Our popular Western image of Buddhism, which spread from India throughout Asia, has been shaped by what we know of the Dalai Lama from Tibet as well as movements such as Zen.  Dominant in this image is the notion of ahimsa (nonviolence).

Given the importance of ahimsa with the Jains and Buddhists as well as Hindu leaders such as Gandhi, we might get the impression that India has always emphasized peacefulness and tranquillity.  This was certainly not true in the past and clearly is not true today.  If anything, as we can see from the Bhagavad Gita, divinity operating through human form is more likely to be in the role of the warrior than that of the priest.  (Later we will see a parallel with early Judaism as well as with Islam.)  Perhaps the best way to approach what Buddhism is about is to see it as a powerful reaction to the level of violence and ruthlessness that would often characterize the age in which it appears and is reflected in a document such as the Artha Shastra ("The Treatise on Success"), which reads as an Indian version of Machiavelli.

The legend of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (literally, "the enlightened one") as the divinely conceived prince led to renounce the wealth and privilege of his rank has a number of points in common with the legend of the Christ (literally, "the anointed one).  There is even the forty days of fasting with temptation from an evil force (Satan for Christ, the jealous god Mara for Buddha),  the remembered sermons, and the formation of a group of followers who have the task of spreading the new message.  An immediate difference is the manner in which Buddhist authority centered on individual monasteries while Christianity set up structures more closely parallel to the Roman political order.  Also, apart from those who chose the life of a monk, the ordinary person accepting Buddhism (done simply through the individual recitation of a brief formula and not through any ceremonial acceptance by the group) was not expected to make drastic changes to his lifestyle.  Gautama himself had insisted that his was the "middle way" between extreme asceticism and an anything-goes worldliness.  For those pursuing enlightenment after the model of Gautama himself, various techniques of meditation were developed that did not involve shutting out mental images (as in Yoga) but actually encouraging them (for this, see more about the exercises used in the Theravada tradition and the use of the mandala in Tibet).

The Buddhist monks would clearly come into conflict with those who represented the older Hindu temples.  The most important issue in the tightly stratified village society of India would be the rejection of the caste system, above all the abandonment of any restrictions about dealing with the "untouchables" and a new position accorded women through the founding of monasteries just for them.   It's useful to keep in mind that Gautama came from an ethnic group already outside the more typical Indian structure and only recently assimilated.  Buddhists, then, began as outsiders, and the most successful proselytizing took place with other outsiders, as in the Greek kingdoms that had been set up in northwest India after the death of Alexander the Great.  One of the most famous documents in Buddhist philosophical literature resulted from an early encounter between the sage Nagasena and the Bactrian King Milinda.  The influence was not all one way, however; the first Buddhist art is seen in statues of the Buddha clearly modeled after the Greek statues of their gods.

A key Buddhist phrase is "anicca, anatta," translated as "no substance, no soul."  Nagasena developed this with the Greek king by insisting that just as there is no such thing as a chariot apart from all the individual objects involved in its construction, there is no real "Milinda" apart from the different bundles of perception that we can be aware of.  To understand this major point of Buddhist thought, which in some ways is similar to David Hume's approach in British philosophy, think of how ordinarily we objectify things in our minds, so that, for instance, we look at fire as an object rather than a process or event.  To switch our perspective we move from saying "the fire burns" (making the fire a thing) to "there is burning."  In the same way we look within ourselves and go from saying "my mind thinks" to "there is thinking."   We are "happenings" rather than permanent selves.

Another example would be to look at a light bulb that's lit and ask where the light comes from and where it goes.  Think about this, and we realize it is the wrong question, since light is something happening, an event, and not itself a thing.  If we then ask about what is ultimately there in order for the event itself to take place, we come to the idea that there is just energy that changes form.  In some schools of Buddhist metaphysics we would talk about the Buddha nature as this ultimate flow of consciousness.  The school of Vedanta that we saw earlier in Hinduism seems to have incorporated something of this Buddhist approach, especially with the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara.  Shankara also imitated the Buddhists  by establishing the first order of Hindu monks, one that remains active still.

