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Ethical and philosophical ideas of Buddhism. What is meditation

Ethical and philosophical ideas of Buddhism. What is meditation

30.09.2019

Hello dear readers.

Contrary to the well-established opinion among Europeans that Buddhism is an integral current, this is not entirely true. Just like Christianity or Islam, it has several directions. Some originated in ancient times, others appeared later and interpret ancient texts a little differently. In this article, we will try to understand these subtleties.

- one of the world religions, which originated in the IV century. BC. in the northeast of present-day India, therefore, it has a close connection with ancient Indian philosophy. There are more than 450 million adherents, and most of them are concentrated in Asian countries - Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. You can become a Buddhist regardless of the previous religion, as well as the shape of the eyes, skin color and class.

Directions

The doctrine is divided into many schools - on average there are 18. So, briefly about the main areas of Buddhism:

. The oldest direction, the second largest. In the 21st century, it has almost 40% of adherents.
or "Great Chariot". Adherents make up the bulk - more than 50% of all Buddhists in the world. The centers are concentrated in Japan, Mongolia, China, Korea, Tibet.
- "Diamond Chariot". Tantric direction, formed within the Mahayana (tantra is the oldest system of self-improvement, helping to improve the body, prolong life, and develop spirituality).
(formed on the basis of the Mahayana and Vajrayana), the smallest - 6%. The centers are located in Mongolia, Buryatia, Tuva, Kalmykia, Manchuria and Northern China.

Some researchers believe that Buddhism has onlythree branches, while others speak of two main ones - Theravada and Mahayana.

Theravada

Teachings of the Elders. Theravada is based on texts that were compiled after the Buddha's departure to nirvana. Adherents of this direction believe that many later directions are innovations that distort the essence of the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni, and in some cases completely contradict him.

Some apply the name Hinayana, or the Lesser Vehicle, to Theravada. This is not entirely correct. The concept of Hinayana originated within the Mahayana and literally means “lower”, “narrow”, “despicable”. However, to apply such "epithets" to the Teachings of the Elders - one of the most ancient schools, you see, is not entirely correct.

Theravada is an ascetic branch. It teaches to repeat the path of the Buddha in order to reach nirvana. And this means that you need to give up everything earthly, break family ties. Ideally, according to the teachings, you need to become a monk - this is the only way to achieve true enlightenment.

Theravada is not a holistic teaching. Her followers are plagued by doubts about the correct interpretations of the Buddha's texts. In this regard, the direction in the course of its existence was divided into several religious and philosophical movements:

santrants;
vibhashiki.

Theravada differs significantly from Mahayana - the "Great Vehicle". If the first focuses on the fact that the person himself must go through the path of the Buddha and achieve nirvana, then the second says that you need to help other people achieve enlightenment, and think about yourself last, since helping others is already part of the path in itself. to awakening.

True Buddhism is different from other world religions - there is no such thing as "God". Its founder, Siddhartha Gautama, is a real person. With the help of spiritual practices, he reached a state called nirvana. It is believed that if an ordinary person follows his path, he will be able to repeat it exactly.

Mahayana

It is often referred to as Northern Buddhism. The origins of the Mahayana are in India, from where it spread to Asian countries - to Nepal, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, China, and certain regions of Russia. Its appearance is attributed to the end of the 1st century BC.

Mahayana is the opposite of Theravada. It traces the deification of the Buddha, as well as the theory of the trinity, a bit reminiscent of the Christian religion: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, only in the Mahayana it is called differently:

A real person - Siddhartha Gautama - is a projection of God on earth (Sambhogakaya).
The earthly body can take many forms. One of them is Amitaba, whom people see, respect, worship.
Nirvana reaches the essence or Dharmakaya - that which is the primary source in the universe.

The basis of Eastern dogma is the personal experience of a real person. Knowing himself and the world, Siddhartha Gautama did not start from religious dogmas, which are not proven by anything and are accepted only on faith, not from mythical tales, but from what his own senses “tell” him. Those who study Buddhism in depth often refer to it not as a creed, but as a philosophy.

