Notes and Key Terms - Early Buddhism

Key Terms - Early Buddhism

Siddharta Gautama, born the son of a king, of the kshatriya or warrior class, became the "Sage of the Sakya Clan, the Awakened One," Sakyamuni Buddha

Mother - Queen Maya, Father - King Suddhodana, Wife - Princess Yasodhara, Son - Rahula

Three Jewels - Buddha (Awakened one), Dharma (Teaching about awakening, reality), Sangha (religious community of Buddhist monks and nuns)

Three Baskets (Tripitaka) - Sutra (Teachings/Words of the Buddha), Sastra (Commentary on the Buddha's Teachings), and Vinaya (Monastic Regulations; these regulations are known as sila )

Four Noble Truths - Suffering, Cause of Suffering (attachment, delusion), Peace (Cessation of suffering), Path Out of Suffering (Buddhist path of practice).

Anatman (No-self), Anitya (Impermanence), Pratitya-samudpada (Dependent Co-origination)

Samsara - realm of suffering; nirvana - realm of peace, enlightenment

Nagarjuna and the Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy of Emptiness and the Two-fold Truth

Recap of key ideas:

Two-fold truth (Truth which consists of two aspects of reality, inseparable from one another like the two sides of a coin.)

form/emptiness

conventional truth/highest truth

duality/nonduality

distinctions/beyond distinctions

words/beyond words

dualistic consciousness/nondualistic awareness

dichotomous thinking/thinking without thinking

Four-fold dialectic (tetralemma, Skt. catus-koti)

1. A exists. Form

This is known as naive realism in Western philosophy. There is believed to be a real thing A that corresponds to the word "A."

2. A doesn't exist. Emptiness

a) There is no fixed definition or essence. b) reality is beyond fixed definitions or distinctions and lies in a nondual awareness of reality beyond words, of oneness.

3.A both exists and doesn't exist. Form and emptiness

One can speak of things at the conventional level of language and dualistic thinking, but in speaking of things one lives in the world of nondual awareness, of highest truth. Analogy: A painter speaks of the beauty of the tree and is able to do so convincingly precisely because she knows the tree intimately, beyond preconceived notions of what the tree is or should be.

4. A neither exists nor doesn't exist. Neither form nor emptiness. Also emptiness of emptiness.

Nondual awareness of the two-fold truth is dynamic and continually unfolding. If I say, "I know what the two-fold truth is, it's that all things both exist and do not exist, that form is emptiness," then I have already fallen into a fixed idea of the two-fold truth. Such concepts as two-fold truth and emptiness themselves cannot capture reality; they are expressions at the conventional level of language used to help one attain or express awareness at the highest level of emptiness.