Zen and the Way of Tea (part 1 continued).
The Rise of Buddhism.
The German philosopher Karl Jaspers described the period 800 to 200 BCE as the “Axial Age” when philosophy and revolutionary thinking had a profound impact in China, India, Persia, Judea and Greece. In China Confucius and Lao Zi, dominated radical thinking whilst in India it was the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, a prince in a royal household of the Shakya kingdom, who introduced a philosophy/religion that today can count an estimated 400 million followers world wide.
To the north of the Indian subcontinent the Himalayan mountain range, forms a formidable physical barrier separating the Indian subcontinent from China and Tibet in the north. The weak points in this natural defence are the high mountain passes into Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Indus River basin in the Northwest and the Ganges River basin in the Northeast. For a thousand years before the rise of the Axial Age, the Indus Valley civilisation was supported by agriculture, overseas trade and fishing.
The Indus Valley civilisation was highly organised, very conservative civilisation divided into a threefold structure of priests, warriors and farmers, a system that may have been introduced by Indo-European Vedic culture and Indo-Iranian Zoroastrian culture. The word “Hindu” that today refers to the philosophy that evolved in that region originates from the Sanskrit word “Sindhu” that means river and referred to the “Indus River”.
The results of Iron Age technology that spread throughout the region c.800BCE facilitated a more intensive form of agriculture, it revolutionised farm implements enabling clearing of land that was able to support a growing population, and enabled the manufacture of efficient armaments. By 600BCE the population had spread and the entire Ganges basin had been colonised. A new class of religious practitioner arose who rejected the older privileged Brahmin claim to Vedic wisdom, the parivrājaka or Holy Wonderers who were dissatisfied with the restrictions of the developing society they developed meditation techniques another group the Nirgrānyhs , (later known as Jain's), were concerned with the pollution and purity of the human body and used various forms of asceticism to purify their soul.
Siddhartha Gautama was born in Lumbini near Kapilavastu on the Indian, Nepalese border, around 500BCE, into a wealthy family, his father Siddhodana was the king and a man of great wealth, his mother Māyādevi was a woman of leisure and refinement. When a son was born a wise man was asked to bless the child "Asita" said “the child would become either a great religious teacher or a world leader”. Soon after Siddhartha’s birth his mother Māyādevi died and Siddhartha was nurtured by his aunt Mahāprajāpatī. Siddhartha grew up in the privileged existence of a royal household, his training was primarily to one day succeed his father and rule the kingdom, by the age of sixteen he was provided with a young wife Yaśodharā.
Siddhartha grew up in the confines of the royal household and as a young man an insatiable curiosity grew to witness life outside the palace environment and this resulted in four secret trips outside the palace and four encounters with the human condition that would have far-reaching consequences. Whilst travelling incognito outside the palace, the first sighting was that of an old man, an experience that brought home the inevitability of old age, the second and third trip Siddhartha had similar confrontations with disease and death. On the fourth trip Siddhartha encountered a wondering holy man, a parivrājaka poverty stricken and dressed in rags but radiant with inner peace and this sowed the seed in his mind that there was an alternative to the passive acceptance of suffering. The Pali word for suffering is “Duka”, and refers to the suffering that permeates our entire existence and affects both body and mind.
It is difficult to understand what would drive a twenty nine year old husband, father, prince, to abandon the comfort of a royal household, his royal inheritance, parents, beautiful wife and by now, a young son, to live the life of an parivrājaka, a homeless wonderer. But such was the drive to find answers. Cutting of his hair and wearing rags Siddhartha searched for teachers and learnt their ways, (the Mahāsaccaka Sutta tells of Siddhatha Gautama’s extreme asceticism).
Then at the age of 35, Siddhartha and close to death as a result of years of fasting and living a life of extreme asceticism, Siddhartha wondered down to the river to meditate, it is said that a young girl tending cows gave Siddhartha a bowl of milk and some rice and this light refreshment gave Siddhartha enough strength for him to realise that his extreme asceticism was no more an answer than his life of sensual indulgence in the royal household. He had learned many spiritual ways but had not found the answers he sought. Having taken sustenance his fellow ascetics left him, but with renewed strength and determination Siddhartha sat under a Bodhi tree and entered deep meditation. After a long period of meditation the dawn broke and he saw his existence through new eyes, free from Samsara, the cyclic existence of life and death and rebirth.
