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Buddhism

This page offers articles about se­lect­ed im­por­tant and some­what con­tro­ver­sial Bud­dhist top­ics. At pres­ent five ar­ti­cles and one audio are avail­able for down­load­ing, oth­ers may fol­low.

An introduction into the basics of Bud­dhism is avail­able at the Books page of this web­site.

This page offers articles about se­lect­ed im­por­tant and some­what con­tro­ver­sial Bud­dhist top­ics. At pres­ent five ar­ti­cles and one audio are avail­able for down­load­ing, oth­ers may fol­low.

An introduction into the basics of Bud­dhism is avail­able at the Books page of this web­site.

1. Non-Self and The Five Aggregates
The teaching about anattā (ego­less­ness, non-self, no un­chang­ing, per­ma­nent, en­dur­ing core or es­sence to any­thing) is one of the pil­lars of Bud­dhism and is a doc­trine which sets Bud­dhism apart from all other re­li­gions as those, in one form or an­oth­er, pos­tu­late some­thing per­ma­nent, a self or a soul.

The Buddha said that the self is not a re­al­i­ty. He did not say that there is noth­ing at all how­ever, but all there is, is just an ever chang­ing proc­ess of na­ture, con­sist­ing of an ever chang­ing body and an ever chang­ing mind. He la­belled this proc­ess the Five Ag­gre­gates, no abiding self to be found in it.

The concept of non-self is of utmost im­por­tance for the under­stand­ing of oth­er core Bud­dhist prin­ci­ples like De­pend­ent Orig­ina­tion (the 2nd Noble Truth) in­clud­ing re-birth (who or what is re-born if there is no self?) or the doc­trine of karma (which non-self re­ceives the result of a karmic action com­mit­ted by a non-self?). A lot of con­fu­sion amongst Bud­dhists and people inter­ested in Bud­dhism is caused by mis­in­ter­pret­ing the doc­trine of anattā.

2. Dependent Origination - Paticca­sa­muppāda
With the first of the Four Noble Truths the Bud­dha states that human ex­is­tence is gov­erned by Dukkha (dis­con­tent­ment, suf­fer­ing); the second Noble Truth dem­on­strates the aris­ing or the cause of Dukkha, sum­ma­rized in a teach­ing called De­pend­ent O­rig­i­na­tion or De­pend­ent Aris­ing or De­pend­ent Co-A­ris­ing, the Pāli ex­pres­sion is Paticca­sa­muppāda.

Various forms and dif­fer­ing ex­pla­na­tions of this teach­ing are given today, the most fre­quent­ly dis­cussed ones being:
  • The Three-Lives-Theory is an ex­pla­nation cover­ing three life­times, a past, the pres­ent and a fu­ture life, that is, it is used to teach re­birth.
  • The Here-and-Now-Theory pro­claims that De­pend­ent O­rig­i­na­tion is con­cerned with the pres­ent life only, with the 'here and now', with the birth and death of the no­tion of 'self', hap­pen­ing count­less times each day.
Both theories aim to explain how Duk­kha arises and how to put an end to it. At first a brief idea about the Three-Lives-Theory is given but the main focus of this paper is the Here-and-Now In­ter­pre­tation.

2.1 The Here-and-Now Inter­pre­ta­tion
According to the late Tan Ajahn Bud­dha­dāsa, a prom­i­nent Thai Bud­dhist monk and pro­po­nent of the Here-and-Now-Theory, the a­ris­ing of suf­fer­ing equals the aris­ing of the no­tions of 'self', 'I', 'me' and 'mine' in the ig­no­rant hu­man mind. Result­ing self­ish­ness does not only lead to per­son­al ca­lam­i­ties but to prob­lems in so­ci­ety and to the pol­lu­tion and ex­ploi­ta­tion of the nat­u­ral re­sour­ces of our planet too.
The ignorant person thinks it is the same 'self' that is living life from the cradle to the grave; here an attempt is made to show how the mind constructs the concept of a per­manent 'self' out of count­less momen­tary 'selfs' aris­ing with sense-contact.

Graph Dependent Origination - Paticcasamuppada

The 12 links of Dependent Origination

Wherever possible the early Buddhist texts, the Ni­kāyas, have been used for ref­er­ence. The rel­e­vant quotes are given either in the text itself or in foot­notes so that readers who do not have the Ni­kāyas at hand can follow up easily.

 

2.2 The Wheel of Life - audio recording
Picture of Dependent Origination - Paticcasamuppada

Dependent Origination - Paticcasamuppāda: Photo of a paint­ing at the Inter­na­tional Dharma Hermitage - Wat Suan Mokkh

The recording of a talk given to the par­tici­pants of the June 2016 med­i­ta­tion re­treat at the Inter­na­tional Dhar­ma Her­mit­age - Wat Suan Mokkh, Thai­land is avail­able as audio (mp3) for down­load­ing below.

Khun Reinhard explains the theory and prac­ti­cal con­se­quen­ces of the Here-and-Now inter­preta­tion of De­pend­ent O­rig­i­na­tion by re­fer­ring to the pic­ture above. A higher res­o­lu­tion copy of this pic­ture is pro­vid­ed for down­load­ing as well. The origi­nal paint­ing has a size of approx. 2m x 3m.

While the article above contains more de­tailed and in depth ma­te­ri­al re­gard­ing the teach­ing of De­pend­ent Aris­ing, the re­cord­ed audio gives some general in­for­ma­tion about the Wheel of Life as well.