The Tantric direction or Tantrayana (the path of the Result) is the youngest of the main ones in Buddhism. It was formed in the 5th century AD. as part of the Mahayana. Now it is most common in Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal, Japan, some regions of Russia (Tyva, Buryatia, Kalmykia). The followers of the Vajrayana borrowed much from the beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Tibet (Bon).

For the followers of the Vajrayana, the personality of the Teacher is very important. Only he can choose the right practice for the student.

Tibetan Buddhism

Another name is Lamaism. Based on the teachings of the Mahayana and Vajrayana, as well as Theravada (monastic vows). There is a complete preservation of late Indian Buddhism here.

In Tibet, this religious teaching began to take hold and develop no earlier than the 7th century AD. The main difference from traditional Buddhism lies in the way power is transferred, both secular and spiritual. In Tibet, this happened as a rebirth (tulku) of one and the same person, while in other countries that professed the same religion - by inheritance or through the organization of elections. In the end, this led to the fact that the clergy and secular authorities united. The Dalai Lama became the sole ruler of Tibet.

Key Ideas

Unlike other world religions, where the person as such is not important - only abstract worship of God is considered (independent thinking is not encouraged, everything is taken for granted, there is no evidence), Buddhism is based on the personal aspect. This means that if the individual himself does not want to change, no one will do it for him.

There are four main ideas:

middle way;
4 noble truths;
the eightfold path;
5 commandments.

The middle path is a concept that means cutting off extremes. There is no need to stumble into complete asceticism or sink into the abyss of pleasure.

The 4 Truths are nothing more than a statement of the following facts:

the earthly world is full of suffering;
the causes of suffering are the craving for pleasures;
there is a possibility of getting rid of suffering - this is the way of limiting oneself in pleasures;
reaching nirvana.

The Eightfold Path is an opportunity to go through seven interconnected stages of one's own improvement, where the reward will be nirvana (the eighth stage). Everything here is subject to logic. Step-by-step passage of steps is impossible - everything works in a complex, the center of which is the human mind.

The commandments are:

don't kill;
do not lie;
do not steal;
do not commit adultery;
do not use "hell's potion" (drugs, alcohol, tobacco).

Conclusion

Dear readers, the information in this article is a meager part of the knowledge that Eastern dogma can give. However, we hope that it will help you gain a deeper understanding of the topic that interests you.

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And we say goodbye to the next meeting!

The message about Buddhism summarized in this article will tell you a lot of useful information about one of the most influential religions in the world.

Report on Buddhism

The main object of worship and the founder of Buddhism is Prince Gautama Siddhartha. He lived in 563-483 BC. e. Therefore, this religion is one of the most ancient in the world.

According to legend, when Gautama was 35 years old, he achieved enlightenment and changed his life, as well as the lives of those people who followed him. They called him Buddha, which in Sanskrit means awakened, enlightened. He distributed his sermons for 40 years and Siddhartha died at the age of 80. It is noteworthy that Siddhartha did not leave any written composition behind him.

How is God interpreted in Buddhism?

The sects that broke away from Buddhism revere the Buddha as God. But the main part of the followers see Siddhartha as a mentor, founder and enlightener. They are sure that enlightenment can only be achieved with the help of the infinite Universal energy. Therefore, we can draw the following conclusion: the world of Buddhism does not recognize the existence of a creator god, omnipotent and omniscient. According to their beliefs, every person is part of a deity. Buddhists do not have a permanent God, because every enlightened person is able to achieve the great title of "Buddha". This understanding of God is what distinguishes Buddhism from other Western religions.

What is the essence of Buddhism?

The main aspiration of Buddhists is the purification of a clouded state of mind that distorts reality. This state includes feelings of fear, anger, selfishness, ignorance, laziness, greed, envy, irritation, and so on.

Religion develops the beneficial and pure qualities of consciousness: compassion, generosity, wisdom, kindness, gratitude, diligence. They help to gradually clear and learn your mind. When it becomes both bright and strong, then irritation and anxiety decrease, leading to depression and adversity.