Siddhartha had attained enlightenment, he had become a “Buddha” and spent the rest of his life teaching and ordaining his followers. Shakyamuni Buddha as he was now known declared: “Suffering I teach – and the way out of suffering” and is the tenant within his early teaching of “The Four Noble Truths” and “The Noble Eight Fold Path”.
1. Acknowledging the Existence of Suffering.
2. The Causes of Suffering.
3. The Cessation of the Causes of Suffering.
4. The Path that leads to the Cessation of Suffering.
The Noble Eightfold Path - is the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
The Buddha likened The Four Noble Truths to “medicine for a sick person”. First we need to recognize we are ill, (Acknowledging the existence of suffering), then we need to identify what is making us ill, (The Causes of Suffering), then we need to recognize that we can get better, (The Cessation of the Causes of Suffering), and finally we need a course of medicine, (the Nobel Eightfold Path). Out of this teaching came a way of life that has orientated a moral and ethical compass that is still practiced by many millions around the world today.
The difference between Buddhism and other religions is that in Buddhism there is no Godhead deity and no text central to Buddhist philosophy such as the Bible, Koran or Torah. The word “Buddha” itself simply means “Awakened or enlightened being", and as such allows each and every one of us to nurture the seeds of Buddha in us. There where many Buddha’s before Shakyamuni Buddha and there have been many Buddha’s after Shakyamuni however, Buddha Shakyamuni is regarded as the “Historical Buddha” and is revered not as a deity but because he represents the seed of Buddha nature in us.
Buddha Shakyamuni was eighty years old when he entered Parinirvana. Nothing of the Buddha’s teachings, (Dharma), was written down whilst the Buddha was alive, (nor for at least 400 years after his death), the teachings being passed (Transmitted) to a successor who then becomes the Dharma heir. The first Dharma heir to receive the transmission was Mahākāśyapa one of Buddha’s most revered disciples. In the story of the “Flower Sermon” Shakyamuni Buddha gave a wordless sermon to the Sangha by holding up a single lotus flower, none of the Sangha understood the sermon except for one, Mahākāśyapa who responded with a smile signifying the direct transmission of wisdom without words. Mahākāśyapa became the first Dharma heir (successor to the Buddha), and the first patriarch of what was later called by the Chinese Chán and by the Japanese Zen Buddhism.
A few months after the death and Parinirvana of the Bhddha, Mahākāśyapa held a council at which the Buddhas teachings were recited in the hope to establish a unified Buddhist Cannon that would define the Buddha’s teaching and establish the precepts that are to be followed by the monastics.
As the Sangha, (the spiritual community of the Buddha’s disciples), grew, so did the popularity and interest in Buddhism which gradually spread throughout the Indian sub-continent. As the number of Buddhist followers grew so did its patronage. It is said that King Ashoka the Great (304-232BCE) converted to Buddhism in 263BCE following the carnage he witnessed during the Kalinga war which resulted in 100,000 deaths and the taking of 150,000 prisoners. Ashoka is responsible for establishing a number of monuments marking sites of significant interest in the life of the Buddha and for the propagation of Buddhism throughout Asia. It is said that Asoka’s son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitra where also prominent in the expansion of Buddhism and establishing Buddhism in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 250BCE.
A schism within the community of monastics developed during the second "council," held a hundred years after the Buddhas death. One school the Hinayana, (of which the Theravadans are the only group of eighteen that survive today), felt that the path to enlightenment should be reserved for the monastic, they who could practice with no distraction. The emphasis of the Theravadan tradition was placed on education and rules; they argued that Nirvana could only be reached through personal effort and moral stringency. Under the patronage of King Ashoka Theravadan Buddhism spread throughout India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Cambodia.
Some scholars also suggest that under King Ashoka's patronage a second school, the Mahayana school travelled north through the mountains on existing trade routes into Afghanistan, Tibet then China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Mahayana Buddhism was considered as inclusive and accessible to the lay practitioner though the aspiration of Bodhicitta, compassion and enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. A third school evolved out of Mahayana tradition that relied on symbolism and ritual, Vajrayana Buddhism settled in the remote and inaccessible mountainous countries of Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet.
Throughout its history the basic tenant of the Buddhas teaching has remained the same, but as trade between countries grew so did the transfer of goods, people, philosophies and ideas. Buddhism was absorbed into other cultures rather than domineering them, thus the teaching stayed the same but the fabric of ritual and custom changed to reflect differing cultural backgrounds. Monks and teachers emphasised some parts of the Buddhas teaching over others.
Coming next: "Analects, Lao Tsu and the Qin".
© The Stillness Project
