IB World Religions 1.3.4. How Do We Get There? the Three Jewels, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path Notes

1.3.4. How Do We Get There? The Three Jewels, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path

The Three Jewels

1. Buddhists describe entering the tradition as taking refuge in the Three Jewels (Pali tiratana, Sanskrit triratna). The three are the Buddha, the dhamma (Sanskrit dharma) and the sangha.
2. The words are said aloud rather than assumed. A Buddhist recites the refuge formula three times, beginning with the line that they go to the Buddha for refuge, and repeats it at ceremonies and daily devotions.
3. Taking the Buddha as refuge is not treated by most Buddhists as worship of a god, since he is taken as evidence that a human being can finish the path. The dhamma is the second jewel because Buddhists hold that his teaching describes how things already work rather than a system he invented.
4. The sangha has a narrow and a wide sense. Narrowly it is the monastic order of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, and widely it is the whole community including lay people, which is the sense Mahayana Buddhists usually prefer.
5. Joining the sangha turns the teaching into a shared life. Monastics depend on lay households for food and robes, and lay Buddhists depend on monastics for teaching and for the merit that giving is said to bring.

The Four Noble Truths

1. The Buddha's first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, is said to have been given at Sarnath and to set the whole path in place. It presents the Four Noble Truths, which Buddhists of every branch accept.
2. The first truth names the problem as dukkha (Sanskrit duhkha), the unreliability of conditioned existence. The second names its cause as tanha (Sanskrit trishna), the craving that wants experience to be other than it is.
3. The third truth, nirodha, states that dukkha stops when craving stops. A cause that can be removed makes the result removable too.
4. The fourth truth, magga (Sanskrit marga), sets out the way to that ending. It is the Noble Eightfold Path, so the fourth truth contains the practical content of the other three.
5. Buddhists treat the truths as tasks rather than as beliefs to hold. The texts say dukkha is to be understood, craving to be abandoned, cessation to be realized and the path to be cultivated.
6. The same sermon opens by rejecting two extremes. Gotama is said to have tried both luxury and severe self-mortification before teaching the Middle Way, which avoids each of them.

The Noble Eightfold Path

1. The Noble Eightfold Path lists right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. The word translated right is samma, which means complete or well aligned.
2. Buddhists arrange the eight under three trainings. Sila covers speech, action and livelihood, samadhi covers effort, mindfulness and concentration, and panna (Sanskrit prajna) covers view and intention, and each training is said to make the next one possible.
3. Sila has visible consequences. Right livelihood is traditionally said to rule out trading in weapons, in living beings, in meat, in intoxicants and in poisons, and Buddhists still cite it when choosing work.
4. Samadhi is trained through bhavana (mental cultivation), which includes samatha for calm and vipassana for insight. Lay Buddhists in Myanmar and Thailand now attend meditation retreats that were once mainly monastic.
5. Panna is not information about Buddhism. It means seeing for oneself how conditioned things behave, which is why the path is described as a wheel with eight spokes rather than a staircase with eight steps.

Lay and monastic precepts

1. Lay Buddhists undertake the Five Precepts (panca-sila). They are undertakings to refrain from harming living beings, from taking what is not given, from sexual misconduct, from false speech and from intoxicants that cloud the mind.
2. The precepts are training rules rather than commandments. A Buddhist takes them on voluntarily, recites them in Pali at temple ceremonies, and renews them rather than confessing to a deity when they are broken.
3. The first precept carries the most weight in daily life. It is the practice of ahimsa (non-harming), and it lies behind vegetarianism among many Mahayana Buddhists and behind Theravada monastic rules on accepting meat offered as alms.
4. Lay practice can be intensified. On uposatha days, which follow the moon, lay Buddhists may take eight precepts, adding restrictions on eating after midday and on entertainment.
5. Monastics live under the Vinaya. Theravada bhikkhus keep the 227 rules of the Patimokkha and recite them together fortnightly, and the order of bhikkhunis keeps a longer list.
6. The two ways of life are treated as one path at different intensities. Boys in Thailand and Myanmar often ordain for a few weeks, and Mahayana monastics add bodhisattva vows to the monastic code.

Wisdom, compassion and the bodhisattva

1. Buddhists treat panna (wisdom) and karuna (compassion) as inseparable. Mahayana teachers picture them as two wings of a bird, since neither one carries a practitioner anywhere on its own.
2. Mahayana Buddhists add the bodhisattva path to the shared framework. A practitioner takes vows to seek Buddhahood for the sake of all living beings rather than release for themselves alone.
3. That path is charted through the six paramitas (perfections): generosity, ethical conduct, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom. The first, dana, is the one most lay Buddhists practise daily by giving to monastics and to those in need.
4. Upaya (skill in means) governs how the teaching is passed on. The Lotus Sutra tells of a father coaxing his children out of a burning house with promises of toys, which Mahayana Buddhists read as licence to fit the teaching to the hearer.
5. Theravada Buddhists cultivate compassion by a different route. The brahmaviharas, above all metta (loving-kindness) meditation, are chanted in temples across Sri Lanka and Thailand and extended outwards to all beings.
6. Older Mahayana texts called the earlier schools Hinayana, the lesser vehicle, and Theravada Buddhists and scholars reject the label. Both branches teach the same Four Noble Truths and differ over whether the goal is release for oneself or Buddhahood for the sake of everyone.