At around the 6th century B.C.E, Hinduism in India was being challenged by a new coming religion. This religion provided freedom from Hinduist authority, individual salvation that one can achieve by his or her own means, and a path to enlightenment that did not require giving up all worldly possessions. This religion was Buddhism, and its mass appeal sent it spreading out from India into Asia and into the entire world. Buddhism developed into a religion that still has global followers today, some as close as right here in New York City.
In order to appreciate the full extent of Buddhism’s teachings, one must understand its history. At Buddhism’s beginnings, India was in a state of competition and confusion between small internal individual states. History shows time and time again that it is usually in times like these that people seek unification under one religion or leader. The budding Buddhism served as this great unifier. Buddhism initially arose from a man named Siddharta Gautama. Siddhartha was surrounded by luxuries throughout his early life as his father strived to protect him from any existing ugliness in the world. “The raja specifically sought to keep the young person from seeing four sights: a dead body, an aged person, a diseased person, and an ascetic monk” (Hopfe, 102). Evidently, this did not work out. At around the age of 30, Gautama witnessed the “ugliness” of the world and the understanding that life is filled with suffering began to haunt him. This initiated the question of if there is a way to avoid suffering and Gautama spent the rest of his life figuring this out. Leaving his home and family, he lived as an ascetic for approximately five years, yet was unable to rid himself of suffering and achieve the enlightenment that he was seeking. His efforts, however, remained fruitless. Eventually, just as he had given up, there came a pivotal moment. Reaching a point of exhaustion and distress from his ascetic attempts, Siddhartha sat underneath a tree and began to meditate. It was at this moment that he finally reached perfect enlightenment, now known as “Nirvana.” After this important event, he was known as the Buddha from there on and he began spreading his message to a growing following of people.
The teachings of the Buddha spread throughout India and Asia. What the Buddha preached was to follow the Four Noble Truths, and to use the Eightfold Path to live an ideal life. The essence of the truths is that life automatically contains suffering, and this suffering comes from earthly desires, attachments, and possessions. However, the Buddha tells that there is a way to rid of this problem: to remove the self from said desires, and the way in which to do this is to follow the Eightfold path. “The eight stages can be grouped into Wisdom (right understanding and intention), Ethical Conduct (right speech, action and livelihood) and Meditation (right effort, mindfulness and concentration). The Buddha described the Eightfold Path as a means to enlightenment, like a raft for crossing a river” (Religions). Buddhism is all about acting towards the world in the right ways, doing no harm unto others, and delving into a practice of meditation to attain inner peace, positivity, and awareness of the mind and body.
Buddhism began to appeal to many people as it rejected the need for various sacrifices and unnecessary worshipping and it picked up many followers. The greatest help to spreading Buddhism was when India’s emperor, Asoka became a convert. He sent out missionaries to help spread the religion which helped it globalize (Sen). Shortly after the Buddha’s early death, there came many divisions within the Buddhist religion as people were trying to understand his teachings. Today, there exist four main branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Zen. Zen Buddhism was the Buddhist sect that I was able to experience when I went to a center in Manhattan.
Zen Buddhism greatly emphasizes meditation that is meant to help attain a greater level of enlightenment. There is little focus on scripture as Zen Buddhism believes that the most important aspect is to meditate and to forget about one’s attachments and there is little emphasis on logic within this sect of Buddhism (Violatti).
All of these different forms of Buddhism have developed over millennia from one man, Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism exists globally now and in many different sects of belief. The Dalai Lama expressed what it means to be a Buddhist in today’s society and the difficulties that it encounters. “Religion faces three principal challenges today: communism, modern science and the combination of consumerism and materialism” (Dalai). Though Buddhism is most prominent throughout Asian countries, it has spread to even the Western world. “Ironically, one of the greatest factors in renewed interest in Buddhism has been the work of Christian missionaries and other Western travelers. As Europeans entered Asian nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they felt the need to know more about Buddhism. They therefore initiated translations of ancient Buddhist texts. Some actually converted to Buddhism. This marked the beginning of Western fascination with Buddhism, which has continued until the present day” (Hopfe, 117). Further Western fascination with Buddhism occurred after World War II and the Vietnam War after more missionary attempts at conversion and and emphasis on creating peace in the world.
This fascination with Buddhism can even be found here in New York City. There are many Buddhist temples located throughout the city, and I happened to find one only 20 minutes away by subway. This Buddhist Center was called the Chogye Zen Center. Apon arriving, I found myself welcomed by 2 friendly faces. They began to speak of the origins of this center. It is Korean based, and it was founded by Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1975. The man whom I was speaking with began talking about what the purpose of Zen meditation is. Zen Buddhism, the branch of this center, focuses entirely on “not knowing.” These Buddhists take comfort in the mystery of life and choose not to look too much into Buddhist texts or scriptures. Rather, the emphasis is to chant and meditate. He told a story of a man walking along a mountainside with his teacher and in the distance they saw an elder man carrying a large sack on his shoulders. Eventually their path brought them to the old man walking with the bag as he took the bag off from his shoulders and gave a great sigh of happy relief that the weight was no longer on him. The teacher turned to the student and said “that is what Zen Buddhism is.” I took this story to mean that with the meditation that Zen Buddhism entails, eventually one quiets their mind just long enough to feel the freedom from the burden of his or her constant thoughts. Following the short introduction, I was asked to put on a robe that was hanging along the walls of the entrance, and join them for chanting and meditation. We performed two chants, some of which was words in English and some of it was syllables from what I assume was another language. After the chants, we turned to face the walls for 25 minutes of meditation. This was a different form of meditation than I am usually used to, for it was “open eye meditation” where one fixes his or her gaze on one spot on the floor. This Zen center told me to focus on the question “What am I?” with each inhale and to leave it open-ended and “not knowing” during the exhale. The meditation itself was very peaceful as the room was entirely silent. Meditation is challenge, however, and it does require practice for an individual to be able to notice his or her own thoughts and to silence them. Thoughts perpetually reappear in the mind, and the entire purpose of meditation is to catch thoughts when they enter and remove them from the mind again to bring it to a place of silent focus. After the meditation the final aspect of the hour I spent there was a short reading of a poem. “Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human. When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Then what is the one pure and clear thing?” This is titled “The Human Route” by Seung Sahn, the man who opened this exact center, and I was able to find it online shortly after the entire session. This beautiful poem reaffirms the goals of Zen Buddhism: to not know. To ask questions, and to leave them unanswered and find the bliss within that. After the poetry reading, the man I was speaking to handed me a book about Buddhism as a gesture of kindness. Walking outside, I remembered that I was once again in the bustling life of New York City. This Zen meditation did an incredible job of removing the mind from where one is. I no longer was thinking about the world happening around me, but rather focusing on the coming and going of thoughts within me. It was beautiful to think that I had just dedicated myself, even if for a short period of time, to a practice that has been occurring since ancient times. The fact that Buddhism still exists today and has spread so much through Western culture that I was able to find one so close to home is an incredible thing. The lessons of one man have molded throughout millennia and people in modern society still teach and use these lessons to guide their lifestyle. Buddhism is incredibly peaceful and unique, and I was lucky to be able to both educate myself on it and experience the ancient religion firsthand.