In general, Buddhism is a religion more than a philosophical one. Its doctrine contains 4 basic truths:

about the origin and causes of suffering
about the nature of suffering
about ways to end suffering
about the cessation of suffering and the elimination of its sources

All of them ultimately lead to the elimination of pain and suffering. Having reached the state of the human soul, you can immerse yourself in transcendental meditation, reaching enlightenment and wisdom.

Ethics and morals of Buddhism

Buddhist ethics and morality are based on the principles of not committing moderation and harm. Religion nurtures and develops in man a sense of concentration, morality and wisdom. Meditation allows you to comprehend the work of the mind and the cause-and-effect relationships between spiritual, bodily and psychological processes. Each level of the teachings of Buddhism is aimed at the comprehensive development of a person's personality - mind, speech and body.

We hope that the report on Buddhism helped to learn a lot of useful information about this world religion. And you can leave your message about the religion of Buddhism through the comment form below.

Sometimes extremely different from each other and sometimes more reminiscent of different religions than different confessions within the same religion. This is especially true with respect to the Mahayana, which, in essence, is a designation of very diverse and heterogeneous currents and directions.

Therefore, one should always analyze and consider specific areas of Buddhism, and not some artificially constructed "Buddhism in general." By virtue of this circumstance, attempts to isolate a certain “true Buddhism” are doomed to failure in advance (which, for example, the so-called “critical Buddhists” - Hakamaya Noriaki, Matsumoto Shiro and their few followers, are trying to do in Japan in the 90s); in fact, any impartial researcher is forced to recognize as "Buddhism" any teaching that was considered Buddhist by the tradition itself. Using language immanent to Buddhism itself, one can say, based on the doctrine known as anatmavada (principle of non-essence, “non-soul”), that Buddhism is only a name for directions and currents that consider themselves to be Buddhist.

Nevertheless, there is a certain range of ideas that, in one form or another, with one or another accentuation, are characteristic of all areas of Buddhism (although their understanding can be very different in them). It is this circle of basic ideas that we will call "the foundations of the teachings of Buddhism" and we will now turn to them. First of all, these basic ideas include the Four Noble Truths, the doctrine of causal origin and karma, the doctrines of anatmavada (“non-soul”) and kshanikavada (the doctrine of instantaneity), as well as Buddhist cosmology. All Buddhists believe that these principles were proclaimed by the Buddha himself, but if Theravadins (“Hinayanists”) consider them to be the complete and final truth, then for most Mahayanists they are only some conditionally true propositions proclaimed by the Buddha for propaedeutic purposes in order to prepare students for perception they are truths of a higher order, such as, for example, the identity of samsara and nirvana, or the endowment of all living beings with Buddha nature. But in any case, consideration of the teachings of Buddhism should begin with them.

The Four Noble Truths (chatur arya satyani) are formulations that are quite comparable to the formulations of a doctor who diagnoses a patient and prescribes treatment. This metaphor is far from accidental, since the Buddha saw himself as a doctor of living beings, called to heal them from the suffering of samsara and prescribe a cure leading to recovery - nirvana. Indeed, the first Truth (the Truth about suffering) is the statement of the disease and the diagnosis; the second (the Truth about the cause of suffering) indicates the cause of the disease (what is called “etiology and pathogenesis” in modern medicine), the third (the Truth about the cessation of suffering) is a prognosis, an indication of the possibility of healing, and finally the fourth (the Truth about the Path) is the course of treatment prescribed to the patient. Thus, from the very beginning of its existence, Buddhism was conceived as a kind of project for the transformation of man from a suffering and ontologically unhappy being into a free and perfect being. This project has a kind of therapeutic (we would say with a certain degree of metaphor - psychotherapeutic) character, and its creator or discoverer (with the caveat that, according to the teachings of Buddhism, there were Buddhas even before the historical Siddhartha Gautama), was Shakyamuni Buddha.

Let's take a closer look at the Four Noble Truths.

