Buddhism Exam 1

Queen Mayadevi

Mother of Prince Siddhartha Guatama

Lumbini

Birthplace of the Buddha

Siddhartha

The Buddhas personal name

Gautama

The Buddha’s family name

Shakya

The Buddha’s clan name

The Four Divine Messengers

* A sick person
* An old person
* A person who has died / a funeral
* A wandering religious seeker (a mendicant or renunciant, someone who has given up on ordinary attachments to seek liberation)

Mara

* The Buddhist tempter
* Personifies delusion, ignorance, and addiction
* Attacks Siddhartha
* Tries to interrupt his meditation
* Challenges Siddhartha’s right to seek Buddhahood
* The Earth herself rises as Siddhartha’s witness

After his Enlightenment

* The Buddha travels and teaches across Northwest India (and beyond?)
* He ordains men as monks
* He returns home to Nepal and many of his male and female family members convert and follow his teachings
* Ordains many men, including the Buddha’s jealous cousin Devadatta (who later tries to kill the Buddha)
* The Buddha’s cousin Ananda becomes his attendant and remembers all his teachings.
* Many male and female followers of the Buddha reach advanced spiritual states

Stupa

a symbol of the enlightened mind of a Buddha. They are sites of pilgrimage, circumambulation, devotion, prayer, and other practices like offering lights

Circumambulation

a practice of walking around a sacred site

Kumarajiva

* 344-413 CE
* A Buddhist monk, scholar, missionary, and translator from the Kingdom of Kucha
* Most important early Central Asia translator

3 Branches of Buddhism

Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajayana

Buddha

The Awakened One

Dharma

The Buddha’s Teaching

Sangha

The Buddhist Community

The Buddhist Canon

collection of authoritative scriptures, now textual. Also known as the *Tripitaka*

Sutra

* “discourse basket”
* said to be spoken by the Buddha (“suture”)

Vinaya

* discipline
* rules for monks/nuns

Abhidharma

* Further discourses
* Buddhist metaphysics

3 Characteristics of Existence

impermanence, suffering, and no-self

The Four Noble Truths

1. The truth of suffering/dissatisfactoriness
2. The truth of the cause of suffering


1. (addiction/craving/thirst/desire, because of ignorance about the interdependent nature of the self and all phenomena)
3. The Cure: Nirvana
4. The 8-Fold Path - the Middle Way of Buddhist Practice to reach Nirvana = liberation from Samsara

The 8-Fold Path

* Right Action
* Right Speech
* Right Livelihood
* Right Effort
* Right Mindfulness
* Right Concentration
* Right View
* Right Understanding

Karma

means action, the cause and effect relationship between actions and their consequences

The Three Posions

1. Ignorance
2. Addiction
3. Hatred

Wheel of Life

Traditional Buddhist visual presentation of the cycle of karma and rebirth, powered by the Three Poisons in the center (metaphorically shown as a rooster, pig, and snake in center)

Theravada classical language

Pali

Theravada Buddhists

see themselves as heirs to earliest Buddhist community, one of the 18 original schools of Buddhism

Theravada

“Way of the Elders”

Theravada Buddhism

The main form of Buddhism in SE Asia today

Theravada Buddhism core ideas

* Emphasis on monasticism
* Emphasis on inner purification of the person: “The Path of Purification”
* The 3 Trainings: Ethics, Meditation, Wisdom
* Through meditation, one can perceive the interdependence arising of the person as a combination of many constantly changing mental and physical factors
* Five Aggregates constitute the ordinary “self”: form (material elements), sensation, perception, mental formations, consciousness

Theravada Consciousness

* Arises in dependence on 6 sense faculties: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind
* Arises when a sense faculty meets an object. It is impermanent