Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) was born approximately 560 BC to a royal family in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was said he would grow up to be a king or a sage, and his family did everything in their power to assure that he would choose to be a king and inherit their palace. Siddhartha was raised in luxury, but when he was 29, seeing an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, he realized that the only way for him to be happy in his life would be to understand and overcome the causes of these basic sources of suffering. He left the palace to become a monk.
For six years he practiced asceticism, studying various forms of meditation with the leading Hindu teachers of his day. He became weak from not taking care of himself and, one day, he passed out along the road. A young "rice maid" saw him and fed him a glass of rice-milk. When he recovered, he realized that the extremes of indulgence and asceticism are not helpful and he vowed to practice the "middle way." He ate moderately and continued to practice his sitting meditation. Sensing that a breakthrough was imminent, he sat down under a tree and vowed not to get up until the answers to the questions he had been asking himself for six years revealed themselves: What is the meaning of life? Why is there so much suffering?
During the night, Siddhartha had many visions and insights into his own mind and into the world. Finally, he had this great insight: everything is in flux; all things are interdependent; nothing is permanent.
In East Asia, this event is celebrated on December 7. December 8 is called Buddha's Enlightenment Day.
Siddhartha was given the name "Buddha," which means he or she who has awakened. The Buddha's first sermon was given to five young men he had been practicing asceticism with. This lecture is referred to as the first turning of the wheel of the Dharma. "Dharma" is sometimes translated as "law" or "truth." In this first sermon, the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths:
(1) Suffering exists. We suffer when we experience pain. We suffer when we do not get what we want. We suffer when we get what we want but it does not last indefinitely.
(2) The Second Noble Truth is that the cause of suffering is desire -- our inflexible desire for things to be other than what they are.
(3) The Third Noble Truth is that it is possible to put an end to suffering by learning to live more simply and be content with what we do have.
(4) The Fourth Noble Truth is that there is a way for realizing this life of joy called the Eightfold Path: Right understanding, aspiration, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.
Buddhism is primarily a practice and a way of life. The essence of the practice is mindfulness or awareness of each activity and moment of life, recognizing each thing, each thought, and each activity for what it is. The basic practice or technique to bring about mindfulness is conscious breathing. As you breathe in, think to yourself the word "in." As you breathe out, say, silently, "out." This is the most basic Buddhist practice.
The teachings of the Buddha are called "sutras." Literally this means thread, as in suture. There are thousands of sutras -- on the Awareness of Breathing, the Foundations of Mindfulness, the Middle Way, and so on. They were first organized following the Buddha's death at the age of 80.
During the next 1,000 years, Buddhism developed and spread throughout Asia. During the past 2,500 years, many sects of Buddhism have developed, emphasizing different aspects of the Buddha's teachings. All those still in existence are represented in North America.
Buddhism has had some contact with the West since the time of Alexander the Great, but the first Buddhist teachers to come to North America were Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Zen master, and Anagarika Dharmapala, a Ceylonese monk, both of whom lectured at the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.
Buddhism may be said to enter a culture through five streams: ideas, art, scholarship, practice, and translation. The Transcendentalists and Theosophists of the 19th and 20th centuries began to enter ideas of Buddhism to North America, as did the French impressionists, the poets William Butler Yeats, T.S. Elliot, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Whalen, and popularizers Alan Watts, Nancy Wilson Ross, D.T. Suzuki, and Lama Anagarika Govinda. Buddhist scholarship, which began in France, England, and Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, became prominent here in the past 40 years. In 1969, it was still possible to own every book published in English on Buddhism. Today, there are eight presses in North America solely dedicated to Buddhism. All major publishing houses issue several books each year.
According to the 1992 Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook, there are 309 million Buddhists in the world. According the American Buddhist Congress, based in Los Angeles, 4 to 5 million Buddhists reside in North America, largely Asian immigrants. There are approximately 500,000 Americans who practice Buddhism more or less regularly whose ancestry is not Buddhist. Buddhism does not require exclusivity in its loyalty. Many people consider themselves Jewish-Buddhists or Catholic-Buddhists or Methodist-Buddhists or Unitarian-Buddhists.
Buddhism is not considered a theistic religion, although
at its core is the realization of the divinity of each person, animal, plant,
and mineral. Its founder is not a god, and its teaching is not revealed
from the outside. According to the teachings of the Buddha, each of us is
capable of realizing awakening. The most basic technique is sitting meditation
and the practice of mindful breathing in order to bring about calm, ease,
joy, and concentration, and eventually insight. There are techniques to
make the practice of mindfulness easier. Faith is at the core of Buddhism,
but it is not blind faith. The Buddha taught that people should not believe
anything just because it is said by some authority, even himself, that only
after experimentation if you find that a teaching or a practice is in accord
with your own intelligence and experience should you believe it or put it
into practice. Practice is the key. The means and the end of Buddhism are
inner peace and world peace.
Arnold Kotler was a monk at the San Francisco and Tassajra Zen Centers for fifteen years. He is a Dharma teacher ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh, and the founding editor of Parallax Press (510-525-0101).