?The Buddhist religion.. Learn about “Buddhism” and how it was transmitted and developed in Japan
Buddhism originated in India approximately 2,500 years ago, then moved to Japan via China in the sixth century. But the Japanese version of Buddhism differs from the original teachings of the historical Buddha in important ways. But how has this religion changed over the centuries and why? In the first part of this series tracing the development of Buddhism in Japan, we learn about the basic principles of this religion that was taught in India long ago.
Resorting to meditation to get rid of suffering
Buddhism originated about 2,500 years ago. Its founder was a person known in history as Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha was born to a noble family in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, near the present-day border between India and Nepal. He spent the first years of his life surrounded by luxury and comfort, and perhaps he had the opportunity to become king as one of the princes. But as a young man his eyes were opened to the suffering inherent in human existence. This discovery prompted him to decide to give up his status as a prince and abandon his life full of comfort and material luxury. He isolated himself in the forests and began the life of a religious ascetic.
But what prompted him to uproot himself from his comfortable life and embark on an isolated life of uncertainty and comfort? As a teenager, Siddhartha realized that there are happy and unhappy people in society. Although each person's circumstances may be unique, there is a common denominator among all people. Each of us will inevitably go through old age, illness and death. In this sense, all people are equally unhappy. Life itself involves suffering. This suffering cannot be alleviated or eradicated by wealth or status in society. For someone who understood that truth, the social privileges of being a prince meant nothing to him. The only path left for Siddhartha was to devote his life to finding a way to escape the suffering inherent in life and reach a state of calm and peace.
In the forests far from the towns, Siddhartha studied with hermits who were experts in the arts of asceticism and meditation, and lived a secluded ascetic life. He stripped himself of physical pleasures, subjecting himself to physical hardship and starvation in the hope that overcoming pain might grant him supernatural powers that would allow him to escape suffering. But after six years of subjugating desires and self-denial, his goal still has not been achieved. So he decided to change his approach, abandoning his extreme asceticism and deciding to focus on meditation alone. Thanks to this method, he was finally able to achieve enlightenment under the famous Bodhi tree. After achieving enlightenment, he became known as Buddha or the “enlightened one.” It is also known as “Shakyamuni” in reference to its origins dating back to the Shakya tribe in ancient India.
A guide to overcoming destructive emotions
What was the nature of enlightenment attained by Buddha? It is impossible for anyone to fully understand the dramatic changes occurring in another person's heart. That is why the full story of the experience that Buddha had when he reached enlightenment must remain a mystery. But we can roughly understand what happened from the sutras and many other Buddhist books that convey the content of Buddha's teachings based on his experience.
Buddha taught that liberation from suffering is possible only through one's own efforts. There is no supernatural being who comes and frees man from suffering. Buddha used the powers of meditation to examine his heart and mind until he discovered the root of suffering. He understood that the root cause of our suffering comes from our clinging to an illusory sense of self. We allow ourselves to be governed by an ego that doesn't really exist. We see the world in a selfish way that suits the interests of this imaginary ego. This self-centered awareness is something that develops in us instinctively, but it is a false view of the world. From this misunderstanding of the world emerge the confused and destructive psychological states that Buddhism calls “klesha.” It includes feelings such as anxiety, desire, jealousy, and fear, which are psychological states that cloud the mind and lead to harmful actions to continue the cycle of suffering.
After Buddha understood the origin of suffering through self-observation, he came up with a set of practical instructions for ending these unhealthy states of mind and liberating oneself from the sea of suffering. This approach to spiritual training is unique to Buddhism. Buddhist practice consists of two main components. The first is to study the sutras and other texts, and arrive at a correct understanding of the Buddha's teachings. The sutras also constitute a practical guide to Buddhist practice. The second element is practicing the spiritual lessons learned from Buddhist texts under the guidance of more experienced practitioners.
