Buddhist Notes

Dhamma (Pali) Dharma (Sanskrit): The Doctrine - The Teaching - The Dispensation

---

Four noble truths:

1. All life is suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by cravings and desires.
3. Cessation of cravings (Nirvana) is the way out.
4. Nirvana is reached by following a three fold plan of wisdom, morality and meditation.

The Eightfold Path:

Wisdom: 1.Right Views, (understanding) 2. Right Purpose.

Morality: 3. Right Speech. 4. Right Vocation, 5. Right Conduct.

Meditation: 6. Right Effort, 7.Right Concentration, 8. Right Meditation.

The Middle Path Avoids Two Extremes:

Delusions: Anger, Drunkeness, Obstinacy, Bigotry, Deception, Envy, Self-praise, Disparaging Others, Superciliousness and Evil Intentions.

Austerities: Self Mortification.

Three Axioms: self evident truths:

1. The sentinent universe is a multitiered edifice with three primary realms.

• Sense-Desire Realm - Eleven planes: Hells, Animal realm, Ghosts, Human realm, Titans, and Six Heavens.
• Fine Material Realm - Sixteen Exaulted planes: Meditative Absorptions of bliss and power
• Immaterial Realm - Four planes of immaterial meditative absorptions. Matter has disappeared completely

2. Rebirth: Transmigration is propelled by ignorance and craving. Samsara is the round of repeated cycles of birth, misery and death caused by Karma.

3. Karma: (Action): Volitional actions subject to a law of retribution. Karma operates in an ethical mode.

• Unwholesome Karma motivated by greed, aversion and delusion brings a bad rebirth.
• Wholesome Karma generosity, kindness and wisdom leads to a good rebirth.

Karma determines not only the specific plane of rebirth, but also the inherent capacities and propensities and the basic direction of our lives.

Four stages of awakening:

1. Stream entry: Brought about by seeing and entering the stream of the Dharma (The noble eightfold path) and eradicating the three coarse fetters.

• Personality view: The view of a substantial self within the empirical person.
• Doubt in the Buddah and the teachings.
• Wrong grasp of the rules and vows. Belief that external observances, religious rituals and penitential forms of asceticism can lead to salvation.

2. Once returner: Will be born one more time and there reach the ultimate goal. Greed, hatred and delusion are attenuated and rise only sporadically and only in a mild degree.

3. Non returner: Is reborn in one of the exaulted forms in realm of heavens and pure abodes. Cuts off the fourth and fifth fetters, sensual lust, and ill will which are the principle ties keeping living beings bound to the sense-desire world.

4. Arahant: Attained by the elimination of the five subtle fetters: Desire for existence in the form and formless realms, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. When ignorance collapses it takes all of the other defilements along with it. For the Arahant, death is not the passageway to a new rebirth, but the doorway to the absolute state. This is the true cessation of suffering and the final termination of the beginningless round of birth and death

There is freedom from desire and sorrow at the end of the way. The awakened one is free from all fetters and goes beyond life and death. Like a swan that rises from the lake, with her thoughts at peace, she moves onward, never looking back. The one who understands the unreality of all things, and who has laid up no store, that one’s track is unseen, as of birds in the air. Like a bird in the air, she takes an invisible course, wanting nothing, storing nothing, knowing the emptiness of all things.

- Dhammapada

 

Therefore, be as a lamp
Unto yourselves,
Be as a refuge to yourselves.
Take no external refuge.
Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp;
Hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.
Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves.

- The Buddha

 

Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held true.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.

- The Buddha

 

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?

- Buddha in the Dhammapada