Buddha

« commitment as a result of a psychological bias - either towards the belief that there is an unchanging immortal soul that survives death or that death is the final end and there is no continuity after the destruction of the body. Similarly any suggestion that the soul or life principle ( jīva ) is identical to, or completely distinct from the body is avoided.

Preferences with regard to the universe were also considered to be the result of psychological bias, for example, whether or not it is eternal in time, and whether it is finite or infinite in space. With regard to practice, the Buddha especially advocated the development of the meditation states known as jh ānas (dhy āna ).

Since these were characterized by a pleasant state of mind, they contrasted with the painful methods of practice widespread in the Indian religion of the day.

These states also placed a stress on clarity and conscious awareness, as distinct from the apparent valuation of unconscious trance-like states in pre-Buddhist Indian religion.

This emphasis led to the development of methods of study and practice which strongly asserted the importance of insight and understanding ( prajñ ā ).

For most later forms of Buddhism and probably for the Buddha himself, the actual goal of Buddhist meditation represented an awakening which permanently integrated both the meditative states of the jhānas and a high development of understanding.

It is this which is referred to in the early texts as acquiring the 'vision of truth' or 'dhamma eye' and is seen as the basis for the awakening or bodhi , taught by the Buddha, or Awakened One. According to early Buddhists, the Buddha presented his teaching on two levels.

At an introductory stage he put forward a simple model of the good life, advocating both the practice of generosity and moral restraint.

This was probably linked to a picture of the world as one where living beings were reborn in a series of after-death destinies, including rebirth as a human being or animal ( Karma and rebirth, Indian conceptions of ).

Such a view appears to have been already widely known, even by the Greeks of that time.

Living such a life was seen as creating conditions for a better mental state, capable of understanding more profound truths.

For the Buddha these more advanced truths were his higher teaching and were referred to as the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha probably rejected monism.

Early on his followers developed a type of process philosophy which emphasized the universality of change in ordinary experience and rejected the idea that there was any kind of fixed essence behind things.

This applied both to the world at large and to the individual.

Thus, notions of a world-soul, or ground of being and a permanent, unchanging individual nature were repudiated.

The picture they adopted saw life in terms of harmonious interaction of multiple processes.

Fundamental to this was the notion of dhamma (Sanskrit dharma ) - the lawful and harmonious nature of things.

This dhamma was rediscovered by the Buddha and his teaching was understood as the presentation of a universal law which exists in some sense, whether or not it is known about. Our knowledge of the Buddha's teachings and of early Buddhism in general derives primarily from the collection of texts known as the tipi ʚaka , or 'three baskets' : the canonical writings of early Buddhism.

The earliest extant. »