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Know after his enlightenment as the Sakyamuni Buddha and Gautama Buddha, the compassionate Bodhisattva, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha gave his first sermon about Buddhism and Buddhist practices at the age of thirty-five was in the Deer Park at Sarnath. It was called, "Turning the Wheel of Dharma". Buddha taught a new spiritual path which he called "The Middle Way". If one followed the Buddhism Pathway it would bring a spiritual pilgrim clear vision, insight, wisdom, tranquility, awakening, enlightenment, and nirvana. Gautama Buddha emphasized that a good society was casteless and everyone was equal under karmic law. A compassionate man of philosophical intellect and inspirational wisdom, Gautama Buddha's disciplines included all social classes from kings to bankers to courtesans. Basic Buddhism principles that he taught were to treat all sentient beings like oneself and to cultivate compassion, kindliness, empathy and fairness. Buddha’s teachings were recollected by his followers and transmitted orally as Buddhism and Buddhist teachings. It was not until many years after his death that the Buddhist principles of Buddhism were written down.
The Pali dialogues or
sutras are believed to be the closest approximation to what Gautama Buddha
actually taught. Unique in religious history, no blood has ever been shed to
convert others to Buddhism.
Buddhism disappeared from India around the end of the thirteenth century, due to the take-over of India by Islamic conquerors. By this time, however, Buddhism had spread out from India to become a dominant faith in many Himalayan areas (Nepal, Tibet which remains a great repository of a vast body of important literature, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Ladak), and through Central and East Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Mongolia); and into Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, and Laos). Karmic Law, Pratityasamypadha, (the Law of Causation or Dependent Origination) is the cornerstone for Buddha's entire system of Buddhism teachings. Although all things are impermanent, all occurrences in one’s life are conditioned by others and with a turn of the wheel then form conditions for other occurrences. One event, action, or reaction, results in an effect and that in turn causes other events, actions, and reactions. During his "Discourse on Casual Relations", Gautama Buddha discussed the four characteristics of causation: objectivity, necessity, invariability and conditionality. In order to get off the karmic wheel one must initiate potent moral action in any moment of time so that one's skandhas will be properly configured. A person consists of five skandhas: a bodily form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. At any given moment in time, you are an amalgam of these five groups. Any future blended patterns are the result of prior causations.
Moral actions result in more
propitious circumstances while wrongful acts lead to unfortunate conditions.
This causal linkage continues from lifetime to lifetime until nirvana liberates
you from the karmic cycles of rebirth... Continue on
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