What did buddha teach?

Question

Once a man demanded that the Buddha tell him how the universe
began. The Buddha said to him "You are like a man who has been
shot with a poison arrow and who, when the doctor comes to remove
it, says 'Wait! Before the arrow is removed I want to know the
name of the man who shot it, what clan he comes from, which
village he was born in. I want to know what type of wood his bow
is made from, what feathers are on the end of the arrow, how long
the arrows are, etc etc etc.' That man would die before all these
questions could be answered. My job is to help you to remove the
arrow of suffering from yourself" (Majjhima Nikaya Sutta No. 63).

So, there is no point we talk about how universe began and talk about how people became human or how they fight against God. Seek for your escape and don't talk rubbish.

Answer 1

Based on his own experience, the Buddha saw that each human being had the capacity to purify the mind, develop infinite love and compassion and perfect understanding. He shifted attention from the heavens to the heart and encouraged us to find solutions to our problems through self-understanding.

http://www.buddhanet.net/

Answer 2

What Did Buddha Teach

Answer 3

Buddha talked of mans suffering.........
Man is suffering because of a mind that wanders aimlessly and plays games with the vessel it inhabits.
That is why man suffers..........

Buddha devoted his entire life teaching man how still the mind and keep it at rest.

Unless the mind becomes still, man cannot pray effectively.
*This I learned while traveling in Tibet.

Buddha did not want to create a religion. Buddhism is a philosophy, and that's the way Buddha insisted it be.
Because of this, any individual of any religious persuasion
can be a devotee, while maintaining their own spiritual path.

Some of the worlds greatest minds, and faith-filled humans,
have opted for this tradition, when they continually found their mind wandering, and not at ease.

Answer 4

Because he never really understood what his true self was. One of the reasons he refused or stayed silent regarding questions about the soul. If you want the truth you need to surpass Buddha. Which requires you to understand what you are to begin with.

Answer 5

I'm not a Buddhist, but this was always one of my favorite Buddhist quotes. Just goes to show you that you can certainly have a religion (ceremony, dogma, cosmic answers and all) without basing things around an alleged creator. This is the fundamental difference it seems between eastern religion vs. western religion.

Answer 6

Don't convince yourself that you can know things that you can't know.

Its better to not know, than to fool yourself.

Answer 7

To become a Buddhist, one merely made public profession of the faith by reciting the Refuge: "I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood."

Buddhism took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama's followers called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman claims for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began to call him the enlightened one, the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha.


The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths:

The noble truths of suffering.
The origins of suffering.
The destruction of suffering.
The way to the destruction of suffering.

Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama's intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much that love of one's fellows should be shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the realities of the eternal future.

The moral commandments of Gautama's preachment were five in number:

1. You shall not kill.

2. You shall not steal.

3. You shall not be unchaste.

4. You shall not lie.

5. You shall not drink intoxicating liquors.


There were several additional or secondary commandments, whose observance was optional with believers.


Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality; his philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He never clearly defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana. The fact that it could theoretically be experienced during mortal existence would indicate that it was not viewed as a state of complete annihilation. It implied a condition of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to the material world had been broken; there was freedom from the desires of mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing incarnation.

According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of India, endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human striving for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers overlooked the fact that the highest happiness is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic pursuit of worthy goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in cosmic self-realization.

The great truth of Siddhartha's teaching was his proclamation of a universe of absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever invented by mortal man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively removed all grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of ghosts or demons.

The great weakness in the original gospel of Buddhism was that it did not produce a religion of unselfish social service. The Buddhistic brotherhood was, for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social; indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment.


Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped.

The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama's gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be.

Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized.

In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha persisted in Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine.

But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama's followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the "Great Road" to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or "Lesser Road." And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan.

Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not.


In Tibet may be found the strangest association of the Melchizedek teachings combined with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. When the Buddhist missionaries entered Tibet, they encountered a state of primitive savagery very similar to that which the early Christian missionaries found among the northern tribes of Europe.

These simple-minded Tibetans would not wholly give up their ancient magic and charms. Examination of the religious ceremonials of present-day Tibetan rituals reveals an overgrown brotherhood of priests with shaven heads who practice an elaborate ritual embracing bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries, images, charms, pictures, holy water, gorgeous vestments, and elaborate choirs. They have rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, mystic rites and special fasts. Their hierarchy embraces monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to angels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They practice confessions and believe in purgatory. Their monasteries are extensive and their cathedrals magnificent. They keep up an endless repetition of sacred rituals and believe that such ceremonials bestow salvation. Prayers are fastened to a wheel, and with its turning they believe the petitions become efficacious. Among no other people of modern times can be found the observance of so much from so many religions; and it is inevitable that such a cumulative liturgy would become inordinately cumbersome and intolerably burdensome.

The Tibetans have something of all the leading world religions except the simple teachings of the Jesusonian gospel: sonship with God, brotherhood with man, and ever-ascending citizenship in the eternal universe.

Answer 8

BULL ****