The main manifestations and characteristics of Buddhism

The 'Buddha' that I am going to present to you here is the generic meaning of the infinite Buddhas, in a broad sense. I will try to define 'Buddha' as follows:

A 'Buddha' is a personality who has reached the most complete state of reason, emotion and ability all at the same time. Let me repeat: a 'Buddha' is a personality who has reached the highest degree of perfection of reason, emotion, and ability at the same time; in other words: a Buddha is a person of great wisdom, great compassion (or full wisdom and full compassion), and great ability. Please note here the difference between Buddhism and other religions: Buddha is not omnipotent, he cannot give us liberation, he can only teach us, and we still have to make our own efforts to achieve liberation. Buddha cannot make us go to heaven or condemn us to hell. It is not easy to define 'Buddha'.

Simply put, a Buddha is a 'conscious person', 'an enlightened person'.

Perhaps more explicitly, one should say that a Buddha is a person who has a thorough realization of the fundamental truths of the universe and life.

There is another concise definition, generally accepted by the general public, which is to say that a Buddha is a person who is self-aware of others and whose realization is complete. In other words, a Buddha is a person who has achieved enlightenment himself, and who has further helped other people to achieve enlightenment, and who has reached the highest level of perfection in both self-realization and self-actualization at the same time. I say that Buddha is the true equalizer, and not just a lie, we first on the social background of India to observe: who knows Siddhartha Gautama's time in India, society is divided into Brahmins, aristocrats, commoners, slaves four major classes, and noble Prince Siddhartha Gautama saw the social class irrationality, and resolutely set up a banner of equality, advocating the abolition of class antagonisms, advocating the equality of all living beings.

Please think carefully, all the revolutions in history, are the lowly and lowly class demanded to 'raise' and the noble and high class equality, absolutely nothing like Siddhartha Gautama, he was willing to 'lower' his status as a prince with the commoners and slaves. and slaves on an equal footing. Because of his selfless, do-nothing style, I say he is the true equalizer.

At the same time, Buddhism advocates 'great kindness without cause' and 'great compassion with one body', which takes the meaning of equality even further.

I think there must be some students who are still not clear about the meaning of 'great kindness without destiny' and 'great compassion with one body', so I should briefly describe them here:

(1) Great kindness without destiny: Buddhism advocates that one should be compassionate not only to those who are related to oneself, but also to those who have a relationship with oneself, such as oneself. Buddhism advocates that not only should we be compassionate to those who are related to us, such as our own parents, relatives, and friends, but we should also be compassionate to those who are not related to us, such as those with whom we have never interacted or who are strangers to us, and we should be just as caring and compassionate to them. In Confucian terms, 'great compassion without a cause' means: 'Care for the old as we care for the old; care for the young as we care for the young.' It is also what the Rituals of the Cosmos says, 'Not only do we kiss our relatives, but also our children.' The meaning of this is that we should not be the only ones who are not only close to our parents but also to our children.

(2) The Great Compassion of the Same Body: The Great Compassion of the Same Body is a kind of spirit of people's hunger, people's drowning themselves, and seeing all beings in the universe as one person and one body, with solidarity and ****, and flesh and blood together.

Confucianism says: 'A friend in the sea is a distant land.' Also said: 'all brothers within the four seas.' This is a great example of the spirit of 'compassion for all'. And the compassionate wish of Earth Store King Bodhisattva, 'If I don't go to hell, who will go to hell? The deep wish of the Buddha is the ultimate in sympathetic compassion.

The last point I would like to make, and the one that best expresses the spirit of Buddhism's 'true equality', is that Buddhism's concept of equality is not confined to human beings, who are the spirits of all living things, and that Buddhism rejects the view that "all animals other than human beings were created for human consumption. Buddhism rejects the argument that "all animals other than human beings were created to feed man. All the animals are dying of grief and wailing, really miserable, mournful, even Mencius have to lament: 'hear its voice can not bear to eat its flesh.'

Buddhism further affirms that these animals, which are indiscriminately hunted and killed by human beings, have Buddha nature - a potential to become a Buddha, even though people and other animals are different in form and wisdom, but in the right to survive, they are equal in Buddha nature. Just as a vicious or stupid person has a 'human nature', we must treat him with 'humaneness', educate him with 'humanism', and sensitize him. The ancients said, 'Heaven has the virtue of kindness.' And again: 'All things are born with me.' All of these are ideas of equality that see all things as one. It's just that Buddhism doesn't say it so thoroughly. According to other religions, their godmasters or the Almighty Lord, after all kinds of coercion and enticement, or after all kinds of painstaking and earnest teaching, if they still don't come to their senses, and throw themselves under the banner of God, and confess and admit that they are a lost sinner, and a poor lamb, then once the final judgment comes, all of them will be sent to the eighteen layers of hell, and they will never go beyond the limits of their lives.

