ILLUSTRATED
martha aitchison
Cover illustration: High priests and ascetics
An illustrated essay on the birth and growth of and its arrival in the West
text and illustrations by
martha aitchison
This essay gives a very short account of Buddhism since its beginnings in Asia until it reached us in England and indeed it spread to the rest of the world. I have tried to set it in its historic and geographical context as far as possible, in the brief space I have allowed myself for the sake of simplicity. It is intended for young people and teachers in western schools. I am very grateful to Venerable Seelawimala, Head of the London Buddhist Vihara, for the interesting and useful chat we had when I was just starting to think about the task and to Bhikkhu Nyanatusita, the editor of the Buddhist Publication Society, for his helpful comments later on. I am also extremely grateful to all my many teachers, particularly to Venerable Paœœ¤sekera, who encouraged me to dedicate myself to the painting of Buddhist subjects and to Ajahn Sumedho, the founder of Cittaviveka and Amaravati, who was the first to hold open the doors of the Teaching for me.
Martha Aitchison February 2011
Buddhism is the religion founded by Prince Siddhattha, the man we call the Buddha, which means the Awakened or Enlightened One. He was born some 2500 years ago in a small kingdom in the area which is now South Nepal, near the frontier with India. In Buddha’s time Nepal and India did not exist as countries; instead in their place there were many small and separate kingdoms, such as that ruled by Siddhattha's family. The long fertile valley at the base of the Himalayas mountains where his kingdom was situated is called the Terai From the Himalayas many rivers which means flow to bathe this flat area and create marshy grasslands that alternate with pockets of forest. These forests are home to many ferocious and dangerous animals, including tigers, elephants and poisonous snakes. The Terai continues into north India and forms part of the basin of the River Ganges, the area where the Buddha spent his long life teaching.
The Birthplace of the Buddha
The Buddha grew up in Kapilavatthu, now in Nepal, but during his long life dedicated to teaching he travelled a lot around the north of India. Many people visit the places in which he stayed to pay homage to his memory. The principal places of pilgrimage are four. The first is the birthplace of the Buddha, who was born in the gardens of Lumbini, near Kapilavatthu, as his mother was on her way to visit her parents. There still exists the pool in which his mother bathed in preparation to the birth and where the newly born baby was bathed. Many pilgrims visit Bodh-Gaya where there is an ancient fig tree that is believed to be the Bodhi Tree under which Siddhattha achieved Enlightenment and so he became the means wisdom). Buddha ( The first sermon Buddha gave was in the Deer Park in Sarnath (now Varanasi) and he died in Kusinara (now Kushinagar) surrounded by his followers. These are two other very important centres where Buddhists congregate. Temples and stupas, which are monuments to the Buddha, have been erected to mark these places of pilgrimage, despite that the Buddha on his deathbed asked that nothing should be built in his memory.
Peregrination Sites
The many small kingdoms that existed at the time of the Buddha were often at war with each other trying to expand their territory. The rulers were warriors, descendants of the Aryan invaders that had come from the west some centuries earlier. They were taller and lighter skinned than the local people and considered themselves superior to the workers and merchants who formed most of the population. By now the economy of the region was no longer based only in the exchange of goods and cattle as coins began to be used. The merchants, with this new system, were becoming richer and more important, threatening the position of the rulers. There were also free workers, struggling to make a living. At the bottom of society were the slaves, who were the descendants of the original inhabitants of the region. The were very poor and neglected by the rest of the people and had a very sad existence.
Nobles, Workers and Slaves
Their religion was based on the worship of nature and only the high priests or Brahmins could perform its rites and animal sacrifices. The Brahmins belonged to a rich and powerful class also of Aryan descent. Some holy men disagreed with the luxurious way of life of the Brahmins and their tight control of the religion. These holy men preferred to retire to the forest away from material comforts, becoming mendicants and working on their own to satisfy their spiritual needs. It was in this period of economic, political and religious change that Siddhattha, the future Buddha, was born and grew up. But Prince Siddhattha was not interested in governing the kingdom, since childhood he was more concerned about less materialistic things. He wondered why so many people were unhappy and he noticed that the happiest of all were the holy men that lived a simple life. Finally his pampered life in his father’s palace and the Brahmin’s teachings disenchanted him and the young man decided to join the holy men in the forest to learn from their wisdom. For many years he studied hard and practised everything he was taught so he learned all they had to teach him but still the future Buddha was not satisfied and decided to go away to find out for himself.
Brahmins and Holy Men
Some other disenchanted students joined Siddhattha. They lived in the forest without eating and sleeping, all of which was thought at the time to be the best way to become clever and holy, but they only managed to get ill and weak. Siddhattha, who after years of sacrifices was ailing, realized that without rest and food his mind did not work properly and started to eat and sleep just enough to become strong again. Seeing this, his companions promptly abandoned him, thinking he had given up the search for the truth behind the riddle of existence. Then for a long time, alone and begging for food, he dedicated himself to meditate until one day, after a very long night of deep meditation, he reached a conclusion:
.
This came upon him as a sudden revelation which it is called the Enlightenment because it shone a light on all the questions that nobody could answer for him. Since then Siddhattha is called the Buddha, which means one who is fully awake.