Downloads

The above article (37 A4 pages) as a pdf-file:
Dependent Origination - article (851 kB)

The audio (1:06:24) as a mp3-file:
Dependent Origination - audio (34.8 MB)

The picture (768px x 1097px) as a jpg-file:
Dependent Origination - picture (222 kB)

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3. Karma and Merit in (Thai) Bud­dhism
The topic is Karma and Merit in (Thai) Bud­dhism and thus we will define at first the mean­ings of the terms kar­ma and merit before we in­ves­ti­gate in which ways they con­trib­ute to the unique form of Thai-Bud­dhism, but much of the ex­pla­na­tion is valid for other Bud­dhist coun­tries as well.

Karma is intentional action of body, speech and mind based on vo­li­tion and will bring about a result (vi­pāka). Karma is not fate or destiny. Ac­cord­ing to the early Bud­dhist texts the result can ripen in this life or in a fu­ture life or even in sub­se­quent lives. This is the gen­er­ally ac­cept­ed under­stand­ing of the Law of Kar­ma, the world­ly level, on which the teach­ing re­gard­ing kar­ma and merit is usu­ally of­fered and this seems to be the level most people prefer.

Complementary to the basic mun­dane inter­pre­ta­tion of kar­ma and merit is the supra­mun­dane or spir­i­tual level of the doc­trine which clar­i­fies that the teach­ings on an­attā (non-self) and kar­ma do not nec­es­sari­ly con­tra­dict each other. The world­ly ex­pla­na­tion helps people to behave prop­erly in this word while devel­op­ing their mind to a higher level; the tran­scen­den­tal teach­ing fol­lows the Noble Eight­fold Path to the end of all suffering.

4. Free Will in Buddhism and Western Philosophy
From the beginning of western phi­los­o­phy the pos­si­bili­ty of a hu­man free will has been con­ten­tious­ly de­bat­ed. Today the lit­era­ture re­gard­ing the free will prob­lem and of­fered so­lu­tions are vast and con­flict­ing.

In early Bud­dhism the pos­si­bili­ty of a free will has not been dis­cussed. Neither in the Ni­kāyas, the early Bud­dhist texts of The­ra­vāda-Bud­dhism, nor in the scrip­tures of Mahā­yāna Bud­dhism the free will prob­lem is men­tioned. It was only when people from the West started to get inter­ested in Bud­dhism that the pos­si­bili­ty of a free will had become a topic.

Relevant Buddhist teach­ings are the ones about non-self (an­attā), the prin­ci­ple of cau­sal­i­ty (idappa­ccayatā) rep­re­sent­ed by the law of De­pend­ent Orig­ina­tion (paticca­sa­muppāda) and the law of Kar­ma and its results. Not ac­ci­den­tal­ly an in­tro­duc­tion into these teach­ings is avail­able in the three arti­cles given above.

The present text is meant to provide an easily under­stand­able in­tro­duc­tion into the prob­lem. At first a few def­i­ni­tions from a west­ern point of view are given, fol­lowed by in­tro­duc­ing some basics regard­ing the free will ques­tion from a west­ern and Bud­dhist per­spec­tive. The dis­cus­sion of the Bud­dhist view­point is based main­ly on the The­ra­vāda-Bud­dhist scrip­tures. The inter­ested reader will find ad­di­tional ma­te­ri­al in the quoted lit­era­ture.

5. Bhikkhuni Ordination Con­tro­ver­sy in The­ra­vāda Bud­dhism
The Pāli-word for a male monk is Bhik­khu. The fe­male equiv­a­lent of a Bhik­khu is a Bhik­khuni. In The­ra­vāda Bud­dhism it is wide­ly but not un­ani­mous­ly ac­cept­ed that Bhik­khunis (nuns) need to be ordained in a dual cer­e­mo­ny by both the male Sangha and the fe­male Sangha (com­mu­nity of monks and nuns). It is believed that ap­proxi­mate­ly 1,000 years ago the Bhik­khuni lin­e­age died out and there were no more nuns left to ordain new Bhik­khunis and since then until re­cent­ly Thera­vāda Bhik­khunis did not exist. At the end of the 20th century more and more women voiced in­ter­est to re­vive the Bhik­khuni Sangha and to re­ceive full ordi­na­tion in Thera­vāda Bud­dhism again.

In a grand ordi­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny in 1998 Bhik­khuni ordi­na­tion in the Thera­vāda tradition was re-estab­lished. While this was ac­knowl­edged by the Bhik­khu Sangha in Sri Lanka the monks in other The­ra­vāda Bud­dhist coun­tries still do not accept Bhik­khuni or­di­na­tion.

After a short look at the his­tori­cal back­ground of Bhik­khuni ordi­na­tion in Bud­dhism, some ar­gu­ments for and against a revival of female or­di­na­tion in The­ra­vāda Bud­dhism will be pre­sent­ed and, as I'm liv­ing in Thai­land, we will spe­cifi­cally look at the sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try.



"In such cases, if there are [...] no senior dis­ci­ples among the nuns, ... no middle-rank­ing or junior nuns, ... no white-robed lay fol­low­ers, male or female, celibate or other­wise [...], then the holy life is not perfected."

Pāsādika Sutta, Digha Nikāya 29.12

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Bhikkhuni ordination.pdf (388 kB)

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