Buddha  Shakyamuni

The fourth Buddha of this age, Buddha Shakyamuni (tib.: sha.kya.thub.pa) was born in 566 BC, and lived 85 years. As main resources of His life-story, one can relate to the Lalitavistara, the Mulasarvastivada-Vinaya, the so-called Gilgit-Manuscript, and thousands of art objects in the entire Buddhist world from Afghanistan to Indonesia depicting the life of the Buddha.

The biographies of the Buddha of all schools begin in Tushita-Heaven. After having accumulated an immense amount of Merit , after having passed through all levels of Bodhisattvas, the future Buddha is looking for a situation where He could live the exemplary life of a Buddha. Therefore, He decides to be born in Jambudvîpa, where He can teach human beings and, due to their supernatural capacities, the gods.

Therefore, He descends from Tushita Heaven into the womb of his future mother (a queen) who has the vision of a white elephant entering her body. He receives the name Siddharta Gautama, from the family of the Shakyas. At His physical birth, there are many miraculous signs, and the astrologers are sure that He will either lead the life of a Cakravartin (Ruler of the World) or that of an Awakened One.

This vision pleases the king-father, and he gives him the opportunity to excel in all worldly arts. The young prince leads a life of luxury and pleasure. But on four occasions, He makes disturbing experiences: He sees a sick person, an old person, a dead corpse, and a mendicant.

This is why He secretly departs from the palace, cuts His hair (leaves the stand of nobility), takes simple clothes, and becomes a wandering ascete. He learns asceticism with five other yogis in the forests, undergoing a very hard ascetic training, so that His body becomes very meager. On the brink of dying, while meditating near a river, a raft is floating on the river, with people on board. The ascete Gautama hears a sitar teacher tell his disciple: "If you fasten the string too strongly, it will break; If you do not fasten at all, it cannot give a sound." After having heard this, Gautama gives up the ascetic practices: He breaks many ascetic rules, because He washes his body, eats some rice, takes some Kusha grass as a cushion, and sits down in the shadow of the Bodhi tree.

While in deep meditation, Mâra, the personification of the world of the senses, understands that his very existence is threatened by one who is on the way to leaving his area of influence. Therefore, Mâra sends his beautiful daughters in order to distract the Yogi , and finally his armies, but no sense experience, pleasant or unpleasant, can disturb the Yogi's insight into the true nature of phenomena. Finally, Mâra himself appears before him and asks: "How can you prove that you have transcended my power?" And the Yogi, touching the earth with one hand, answers: "The earth is my witness." The goddess of the earth appears and approves.

Now that Mâra is conquered, the Yogi Gautama becomes a Fully Awakened One, a Buddha. All sensory illusions are completely annihilated, He reaches Nirvana , full understanding of Emptiness . Out of Compassion , He remains in the world of Jambudvîpa but silent for several weeks.

During this time, millions of gods come to venerate Him and ask Him to teach. Thus, finally, He departs in search of His five former yogic friends as His first disciples. He teaches them the four noble truths: the noble Truth of Suffering , the noble Truth of the origin of suffering, the noble Truth of the cessation of suffering, and the noble Truth of the noble path leading to the cessation of suffering.
This is called the first turning of the wheel of Dharma .

From then on, the Buddha and a growing group of ordained and lay followers lead the life of mendicant yogis for more than fifty years. The Buddha taught tens of thousands of people, according to His own words: advice for the children (= ordinary people), and doctrines for yogis (= meditators).
The Tibetan Kanjur has collected 84.000 teachings of the Buddha, 84.000 different types of liberating explanations.

After having given all teachings that can be given, He knowingly eats a poisonous meal, gives last advice, shows once again all stages of meditation to His disciples, lies down in the lion posture, and passes into Mahaparinirvana.

The Buddha is in many ways a very special Being in old India: He is born into the warrior cast, not in the religious cast. At that time, wandering ascetes discuss openly, and to everybody's interest and concern, many different world views. The Buddha gets all the education of his time, and impersonates all possible social roles, as a warrior, a prince, a husband, a father, an ascete, and a Buddha. He is revered by everybody, notably by the kings and wealthy people who feel honoured to offer him and his Sangha  shelter and food – in other words, the circumstances of life at that time were generally much better than they are today. He made some quite revolutionary changes, e.g., the acceptance of women as religious persons (nuns), which was virtually unthinkable in old India. During his lifetime, thousands of human beings attained arhatship - the state of liberation from the suffering in Samsara  - often after one single teaching of the Buddha. This happened due to the perfect circumstances at that time. The beings who were born near the Buddha, had excellent Karma , and the presence of the excellent being made it perfectly easy to understand quickly.