Living and practising in the Forest
After his revelation the Buddha thought that there was no point to tell others what he had discovered as they would not understand, but then he thought better of it and decided that some might be ready to open their eyes like and only needed a little push. In his first sermon in the Deer park near present day Benares, the Buddha told his old companions who had rejoined him to follow the middle way between attachment to a life of pleasure and extreme ascetic practices. Pleasure leads to unhappiness because sooner or later it ends and chastising the body is useless and only increase suffering. Then the Buddha explained the Four Noble Truths, the first of which is the existence of unhappiness in this world, which nobody can escape. The second is that our wants and don’t wants are the reason we are unhappy. To want what we do not have is suffering and to have what we do not want is suffering. The third Noble Truth is that there is a peaceful state of mind, called Nirvana, reached when we have switched off all desire. The Fourth Noble Truth is that the Noble Path is the way to Nirvana. This Path is based on understanding and accepting that nothing lasts forever and that we have to be careful to act and to talk with kindness and respect towards all, including ourselves. We have to make a good effort to be mindful of everything, especially how of our own mind works. Only then will we be contented and happy.
The First Sermon in the Deer Park
In his second sermon the Buddha explained that not only the body but also our feelings and other mental components are always changing and lack a permanent self. This causes suffering because being attached to things that do not last leads to unhappiness whereas learning to be detached leads to peace of mind and lasting contentment. In another early sermon the Buddha said that even if a teaching is traditionally accepted or a teacher has a good reputation any teaching should be examined with a clear mind and tested to see if it leads to skilful living. Only then it should be followed. In Buddhism personal effort and responsibility are given great importance. Good actions or good karma lead to a happy life and bad actions or bad karma to an unhappy , are beone. The effects of karma, which just means lieved to carry on after death. This belief is explained in Buddhism not as a soul that passes intact from life to life but as a sort of energy that passes on. Karma is not the same as fate because the effects of past bad actions can be overcome by doing good deeds. Furthermore, the Buddha said that not all that happens to a person is necessarily due to past action but can be due to other factors.
The Buddha Teaching
The Buddha went on teaching his message full of compassion and loving kindness for a long time. Many men and women joined him, giving up all material things and becoming monks and nuns. After he died his Teaching spread under the reign of Ashoka, the kind ruler of a large empire based on justice and tolerance. He had been a mighty and ruthless conqueror and had subjugated almost the whole of India. Then he anexed the regions of Burma, Bangladesh and Assam to the east and Iran and Afghansitan to the west. Later, on meeting Buddhism, he had a change of heart. Then Ashoka dedicated himself to the erection not only of monuments to the Buddha but also he built many schools, monasteries and hospitals and sent monks to other countries to ensure the spread of Buddhism, always by peaceful means. After the death of Ashoka and while Buddhism was growing steadily in China and other eastern countries it nearly disappeared in India. Eventually it was revived by the Maha Bodhi Society. This body was founded in 1891 for the purpose of restoring the ancient shrines at Bodh-Gaya, Sarnath and Kusinara, which had fallen in disrepair or were in use as temples by other religious groups.
Lion pillar and stupa at Kolhua, near Vaishali
Lions pillar, stupa and ruins of monastery at Sarnath
The Great Stupa of Sanchi, with the Wheel of the Law and a carving of an important personage, possibly Ashoka
Some of Ashoka’s Buildings
When Buddhism spread towards the East it changed as it adapted to the local traditions instead of rejecting them, being a tolerant and compassionate religion. At the same time it influenced the thought and the arts of the peoples it embraced. One fundamental change was the switch in reliance on personal effort alone to the invocation for support to a celestial being. An example of this is the cult of Guan Yin, who is the beloved Bodhisattva of Compassion, venerated all through Eastern Asia. A Bodhisattva is an enlightened being that refuses to reach Nirvana until all beings are equally enlightened. . Guan Yin means In the legend of Guan Yin and the Dragon she saves the son of the Dragon King of the Ocean who had been caught in a net. Dragons in the East are not evil but powerful and wise creatures who control water, rainfall and floods. They are a symbol of good luck and strength, and in China a dragon is also the official symbol of the Empire. The Imperial Dragon has five fingers on his paws while the common dragons have only four, apparently. In the illustration the water pouring from the pot in Guan Yin’s hand onto the ocean symbolizes her love and compassion, freely given to all beings.
Guan Yin and the Dragon
Another example is Mahakala, an old legendary supernatural being that was adopted as the defender of Buddhism. although sometimes His name means the he appears as a blue fierce creature. He is often seen in Tibetan temples near the door and sometimes he even has his own personal shrine where his many devotees can venerate him . Focusing on the image of Mahakala helps to develop concentration, destroying the tendency of the mind to jump all the time from one thing to another. The legend says that he was a fierce demon and was tamed with loving-kindness by Avalokiteshvara, who is the male form of Guan Yin and the personification of Compassion. Central to Buddha’s Teaching, this virtue is also called loving-kindness and it means to be in tune with another’s feelings, so it is natural to be kind to them. Buddhists also believe in the unity of all living things and their relation to the environment. It is understood that harming one part affects the whole. So they try to develop a compassionate attitude towards all living beings and nature as a whole.
