Buddhism centers on the four noble truths: that (1) there is suffering, that (2) it has a cause, that (3) it can be suppressed, and that (4) there is a way to accomplish this. Everything about life, according to Buddha, is suffering, and people will always be in a state of suffering; life is full of longing. Everything will pass away, art, books, life, and nothing can escape dissolution. The remedy for this is to get out of it. It is often objected that Buddha is emphasizing the dark side of life and there is room for fulfillment in life with the reaching of goals and comforts between the extremes of chuildood and dying. However, Buddhism maintains everything is transient, but there is happiness in detachment and attempting to reach the arhata state. Everything is in a constant state of flux and everything is subject to beginning and dissolution in a chain without beginning or end. Becoming is all that exists and the apparent identity in time consists in a continuity of moments which exists as a continuity of an identity. We come to see things in terms of the categories: substance, whole and part, plurality, etc., but really at the core of things, there is a single evolution of becoming. For instance, we say it rains, but really, there is no it at all, and everything is just becoming.
Buddha often seemed to deny the self, as he sees it as a root of misbehavior and he maintains that we never remain the same for two moments. Buddha was silent about the Atman in the Upanishads. In terms of the soul, Buddha refuses to give a description. For if one affirms the soul, permanence is attained which leads to contradiction. If one denies the soul, it leads to annihilation, which leads to contradiction. Buddha probably did not believe in a lack of a soul as a lack of soul would lead to annihilation upon death which Buddha repudiates. The logical conclusion is that the something exists (though not the empirical self) but he is cautious in making his statement and is therefore taking an agnostic standpoint. However, I must say that taking an agnostic standpoint leads to ethical contradiction in the same way as not taking an agnostic standpoint. However, Buddha is additionally recognizing the transcendence of the soul. After Buddha, Nagesena developed his doctrine on the self through a phenomenalistic doctrine developed with great skill and brilliance, who drew the definitively negative conclusion that there is no self. Ideas and states come. occupy our attention for a while, and then go away. We come to believe that there is a permanent self that binds all of these states together, but this is not actually found in experience. He argues that there is nothing in experience that can be justified as the self; between two successive moments, there is no identity.
The Buddhists define a doctrine of Origination. The world came to be through ignorance, through ignorance comes the samskaras, from the samskaras comes consciousness, from consciousness comes name and form, from name and form comes the six senses, from sensation comes thirst (or desire), from thirst comes attachment, and then birth, old age, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair. Ignorance is clinging to existence, which conceals the nature of reality which is that all is suffering. The samskaras is the term for the force which causes beings to arise. These samskaras lead to rebirth. Consiousness is necessary for existence, and only ceases when nirvana is obtained. This whole scheme may seem dogmatic, but it must be remembered that there is no fixicity about the number and order of these phases.
The Ethics of Buddhism
Every act has a karmic result and can be either pure or unpure. Pure acts are directed toward the welfare of others and are free from passion, desire, and the illusion of the ego. Buddhism expounds not to indulge in the extreme stances of indulgence and mortification, and instead to follow the eightfold path, i.e. (1) right beliefs, (2) right aspirations, (3) right speech, (4) right conduct, (5) right livelihood, (6) right effort, (7) right mindedness, and (8) right enthusiasm. For example, Right conduct is unselfish conduct. Right effort consists in exercising control over the passions, so as to prevent the rise of bad qualities. For example, focus on a good idea, face the danger of letting the bad idea develop into action, turn attention away from the bad idea, and coerce the mind back into the good idea. Right effort consists of a mental steadiness. Meditation is an important part of Buddhist practice and has four stages: joy from living a life of solitude, contemplation, insight, and reflection, inner calm without conscious reflection, absence of prejudice and passion, and tranquility without care or joy. Pure acts are based in unselfishness and results in acts of love and compassion and unpure acts are based in egoism and lead to malice, etc. Actions become good by avoiding the three bodily sins of murder, theft, adultery; the four sins of speech, lying, slander, abuse, and idle talk; and the three sins of mind, covetousness, hatred, and error. Knowledge is emphasized in Buddhism in addition to meditation, but not to the charge of intellectualism. You must think things through to obtain truth unceasingly. Salvation consists in the overcoming of selfishness, the illusion of the ego, and the false sense of the self. Buddha does not preach asceticism, unless asceticism means the cutting off of the ego.
Nirvana is the goal of spiritual progress in Buddhism, but Buddha did not usually give direct descriptions and instead spent most of the time trying to win others over to its realization. Buddha gave both a negative and positive status to nirvana. It is inconceivable to us and it is best to explain it through negative descriptions, along with positive descriptions which are only approximations. Sometimes a distinction is made between two types of nirvana: (a) Upadhisesa, which occurs in this world, and (b) Anupadhisesa, which occurs upon the death of one who obtains nirvana. In Upadhisesa, the human passions are extinct, and in Anupadhisesa, all being is extinct. The former is a mental repose free of stress and conflict. It is an existence full of confidence, peace, calm, bliss, and happiness. The latter is often compared to a deep sleep in which the subject becomes one with the universe. Some commentators interpret nirvana as equivalent to annihilation, but others believe there is nothing that suggests annihilation. Some schools reduce nirvana to vacuity and nihility. There are others that view nirvana as pleasant. Thus nirvana is neither annihilation nor ordinary existence.
Karma and Refutation of God
Karma, for the Buddhists, comes from within, and not without. It is often objected that karma is incompatible with freedom. However, Buddha maintained that karma is not merely a mechanical principle in which past deeds have complete causation over the present, and instead merely demonstrates a continuity between past actions and present consciousness, in which the present accords with the past. This does not mean the present is the only possible consequence of the past. Buddha analyzes the self psychologically into a sum of qualities, tendencies, and dispositions, which creates the effects of karma. Analyzing things psychologically, an element of determinism holds, but our self is subject to our own activity and as such has the capacity to transcend the past. Buddha is simply against the type of indeterminism which regards free will as a force which interferes with the orderly workings of the mind. When nirvana is reached, karma ceases, which obtains freedom in nonconsequence of good and evil, and so all moral conduct is preparation for this final state. Heaven and Hell are recognized as temporary states for the good and evil, along with reincarnation for the imperfect on the round of rebirth. There is no such thing in Buddhism as the transmigration of the self from life to life. All that remains upon rebirth is the person’s karma, in which they are otherwise an entirely different person. The reincarnation is the result of the karma remaining inplace resulting from a clinging to existence. The last thought is often the most important thing that determines the persons rebirth. This mechsanism is not explained in Buddhism, but is imply assumed. Some Buddhists do believe in the transmigration of the self.
Like Jainism, Buddhism rejects the conception of God. These arguments are perhaps refutable, but they get the job done. The Buddhists reject the cosmological argument. The Buddhist doctrine of origination takes care of the beginning of the universe and we need not have a conscious cause. A first cause does not necessarily help us in moral progress and can lead to inaction. If God exists, he must cause everything, so that we can have no freedom of our own. If he disowns his authorship of the evil in the world, he is not a universal agent. If God has universal grace, we can be indifferent to a virtuous life. Karma is at the core of things since is the only thing that can explain the suffering of the world. With karma at the core of things, a God would have no ability to alter or modify anything. The Buddhists reject the teleological argument since the world is obviously imperfect. A perfect creator cannot create an imperfect world.
Idealism Studies 