Buddhism

THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA
 In the Pali canon, the Buddha is presented as a man, but an extraordinary one, whose body bore the 32 signs of a mahapurusha (great man).  He is the Tathagata, one who has come thus (tatha) and gone (gota). The Buddha was born as Siddhartha son of Suddhodana, chef of the Sakya clan, who ruled from Kapilavastu. His mother Maya gave birth to him in a grove at Lumbini, while traveling towards her parents' home and died within a few days.

Brahmanas saw the 32 marks of a great man on his body. According to Buddhist tradition, a mahapurusha can be of two kinds- a world conqueror or a world renouncer. Suddhodana did not want his son to turn his back on the world and hence took great pains to shield him from its sorrows, bringing him up in a highly artificial atmosphere, surrounded by luxury and pleasant things. Siddhartha married a young woman named Yashodhara and they had a son named Rahula.

The hagiography tells us that when he was 29 years old, Siddhartha saw four things that completely shattered his composure-an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a renunciant. The first three scenes brought home to him the harsh realities and inevitabilities of old age, sickness, and death while fourth pointed to the way of dealing with years, seeking the truth. Siddhartha left his home and family and wandered around for six years seeking the truth. He attached himself to teachers but was not satisfied with their instruction. Accompanied by five wandering ascetics, he practiced severe austerities until his body was emaciated. He then realized that he must nourish his body and try to attain peace of mind. His companions abandoned, thinking he had compromised his asceticism. Siddhartha ultimately enlightened and became known as the Buddha, the enlightened one.

The Buddha gave his first sermon on deliverance from suffering to his five companions in a deer park near Benaras is known as dhammachakka-pavattana (turning the wheel of dhamma). His first five disciples soon themselves realized the truth and became arhats. He established an order of monks and nuns known as the sangha . He died at the age of 80 at Kusinara.

THE BUDDHA'S TEACHINGS
 The core of the Buddha doctrine is expressed in the Ariya-sachchani (Four Noble Truths): there is suffering (dukkha), it has a cause (samudaya), it can be removed (nirodha), and the way to achieve this is following the Atthanga-magga (Eight-Fold Path). Meditation is a very important part of Buddhism and is the key to achieving mental clam and insight. The path taught by the Buddha is often referred to as the Middle Path-one between extreme indulgence and extreme asceticism.

Dukkha and its extinction are central to the Buddha' doctrine. The Buddha taught that everything is suffering (sabbam dukkham). This can be seen as either an extremely pessimistic or extremely realistic teaching. The reason for suffering includes human propensities such as desire, attachment, greed,pride,aversion, and ignorance. Desire is central to the cause and removal of suffering.

All this is connected with another aspect of existence emphasized in the Buddha's teaching - Impermanence (the state or fact lasting for only a limited period of time). Impermanence has many facets. In relation to an individual's life, there is no being or power in the universe that can prevent old age, sickness and death.

Another important aspect of the Buddha's teaching was patichcha-samuppada - the law of dependent origination. The elements of this law were presented as a wheel consisting of 12 nidanas, one leading to the next; ignorance (sankhara), consciousness (vinnana), mind and body (nama-ripa), six senses (salayatana), sense contact (phassa), feeling (vedana), craving (tanha), attachement (upadana), becoming (bhava), birth (jati), and old age and death (jara-marana).

The nidanas were later divided into three groups pertaining to the past, present, and future lives and patichcha-samuppada therefore also became an explanation of how the origins of rebirth lay in ignorance. The ultimate goal of the Buddha's teaching was the attainment of Nibbana. Nibbana literally means blowing out, the dying out or extinction of desire, attachment, greed, hatred, ignorance, ad the sense of I-ness. Nibbana does not mean physical death. The term parinibbana (complete or final dying out ) is used for the death of an enlightened being such as the Buddha.

The Buddha's teaching accepts the idea of transmigrants (samsara) but rejects the idea of the atman.  In the Buddha's teaching, karma means intention which leads to the action of body, speech, or mind.

An ethical code of conduct for members of monastic order and the laity.

Monks and nuns were supposed to strictly avoid the following destruction of life, taking what is not given (theft), sexual activity, lying, the use of intoxicants that cause heedlessness, eating after mid-day, attending entertainments, using perfumes and jewelry, using luxurious beds, and handling gold and silver (including money). The first five rules were supposed to apply to the laity as well, except the celibacy was replaced by chastity. Chaisty was important and was defined not just with regard to sexual activity but also sexual desires and sensual pleasures.