So the First Truth is the truth about suffering. What is it and what is suffering (duhkha)?

Despite the fact that many researchers have proposed to abandon the word "suffering" as having connotations somewhat different from the Sanskrit "duhkha" when translating this concept, and to replace the word "suffering" with such words as "dissatisfaction", "frustration" and even "problems" (the latter, however, not in an academic, but in a popular American edition). Nevertheless, it seems optimal to leave here the Russian word "suffering" as the most existentially strong and expressive. As for the undoubted differences between the semantic fields of Russian and Sanskrit words, they will fully come to light in the course of further consideration of the first truth.

“Everything is suffering. Birth is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering. Connection with the unpleasant is suffering, separation from the pleasant is suffering. Indeed, all five groups of attachment are suffering. These words usually formulate the first Noble Truth. Buddhism, to a much greater extent than other religions, emphasizes the connection of life with suffering. Moreover, in Buddhism, suffering is a fundamental characteristic of being as such. This suffering is not the result of some fall into sin and the loss of the original paradise. Like being itself, suffering without beginning and invariably accompanies all manifestations of being. Of course, Buddhists by no means deny the fact that there are pleasant moments in life that are associated with pleasure, but this pleasure itself (sukha) is not the opposite of suffering, but is, as it were, included in suffering, being its aspect.

The fact is that none of the possible "worldly" states is completely satisfactory for us. We are in constant dissatisfaction, constant frustration. We can experience strong physical or even spiritual (for example, aesthetic) pleasure and are ready to even exclaim: “Stop, a moment!” But the moment does not stop, the pleasure ends, and we suffer because it is gone, we strive to experience it again, but to no avail, which makes us suffer even more. Or vice versa: we strive for something, perhaps devoting our whole life to it. And now we have reached the goal, but we are bitterly disappointed - the fruit turned out to be not as sweet as we imagined, and life loses its meaning, because the goal has been achieved, and there is nothing more to strive for. And finally, death awaits all of us, which makes all our pleasures and pleasures finite and transient. But that's not all. We not only suffer (in the sense of suffering), but we also find ourselves in a situation of suffering, passive enduring all the time.

Apparently, a person is the blacksmith of his own happiness, but in reality, being entangled in a tangle of causal relationships and connections, he does not so much forge as he himself is under the hammer of causality on the anvil of consequences. Speaking of suffering, Buddhism is by no means limited to the human condition. Animals suffer. Everywhere in nature the life of one species depends on another species, everywhere the life of one creature is bought at the price of the life of another, everywhere there is a struggle for survival. The sufferings of the inhabitants of hells are innumerable (a temporary state according to Buddhism; this religion does not know eternal torment), hungry spirits - pretas - suffer from never-satisfied cravings. Even deities (Vedic Brahma, Indra, Varuna and other gods) also suffer. They have to fight with demons - asuras, they know the fear of death, because they are also born and die, although their life span is huge. In short, there is no form of life that is not subject to suffering. Pain is absolute, pleasure is very, very relative. Here is a statement of illness, here is the diagnosis of a Buddhist therapist. But what is the cause of the disease?

The Second Noble Truth is the truth about the cause of suffering. This reason is attraction, desire, attachment to life in the broadest sense, the will to live, as A. Schopenhauer, who was fond of Buddhism and other Indian teachings, would say. At the same time, attraction is understood by Buddhism as broadly as possible, because this concept also includes disgust as the reverse side of attraction, attraction with the opposite sign. At the heart of life is attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant, expressed in appropriate reactions and motivations, based on a fundamental delusion, or ignorance (avidya), expressed in a misunderstanding that the essence of being is suffering. Inclination gives rise to suffering, if there were no inclinations and thirst for life, then there would be no suffering. And all nature is permeated with this thirst. It is, as it were, the core of the life of every living being. And this life is regulated by the law of karma.

