Samādhi, Three Mysterious Practice and Transformation as the Principle of Immedately Becoming the Buddha and Saving Sentient Beings

It seems uncontroversial that Buddhism is therapeutic in intent. The word ‘therapy’ is often used, however, to denote methods of treating medically defined mental illnesses, while in the Buddhist context it refers to the treatment of deep-seated dissatisfaction and confusion that, it is claimed, afflict us all. The Buddha is likened to a doctor who offers a medicine to cure the spiritual ills of the suffering world. In the Pāli scriptures, one of the epithets of the Buddha is ‘the Great Physician’ and the therapeutic regimen or healing treatment is his teaching, the Dhamma. This metaphor is continued in later literature, most famously in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra, where the Buddha is said to be like a benevolent doctor who attempts to administer appropriate medicine to his sons. In the Mahāyāna pantheon, one of the most popular of the celestial Buddhas is Bhaiṣajyaguru, the master of healing, who is believed to offer cures for both the spiritual and more mundane ailments of sentient beings. The four truths, possibly the most pervasive of all Buddhist teachings, are expressed in the form of a medical diagnosis. The first truth, that there is suffering (dukkha), is the diagnosis of the disease. The second truth, that suffering arises from a cause (or causes), seeks to identify the root source of the disease. The third truth, that suffering can be ended, is a prognosis that the disease is curable. The fourth truth describes the path to end suffering, and is the prescription of treatment.

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Filial Piety with a Zen Twist: Universalism and Particularism Surrounding the Sutra on the Difficulty of Reciprocating the Kindness of Parents

Journal of Religion in Japan ◽

10.1163/22118349-12341248 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 35-62

Author(s):

Michel Mohr

Keyword(s):

Filial Piety ◽

True Nature ◽

Tokugawa Period ◽

Sentient Beings ◽

The Buddha ◽

Insight Into

Abstract This article examines the Sutra on the Difficulty of Reciprocating the Kindness of Parents and its reinterpretation by the Japanese Rinzai Zen monk Tōrei Enji 東嶺圓慈 (1721-1792). In the context of the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) where filial piety was upheld as one of the pillars of morality and Neo-confucian orthodoxy, Tōrei’s commentary of this sutra skillfully combined the particularist understanding of filiality as limited to one’s relatives with its broader construal as a universal attitude of reverence directed toward all sentient beings. The father is envisioned as the wisdom and the excellence of the Buddha, the mother as the compassionate vows of the Bodhisattva, and the children as those who emit the thought of awakening. Tōrei further pushed this interpretation by adding the distinct Zen idea that the initial insight into one’s true nature needs to be surpassed and refined by perfecting the going beyond (kōjō 向上) phase of training, where the child/disciple’s legacy and his indebtedness towards his spiritual mentors is recast in terms of overcoming one’s attainments and attachment to them.

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Buddhist concept of emptiness

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-f057-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Paul Williams

Keyword(s):

Tibetan Buddhism ◽

Ultimate Truth ◽

The Absolute ◽

Sentient Beings ◽

The Buddha ◽

The Way

‘Emptiness’ or ‘voidness’ is an expression used in Buddhist thought primarily to mark a distinction between the way things appear to be and the way they actually are, together with attendant attitudes which are held to be spiritually beneficial. It indicates a distinction between appearance and reality, where the paradigm for that distinction is ‘x is empty (śūnya) of y’, and emptiness (śūnyatā) is either the fact of x’s being empty of y or the actual absence itself as a quality of x. It thus becomes an expression for the ultimate truth, the final way of things. Śūnya is also a term which can be used in the nontechnical contexts of, for example, ‘The pot is empty of water’. These terms, however, are not univocal in Buddhist thought. If x is empty of y, what this means will depend upon what is substituted for ‘x’ and ‘y’. In particular, any simplistic understanding of ‘emptiness’ as the Buddhist term for the Absolute, approached through a sort of via negativa, would be quite misleading. We should distinguish here perhaps four main uses of ‘empty’ and ‘emptiness’: (1) all sentient beings are empty of a Self or anything pertaining to a Self; (2) all things, no matter what, are empty of their own inherent or intrinsic existence because they are all relative to causes and conditions, a view particularly associated with Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamika school of Buddhism; (3) the flow of nondual consciousness is empty of hypostasized subject–object duality, the Yogācāra view; (4) the Buddha-nature which is within all sentient beings is intrinsically and primevally empty of all defilements, a notion much debated in Tibetan Buddhism.

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“The Place of Multiple Meanings”: The Dragon Daughter Rereads the Lotus Sutra

Intercarnations ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823276455.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Catherine Keller

Keyword(s):

Lotus Sutra ◽

Multiple Meanings ◽

Sentient Beings ◽

The Buddha

This chapter examines the Lotus Sutra, a 2,000-year-old sutra recognized by the Chinese Buddhist master Zhi Yi as the ultimate teaching of the Tiantai lineage. Lotus Sutra announces the true dharma of compassion to all sentient beings, as distinguished from the inferior dharma of mere personal liberation. The compassion is boundless, infinite, encompassing all beings, all worlds, in their fathomless multiplicity. The Buddha of Lotus Sutra declares the Dharma of Innumerable Meanings. The chapter shows that the means of Lotus Sutra epitomize entangled difference: the buddhas “know that nothing exists independently/And that buddha-seeds arise interdependently.” It also considers how these far-flung intercarnations give rise to some unexpectedly current entanglements.

