A Buddhist is traditionally defined as somebody who takes refuge in or
relies upon the Three Jewels; the Buddha as teacher, the Dharma, as the path to
practice and the Sangha, the community as the companions with whom they
practice Dharma.
There are three main traditions. Mahayana in East Asia mainly,
parts of Southeast Asia as well. Vajrayana is more practiced in Central
Asia and Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.
So a geographic dispersal with lack of communication between different centres
of Buddhism even in India let alone when it spreads outside- definitely geography
and accident in a way, played its role in ensuring that one tradition emphasized
particular scriptures; another traditional emphasised their particular
favourite scriptures.
In this happenstance way the tradition grew.
Buddha was born in a
royal family but at the age of 29, he lived happily, but he found that there's a
samsara which means birth, getting old, ill and die. So he left the palace and went
out to learn how to find the truth of life and then he practiced by himself as well
by vipassana meditation, training the mind, and at the age of 35 at the Bodh Gaya
under the Bodhi tree he attained enlightenment and he know the truth of
life, the way of life, and he was wondering whether who he can teach
because this is a high state of knowledge. He went to teach his disciples
who used to be with him before and the first sermon he taught on the Four Noble
Truth, which is the foundation of the Buddha and how you can get rid of
suffering; you have to do Noble Eightfold Path. So when we know the life of the
Buddha we know how to be happy and live life to the full with the
consciousness and without suffering
Our texts are called Tipitaka. The word Tipitaka means the Three Basket or three
collections of the Buddha's teachings and there are Vinaya Pitaka, the
collections of monastic codes and rules, rites and rituals. Then Sutta Pitaka, the
collections of the discourses given by the Buddha himself or by his closest
disciple and then last one are Bidama Pitaka. The collection of heard teaching;
Abhidharma teaching.
In Theravada tradition the Buddha's
teachings were recorded in Pali language so for us, Tipitaka is the main source in
order to examine, to investigate, even to make a comparison- if the teaching is
right or wrong- we always go back to the source.
It's very large, I think about over 20,000 pages.
Other schools in India wrote their scriptures in Sanskrit
for instance. The Tibetans translated these
from about the 8th century onwards but it took several centuries actually. There are
scriptures which we feel are authentically Buddhist teachings which
are not included in the Pali canon but which we include. In short, the Mahayana
teachings and the Tantric teachings so we consider they're legitimately part of
the Tripitaka.
Dharma is a Sanskrit word and has actually many meanings but in this
particular context you mean the body of teachings that stems from the Buddha's
activity two and a half thousand years ago so it's not just literary scriptures
but it's also this presentation, the transmission of teachings as direct
personal advice from one master to their disciples. All that is the Dharma.
So basically monks have two tasks. Learning and teaching. Learning about the
teaching and then spread the teaching. To be a good monk you need to know all of
the monks precept. So there are 227 precepts are called Patimokkha; monastic codes in
fact as a Buddhist monk we have more than that and I thought there are
approximately three thousand precepts for monks
The minor one for example - as a
Buddhist monk if you didn't have the wound on your face you are not allowed
to use the mirror. You need to take a nap during the daytime, you need to close the
door. You can't simply leave the door open and then take a nap during the daytime.
But these precepts are not included in 227 precepts; we call them minor. Minor
rules
For lay people, their main job is to support the monks,
the monks work. For example to support the monks with food, accommodation, robe. We
show appreciation to the Sangha. Sangha means the members of monastics for what
they have done from the beginning from in ancient times,
until today. We have a chance to learn about Buddhism because
of the Sangha, because the Sangha members hand the Buddha's teaching
from generation to generation until our time.
So we're looking at a horizontal scroll written in Chinese that would have been
read from right to left. So you have columns of text and what they
would have been also read then from top to bottom. It's about five metres long
and so it's made of several sheets of paper that were originally glued
together. It starts with a beautifully illustrated frontispiece. In the Diamond
Sutra, the Buddha basically explains that there is no such thing as a permanent
not changing self. This is a very special copy of the Diamond Sutra because it's
the world's earliest reliably dated printed book.
By using printing then
monks or Buddhist believers found a method that allowed to reproduce the
text with extreme accuracy but also on a very large scale
The Lotus Sutra is one of the most influential sutras particularly in East
Asia and it's regarded as being one of the key texts containing the teachings
of the Buddha. One of the the key doctrines of the Lotus Sutra is that all
sentient beings, all living beings can attain Buddhahood in their current
existence.