The doctrine of karma is the doctrinal core of Buddhism. The word "karma" itself can be translated as "deed", "action" (and in no way as "fate" or "destiny", as is sometimes thought); in Chinese, “karma” is translated by the word “e”, which in modern language even means “occupation”, “specialty” or “profession”. In Vedic times, karma was not understood as any action, but only ritually significant (for example, performing a rite) that gives the desired result, or “fruit” (phala). Gradually, the meaning of this concept expanded, and it began to mean any action or act, and in the broadest sense of the word - a physical act (action, deed), a verbal act (word, statement) and a mental and volitional act (thought, intention, desire). ). By the way, this triad “body, speech, thought” itself is very ancient and is recorded not only in Indian, but also in early Iranian texts (the ghats of the Avesta, the sacred text of the Zoroastrians - Mazdeans), which indicates its deep Indo-European roots.

Therefore, all the religions of India (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and partly even Sikhism) set as their goal liberation, that is, getting out of the cycle of samsara and gaining freedom from suffering and suffering, to which any living being dooms samsaric existence. Samsara is beginningless, that is, not a single creature had an absolutely first life, it remains in samsara from eternity. And consequently, samsaric existence is also fraught with the repetition of situations and roles, the painful monotony of the cyclic reproducibility of the same content. Both Buddhism and other religions of India are completely alien to the idea of evolution - unlike non-traditional forms of occultism like Theosophy, the transition from life to life forms in Indian religions not a ladder of improvement and ascent to the Absolute, but a painful rotation and transition from one form of suffering to another. Therefore, if a person with a materialistic or simply non-religious Western upbringing can even find something attractive in the idea of rebirth (“the Hindus came up with a convenient religion that we, having given up, do not die for good,” Vladimir Vysotsky sang), then for an Indian it is associated with a feeling unfreedom and painful enslavement, causing the need for liberation from this whirlwind (“When will deliverance from the bonds of samsara come, O God?! This thought is called the desire for freedom,” wrote one Brahmin philosopher). The doctrine of karma and samsara arose in the pre-Buddhist period within the framework of late Vedic Brahmanism (apparently, no later than the 8th - 7th centuries BC), but it was Buddhism that carefully developed it, clearly articulated it, made it a formative part of its teaching and already in its final form, again "transferred" to Hinduism. However, there are some differences between the Buddhist and Hindu understanding of karma. So, in the theistic directions of Hinduism, it is believed that the consequences of karma are determined by God, distributing the reward for certain actions.

But Buddhism is not a theistic teaching, there is no place for the concept of God in it, and therefore karma is understood by Buddhists not as some kind of retribution or retribution from God or the gods, but as an absolutely objective basic law of existence, as inevitable as the laws of nature and acting just as impersonal and automatic. In essence, the law of karma is simply the result of transferring the idea of the universality of cause-and-effect relationships to the field of ethics, morality and psychology.

In addition to the human, Buddhism recognizes five more possible forms of existence: birth as a deity (deva), a warlike titan (asura) - these two forms of birth, like the human, are considered “happy”, as well as an animal, a hungry spirit (preta) and an inhabitant ada - unlucky forms of birth. It should probably be repeated that there is no idea of spiritual evolution in this scheme: after death as a deity, one can be born again as a human, then go to hell, then be born as an animal, then again as a human, then go back to hell, etc.

It should be noted here that only a person (according to some Buddhist thinkers - also deities and asuras) is able to generate karma and thus be responsible for his actions: other living beings only reap the fruits of good or bad deeds committed by them in previous human births. Therefore, for example, animals suffer innocently in some way, and their human karmic "predecessor" is to blame for their suffering. Here, the Buddhist position is largely close to the arguments about the innocently suffering dumb creatures of the elder Zosima from the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov".

In Buddhist texts, it is constantly emphasized that the human form of birth is especially favorable: only a person occupies a middle position between living beings: he is not as immersed in deceptive bliss as the gods, but not as tormented as the inhabitants of hells; in addition, man, unlike animals, is also endowed with a developed intellect. And this middleness, the centrality of the position provides a person with a unique opportunity: only a person is capable of gaining liberation from the cycle of samsara, only a person is able to get out of the cycle of births and deaths and find the eternal blissful rest of nirvana.