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Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark

10.21313/hawaii/9780824867393.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robert E. Buswell Jr.

Keyword(s):

Zen Buddhism ◽

Extensive Study ◽

Buddhist Literature ◽

Buddhist Tradition ◽

Korean Buddhism ◽

Wide Range ◽

Gradual Development ◽

Sentient Beings ◽

The Buddha ◽

Annotated Translation

Numinous Awareness is Never Dark examines the issue of whether enlightenment in Zen Buddhism is sudden or gradual: that is, something achieved in a sudden flash of insight, or through the gradual development of a sequential series of practices. In Excerpts, the Korean Zen master Chinul (1158-1210) offers one of the most thorough treatments of this “sudden/gradual issue” in all of premodern East Asian Buddhist literature, including extensive quotations from a wide range of his predecessors in Chinese and Korean Buddhism on the sudden/gradual issue. In Chinul’s analysis, enlightenment is actually both sudden and gradual: an initial sudden awakening to the numinous awareness, the buddha-nature, that is inherent in all sentient beings, followed by gradual cultivation that removes the deep-seated habitual proclivities of thought and conduct that continue to appear even after awakening. Chinul’s preferred approach of “sudden awakening/gradual cultivation” becomes emblematic of the subsequent Korean Buddhist tradition. In addition to an extensive study of the contours of the sudden/gradual debate in Buddhist thought and practice, the book also includes a complete, copiously annotated translation of Chinul’s magnum opus. In Buswell’s treatment, Chinul’s Excerpts emerges as the single most influential work ever written by a Korean Buddhist author.

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Vasubandhu. [“The Great Compassion and the Perfections of All Buddhas”]. A Fragment of the Seventh Part of Abhidharmakośabhāṣya

Письменные памятники Востока ◽

10.17816/wmo46754 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 5-15

Author(s):

Helena P. Ostrovskaia

Keyword(s):

Historical Source ◽

The Real ◽

Religious Cult ◽

Transcendental Object ◽

Sentient Beings ◽

The Buddha

The paper presents a commented translation of the fragment Jāna-nirdeśa (The doctrine of knowledge) from the seventh part of the exegetic compendium Abhidharmakośabhāya ascribed to the eminent medieval Buddhist thinker Vasubandhu (4th5th centuries AD). The fragment can be used as a historical source for the study of evolution of the image of the Buddha in post-Canonical treatises where the real Śakyamuni was invested with the attributes of a transcendental object of religious cult. The text explicates the conceptual differences between the great compassion (mahākāruā), treated as the Buddhas attribute, and compassion (kāruā) as a characteristic trait of enlightened ascetics (śravakas and pratyekabuddhas) and explains the postulate of identity of all buddhas perfections (the perfection of religious merits and knowledge, the perfection of the Dharmic body, the perfection of serving all sentient beings). This is the first translation based on the Sanskrit edition by P. Pradhan (Pradhan 1967: 414416).

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THE TEACHING AND PRACTICE OF FILIAL PIETY IN BUDDHISM

Journal of Law and Religion ◽

10.1017/jlr.2016.20 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 212-226

Author(s):

Guang Xing

Keyword(s):

Filial Piety ◽

Chinese Culture ◽

Belief System ◽

Confucian Ethics ◽

Chinese Buddhism ◽

Human Beings ◽

Buddhist Ethics ◽

Buddhist Teaching ◽

Sentient Beings ◽

The Buddha

AbstractBuddhist scholars like Kenneth Ch'en have argued that the teaching of filial piety was a special feature of Chinese Buddhism as a response to the Chinese culture. Others, among them John Strong and Gregory Schopen, have shown that filial piety was also important in Indian Buddhism, but Strong does not consider it integral to the belief system and Schopen did not find evidence of it in early writings he examined. In this article, through an analysis of early Buddhist resources, the Nikāyas and Āgamas, I demonstrate that the practice of filial piety has been the chief good karma in the Buddhist moral teaching since its inception, although it is not as foundational for Buddhist ethics as it is for Confucian ethics. The Buddha advised people to honor parents as the Brahmā, the supreme god and the creator of human beings in Hinduism, as parents have done much for their children. Hence, Buddhism teaches its followers to pay their debts to parents by supporting and respecting them, actions that are considered the first of all meritorious deeds, or good karma, in Buddhist moral teachings. Moreover, according to the Buddhist teaching of karma, matricide and patricide are considered two of the five gravest bad deeds, and the consequence is immediate rebirth in hell. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed the idea of filial piety further and formulated the four debts to four groups of people—parents, sentient beings, rulers, and Buddhism—a teaching that became very popular in Chinese Buddhism and spread to other East Asian countries.

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