The teachings of the Buddha are not a list of facts or truth values; instead, the Buddha taught methods to transcend our illusionary view on the world and on our own existence. Therefore, it is a dynamic system which has to be applied individually, and which is therefore passed from one realized master to the next one. The various styles of expression of the teachings of the Buddha in Buddhist schools are but the expression of the different needs of different followers. As long as the teaching is maintained by fully qualified masters possessing the necessary Special insight , the teachings are still useful in the world.

Once in the future, the teachings will vanish again. Teachers will not be qualified, disciples will not understand correctly. Buddhism will become a collection of empty rituals which are eventually given up completely. Then, for a long time period, there will not be a way to liberation. This is one reason why it is said that we should not waste this precious opportunity of meeting the dharma here and now.

The spread of Buddhism in India

The first Sangha of the Buddha were the five yogis who became His disciples at the occasion of the first turning of the wheel of dharma. They attained Arhatship at that very moment. The Sangha constantly grew, and thousands of human beings attained the state of an Arhat ; these Arhats represented the higher Sangha, the Teachers. After the Buddha's Parinirvâna (486 or 476 B.C.), Mahâkâshyapa presided over the monks.

The early Sangha consisted of wandering monks and nuns who settled down during the rainy season. During these times of rest, a kind of monastic life developed, e.g., with the bi-monthly recitation of the pratimoksha.

Some thirty years after the Parinirvana of the Buddha, the first convocation of the Buddhist Sangha was held for the purpose of reciting and codifying the Buddha's teachings, in order to preserve them correctly. It took place in Râjagrha, where the Magadha-king Ajâtashatru offered to supply them. Only arhats, possessing the Siddhi  of perfect rememberance, were allowed to participate. More than 500 Arhats attended the meeting – but many were missing, because they were engaged in meditation. Ananda, the Buddha's closest disciple, reached the state of an Arhat shortly before the council, therefore he was allowed to participate.

The means for preserving the teachings were memorization and recitation. Ananda who was present at almost all teachings of the Buddha, recited the sutras, Upâli recounted the Vinaya rules, and Mahakashyapa set forth the early wordlists which developed into the Abidharma. Arhats have the ability to remember perfectly whatever was heard; therefore, there was unanimous agreement that these recitations were indeed the words of the Buddha.

At the same time, the Mahayanasutras of the Buddha were collected by the Sangha of the bodhisattvas at Vimalasvâbhava. The next council (at Vaishali) with 700 attendants took place ca. 100 years after the parinirvana.

Theravada  and Mahayana 

140 years after the Parinirvana, at the council of Pataliputra, the arhat Mahâdeva voiced that some Arhats are "more" spiritually accomplished than others. The majority sided with Mahâdeva (and were therefore later called the 'Mahâsanghikas' (the 'great Sangha' party); a minority, however, dissented by stating that this has not been taught by the Buddha. They were therefore called the 'Sthaviravadins' ("Elders", in Pali 'Theravadins', those who keep an "orthodox" view of the Vinaya). Both groups subsequently modified their respective canons. The Theravadins continued to teach only the path towards arhatship, whereas the Mahâsanghikas taught the path to Buddhahood. This division of the Sangha has some similarity to the distinction between Hinayana  and Mahayana, although these terms are to be used only within the Mahayana as terminology for different types of motivation: Hinayana leads to the Self -liberation of an arhat, Mahayana leads to the path of the Bodhisattvas who aim at helping others to be liberated.

Another council at Pataliputra under the reign of king Ashoka led to the official political rejection of one school, the Sarvastivadins. The monks of this order subsequently settled mostly in the north of India, i.e., in today's Pakistan, Kashmir, and subsequently moved northwards along the silk route until they arrived in China. The Sarvastivada subschool of the Mahasanghikas thus became the origin of the so-called 'Northern' or 'Mahayana' Buddhism which spread to Central Asia, China, Japan, Vietnam, and finally to Tibet and Mongolia/Siberia. From the early 18 Indian schools of Buddhism, basically one Southern school of the Theravada spread from Sri Lanka to South-East Asia. In other words, the views of and differences between the 18 original divisions of Buddhism in India are preserved only in the Tibetan philosophical scriptures which discuss Buddhist and non-Buddhist views, thereby clarifying one's own position (of the Madhyamaka viewpoint).

It is probably important to note that there was never any violent opposition between the schools. The distinction was made only on secondary, 'philosophical' points. Travelling monks were always well received in any monastery, and history is full of accounts of great masters showing little spirit of distinction when it comes to choosing additional teachings. To give one example, Atisha, a follower of the Mahasanghika view, due to his erudition in all scriptures, was the librarian of a monastery (Vikramalashila) which belonged to another tradition, and he estimated highly the Lojong  teaching which he received from a teacher in Sumatra who also belonged to a different branch of Buddhism. Finally, all Buddhists shared the traditional practices of compassion, unobscured communication, and non-violence (ahimsa).

