Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the path

Program / Course 18: World Religions / Lesson 3.2

What you will learn

• Tell the life of the Buddha as Buddhists tell it and state what he taught.
• State the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the ideas of impermanence and no-self.
• Distinguish the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana streams.
• Describe Buddhism as Buddhists do, without calling it simply atheism or simply a philosophy.

The big idea

Buddhism began in northern India with Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha, meaning the awakened one. He taught that life is marked by suffering, that suffering comes from craving and ignorance, that it can end, and that a path of ethics, meditation and wisdom leads to its end. Buddhism does not teach a creator God as the source of salvation. Liberation is attained by understanding and practice, though Buddhist schools differ widely, and many Buddhists also practice devotion and ritual.

Key terms

Buddha

An awakened one, a being who has realized the truth and freed himself from suffering. The historical Buddha is Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhists believe there have been others.

Dukkha

Suffering, unsatisfactoriness or stress. The first of the Four Noble Truths says that existence is marked by dukkha.

Dharma

In Buddhism, the Buddha’s teaching and the truth it describes.

Anatta (no-self)

The teaching that there is no permanent, unchanging self. A person is a changing collection of physical and mental processes.

Nirvana

The ending of craving, hatred and delusion, and of the cycle of rebirth. The goal of the path.

Sangha

The community of Buddhist monks and nuns, and in a wider sense all practitioners. With the Buddha and the Dharma it is one of the Three Jewels.

Bodhisattva

In Mahayana Buddhism, a being who seeks awakening for the sake of all beings and delays final nirvana to help them.

Background

Buddhist tradition says that Siddhartha was born a prince in the region of present day Nepal, probably in the fifth or sixth century before Christ. The dates are debated. Seeing sickness, old age and death, he left his palace to seek an end to suffering. After years of ascetic practice he sat in meditation beneath a tree at Bodh Gaya and awakened. He taught for about forty years and died around the age of eighty.

Buddhism spread through Asia, taking different forms in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia (Theravada), China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam (Mahayana, including Zen and Pure Land) and Tibet and Mongolia (Vajrayana). There are hundreds of millions of Buddhists. The tradition is as varied as Christianity and cannot be summed up in one image of a meditating monk.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Four Noble Truths

In his first sermon the Buddha is said to have set out four truths. First, there is dukkha: birth, aging, sickness, death and loss bring suffering, and even pleasant things are impermanent. Second, dukkha has a cause, which is craving, rooted in ignorance. Third, dukkha can end, and that ending is nirvana. Fourth, there is a path that leads to its end.

Buddhists describe this as a diagnosis and a cure, like a physician’s. The Buddha is often compared to a doctor who treats the arrow in the wound, not one who first discusses who shot it. For that reason Buddhist teaching is often practical, and speculation about the origin of the world is set aside.

Step 2: The Eightfold Path

The path has eight parts, grouped in three. Wisdom: right view and right intention. Ethics: right speech, right action and right livelihood. Meditation: right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. The ethical rules for lay Buddhists include five precepts: not to kill, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, lie or take intoxicants. Monks and nuns follow many more.

The path is called the middle way, between the extremes of indulgence and severe self-denial. It requires practice and not simply belief, though faith in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, the Three Jewels in which Buddhists take refuge, is the doorway.

Step 3: Impermanence, no-self and rebirth

Buddhism teaches that all conditioned things are impermanent and that there is no permanent self. What is called a person is a stream of body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. Clinging to a fixed self is the root of suffering. This doctrine of anatta differs sharply from the Christian teaching of an immortal soul made in God’s image.

Buddhists also teach rebirth, driven by karma, intentional action and its effects. If there is no self, then what is reborn? Buddhist teachers answer that a stream of causes carries on, as one flame can light another without anything passing across. This answer has been much discussed within Buddhism and outside it.

Step 4: The schools

Theravada, the school of the elders, relies on the Pali Canon and holds the ideal of the arhat, who attains nirvana. It emphasizes monastic life and meditation. Mahayana, the great vehicle, honors the bodhisattva who vows to save all beings and holds a wider body of sutras. It includes Zen, which stresses direct meditation, and Pure Land, which teaches trust in the Buddha Amitabha and a rebirth in his realm. Vajrayana, the Tibetan tradition, adds ritual, visualization and the guidance of a teacher called a lama.

