Sessão nº22

A. Many aspects of Buddhism seem very familiar.

1. For example, Buddhists tell a story about the founder of their
   tradition. His name was Siddhartha Gautama. He lived in northern India around 500 B.C.E. and was known to his followers as the Buddha, or the “Awakened One.” Like Jesus and Muhammad, he developed a distinctive response to the religious problems of his day, and he started a religious movement that now spans the globe, from India and Southeast Asia; to China, Tibet, Korea, and Japan; and in the last hundred years, to Europe, North America, and other parts of the world.
   
2. During his life, the Buddha created an order of monks and nuns who passed on a tradition of Buddhist learning and practice, as Christian monks and nuns did in Europe during the Middle Ages and still do in many parts of the Christian world today.
   
3. Buddhists have familiar patterns of ritual and worship. They go on pilgrimages to important shrines; they worship images and sites that are sacred to the Buddha; and they mark the stages of life with rites of passage, similar to the ritual of a bar mitzvah in Judaism or baptism in Christianity.
   
4. Buddhists also teach people how to confront and deal with the deepest questions of human life: What will happen to me when I die? How can I live my life in a way that will be happy, peaceful, compassionate, and free from suffering?
   

II.

B. But some aspects of Buddhism challenge our assumptions about religion.

1. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines religion as “the service and adoration of God or a god expressed in forms of worship.” If you mention the word “religion” to most people, the first idea that comes to mind is “God.” There are gods in Buddhism, and Buddhists sometimes attribute special powers to the Buddha, but the tradition begins simply with a human beingSiddhartha Gautamawho found a solution to the problem of human suffering. Buddhists focus on his experience, and they deny the existence of a single, almighty God.
   
2. The Buddhist tradition will challenge us to look in new ways at some basic religious questions: What is ultimate reality? How can I know it? And does it love me?
   
3. Many religious traditions emphasize the importance of an immortal soul. This is not so in Buddhism. Buddhists say that a human personality is like a river or a raging fire: The personality is constantly changing, and the idea of an immortal soul is simply an illusion that human beings impose on a process of constant change. Buddhist ideas of the self challenge us to think in new ways about some old questions: Who am I? How can I develop my full potential as a human being?
   
4. What is true for human beings is also true for Buddhism itself. Like everything else in the world, Buddhism is constantly changing. As we consider the astonishing variety of Buddhism that evolved in India and elsewhere in Asia, we will have to ask ourselves: What actually is Buddhism? Are there any values, practices, or religious commitments that remain constant through this extraordinary process of cultural change? Malcolm D. Eckel

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