Ancient people say: 'The prodigal son returns to the gold.' Parents in the world always keep their doors open, hoping that the prodigal son will return, even though their child is a sinful robber. There is never a pair of parents who wish or tolerate their children to suffer forever in the dark and deep hell.

Buddhism recognizes that human nature is good, and that if one puts down the butcher's knife, one can become a Buddha on the ground. The Buddha even believed that the real 'culprit' is not sin, but ignorance, and that all sins are induced by ignorance (called 'ignorance' in Buddhism). Therefore it becomes the Buddha's responsibility to enlighten and inspire all beings, day and night, in a painstaking manner. The Buddha cares for all beings, 'like a mother remembering her son', and not only does he not tolerate the suffering of all beings in hell, but he also makes the vow that 'I will not become a Buddha until the hell is emptied; and I will not realize Bodhi until all beings are destroyed. The vow of 'Bodhi is the realization of all things. (Bodhi means 'enlightenment' or 'the right path', and to attain bodhi means to attain the path or to become a Buddha). What a compassionate heart! What compassion! This is true love! This is true compassion! In the third point, it was mentioned that the difference between Buddhas and sentient beings lies only in the order of the time of enlightenment. Han Yu said, 'There is a sequence of hearing the Way. This can be used as an illustration.

'Buddha' is just a generic term for an enlightened being. Just as we call a person who can 'preach, teach, and explain' a 'teacher', there is more than one teacher; everyone can be a teacher, and there can be teachers everywhere. In the same way, Buddha does not mean Sakyamuni alone; everyone can become a Buddha, and there can be Buddhas everywhere, not only in this world, but also on countless planets in the universe. (Of course, there are also sentient beings.)

This is where Buddhism is fundamentally different from other religions, which can only recognize their 'unique' gods, and do their best to denounce and negate the gods of other religions, calling them 'false gods'.

At the same time, under their doctrine, human beings, no matter how hard they strive, can never be on an equal footing with God (always in a master-slave relationship). Because God is the Creator and man is just one of the 'things' created by God.

According to some religions, everything in the universe was created by the Almighty, and their evidence for this is the Old Testament book of 'Genesis'.

In fact, a person with a little bit of thinking can immediately realize that 'God' is also a product of human thought, and human beings have created God based on their own ideas and images. The human being created 'God', one of the purposes is to explain 'the origin of the universe and life', which the Buddhists call 'the first cause'. But where did 'God' itself come from? Not only do the laymen refuse to pursue the matter, but they say with great certainty: 'God is omnipotent; he exists naturally.'

O dear friend! If God can 'exist by Himself', in other words He can exist by Himself without being created by others, then what is the point of the idea that 'God created the life of the universe'? (For by the same token cosmic life could have existed naturally.)

Here is the next mathematical equation to illustrate the problem, which is not very appropriate, but can somewhat help students to understand:

Suppose the origin of cosmic life is X. Find X = ?

The gentiles answered it in such a way that they didn't have to cite theorems or known assumptions, and just wrote the answer: X = God

But where did God come from? Consider the following equation: X = God = Y

Anyone with any mathematical sense knows that Y is also an unknown number, in other words the question remains unanswered.

Buddhism simply rejects the assumption that 'God created everything', and does not recognize a first 'beginning' of the universe at all. It is not true that the universe had a first 'beginning'. The 'beginning' of an event is only the 'end' of the previous event. In a chain of cause and effect, the passing away of one thing is the condition for the rise of another.

Dr. Chang Cheng-ki, in his book What is Dharma? In his book What is Dharma?, Dr. Chang Cheng-ki explains this question as follows: '"The idea of "beginning" is due to the "limited" mentality of human beings, which is not capable of encompassing all the thousands of cause-and-effect relationships. '

For example, let's say we go to see the third 'Gone with the Wind' movie, which 'starts' at 7:00 and 'ends' at 10:00, but let's think about it more carefully. 'beginning' of the movie is actually the 'end' of the second, and isn't the 'end' of the third the 'beginning' of the fourth? '?

