Tien Nguyen 2/26/2021
Buddhism began between India and Nepal.
Buddha's mother dreamed that a white elephant with six tusks entered her right side,
which was interpreted to mean that she had conceived a child who would become either a world
uler or a Buddha.
When sages were asked to interpret the dream, they predicted the queen would give birth to a son
destined to become either a great ruler or a holy man
a baby boy was born, emerging from her side. Seven days later, the Queen died
oral
When I was a child, I was delicately
ought up, most delicately. A white sunshade was held over me day
and night to protect me from cold, heat, dust, dirt, and dew. He wore the most costly garments, ate the
finest foods. He was su
ounded by beautiful women. During the rainy season he stayed in his palace,
where he was entertained by musicians and dancing girls.
Because the father wants him to be a king wants him to conquer the world and to be the emperor of
India, which at that time was sixteen different kingdoms. And it was predicted that he would be able to
conquer wherever he wanted if he remained as a king.
Siddhartha's son name is Fetter. He names his son 'ball and chain' because this is the fetter that will
keep me tethered to this life and this is what will keep me imprisoned."
Mara, the tempter god of desire, was waiting. "You are destined,” Mara told him, “to rule a great
empire. Go back and worldly power will be yours."
Siddhartha's time, the rituals no longer spoke to the spiritual needs of many Indians, leaving a spiritual
vacuum, and a sense of foreboding.
PBS
Friday, Fe
uary 26, 2021 1:44 PM
Homework Page 1
The notion of reincarnation is something that is part of Indian culture, part of Indian civilization, part of
Indian religion that was there long before the Buddha, and it was the, in a sense, the problem that the
Buddha faced."
The teachers of the time are already teaching forms of yoga and meditation, teaching that the self reflective
capacity of the mind can be put to use to tame the mind, to tame the passions —that was already established in
India.
Asceticism was a common spiritual practice—punishing the body as a way to attain serenity and wisdom
Five
he discovered having tried this completely for many years was that he had not answered his question. It
hadn’t worked. He was on the verge of death, dying, unawake ned, when he remembered something.
He remembered a day when he was young and sat by the river with his father and the perfection of the
world as it was simply gave itself to him."
when Siddhartha was a small boy, his father the King had taken him to a spring planting festival. While
he watched the ceremonial dancing being sown, he looked down at the grass. He thought about the
insects and their eggs, destroyed as the field was planted. He was overwhelmed with sadness
Pure joy
A village maiden mysteriously appears ca
ying a bowl of rice po
idge.
That moment of generosity and release when he accepted the rice was a decision towards life. It was
what in the Christian tradition might be called grace that you cannot do it completely on your own, and
in Christianity the grace comes from the divine. In the story of the Buddha the grace comes from the
ordinary kind heart of a girl who sees somebody starving and says, 'eat'."
Homework Page 2
Meditate
he said he will not move from this place until he have solved my problem."
Mara, lord of desire, rose to challenge him. With an army of demons he attacked. Siddhartha did not
move, and their weapons turned into flowers
He sent his three daughters to seduce him. Siddhartha remained still.
he’s afraid Siddhartha is going to do when he attains enlightenment and becomes the Buddha is
conquer that world, that is he’s going to do away with desire
When he faces Mara he faces himself and his own destructive capacity
The lord of desire had one final test. He demanded to know who would testify that Siddhartha was
worthy of attaining ultimate wisdom. And his demon army rose up to support him. Siddhartha said
nothing. .
He reached down and touched the ground, and the earth shuddered. Mara’s demons fled. That mean
eaches down, and with his finger, touches the earth. He says, 'The earth is his witness.' He said, 'Mara,
you are not the earth. The earth is right here beneath his finger,'
He remembered all his previous lives—infinite number of lives—female and male and every other race and every
other being in the vast ocean of life forms. And he remembered all that viscerally so that means his awareness
expanded until all the moments of the past were completely present to him
"He gains the power to see the process of birth, death, and rebirth that all creatures go through. He’s
given this sort of cosmic vision of the workings of the entire universe
He realized he’d always been in Nirvana that Nirvana was always the case; your reality itself
is Nirvana. It’s the unreality; it’s your ignorance that makes you think you’re this self-
centered separate being trying to fight off an overwhelming universe and failing. You are
that universe
Buddha saw the nature of the people, and the envy and jealousy and the strong negative mental states.
All the people in the world they are like the fishes wriggling in the very shallow water. So Buddha, he
himself afraid to teach the people
The myth is that a god come to the Buddha, Brahma comes on his knees, and says, 'please we need you.
Why don’t you try talking about what you just understood, because the world…the gods need it and the
men need it, people need it
Buddhism is about being ordinary. And it is not about the continual exudation of bliss. It is
about walking a normal human life with normal human beings, doing normal human
things.
Homework Page 3
"The Buddha said, 'I've discovered a new way to go and it's not the path of asceticism, and it's not
the path of sensory indulgence. It's the Middle Way.
The first Noble Truth is that there is suffering in this world. Generally this suffering has been
mistranslated
the second Noble Truth asserts that suffering has a cause,
the third Noble Truth makes an astonishing claim.
With the fourth and final Noble Truth, the Buddha laid out a series of instructions for his disciples to
follow: a way of leading the mind to enlightenment called the Noble Eightfold Path—the cultivation of
moral discipline, mindfulness, and wisdom.
The Buddha's saying 'be smart about your desires'." His Holiness the Dalai Lama: "Desire must be there.
Without desire how can we live our life?
Homework Page 4