Tima Mustafa HUMA-2300 03-24-2014 Part 1 Introduce the Buddha Part 2 Name three teachings of Buddha Part 3 briefly

explain one of his teachings

He will deliver by the boat of knowledge the distressed world This paper will introduce Buddha and the three of his teachings. Buddha is the founder of Buddhism. His name means the Awakened one. (Bud-to know/knowledge/understand). Buddha is a term anyone can have and become. The Buddha taught about earthly suffering and its cure. Many religions offer comforting supernatural solutions to the difficulties of earthly life. Early Buddhism was different. It held that liberation from suffering depends on our own efforts. The Buddha taught that by understanding how we create suffering ourselves we can become free. Buddhas teachings spread far and wide from India throughout Asia, becoming the dominant religious tradition in many countries. The Buddhas teachings have been meaningful to some as a profound system of philosophy and to others as a system of religious practice or way of life. As Buddhism spread to new lands, it took new forms, often reflecting earlier local traditions. These new forms might include devotional practices, mystical elements, and appeals to the various Buddhas and bodhisattvas for protection and blessing. Now, more than 2,500 years after the Buddhas death, the path that he taught is attracting consideration interest in Western countries, where its psychological and meditative aspects are often emphasized. Buddha was born near between India and Nepal. He was named Siddhartha Gautama, meaning wish-fulfiller. He lived over eighty years during the 5th BCE. His family claimed as

ancestor or spiritual guide. The epic tells his birth story as a conception without human intercourse, in which a white elephant carrying a lotus flower entered his mothers womb during a dream. According to legend he was a happy child who was raise in the lap of luxury, with good clothes, perfumes, a mansion for each season, and the company of female musicians and a harem of dancing girls. He was married to at least one wife, Yashodara who born a son. Despite this life of ease, Siddhartha was reportedly unconvinced of its value. As the legend goes, the gods arranged him to see four sights that his father tried to hide from him: an old man, a sick person, a dead persona and a mendicant seeking lasting happiness rather than temporal pleasure. Seeing the first three sights, he was distress by impermanence of life and the existence of suffering, old age, and death. The sight of the monk stimulates his interest in a life of renunciation. At the age of twenty-nine Siddhartha renounced his wealth, left his wife and newborn son, shaved his head, and donned the coarse robe of a wandering ascetic. He embarks on a wandering life in pursuit of a very difficult goal: finding the way to total liberation from suffering. Unsatisfied, still searching, Siddhartha reportedly underwent six years of extreme selfdenial techniques: nakedness, exposure to great heat and cold, breath retention, a severe fating. Then he acknowledged that this extreme ascetic path had not led to enlightenment. He described his appearance after a long and strenuous period of fasting. Then he shifted his practice to a Middle Way that rejected both self-indulgence and self-denial. He revived his failing health by accepting food once more and began a period of reflection. At the age of eighty, he died. The newly awakened Buddha walked across northern Indian for forty-five years as a mendicant with an alms bowl, giving teachings and advice to people of all backgrounds and religions.

Historians agree on the validity and centrality of a core of teachings that became known as the Dharma {Dharma is my teaching and it will be your leader} that he taught: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold path, the Three Marks of Existence, and other guidelines for achieving liberation from suffering. The Sangha-the monastic order that developed from the Buddhas early disciples accepted people from all castes and levels of society. The Four Noble Truths are the basic teachings of Buddha. 1. Noble Truth of suffering (Dukha): birth, sickness, aging, death. 2. Noble Truth of Origin: suffering arises from excessive desire. 3. Noble Truth of cessation: suffering with end when desire cease. 4. Noble Truth of Eightfold Path: it is possible to ease suffering by following eightfold path. The Eightfold Path are right views, right thought, right speech, right conduct, right live hood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The three characteristic of Middle Path are Impermanence, suffering and no soul. Buddha set forth the Four Noble Truths the foundation for all his teaching: 1) Life inevitably involves suffering, dissatisfaction, and distress. 2) Suffering is caused by craving, rooted in ignorance. 3) Suffering will cease when craving ceases. 4) There is a way to realize this state: the Noble Eightfold Path. The Buddha was neither pessimistic nor optimistic about our human condition, but realistic. The Buddha set forth approach so that human beings could extricate themselves from suffering and achieve the final goal of liberation. The Noble Eightfold Path offers ways to purify the mind of afflictive emotions and avoid unwholesome actions. The first aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path right understanding this means seeing through illusion, such as the idea that wealth and possessions can bring happiness. The second aspect is right thought or motivation. The Buddhas teachings help us to uncover any afflictive emotions that affect our thinking, such as selfish desires or a tendency to hide our imperfections. The third aspect is right speech. The Buddha taught his followers to relinquish the propensity to lie,

gossip, speak harshly, or engage in bad speech , and instead to use communication in the service of truth and harmony. The fourth aspect is right actions, which mean to avoid destroying life, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxicants. Beyond these, all actions should be based on the clear understanding. The fifth aspect is right livelihood this means making sure that ones way of making s living does not violate the five precepts. One should choose a profession or line of work that does not cause harm to others or disrupt social harmony. The right effort, the sixth aspect means striving continually to eliminate the impurities of the mind and cultivating wholesome actions of body, speech, and mind. Joyful effort is the antidote to laziness. The seventh aspect, the right mindfulness, is a distinctive feature of the Buddhist path. The way to liberation requires discipline and the cultivation of awareness moment to moment. The eighth aspect, right meditation that applies mental discipline to quite the mind and develop singlepointed concentration. Once we have grasped these basic facts of life, we can be free in this life. And free from another rebirth. In conclusion Buddha is the Awaken One; he is the founder of Buddhism. He was a rich and a happy guy and he had it all from the fine clothes to the beautiful wife and a newborn son but he gave up all of them when he saw the four sights that changed everything for him. The sight four sights stimulates his interest in a life of renunciation. He is portrayed as the reincarnation of a great being that had been born many times before and took birth on earth once again out of compassion for all suffering beings. The Buddha teachings were about earthly suffering and its cure. All of his teaching was to help people grow towards Enlightenment.

Citation: Living Religions- the Eighth Edition, by Mary Pat Fisher