National Taiwan University

What Buddha Has Taught Us

Research Report

B09504078
Karla Chinchilla
December 18th. 2022
Wordcount: 1968
Film, Faith, and Moral

B09504078 1
 WHAT BUDDHA HAS TAUGHT US

"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of
abundance”, this is one of Buddha’s most famous quotes because it transmits what Buddhism is
about. Most people mention how Buddhism is more a lifestyle than anything else, and how it
focuses on how there are a combination of forces that are constantly changing. It teaches people to
think on their own and to not settle to what they are taught, that they must search for the Truth even
in Buddha himself. It’s all about looking for their purpose and following the right path to what they
call Nirvana.
The first of the chapters talks about the Buddhist mental attitude. For Buddhists, Buddha is
not considered a God or a messiah, but only a man who through effort and intelligence has reached
enlightenment. According to Buddhism there is no such thing as something above man, who alone
is capable of forging who he is. Man's purpose then is to find and follow the right path to Liberation
or "Nirvana", and this should not be too complicated for man since Buddhism does not keep
anything hidden. (Rahula Thero 3)
Buddhism exhorts us to think for ourselves and not just go by the things we are taught,
not even by the Buddha himself whom we must also examine and make sure that he is the
Truth. However, we must not remain in doubt, because doubt is an impediment that we must get
rid of in order to progress and see our path and our purposes clearly. Two other very important
ideals in Buddhism are: tolerance, which dictates that we should not condemn other beliefs or
religions, but rather always be open to listen and understand what others think; and the idea that
things do not need labels or names to remain what they are, because that kind of actions often
only serve to put prejudices in the mind of man. In the case of Truth, for example, it is not
important where it comes from or how it has developed as long as it fulfills its purpose of
liberating us.
Another thing that is paramount to Buddhism is to avoid attachments, even to the
Buddha's own teachings, which should be seen as a tool to reach the Truth and not as something
to carry forever on our backs.

B09504078 2
 In his first sermon to the 5 ascetics the Buddha briefly explained to them about the Four
Noble Truths: Dukkha, Samudaya (arising of Dukkha), Nirodha (cessation of Dukkha), and
Magga (Path leading to the cessation of Dukkha). (Rahula Thero 12)

In the context of the first Noble Truth, Dukkha represents suffering in a certain way,
and deeper ideas such as imperfection, impermanence, emptiness and insubstantiality, but in
the Buddha's discourses it is mentioned that it also includes certain kinds of happiness such as
the happiness of pleasure and the happiness of attachment and detachment. The Buddha taught
that to understand life we must first need to understand the attraction, dissatisfaction, and
freedom that attachments or detachments bring. And also, he taught of how Dukkha can occur
as ordinary suffering, suffering generated by change, or suffering from conditioned states.

For Buddhism the "being" is a combination of constantly changing forces or energies

that are divided into five aggregates that define our way of act, our feelings and the way in
which we must learn to interpret the world that it is around us every day. The five aggregates
are then: the aggregate of matter which includes all internal as well as external matter, the
aggregate of sensations which includes all that we experience with the six senses or faculties,
the aggregate of perceptions which is how we receive the information grasped by the previous
aggregate, the aggregate of mental formations which includes all kinds of volitional activities,
and the aggregate of consciousness which includes the act of noticing the presence of objects.
Buddha stated that consciousness depends on matter to exist and therefore the called "being"
is only a label given to the combination of the five aggregates.

B09504078 3
 The second Noble Truth is about how Dukkha arises, generally the position on the meaning of
this is that it speaks of a thirst or desire, and how the act of manifesting something in different
ways causes attachments and consequently suffering to arise. This thirst also depends on the
sensation that is perceived through touch, but it is not limited to desire and attachment for sense
pleasures but also desire and attachment for ideals, opinions, conceptions and beliefs.
According to Buddha all conflicts arise from this selfish thirst. From the most important
teachings of the Buddha then we get that the root of the arising of Dukkha is in itself, in the
desire, the will to be, to exist, to become, to accumulate incessantly, all these being included in
the group of the mental formations, one of the five aggregates. All that has in itself by nature
arising has also by nature cessation, thus Dukkha (the five aggregates) have in themselves both
the nature of their own arising and the nature of their cessation.
For Buddhist belief, karma expresses only the fruit or result of volitional actions. These can
then be guided by good or bad volition as well as the fruit they will generate through karma.
Only in the case that one manages to act free of the thirst described by the second Noble Truth
will one not accumulate karma, and it will be able to reach Nirvana and manage to free oneself
from the cycle of rebirth.
The Third Noble Truth describes the cessation of Dukkha, what we just talked about in
the previous paragraph. The root of Dukkha which is 'thirst' must be eliminated in order to reach
Nirvana where we will see everything clearly, thirst ceases due to wisdom. The chapter four
poses the question: what is nirvana? And the answer is that we, as limited beings, find it
impossible to describe the nature of this state of absolute Truth. In the end, instead of arriving at
a clear answer, we get more and more bogged down in words and never get anywhere.