In the early fourth century Constantine sought to unify his hold on the Roman Empire by converting to the new Christian movement and ordering its leaders to meet in order to resolve doctrinal differences.  Almost six centuries earlier this had been the story of Ashoka, who unified India politically and used Buddhism as a basis for establishing a cultural unity that would reinforce his position.  It is against this backdrop that we can better understand the resistance of the older Hindu world and its need to win back the Indian people by offering a more clearly human figure as an object of worship (Krishna, as portrayed in the Bhagavad Gita, which is inserted as an episode into the older war story, the Mahabharata).

The key ideas of Buddhism are the "Four Noble Truths" with their identification of suffering (dukka) as the dominant fact of human existence, desire as the cause of suffering, eliminating desire as the cure, and an eight-step path as the means by which this can be done.  What stands out here is the emphasis on a psychological account as compared with the metaphysical assumptions of Yoga or the Jains.  Instead of seeing ourselves as eternal selves trapped by our human actions (karma) in a cycle of rebirth, Buddhism emphasizes that there is no "real" self at all.  Nirvana, in the earlier statement of Buddhism persisting in the Theravada tradition of Southeast Asia, is the extinction of any apparent self when the very desire to exist  is overcome.

It is perhaps very important to see how Buddhists can approach such a statement.  We tend to react to it as something very negative and pessimistic.  Perhaps a better approach is to ask how many times we would like to go to Disneyland.  Given the notion that we are reborn many times, most of us are probably not yet at the "been there, done that" stage.  There is no pressure to adopt such an outlook.  Those who are ready to follow the path more completely--accepting the life of the monk, let's say--will know it in their hearts, while the rest of us are encouraged simply to move forward through a deeper degree of compassion for others.  At the same time, in many parts of Asia in the past it was completely normal for male teens to spend some time in a monastery without the expectation that this should be their life's vocation.

The simplicity of this vision assumes that reincarnation is not a solution to a problem--the way that Westerners tend to view it--but the problem itself.  Understandably, this would appeal to some individuals burnt out by their consciousness of a tortured existence, but it would hardly be enough of a basis for the kind of thing Buddhism was to become as a world religion.  Quickly enough, in still another parallel with later Christian history, new documents (the sutras) continue to appear that supposedly represent the hidden teaching of the Buddha to his followers that would be made public as time went on.  This is the basis for the Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) tradition that came to dominate most of Asia.  Just as Christianity later on would incorporate older local deities as "saints" (St. Christopher, for instance), Buddhism in its spread would incorporate various deities as Bodhisattvas or expressions of the ultimate reality of  the Buddha-nature in a "heaven" of their own that aim at helping us achieve our salvation.

Just as Christianity is hardly a single coherent tradition but a number of historically linked movements, Buddhism has to be seen as a collection of belief systems.  Unlike Christianity, however, there is most often the vision that no one system has the exclusive claim to be the "true" church (let's note Nichiren Shoshu--the True Church of Nichiren--as the leading exception), and individuals are allowed to move from one path to another as they feel they should.  What does dominate almost all traditions is the value of compassion as the key to how we should treat each other, and in popular devotion Kuan Yin, the goddess of compassion, has a special role.

Leading expressions of contemporary Buddhism are the Tibetan tradition, best known through the Dalai Lama, and the Zen movement that a half-century ago provided inspiration to the so-called Beat movement.

In the Los Angeles area there are a number of temples and centers that allow a more personal exposure to many different Buddhist traditions.  Also, I would strongly recommend viewing the film Kundun, Martin Scorsese's depiction of the early life of the present Dalai Lama (and you may also want to view Seven Years in Tibet, which has wonderful scenes capturing the life of a Tibetan monastery).  Finally, be sure to check out additional resources on the Internet, including a visit to a virtual temple.

 REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR SECTION A:
(1) How true is it that Buddhism, which emphasizes peacefulness, reflected what India was like in the Buddha's time?
(2) What are some similarities between the stories of the Christ and the stories of the Buddha?
(3) What was Gautama's "middle way"?
(4) Why would Buddhism be less attractive to people living in a traditional Indian village than it would be to the rulers of the areas under Greek influence?
(5) What is the translation of anicca, anatta and what does this phrase express about a basic Buddhist metaphysics?
(6) Who was Ashoka?
(7) How might the Bhagavad Gita with its image of Krishna be seen as a response to the Buddhists?
(8) What are the Four Noble Truths?
(9) What is a Bodhisattva?
(10) What does it mean to say that Buddhism is like Christianity in not being a single coherent tradition?

Buddhism, like Hinduism, has appealed to Westerners interested in the idea of spiritual growth in part because it does not place the ultimate reality ("God" or the divine) somehow outside the individual, as do the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Hinduism, whether in the Vedantist idea that ultimately there is but one substance (Brahman) and the separation that marks the deep part of one's self (atman) is an illusion to be overcome or in the Yoga idea that the purusha or self needs to be liberated from the material world (prakriti) in order to experience itself fully, emphasized a permanent reality.  Buddhism did not.  Instead emphasis was on the flow of consciousness.

Imagine the difference between saying things happen and things happen.  In the first we are looking at an event as characterizing an object.  In the second we are focusing on the event itself.  There is something like this in science when we think about the objects around us as somehow permanent when the physicist might remind us that the object is simply how we are interpreting the complex intereaction of various energy fields.

Buddhist meditation is an effort to achieve this awareness of the flow of consciousness (the Buddha nature) within oneself.  As with Hindu spiritual practices this means letting go of an ego or "little self" but with the difference that there is no "self" left.  This could be accomplished either by one's own self-effort (jiriki, in Japanese), which would characterize Zen, or through dependence on supernatural aid (tariki), which is behind the chanting and other devotional practices of most other Buddhist traditions.  Jiriki insists on achieving a certain "no mind" state, which then is the end of the desire that triggers suffering, and is compared with going straight up a steep cliff instead of taking the winding path around to the top, and for the Rinzai school of Zen it is the reason for the paradoxical statement "If you should meet the Buddha, kill him" (meaning, not to depend on anything outside of oneself, no matter how holy).

Satori is described as the momentary state of enlightenment when this Zen goal is achieved.  For the Rinzai school it is seen as sudden, like a flash of lightning, and practices such as the use of the koan (seemingly nonsensical questions such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?") are meant to trigger it.  For the Soto school of Zen the comparison is with the slow dawning of the sun, and the main practice is extended sesshin or sitting in meditation.

The Zen outlook is reflected in traditions as different as the martial arts (as in the classic Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel), the tea ceremony (which legendarily honors Bodhidharma, the monk who brought this meditation tradition from India to China), and the haiku tradition of poetry.  (Keep in mind, though, that the bushido or warrior tradition--dramatized in the film "The Last Samurai"--is as much Confucian as it is Buddhist in origin.)  One concept is that the mindfulness accomplished through any one of these techniques would carry over into others, as in the famous Japanese story of a humble tailor challenged to a duel by a bullying warrior: experienced in the tea ceremony, he adopted the same attitude and spontaneously adopted the pose of a skilled swordsman and so frightened the samurai that the duel never came off.

Tibetan meditation, with its mandalas and droning chants, is perhaps the best example of the tariki (dependence on others) approach, as in the story of the Tibetan teacher who had tried to get his peasant mother to understand some of the subtleties of Buddhist metaphysics and always talked about Amitabha (Amida in Japan), one of the most important bodhisattvas.  His mother never followed what he was saying, but at the moment of her death, confronted by the clear light of ultimate reality, in fear she shouted out this name that had been so  impressed on her consciousness and at that moment achieved nirvana because she had now drawn on the merits of the Buddha.