Buddhist texts constantly say that the human body is a rare treasure and its acquisition is a great happiness, since only a person is able to achieve liberation, and therefore it is highly unreasonable to miss such a rare opportunity. Tsongkhapa (Tsongkhapa), the famous Tibetan religious reformer at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries, compares the probability of acquiring a human body with the probability that a turtle swimming in the depths of the oceans, having emerged to the surface, will immediately fall headfirst into the hole of a single wooden circle, by someone thrown into the ocean. And therefore, the best thing a person can do, teaches Buddhism, is to embark on the path of liberation, whether of oneself (as taught by Hinayana) or of all living beings (according to the teachings of Mahayana).

The doctrine of karma as a cause-and-effect relationship finds its in-depth development in a theory called “pratitya samutpada” (causal origin). This theory is extremely important because later (especially within the framework of the Madhyamaka school of thought) it essentially became the fundamental methodological principle of Buddhist thought.

Usually, for simplicity of presentation and for didactic purposes, this principle is illustrated in Buddhist texts (its classic description is contained in the Mahavagga, a text of the Pali Tipitaka) on the example of human life, although, in accordance with the general principles of Buddhist teaching, it can be applied to any element of existence, every moment arising and disappearing, as well as to the whole cosmic cycle. Let's follow the tradition.

The chain of causally dependent origination consists of twelve links (nidana), and, in principle, it does not matter which nidana to begin with, since the presence of any of them determines all the others. However, the logic of presentation nevertheless requires a certain order, which will be observed here as well.

I. Past life (more precisely, the interval between death and a new birth, antarabhava). Avidya (ignorance). Ignorance (in the sense of not understanding and not feeling) the four Noble Truths, delusion about one's own nature and the nature of existence as such determines the presence of Samskaras (forming factors, motivations, basic subconscious drives and impulses) that attract the deceased to a new experience of being, a new birth. The intermediate existence ends and a new life is conceived. II. This life. The presence of samskaras causes the appearance of consciousness (vijnana), unformed and amorphous. The presence of consciousness determines the formation - Name and form (nama-rupa), that is, the psychophysical characteristics of a human being. On the basis of these psychophysical structures are formed - Six bases (shad ayatana), that is, six organs, or abilities (indriya), sensory perception. The sixth indriya is manas (“mind”), also considered the organ of perception of the “intelligible”. At the moment of birth, the six organs of perception come into contact (sparsha) with the objects of sense perception, resulting in - 7. Feeling (vedana) of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

Feeling pleasant and wanting to re-experience it, lead to the emergence of - Attraction, passion (trishna), while the feeling of unpleasant forms disgust. Attraction and repulsion as two sides of one state form - Upadana (grasping, attachment). Attractions and attachments constitute the essence of Life, samsaric existence (bhava). But this life must certainly lead to -III. next life. A new birth (jati), which in turn will certainly end - Old age and death (jala-marana).

Here is a short and concise enumeration of the links in the chain of causal origin. Its main meaning is that all stages of existence are causally determined, and this causality is purely immanent, leaving no room for a hidden mysterious transcendent cause (God, fate, and the like). At the same time, a living being (not only a person), attracted by his subconscious impulses and inclinations, turns out to be, in essence, a slave of inexorable conditioning, being not so much in an active, but in a passive position.

On Tibetan tankas (religious paintings, icons), this doctrine is extremely visually embodied, organically combined with the doctrine of karma and the forms of births. Pictures of this kind are called bhava-chakra (“wheel of being”) and represent the following. Imagine three concentric circles. Three animals are depicted in the central (smallest) circle: a pig, a snake and a rooster. They seemed to grab hold of each other's tails and started running in a circle (like a squirrel in a wheel), setting the entire "wheel of being" in motion. The depicted animals are ignorance (moha), anger (raga) and passion (dvesha) - three basic affects (klesha), as if underlying samsaric existence (envy and pride are sometimes added to them in the texts).