Buddhism had a strong appeal to people as a completely new type of teaching, and Buddha soon had many followers. Buddha taught the methods he learned from his own experience without discrimination among his followers. After his death at the age of eighty, his disciples kept his methods and teachings alive, and Buddhists still follow them in many countries around the world today. Under Buddha's leadership, his disciples worked their way through the path of meditative spiritual practices that he prescribed for them. That community later became one of the central pillars that supported the development of Buddhism as a religion over the following centuries.
Maintain the Sangha
Perhaps the most important reason why Buddha's teachings continued uninterrupted over 25 centuries is that Buddha designed his religion as a society that operated according to strict rules. He organized his followers into one organization under his leadership called the Sangha. The community was run according to a strict set of regulations called the Vinaya Pitaka, one of the three central collections of Buddhist texts. After the Buddha's death, his followers continued to uphold these regulations and maintained the Sangha as an independent community of individuals administered according to the rule of law. From the beginning, the Sangha formed the basis of Buddhism, which had many benefits.
1. Maintaining the relationship between teacher and student
The Vinaya Pitaka regulations establish clear relationships between teachers and disciples within the Sangha. This enables the Buddha's teachings either in the form of sutras or other texts to be accurately transmitted across generations. It also facilitates contact with the practical side of meditation and other Buddhist practices, which can be taught face-to-face from teacher to disciple across generations. This helped make the Sangha a very rational educational organisation.
2. Mutual assistance as social security
The establishment of a system of mutual aid within the Sangha made the relationships between the teacher and his disciples relationships of mutual support in everyday life. This meant that hermits who distanced themselves from the secular world to devote themselves to Buddhist practices were offered protection and a kind of insurance against illness, injury, and old age. The Sangha became a system of mutual support and assistance that its members could trust.
3. Maintaining society through charity
The Sangha organization of Buddhist monks was a community governed according to the rule of law, and its members lived humble, blameless lives according to their own strict code of conduct. This model of upright behavior earned society the respect of the outside secular world. People saw that Buddha's followers were people who lived according to a strict regime, and many of them gave alms to support the community. Donations by ordinary people have helped sustain the Sangha to the present.
4. Independence from external authority
By operating as an organization with its own laws and regulations, the Sangha has been able to attain a degree of independence. This was an important factor in reducing the risk of interference by external forces, and maintaining an environment suitable for contemplation and reflection. Throughout its history, the Sangha has functioned as an independent community separate from external authorities.
Of course, these four characteristics were not preserved completely without interruption for 2,500 years. Many things have happened over the days that contradict those basic principles. But the fact that these four elements were there from the beginning as the founding principles of religion was very important. Even if the Sangha occasionally lost its way, it was relatively easy to get the community back on track as long as it still had its founding principles to return to.
Japanese Buddhism is radically different from early Buddhism
The characteristics of early Buddhism can be summarized in two main points. First, the purpose of living a religious life is meditation. Buddhism does not assume the presence of any external savior. But practitioners use their own powers of observation to look inward, analyze and improve oneself. Daily training through meditation is the main method used to achieve this.
Second, the Sangha's existence as a community provides a place for practitioners to focus on following the path to enlightenment. He founded the Sangha community for the purpose of allowing practitioners to devote themselves to their practices while continuing to depend on the surrounding secular community for its daily needs. Society is managed rationally according to the disciplinary laws stipulated in the Vinaya Pitaka.
These two features distinguish Buddhism from other religions. But in Japanese Buddhism, these two characteristics are atrophied. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that they have completely disappeared. This is a pivotal point for understanding Japanese Buddhism. If the Japanese version lost these two characteristics of early Buddhism, what other characteristics developed in their place? In this series I want to take a look at how people in Japan received Buddhism after it arrived in this country via China. The status of Buddhism in Japan has fluctuated greatly over the centuries. In some periods, religion established close relationships with rulers and authorities at some times. At other times, this religion suffered persecution and repression. I want to look back at this long and checkered history and examine the unique path that Buddhism has followed in Japan over the past millennium and a half.
Source : websites