THE BUDDHIST SANGHA AND THE LAITY

The monastic order of monks and ultimately also of nuns was created within the Buddha's lifetime. The Buddhist sangha became a core institution and a major factor in the dissemination of the Buddhist doctrine The Vinaya Pitaka gives an account of the establishment of the sangha and the rules that governed it. 

The Vinaya Pitaka has two main sections-The Sutta Vibhanga nad Khandaka- and an appendix known as the Parivara. The Sutta Vibhang contains the Patimokkha, a set of monastic rules.  The Vinaya rules deals with all kinds of details in the life of individual monks and nuns-what and how they should eat, walk, talk, what hey should wear and how they should behave.

The pravrajya ceremony marked a person's going forth from home into homelessness and his/her becoming a novice under a preceptor. It involved shaving the head and donning ochre robes. The novice recited the formula of taking refuge in the Buddha dhamma and sangha and then took the 10 vows. The upasampada was the ordination ceremony when the novice became a full-fledged member of the monastic community. The eight personal possessions allowed to a monk comprised three robes, an alms bowl, razor, needle, belt and water strainer. 

Senior monks held authority within a monastic community. Members of the Sangha living in a locality were supposed to gather every fortnight on the new moon and full moon days to recite the Patimokkha rules and confess if they had broken any. The four most serious offenses involving expulsion from the sangha were; sexual intercourse, taking what is not given, killing someone, and making false claims of spiritual attainment.

The Buddha's follower had a choice- to join the sangha or remain outside it. The Sangha and laity were closely connected. The monastic community depended on the laity for food and other forms of patronage. The permanent monastic establishment must have strengthened the bonds between them. However, the interactions were not supposed to be too close and a certain distance always had maintained.

According to Tradition, the first lay followers of the Buddha were two merchants, Tapassu and Bhallika. The laity male followers (upskas) and female followers (upasikas). Thereafter the ranks of the laity expanded swiftly. The laity included male followers (upasakas) and female followers (upashikas) . For the laity, good conduct consisted in taking five vows-not to harm living things, not to indulge in false speech, and not to consume intoxicants On certain occasions such as full moon days, or for longer periods of time, layperson could move a step further by replacing vow of avoiding sexual misconduct with sexual abstinence and by taking additional vows of not eating after mid-day, not attending entertainment, not using jewelry or perfumes and not using luxurious beds..

The duties of the laity were laid down in the Sigalavada Sutta. This emphasized the importance of fulfilling the duties that are implied in certain key reciprocal social relationships-between parents and children, teachers and pupils, husbands and wives, friends and companions, masters and servants and slaves and shramanas and Brahmanas. This asserts that a man must be faithful to his wife, must respect her, and not make her unhappy.


BUDDHISM AND WOMEN
Two important features of early Buddhism were assertion that the highest goal-nibbana was possible for women and the creation of the bhikkhuni sangha. Buddhist text reflects stereotyped ideals of the submissive and obedient woman, whose life was supposed to revolve around her husband and sons.

Buddhist tradition suggests that the Buddha was not initially keen to establish a bhikkhuni sangha but ultimately gave in to the persistent pressure of his disciple Ananda and his aunt and foster-mother Mahapajapati Gotami. The Vinaya Pitaka describes him as making the gloomy prediction that the doctrine would decline in 500 instead of 1,000 years because women had been admitted into the Sangha.
 The sangha was not open to pregnant women, mothers of unweaned children, rebellious women who associated with young men and those who didn't have their parents or husbands' permission to join. The rules for nuns were basically the same as those for monks, but there were more rules. The Buddha is also described as having laid down eight special rules subordinating the order of nuns to that of monks.

The Thergatha  (verses of Elder Nuns) is a collection of 73 poems consisting of 522 verses, supposed to have been composed by 72 nuns who had reached a high level of spiritual attainment. Some poems express the nuns' experience of nibbana. They also tell of the experience which preceded their joining the sangha. This range of unhappy marriages to tragedies such as the death of a child.

Monks and nuns were bound to have had some amount of interaction. In fact, nuns were not supposed to live too far away from monks during regular times as well as during the monsoon retreat. They had to consult the latter for the date of the uposatha ceremony. If nun broke certain rules, she had to answer to a mixed gathering of monks and uns. However, contact and interaction were carefully regulated and restricted. For instance, a monk was not supposed to be alone with a nun in a closed room and was not allowed to preach to a woman in private without the presence of a third person who could understand what was being said. However, a monk could accompany a nun on a road that was considered dangerous. By the standards of the 6/5 century BCE, the Buddha opened up significant space for women's spiritual aspirations.