The large circle external to this is divided into five sectors, corresponding to the five worlds of the births of living beings (usually gods and titans are depicted in the same sector); it contains scenes of the life of each type of creature.

And, finally, the last, narrow circle, forming, as it were, the rim of a wheel, is divided into twelve segments corresponding to the twelve nidanas of the chain of causal origin. Each nidana corresponds to a symbolic image. For example, ignorance is symbolized by the image of a person whose eye has been hit by an arrow, impulses - sanskaras - by the figure of a potter making pots on his potter's wheel, consciousness - by a monkey jumping from branch to branch (consciousness is unstable and tends to jump from one object to another), the name and form - two people sailing in the same boat, six bases of perception - a house with six windows, contact of the senses with their objects - a copulating couple, and so on.

All this “wheel of being” is held in its paws, as if embracing it, by a terrible monster, symbolizing suffering as the main property of samsaric life. Outside the wheel in the upper corner of the picture, the Buddha (or monk) is usually depicted pointing with his finger at a radiant circle around him - a symbol of nirvana, a state free from suffering.

And here we can go directly to the third Noble Truth.

The Third Noble Truth is the truth about the cessation of suffering, that is, about nirvana (synonymous with nirodha, cessation). Like a doctor giving a favorable prognosis to the sick, the Buddha states that although suffering permeates all levels of samsaric existence, there is nevertheless a state in which suffering is no more, and that this state is achievable. This is nirvana.

The very word "nirvana" (Pali: nibbana) goes back to the Sanskrit root "nir" with the meaning of "extinction", "attenuation" (for example, the extinction of a lamp or the cessation of the waves of the sea). On this basis, 19th-century Buddhists often built their theory of nirvana as a complete cessation of life, some kind of complete dying, after which they accused Buddhism of pessimism. However, Buddhist texts quite clearly indicate that it is not being that is fading or dying out. One of the most common images used in texts to explain the idea of nirvana is this: just as the lamp stops burning when the oil that feeds the fire dries out, or just as the surface of the sea stops rippling when the wind that raises the waves stops, in the same way all suffering ceases when all the affects (kleshas) and drives that nourish suffering dry up. That is, it is passions, attachments, obscurations that fade away, and not being at all. With the disappearance of the cause of suffering, the suffering itself also disappears.

Nirvana is not a substance (Buddhism does not recognize substances at all), but a state, a state of freedom and a special impersonal, or transpersonal, fullness of being. But this state is also absolutely transcendent to our entire samsaric experience, in which there is nothing like nirvana. Therefore, it is even psychologically more correct not to say anything about nirvana than to compare it with something known to us, because otherwise we will immediately construct “our” nirvana, create some mental image of nirvana, a completely inadequate idea of it, we will become attached to this idea, making it so thus, and nirvana as the object of affection and the source of suffering. Therefore, the Buddha limited himself to the most general characteristics of nirvana as a state free from suffering, or as a state of supreme bliss (paramam sukham). Subsequently, Buddhists will develop many different concepts of nirvana, but the recognition of its extra-sign, non-semiotic nature will remain in Buddhism forever. Therefore, for the time being, we will also confine ourselves to the brief outline that is given here.

But how to achieve liberation, nirvana? This is evidenced by the Fourth Noble Truth - the truth about the path (marga) leading to the cessation of suffering - that is, the Noble Eightfold Path (arya ashtanga marga).

The entire Buddhist path is divided into three major stages: the stage of wisdom (prajna), the stage of morality, or observance of vows (sila), and the stage of concentration (samadhi), that is, psychopractice. The first stage includes two steps, the rest - three, for a total of eight steps.

