Samuel Bercholz - The Buddha and His Teachings

This splendid collection of classic and modern Buddhist texts provides insight into the teaching and practice of Buddhism.

Publishers Weekly

Among many good introductions to Buddhism, this one stands out for seeing to it that its principles and practices are presentedthrough either translations or original commentariesby masters who have dedicated their lives to teaching Westerners. The result is a book which, while faithful to the Buddhist tradition, speaks unusually effectively to an English-speaking audience.

Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions

ABOUT THE BOOK

Originally published as Entering the Stream, this book offers a simple and inspiring answer to the question What is the Buddhas teaching? primarily in the words of the Buddha and other masters. This anthology draws on traditional Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan sources as well as teachings by contemporary Buddhist masters. Among the contributors, both classical and modern, are: Ajahn Chah, Pema Chdrn, The Second Dalai Lama, Dogen, S.N. Goenka, Dainin Katagiri, Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Milerepa, Padmasambhava, Reginald Ray, Shunryu Suzuki, Nyanaponika Thera, Thich Nhat Hanh, Chgyam Trungpa, and Burton Watson.

SAMUEL BERCHOLZ is the founder and editor-in-chief of Shambhala Publications.

Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications.

Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala.

The Buddha and His Teachings

Edited by

Samuel Bercholz and

Sherab Chdzin Kohn

SHAMBHALA

Boston

2012

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1993 by Samuel Bercholz and Sherab Chdzin Kohn

Cover art: Buddha Shakyamuni (image no. 39) courtesy of the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author photo credits: Chgyam Trungpa: Karen Schulenberg. Pema Chdrn: Lynn Davis, Dainin Katagiri; Richard Bend 1985. Ajahn Chah: Jim Roy.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Buddha and his teachings/edited by Samuel Bercholz and Sherab Chdzin Kohn.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2351-8

ISBN 978-1-57062-960-0

1. Gautama BuddhaTeachings. 2. BuddhismDoctrines.

I. Bercholz, Samuel. II. Chdzin, Sherab.

BQ4132 .B83 2003 294.3DC21

2002026876

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This book contains diacritics and special characters. If you encounter difficulty displaying these characters, please set your e-reader device to publisher defaults (if available) or to an alternate font.

THE EDITORS would like to thank the following people for their efforts in making the publication of this book possible: Bernardo Bertolucci, Jeremy Thomas, and Rudy Wurlitzer, respectively director, producer, and screenwriter of the film Little Buddha, for being the catalysts for the creation of this book; Laura Kaufman, for her excellent work in researching the art for this volume and writing the captions; Debra Kelvin, for gathering the permissions for both the art and the written material; Hiromitsu Washizuka of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo, for arranging the use of various works of art from Japanese museum collections; Anne MacQuarrie, for sharing her beginners mind in reviewing various chapters; Larry Mermelstein and Peter Turner of Shambhala Publications, for their suggestions and contacts; and Emily Hilburn Sell and Kendra Crossen of Shambhala Publications, for their suggestions and for preparing the manuscript for publication.

BUDDHISM is a relatively modern Western term. The body of spiritual doctrine and practice to which it refers has generally been known on its own ground, in countries across Asia, as the Buddha Dharma, which is perhaps best translated way of the Buddha. This teaching came from one young man who woke up from lifes melodrama more than twenty-five hundred years ago and was thereafter called the Buddha, the awakened one.

Now it turned out that this enlightenment of the Buddhas was profound and brilliant, accurate and powerful, and also warm and compassionate. It was like the sun behind the clouds. Anyone who has taken off in an airplane on a grim and gloomy day knows that beyond the cloud cover the sun is always shining. Even at night the sun is shining, but then we cant see it because the earth is in the way, and probably our pillow also. The Buddha explained that behind the cloud cover of thoughtsincluding very heavy clouds of emotionally charged thoughts backed up by entrenched habitual patternsthere is continual warm, bright, loving intelligence constantly shining. And even though in the midst of thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns, intelligence may become dulled and confused, it is still this intelligence in the midst of the thoughts and emotions and habits that makes them so very captivating, so resourceful and various, so inexhaustible. This cloudy world of thoughts and emotions backed by habits continually churns out what I referred to above as lifes melodrama, which from the Buddhas point of view is sleep. According to the Buddha Dharma, everyone can wake up from this sleep. Everyone is capable of becoming Buddha.

When we go to the movies, many of us dont only like to see nice, pleasant, lovable movies. Just as much, or perhaps even more, we like to see sad, tragic, painful, or aggressive movies, even horror movies. The positive and the negative both draw us under their spell. In the same way, the Buddha recognized, we keep our own personal melodramas (made up of thoughts once removed) juicy and entertaining with these same very effective, sometimes positive but often negative elements. According to the Buddha Dharma, the personal melodrama that we keep going in one form or another over the years is known as ego.

Basically, of course, we know that even ego, or the sense of self, is made up of that warm basic intelligence fully discovered by the Buddha, because there simply isnt anything else clever enough to produce and maintain ego. But some kind of confusion has arisen, like a storm blowing up out of a cloudless sky. Its a very pervasive and stubbornly persistent storm. It contains all our hopes and fears relating to the processes of birth, growing up, being in our prime, aging, sickness, and deatha lot of pleasure and pain. But since the Buddha himself had awakened from all that hope and fear, he knew awakening from it was possible. He taught people how to go about awakening from it. With some people he just showed them his profound, brilliant wakefulness directly, and they too woke up on the spot, just like shaking off a dream.

So that is what Buddha Dharma is aboutrecognizing our psychological condition and working with it so we can wake up from the confused aspect of it. Buddhists follow the way that the Buddha taught for waking up from egos confusion. Of course, occasionally one or another Buddhist wakes up before completing all the steps recommended by the Buddha. There are always a few rascals around like that. But most Buddhists patiently continue following the Buddhas path.

The main method the Buddha taught to help people awaken from confusion is meditation. Meditating in the Buddhist way is not like praying. It is not trying to believe in anything or making utterances in your mind about your beliefs, longings, or intentions. It is more like relaxing and just letting things be as they arewithout cranking anything up. We spend a lot of time in our lives trying to crank something up. In meditating, Buddhists take the approach of letting go of all that struggle and resting in the way things really are, which is however they happen to be.