So the concept of 'beginning' is meaningful only for a particular thing; it is meaningless for the entire intricate, causal universe. Time is a continuous flow, and who can identify a point in it that has ceased to be immovable, the so-called 'now'? And then to say that this point is the 'beginning'?

In fact, Buddhism is not interested in discussing these kinds of issues that are not beneficial to life (philosophical metaphysics), because the universe has no beginning and no end, and it would be futile and futile for people to exhaust themselves in the pursuit of the 'first cause of the universe'. When you seek the 'first cause' with all your efforts, you are bound to find that there is another 'cause' before it. And so the cycle goes on and on and on and on, and you will never be able to find a fixed 'first cause'.

At the same time, life is short, life is impermanent, and if you still want to take the bull by the horns, then you may already be dead when you haven't pursued the answer to the 'first cause of the universe'.

In the Buddhist scriptures, there is an extremely wonderful parable:

'There was a man who was wounded by a poisoned arrow, and his friends and relatives took him to a surgeon. Suppose at that time the man said, "I don't want to pull out this arrow; I want to know who it was that shot me; was he of the Kshatriya race? A Brahmin? Vaishya? Or is he a Shudra? What is his name and clan? Is he tall or short or of medium stature? Is his skin color black, brown or golden? What city or town does he come from? I will not take out this arrow until I know by what bow I was shot, and what kind of bowstring? What kind of arrow? Of what kind of hair was the feather made, and of what material was the fletchings made?......" If this is pursued, the person must have died before these answers were given.' The reality is that the problem is actually to pull out the arrow first and treat the wound without dying from waiting for the answer. That is why Buddhism does not waste space and time agonizing over the question of the 'first cause of the universe'. For the pursuit is also useless and at the same time unhelpful to life; these have nothing to do with freeing people from the pains of birth, old age, sickness, and death, and do not enable them to thereby attain the happiness of tranquility and liberation.

The topic is a little bit far away, and now we come back to Buddhism's opposition to the idea that everything in the universe is created by God, and the idea that everything is a 'karmic aggregation'. For example, the mountain in front of us is the result of the accumulation of earth and stone; the lake is the result of the accumulation of water in a depression; and the desks and chairs in the classroom are made of wood by a carpenter. If the earth and rocks are scattered, it will not become a 'mountain'; if the water of the lake is drained, it will become a depression, where is the shadow of a 'lake'? And if the planks are broken up piece by piece, where are the 'tables and chairs'?

All of these tangible and visible things can be called 'colors' for short, because they are just 'temporary aggregations of causes', not real and unchanging, so we say they are 'empty'. '-there is no eternal, unchanging entity. This is the simple truth of the Buddhist scripture that 'color is emptiness'.

However, when Buddhism says that 'color is empty', this word 'empty' is not 'empty' as in 'empty and void', nor is it 'empty' as in 'empty and void'. ', nor 'empty' as in 'nothing', but a 'vacuum' containing 'wonderful existence '. How do you say this? Let me give an example to illustrate:

There is a cup of water in front of me, the water continues to be heated into water vapor, and the shadow of the water can no longer be seen. But this does not mean that the water really disappears into the 'empty', when the water vapor is cold, and will be restored to the 'water'.

Furthermore, people who know chemistry know that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, in other words, 'water' is just a temporary chemical compound of hydrogen and oxygen. After electrolysis, water will become hydrogen and oxygen again. By analogy, there is nothing in the universe that is not generated by the temporary aggregation of karma, and there is nothing that is unchanging. Karma is born, karma is destroyed, where is the 'God' who creates everything? The first thing that I want to do is to make sure that I have a good understanding of what is going on in the world.

Seventh, the Buddhist teachings are tailored to the needs of the people

The Buddha said to the beings, are for different root causes, with the different space and time and set up the teachings. The Buddha has different interpretations because of the different objects of his teachings: for example, for those who are highly intelligent, the Buddha will tell them to be able to direct their hearts to the human heart, to see the nature of the heart and to realize the truth at the same time; for those who are a little less intelligent, the Buddha will tell them to practice in an orderly manner, in a step-by-step manner.

For example, for those who are keen on fame and fortune, the Buddha tells them that 'fame and fortune are all empty'; and for those who are negative and pessimistic, believing that life is meaningless and that life is all vanity and emptiness, the Buddha tells them that 'life is rare, life is precious, and one can work hard to achieve happiness and joy. life is precious, and one can achieve happiness and joy through hard work. The Buddha told him, 'Life is precious and one can achieve happiness and joy through hard work.