Mahakala
Only recently, in the 20th century, Buddhism reached the West as a religion in its own right, although it is known that it had influenced both Greek and Roman thought. In 1924 the Buddhist Society was founded in London to publish and make known the principles of Buddhism and to encourage the study and practice of those principles. However, the honour of being the first Buddhist monastery to be established outside Asia belongs to the London is a retreat or dwelling place for Buddhist Vihara ( monks). Now in Chiswick, a suburb in west London, it was founded in 1926 by Anagarika Dharmapala, a Sinhalese monk with a strong missionary purpose. They are mendicant monks which means that they cannot work for money and they survive by donations from the devotees. These monks, mainly Sinhalese, dedicate a lot of effort to education and to the spread of Buddhism. In their web site there is an excellent short and clear guide to the Teaching of the Buddha. Since then many other schools of Buddhism have followed and have established their monasteries in Britain and other parts of the western world.
The shrine, London Buddhist Vihara, Chiswick
A monk receiving visitors
The London Buddhist Vihara
In 1979 Ajhan Sumedho, an American monk trained in Thailand, established a monastery with a few other monks in the south of England, Cittaviveka, which soon grew into a thriving community. The first western monks were ordained in 1981 and the ordination of the first western nuns followed two years later. Since then this community, which started in a large and dilapidated old house, has grown fast and steadily not only around the original monastery but has given birth to a large teaching monastery at Amaravati, Hemel Hempstead, and several others in Britain and in Europe, America and New Zealand. These monasteries are maintained with donations to a separate body of lay administrators as these monks and nuns cannot touch money. Most of the donations anyway are in the form of food and other necessities taken by devotees to the monasteries. Residential retreats are offered to lay people, who put what they can afford in a collecting box at the end of their stay. The monks and nuns are celibate and live in the Thai forest tradition of mendicants. They have a strong leaning towards meditation and monastic discipline and wear simple robes and shave their heads as a symbol of having given up a materialistic life.
Cittaviveka, the first western monastery, Chithurst, Hants,UK
Amaravati, near Hemel Hempstead, Herts, UK
Cittaviveka and Amaravati Monasteries
These nuns and monks have individual cells but they have communal meditation at dawn and again in the evening. For their lunch just before midday, their only meal of the day, they have to eat whatever they are offered by lay people. After midday they cannot have any more solid food until the next morning. They work on the maintenance and administration of the monastery, they teach and meditate. At certain times of the year they have long retreats in which they are exempted from everyday duties in order to spend the day in meditation. They have very few personal possessions; their bowl for the meals, needle and thread, shaving things, their robes and medicines. They are forbidden to touch money so all their services are given for free. These are some of the strict rules they have to follow; there are more than 200 rules, set up during the lifetime of the Buddha, which have been designed to help the nuns and monks in their efforts to lead a skilful monastic life and to help also in the smooth running of the monasteries. Visitors are always welcome, and it is traditional for these visitors to join in all the activities of the monastery and live by the same rules as the monks and nuns during their stay, which actually is not a problem at all.
A monk and his few possessions A nun teaching
Calling to assembly Monk receiving alms
Western Monks and Nuns
The practice of meditation is central to Buddhism. Meditation helps to relax and a relaxed mind is better at seeing things as they are and coping with them. Buddhists meditate to see clearly into their own mind and become enlightened like the Buddha. Meditation takes many forms depending on the different Buddhist traditions. There are silent meditations during which the practitioner concentrate the attention on the breath or a word or image. Watching the thoughts as they come and go is another way to develop wisdom. There are also guided meditations and even chanting can be considered a form of meditation. Buddhists respect the Buddha as a great teacher but they are fully aware that he was only a man, not a god, and therefore there is no praying to him. The image of the Buddha is put in a shrine with candles, flowers and incense sticks as an object upon which to focus the mind. Other images to aid devotees are representations of feelings and emotions. For example, Guang Yin is the embodiment of compassion, and focusing on this image can help to develop this virtue. Buddhist ceremonies, rituals and festivals are a means to bind the community and encourage good behaviour. They give an opportunity to hear Buddhism explained by the monks and the nuns. In some traditions they might include a period of meditation, others rely in chanting and invocations to celestial beings.
Buddhapadipa Thai Temple, Loi Kratong Festival Wimbledon, London.
Paying respect to the Buddha, Bodh-gaya, India
Group meditation
Rituals, Ceremonies and Festivals
As it spread from Nepal to the rest of Asia, Buddhism took different forms, adapting to and incorporating local customs as we have seen. However, its essence remained the same. It is flourishing now also outside Asia and no doubt eventually there will be a form of Western Buddhism with a particular flavour of its own.
For more eBooks of the same author
issuu.com/nottwobooks
For more information on the Teaching of the Buddha look in
www.londonbuddhistvihara.org And in
www.amaravati.org
You do not need to be a Buddhist to benefit from meditation. There is a good simple training system for everybody by Dr. Kristin Neff in
www.self-compassion.org