During the time of Buddhism in India, Buddhism flourished in a wide area from today's Afghanistan until Sri Lanka. Art and architecture of India are closely connected with the development of Buddhist culture. The knowledge of the Buddhadharma was kept in monastic universities. Some of these universities were extremely famous, such as Nalanda or Vikramashila. These monasteries were the cultural centers of Classical India.

Tantra 

At the same time, outside of society, the so-called Mahasiddhas maintained a tradition which only slowly became known to the official history, due to its secrecy. These practitioners, highly advanced yogis, applied Tantric methods in order to attain the goal of Buddhahood. They looked like crazy people, etc., in short, showing no 'religious' behaviour at all. During the time of Buddhism in India, this kind of Buddhism was clearly 'secret', unknown by the broad public and disallowed in monasteries. It was a special way for special persons.

(It should be mentioned once again that these mahasiddhas were highly advanced practitioners and not ordinary people like ourselves. It is therefore not at all convenient to think that one is 'able' to follow their example, while one is still under the influence of the emotions and of attachment. It is not an excuse for pride and attachment, but a method beyond such afflictions.)

Buddhism in Tibet

In the times of the Tibetan empire, Tibet (sometimes) ruled over Buddhist territories along the silk route as well as parts of China and India. Therefore, Tibet met Buddhist cultures whereever it turned its eyes. Central Asia must have played a more important role for Tibet than is generally assumed until now. It is possible that the Tibetan script developed in Central Asia under the influence of the Khotanese alphabet, for example.

When the Tibetan kings developed an interest in Buddhism and invited Buddhist masters from the 7th century onwards, this coincided with the islamic expansion across the western parts of the Buddhist world. The 'furor islamicus' struck Bamiyan (Afghanistan), and shortly later Khotan and other regions in Central Asia and led to the complete destruction of the Buddhist civilizations of these areas. At that time, this 'northwestern' Buddhism was a main source for the cultural transfer.

Tibet was under the influence of the Bön religion which had established a 'sacral' kingdom with the kings being representatives of the gods on earth for a limited amount of time of 13 years. The conversion of one king (Thrisong Deutsen) to Buddhism therefore also was a political move in order to break the strong influence of the Bön aristocracy which enjoyed much influence over a time-limited, usually weak king.

The Chinese emperor and the Nepalese king feared the Tibetan warriors so much that they sent one princess each as bride to king Thrisong Deutsen. These two queens brought with them two flavors of Buddhism: the Indian tradition and the Chinese tradition. King Thrisong Deutsen invited the abbot Shantirakshita and the Mahasiddha Padmasambhava from Kashmir and overcame the Bön opposition.

It was customary in Buddhism to have debates between diverging viewpoints, both with non-Buddhists and with Buddhists. Since the Tibetans were now in contact with the Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhism, a debate was held, and the Indian debater, Kamalashila, won the debate. Therefore, the late North Indian Buddhism (Sarvastivada-Mahasanghika, Madhyamaka) became state religion, and (Chinese) Ch'an (Zen ) was no longer taught in Tibet, but perhaps quickly fused with the Mahaati and Mahamudra doctrines.

Shortly after having been established, a Bön king (Langdarma) ascended the throne and destroyed Buddhism in Central Tibet entirely. After some political turmoil, Buddhism was eventually reestablished. Now, the Tibetans went down to the North Indian monasteries, where they experienced the last days of Indian Buddhism, shortly before the advent of the islamic Mogul (Mongol) hords which destroyed almost every trace of monastic Buddhism.
Tantric Buddhism, situated outside of society, probably survived longer and probably at some point also merged with the religious beliefs of the lay people. Therefore, Tibet is the last country which received the highly complex system of Buddhist philosophy and tantric Buddhism from India, and we can find the most complete tradition of Buddhist scriptures only in Tibet.

The earlier introduced tradition of Buddhism, still established in the (Far-Eastern) marginal areas of Tibet, was brought back to Central Tibet as well, now named 'Nyingmapa' (the old ones), as opposed to the 'new' traditions ('Sarma') from India. The main Indian transmissions were termed 'Sakyapa' (those from Sakya ), 'Kadampa' ('those with the pure words'), and 'Kagyupa' (those with the oral Transmission ).

The Sakya school derived from a specific transmission (lam-dre) from India. The Kadampa teachings were the non-tantric methods (lam-rim) which came especially from Atisha, but not neglecting the tantric methods. The Kagyu  school, however, was a derivative of a mahasiddha tantric tradition of Marpa and Milarepa, together with the Kadampa education of Gampopa. The Nyingmapa held the Sutra  and tantra teachings of the Mulasarvastivada school from Kashmir. Thus, all schools contain the very same traditions of the monasteries and the mahasiddhas of India – technically speaking, they are all the same branch of the Sarvastivada School, all belong to the Madhyamaka view of Buddhist philosophy.

