Buddhism
109 flashcards by MentisLibrary
The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, the three marks of existence, and the schools that grew from them across Asia. A clear, respectful look at what Buddhists teach and practice.
- Who was Siddhartha Gautama?
- The historical figure Buddhists regard as the Buddha of this age, a prince of the Shakya clan who left his household life to seek release from suffering.
- What does the title Buddha mean?
- Awakened one, or one who has woken up. It is a title describing an attained state rather than a personal name.
- The four sights
- The accounts describe the young Siddhartha encountering an old person, a sick person, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic, which prompted him to leave the palace.
- The middle way
- The path Buddhists describe the Buddha as finding between self indulgence and severe self mortification, neither extreme leading to release.
- Where do Buddhists say the Buddha attained awakening?
- At Bodh Gaya in present day Bihar, India, seated beneath what became known as the Bodhi tree.
- What was the Buddha's first teaching?
- The discourse traditionally given at the deer park in Sarnath near Varanasi, in which he set out the Four Noble Truths.
- Parinirvana
- The final passing away of the Buddha at Kushinagar, understood as complete release with no further rebirth.
- The First Noble Truth
- Dukkha: that unsatisfactoriness, stress, or suffering is a feature of conditioned existence, including birth, aging, illness, death, and getting what one does not want.
- The Second Noble Truth
- That dukkha has an origin, identified as craving or thirst, tanha, together with clinging and ignorance.
- The Third Noble Truth
- That dukkha can cease, through the fading away and cessation of that craving. This cessation is called nirvana.
- The Fourth Noble Truth
- That there is a path leading to that cessation, the Noble Eightfold Path.
- Why are the Four Noble Truths compared to a medical diagnosis?
- They set out a condition, its cause, the possibility of a cure, and the treatment, a structure many teachers use to explain them.
- The Noble Eightfold Path
- Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
- The three divisions of the Eightfold Path
- Wisdom, comprising right view and intention; ethical conduct, comprising right speech, action, and livelihood; and mental discipline, comprising right effort, mindfulness, and concentration.
- Right view
- Understanding reality as the teaching describes it, in particular the Four Noble Truths and the workings of karma.
- Right intention
- Intention marked by renunciation, goodwill, and harmlessness rather than by craving or ill will.
- Right speech
- Refraining from lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, and idle chatter.
- Right action
- Refraining from killing, taking what is not given, and sexual misconduct.
- Right livelihood
- Earning a living in a way that does not cause harm, traditionally excluding trades such as dealing in weapons, living beings, intoxicants, or poison.
- Right effort
- Working to prevent and abandon unwholesome states of mind, and to arouse and maintain wholesome ones.
- Right mindfulness
- Sustained clear awareness of body, feelings, mind, and mental phenomena.
- Right concentration
- The development of unified, stable attention, described in stages called jhana.
- The three marks of existence
- Anicca, impermanence; dukkha, unsatisfactoriness; and anatta, not self.
- Anicca
- Impermanence: the teaching that all conditioned things arise, change, and pass away.
- Anatta
- Not self: the teaching that no permanent, independent self can be found in or apart from the aggregates that make up a person.
- The five aggregates
- Form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, the five processes into which the teaching analyzes a person.
- Dependent origination
- The teaching that phenomena arise in dependence on conditions: when this exists, that comes to be.
- The twelve links of dependent origination
- A sequence from ignorance through formations, consciousness, name and form, the six senses, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and aging and death.
- Karma, in Buddhist teaching
- Intentional action of body, speech, or mind, which conditions future experience. It is understood as a natural process rather than a system of reward and punishment.
- Rebirth, in Buddhist teaching
- The view that the process of becoming continues after death, conditioned by karma, without a permanent self transmigrating.