In the same way, the Buddha used different metaphors and illustrations because of the differences in space and time: for example, a person in Taipei asked the Buddha, 'How can I get to Taichung? The Buddha's answer was, 'Go south,' and as for the person who answered Kaohsiung, he said, 'Go north.' And so on, because all beings are in different places, the Buddha's answer is different.

There are three collections and twelve divisions of the Buddha's teachings, and eighty-four thousand Dharma-doors (Dharma-doors are methods of practice). These methods of practice are created to accommodate the rootedness of sentient beings and to cure their troubles. If there were no sentient beings there would be no need to have the Dharma. Dharma is like 'medicine', and if sentient beings did not have the 'disease' of worry, medicine would not be needed.

The Buddha's teachings have been passed down for more than two and a half thousand years, and can be adapted to different times and different beings, which is due to the fact that he is able to teach according to the material, according to the local conditions. And this method of education is one of the characteristics of Buddhism.

Eighth, Buddhism is worldly

The truth of Buddhism, although the ultimate goal is 'out of the world', but it is not incompatible with the spirit of 'worldly'. (The so-called 'leaving the world' is not to detach from or escape from the world, but to transform this world and rebuild it.)

What the Buddhist scriptures say: 'The Buddha's teachings are in the world, not separate from worldly consciousness, and to seek Bodhi away from the world is just like searching for a rabbit's horn.' It means that cultivation has to be on earth, and enlightenment also has to be on earth. Every person who has a heart for the Way, it is impossible for him to abhor this world, to escape from the human beings in this world, and to cultivate the right fruits 'alone'. This is because for a person to become a Buddha, in addition to possessing intelligence and wisdom, he must also have the vast vow of compassion to universalize all sentient beings. It is only when these two kinds of 'compassion' and 'wisdom' are utilized interactively and complement each other to achieve a complete and perfect state that one can attain Buddhahood. So Buddhism is to do the business of entering the world with the spirit of leaving the world, and from the time of cultivation until Buddhahood, there is neither 'entering the world' nor 'leaving the world', because it is always carried out in this world, ah!

Although there are so-called 'Western Bliss World' and 'Eastern Glazed World' in the Buddhist scriptures, which urge people to recite the Buddha's name to be reborn in their own country, those who know a little bit about the true meaning of Buddhism know that this is a kind of expedient and convenient way for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to realize the sentient beings, and the final goal of Buddhism is to 'bring the world into being', so that people will be able to realize the Buddha's name. The final aim of Buddhism is to 'transform the earth into the Pure Land of Enlightenment, and the hells into the World of Ultimate Bliss.' This is the true purpose of Buddhism, not to make people escape from this world and go to the Western Pure Land to enjoy happiness. Most of the religions in the world only recognize their own religious teachings as the only 'truth' and reject the teachings of other religions as 'heresies'.

Buddhism, on the other hand, recognizes that all religions are only as good as their teachings, and that there is very little difference between the good and the bad. Any religion that has existed for more than a thousand years must have had some benefit to the people of the world, otherwise it would have been rejected by human 'wisdom' and lost to the waves of time.

The problem is that some religions can only give short-lived, minority happiness, while others can give eternal, majority happiness. And Buddhism is one of the few latter.

In the nearly 2500 years of its existence, Buddhism has lived in peace with other religions, and there has never been any bloody conflict with other religions for the sake of evangelization in Buddhist history.

Here I would like to invite my friends to see a passage from Ashoka (3rd century BCE), following Siddhartha Gautama's legacy of generosity, compassion, and inclusiveness, which survives in its original form and is carved into the rock: 'Do not respect your own religion and despise the religions of others. You should respect other religions as you should. By doing so, you not only help the growth of your own religion, but you also do your duty to other religions. To do the opposite not only digs a grave for one's own religion, but also harms other religions.' 'Therefore, it is best to speak of harmony. Everyone should listen attentively, and willingly, to the teachings of other religions.' (Listening carefully means listening attentively.) It seems from this passage that such tolerance and sincerity is one of the most precious legacies of Buddhist culture.

'Truth', in the Buddhist view, has no national boundaries; it does not need to be 'trademarked' by any religion. Nor does it belong to any one religion, or to any one person in any one age. Therefore the truth spoken by the Buddha is not unique to him alone, for the Buddha is merely a 'discoverer of truth', just as the 'geocentric attraction' discovered by Newton was not exclusive to Newton. Therefore Buddhism considers everything that is reasonable and has eternal and unchanging truths to be 'Dharma'.