Later in history, when the discipline in many monasteries was low, a reformator was born in Tibet. His name was Tsongkhapa ('The one from the onion valley'). He received teachings from all Tibetan schools, made many retreats within different traditions, and wrote a great number of books clarifying many points of the entire Buddhadharma. Those who sided with him with respect to ethical discipline and maintenance of the vinaya rules, as a political move, wore yellow hats instead of the traditional red ones. Therefore, the distinction between red hats and yellow hats came to be known. In accordance with their high discipline, the yellow hats were subsequently called Gelugpa ('the discipline tradition'). The Gelug  branch of Buddhism eventually was adopted by the majority of the monasteries, so that finally, Gelug was the dominant school in Tibet.

The Gelug school quickly established central monastic universities which played the same role as the earlier Indian monasteries such as Nalanda: as world-famous centers of Buddhist erudition, where many monks studied in order to resume leading jobs in their respective home monasteries – comparable to Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard, so to say.

In response to political controversies between monasteries in Tibet, a number of high masters in the 19th century started a new movement, the Rime  ('no lineage adherence'). They went to receive transmissions from schools other than their own one in order to show the equality of the various traditions.

After the murder of the last Bön king more than 1000 years ago, the Tibetan kingdom had no more leader. It was under the pressure of the Mongol expansion that a Lama  from the Sakya school became the tributary leader of Tibet for the Mongolians. Some time later, a lama from the Gelug school got this title from the Mandju emperor; he became known as the Dalai Lama. The Chinese claim for Tibet goes back on this historical fact.

The Buddhist masters who were appointed leaders of Tibet used their political influence in order to keep Tibet free from invasions. Finally, in 1904, the British, and in 1951, The Chinese forces conquered Tibet. Therefore, the 13th Dalai Lama passed many years in Mongolia and China, while the 14th Dalai Lama had to flee to India and take permanent residence there.

The so-called Cultural Revolution from 1966 onwards, besides the immense loss of lives of human beings, especially of high Buddhist masters, led to the destruction of the entire Buddhist infrastructure.
But the Tibetan refugees recreated the main monasteries in exile and were able to maintain the high standards of their education. Finally, the rich Western countries took interest in Buddhism and started to contact these monasteries. This led to a spread of Buddhism into the Western world, and to some funding of the Buddhist monasteries in the East.

The Universe, from a Buddhist perspective

According to Buddhist thought, there are various universes in which Sentient being  are dwelling. Beings which have relations with each other and which share similar types of karma, may find themselves in contact with each other in a universe in which they live.

Universes, like everything else, have a beginning and an end. A universe exists for the long period of one Mahakalpa. It starts when beings have created the karma to experience such a world. It ends, when this karma is finally exhausted. The end of the Mahakalpa is described as a huge fire which destroys everything which has form – similar to Greek, Roman, Germanic accounts.

The mahakalpa is divided into four eons. Each of these eons has sub-eons, further cycles of better and worse karmic conditions. Thus, the whole universe is pulsating under the influence of the various karmas of the sentient beings who by their karma create the universe.

In exceedingly good sections of the Mahakalpa, human beings live 80.000 years. In exceedingly bad circumstances, human beings live less than ten years. We are now in the times where human beings live up to 100 years, but on the decline towards shorter lives.

The universe is further divided into four great sections or continents. We live on the southern continent, Jambudvîpa, where the situation of human beings is less fortunate in terms of happiness, but the due amount of suffering is instigating the dharma practice which is found (from time to time) on this continent.

This Mahakalpa has the name Bhadrakalpa ('fortunate eon', tib. skal pa bzang po), because 1.000 Buddhas will appear in order to teach the beings how to be liberated from samsara. Since during exceedingly positive times, beings are not inclined to understand the noble truth of suffering (and impermanence), Buddhas will appear especially during times when there is much more suffering, i.e., in bad times. Since we are now in the declining part of the 'Kaliyuga ', itself the 'bad' section, Buddhas come in relatively quick succession.

Before Shakyamuni Buddha , Buddha Kashyapa has taught a dharma, and after Buddha Shakyamuni, Buddha Maitreya  will teach gods and human beings. In the meantime, innumerable Bodhisattvas will help maintain the Buddhas' teachings or even found religious beliefs, if this is a good way to prepare beings for the path to liberation.

In fact, a Buddha is probably not 'born' into the world like an ordinary being, but rather are we born in an environment in which we can perceive a Buddha (or his teachings). In this respect, Jambudvîpa, our share of the universe, is the Pure Land of Shakyamuni Buddha, because we possess these qualities: (a) a Buddha has taught the dharma, (b) the dharma is still present, (c) there is a supportive (qualified) sangha.