These schools differ in what they say of the Buddha. In Theravada he is a human teacher who has passed away. In much Mahayana he is a manifestation of a deeper truth, and some Mahayana devotion looks like prayer to a savior figure. This variety matters when comparing with Christianity.

Step 5: Is Buddhism a religion, and does it deny God?

Many Westerners call Buddhism a philosophy or a way of life. Most Buddhists describe a practice that includes ritual, devotion, monastic orders, festivals and ideas of death and rebirth, and scholars therefore usually treat it as a religion. Buddhism does not deny that gods exist in its cosmology, but it holds that the gods are themselves impermanent and in the cycle of rebirth, and that none is the creator or the source of liberation.

The Buddha’s silence on certain questions, such as whether the world is eternal, is part of the tradition. Buddhists do not generally call themselves atheists, since many reject the framing, though some Buddhist writers have argued against a creator God.

1. What does the Buddhist word dukkha cover, and is suffering a fair translation?
2. How does the idea of no-self differ from the Christian idea of the soul?
3. Why does Buddhism teach that craving is the root of suffering?
4. How does the bodhisattva ideal compare with Christian ideas of compassion and sacrifice?
5. In what sense is Buddhism a practical path more than a creed?
6. Where do Buddhists and Christians agree on ethics, and where do they diverge on what is ultimate?

Examples

Different perspectives

Buddhist

Buddhists across schools agree on the Four Noble Truths, the Three Jewels and the goal of ending suffering, and they disagree on much else. Theravadins stress the Pali Canon and arhatship, and Mahayanists the bodhisattva. Many Buddhists are open to other religions’ wisdom, and some Buddhist teachers hold that belief in a creator God keeps people from realizing no-self.

Catholic

Nostra Aetate says that in Buddhism the radical insufficiency of this changing world is acknowledged, and a way is taught by which people, with devout and confident spirit, may attain a state of perfect liberation or supreme illumination. The Church urges respect, and holds that Christ is the fullness of religious life.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers appreciate Buddhist ascetic discipline and silence, which resemble practices of the Eastern monks. They stress differences: for Orthodox faith, the person is a real and eternal being made for communion with a personal God, and salvation is God’s gift in Christ, not an achievement through meditation.

Protestant

Protestants range from those who see Buddhism as a human system that cannot save, to those who find in Buddhist ethics and compassion much to admire. A widely held evangelical view is that Buddhism rightly diagnoses suffering and wrongly denies a creator and a personal Savior. Some Protestants, such as the theologian Paul Knitter, have written as dialogue partners.

Scholarly

Scholars debate how much of early Buddhist teaching is preserved in the earliest texts, written down centuries after the Buddha. The dates of his life are uncertain, and different traditions give different dates. Scholars also debate how to read no-self.

Why it matters

Buddhism is the clearest example of a major religion that does not rest on belief in a creator God, and its answers to suffering and death are serious ones. Understanding it fairly helps Christians avoid both easy dismissal and easy blending. It also prepares for the later comparison of divine nature and salvation.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. What do you notice when Buddhist teaching begins with suffering? How does the Christian story begin?
2. How might a Christian respond to the claim that clinging to a self is the root of suffering?
3. What do you admire in the Buddhist ethic of compassion, and where do you part?
4. Why might it be a mistake to treat Zen as the whole of Buddhism?

Independent assignment

A Buddhist account of Buddhism

In your notebook, write about 350 words describing Buddhism as a thoughtful Buddhist would, covering the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, no-self and one school of your choice. Use a primary source such as a sutra in translation or a text by a Buddhist teacher. Then write 100 words on one point where a Christian can learn from Buddhist practice and one point of real disagreement. Fill in the Buddhism column of your grid.

Further study

• Huston Smith, The World’s Religions Read the chapter on Buddhism and note how the author describes the Buddha’s teaching.
• David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss Read selectively for a Christian philosopher’s engagement with classical Indian accounts of ultimate reality.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Religious Diversity (Pluralism) Read for the arguments about how a Christian should think of non-theistic religions.
• Ecclesiastes 1:2 Vanity of vanities, a Christian reflection on impermanence.
• Romans 8:22 The whole creation groans, a Christian account of suffering.
• Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, a text on release from worry.