B09504078 4
 The original Pali texts have various descriptions of Nirvana which include phrases such as
Nirvana is the cessation of "thirst", the total detachment from it, the extinction of desire, the
extinction of hatred, the extinction of delusion, the uprooting of attachment. In Nirvana we will
understand that there is no 'I', we will see the absolute Truth which is not bound to any notion of
this world. In a discourse of the Buddha to Pukkusati he explains to him that what Nirvana does
not understand are the six elements that constitute man: solidity, fluidity, heat, movement, space
and consciousness, he also makes him understand what we can call consciousness arises and
how sensations influence us. In a state of Nirvana none of these sensations is perceived, there is
nothing pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and therefore there is no attachment.

The one who has attained Nirvana is endowed with absolute wisdom, since the total
extinction of Dukkha is the noble and absolute wisdom. (Watts 43) This is how one can even
apply the word Truth in replacement of Nirvana thinking that this is the ultimate end, the
destination to which the path taught by Buddha helps us to experience it. But Nirvana is not an
effect of this path as it cannot be produced or conditioned, the only thing that can be done to
interact with it is to experience it. Nothing is beyond Nirvana because it is the Ultimate Truth, it
is the ultimate end.

The Fourth Noble Truth is known as the path that will lead to the cessation of Dukkha and
therefore to Nirvana. This is a path that avoids all kinds of extremes and goes through a middle
path between them, it is also often referred to as the Noble Eightfold Path as it consists of eight
divisions, which are not steps that should be done one at a time but rather parts that if carried
out simultaneously will give us good results, and which will lead us to Nirvana. These eight
factors are: right compassion, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right
effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

B09504078 5
 In one way or another all the Buddha's teaching is about this path, this is the very essence of
Buddhism. The aim of these factors is to practice the three training principles of Buddhism:
ethical conduct, mental discipline and wisdom. Ethical conduct (sila) is based on the conception
of universal love and compassion for each and every living being and seeks to ensure a happy
and harmonious existence. (Watts 85) This conduct consists of three factors of the Noble
Eightfold Path: right speech, right action and right livelihood, and is directed to the mental
qualities that come with developing the affective part of one's mind. Mental discipline also
consists of three factors of the path, and in this case they are: right effort, right attention and
concentration. To achieve this mental discipline we must be aware of our sensations and
emotions in order to be attentive and learn how they appear and disappear. Wisdom is
complementary to ethical conduct since this is when one develops the intellectual part of one's
mind, so one does not go to the extreme of being someone very intelligent but insensitive nor to
the extreme of being someone very good but ignorant. Wisdom encompasses the two missing
factors of the path, right thinking and right understanding. (Watts 87) As far as wisdom is
concerned, it helps us to stay away from bad qualities such as selfishness or attachment while
also understanding things as they are and not as we want to see them, this wisdom is what
penetrates when we ascend to Nirvana.

In Buddhism there is no such thing as a soul or self or anything like the Atman which is a kind
of immutable entity or substance behind each of us. Buddhism denies the existence of the soul
and self that gives rise to selfishness and all that is evil. Without a self that drives man's ideas of
self-protection and self-preservation these attachments are removed and he aspires to
enlightenment. The Buddha realized that there are different levels of man's development and
these are affected by how he understands the Truth.

B09504078 6
 The doctrine of anatta describing the non-existence of the soul arises from the analysis of the
five aggregates and the teaching of conditioned genesis. Conditioned genesis is a synthetic
method that concludes that there is no absolute in the world, but that everything is conditioned
and relative. So, the conditioned genesis starts from the principle of relativity and consists of
twelve factors, which are: through ignorance, volitional actions are conditioned, through
volitional actions, consciousness is conditioned, through consciousness, mental and physical
phenomena are conditioned, through mental and physical phenomena, the six faculties are
conditioned, through the six faculties, contact is conditioned, by contact is conditioned sensation,
by sensation is conditioned desire, by desire is conditioned attachment, by attachment is
conditioned the process of becoming, by the process of becoming is conditioned birth, and by
birth are conditioned old age, death, affliction, sorrows, and so on.

This formula describes the development of life, but also analyzed in the opposite sense it
results in the cessation of the process, but Buddhism does not accept a beginning or a first cause,
since genesis is not a chain with a beginning and an end, but rather a circle that continues until
one manages to get out of the cycle through enlightenment and the attainment of Nirvana.
Thinking in this way we realize that free will has no place in Buddhist philosophy since all
existence is conditioned and the will of each one of us depends on conditions so we are never
really free to think about things.

B09504078 7
Bibliography:

Works Cited

Rahula Thero, Dr. Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. Oneworld Publications, 1959.

Watts, Allan. Buddhism: the religion of non-religion. Eden Grove Editions, 1995.

https://www.academia.edu/68099057/The_Buddha_s_Teaching

https://www.academia.edu/90978546/The_teachings_of_the_Buddha

B09504078 8