'Thou shalt love thy enemies.' Though from the Bible, Buddhism unquestionably recognizes it as a truth with virtue. (It is the same as the Buddhist principles of 'no mercy' and 'compassion with the same body.')

The Dharma is like a vast river and sea, which holds all the rivers of all sizes on earth. That is why the sutra says, 'All dharmas are Buddha dharmas', ah! In other religions, the words of the master are the irresistible 'order', the 'truth' that cannot be doubted. Whoever disobeys or expresses the slightest doubt will be punished by God.

It is clearly written in the Gentile classics that the patriarchs of mankind were cast out of the Garden of Eden forever because they disobeyed God's commands, and that their descendants - that is, millions of human beings, past, present, and future - somehow suffered as a result of that disobedience.

According to the layman's explanation, this is called the inheritance of 'original sin'. However; I have only heard that certain diseases are hereditary, not that 'sin' is also hereditary. In addition to the ancient despotic and barbaric times, when a person commits a crime, the whole family will suffer from the death penalty, so that they will be exterminated; nowadays, in any progressive and civilized country, the father commits a crime, and the father goes to jail, which is not related to the wife and children.

And Buddhism is this kind of advocacy: Buddhism believes that a person does things, a person to bear, the father kills people, the son can not go to hell. (Nor can a son suffer in place of his father.)

I have a good confidant who is a devout Christian, and we used to argue over the story of Adam and Eve being 'deported' for eating the forbidden fruit.

Here's the conversation we had:

'Why were Adam and the others expelled from Paradise?' I asked.

'Because Eve disobeyed God and was tempted by the serpent to steal the forbidden fruit, he disobeyed God.'

'May I ask if God is omniscient?'

'Yes, it is omniscient.'

'May I ask if the all-knowing God knew beforehand that Eve could not stand the temptation of the serpent?'

'It was not known because God wanted to test Adam and Eve to see if they would listen to Him.'

'Since God did not know beforehand, can He still be called omniscient?'

'Huh? Wow, wrong, of course God knew beforehand that Eve would not be able to stand the temptation. Because he's the all-knowing and all-powerful Lord ah! I'm so damned, I just blasphemed God by saying he didn't know beforehand.' My friend saw the wind in his sails, but he didn't realize that the other side was also a dead end ah!

'Well, the all-knowing and all-powerful Lord allowed the vipers to seduce Eve without stopping them, and punished them afterward, since he knew beforehand that Eve couldn't stand the temptation of the vipers. Is this not ill-intentioned and willfully nabbing people in sin?'

'Huh?' My friend was finally speechless over it.

This is how Adam and Eve were confusedly cast out. That's how we've muddled along and suffered.

In any case, God's words are always right, and the consequences of disobeying God's words are so tragic. But God Himself does not reflect on Himself. Is His own 'word' reasonable? Is it self-contradictory? Is it too arbitrary? Too authoritarian?

In addition to this, in various religious classics, there are often recorded stories of God's wrath due to man's disobedience, with punishments such as drowning mankind in a disastrous flood; and killing mankind with a plague.

In the Buddhist scriptures, there is absolutely no record of the Buddha's anger, let alone this kind of cruel and merciless punishment. Throughout the forty-nine years of the Buddha's teachings, what the disciples saw of their guru was always pleasant, compassionate and serene; he did this to the good people as well as to the bad.

The Buddha never forced his disciples to accept what he said, and he encouraged them to ask skeptical questions. Until he was eighty years old, when he was about to die among the twin trees of Brahma, he still taught earnestly and repeatedly asked his disciples if they still had any doubts.

The Buddha said, 'Great doubt leads to great enlightenment; small doubt leads to small enlightenment; no doubt leads to no enlightenment.'

The Buddha also said in his final teaching: 'I have not thought that you disciples are mine, that all beings are mine ...... I am but one of you, often with all of you. ...... I never oppress others, nor do I ask people to obey me.' What a kind, touching legacy this is!

This spirit of Buddhism, which permits and encourages believers to ask questions freely and skeptically about the truth of what the master himself says, and then to go deeper and deeper, is, I think, unparalleled in the world, is it not?

Friends, truth is not something that can be forced on others. To force someone to accept what they don't understand, or what they don't like, is politics, not religion. Truth can only show its spirit and value more clearly when it is pondered over and over again under the premise of democracy and freedom.

And of all the religions of the world, only Buddhism's Patriarchs and Classics are allowed to be doubted, discussed and pursued.