I. Stage of wisdom. Correct view. At this stage, a person must learn and master the Four Noble Truths and other basic provisions of Buddhism, experience them internally and make the basis of the motivations for their actions and all their behavior. Right resolve. Now a person must decide once and for all to embark on the path leading to liberation, guided by the principles of Buddhist teachings. II. stage of morality. Correct speech. A Buddhist must avoid lying, slander, perjury, slander, and the spread of rumors and gossip that feed enmity in every possible way. Correct behaviour. Lay Buddhists take the minimum number of vows that contribute to the accumulation of good karma. They are as follows: Non-violence, non-harm to living beings: “without a stick and a sword he goes through life, full of love and compassion for all living beings”; Refusal of bad speech (lie, slander, etc., see above); Non-appropriation of what belongs to another; refusal to steal; Correct sexual life (including in the sense of "do not commit adultery"); Refusal to use intoxicating drinks that make the mind cloudy and behavior difficult to control. Monks and nuns have many more vows (several hundred). They are described in detail in the Vinaya section of the Buddhist Tripitaka (the text called Pratimoksha/Patimokkha is especially important). The vows of the monks orient their lives no longer towards the improvement of karma, but towards its complete exhaustion and the achievement of nirvana. Right way of life. This is the same correct behavior, but taken as if in a social dimension. A Buddhist (whether monk or layperson) should refrain from engaging in any form of activity that is inconsistent with right conduct. He must refrain, for example, from trading in living beings, people and animals, from trading in weapons (at the same time, Buddhism does not forbid laymen to serve in the army, since the army is seen as a means of protecting living beings in case of aggression, while the arms trade provokes conflicts and creates prerequisites for them), from the distribution of alcohol and drugs, from prostitution and any professions associated with deceit (fortune telling, fortune telling, horoscopes, etc.).

III. stage of concentration. Right diligence. This stage and all its stages are intended mainly for monks and consist in constant Buddhist yoga classes. The Sanskrit word "yoga" is derived from the root "yuj" - to bind together, harness, conjugate. Therefore, the word "yoga" is related to the Russian word "yoke" and the English word "yoke" - "yoke", "yoke". The word "yoga", thus, means concentration, concentration, binding into one bundle of all forces to achieve the goal.

Since ancient times, this word in India has been called various very complex systems of psychophysical training (“psychopractice”, “psychotechnics”), aimed at changing consciousness and transition from a profane, mundane, samsaric state to a sacred state of “immortality and freedom”. Yoga in the narrow sense of the word is one of the orthodox Brahmanistic religious and philosophical systems (darshan), created by the rishi (sage) Patanjali in the 4th-5th centuries AD. e. Yoga in a broad sense - any form of psychopractice aimed at achieving liberation from samsara (nirvana, moksha, mukti, kaivalya); in this sense, one can speak of Buddhist yoga, Jain yoga, Hindu yoga, etc. Yoga, as a rule, was practiced by ascetic hermits and members of various religious monastic communities. “Right determination” is here spoken of in the sense of developing an attitude towards an in-depth and traditional practice of yogic contemplation in order to move into nirvana. Right mindfulness. Holistic and comprehensive control over all psycho-mental and psycho-physical processes with the development of continuous awareness. The main methods here are shamatha (calming down the mind, stopping the agitation of the psyche, getting rid of affects and psycho-mental instability) and vipashyana (analytical contemplation, which involves the cultivation of good, from the point of view of Buddhism, and cutting off bad states of consciousness). Right concentration, or right trance. Achievement of Samadhi proper, the ultimate form of contemplation, in which the differences between the contemplative subject, the contemplated object and the process of contemplation disappear. The Buddhist tradition describes numerous types of samadhi, some of which do not lead to nirvana. The correct practice of samadhi eventually leads the monk to liberation, and he becomes an arhat (“worthy”; the Tibetan etymology of this word “victor of enemies”, that is, affects - klesh, is not philologically correct).

Concluding the conversation about the Noble Eightfold Path, it should be noted that the word that we translated here as “correct” (samyak) more precisely means “complete”, “integral”, “all-encompassing”. Thus, on the one hand, it indicates the correctness, that is, the nature of the practice itself prescribed by the Buddhist tradition, and, on the other hand, the integrity and organic nature of this practice, which ideally should cover all aspects and levels of the human being.

With this, we conclude our needlessly brief discussion of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and move on to such an important, if not the most important, Buddhist doctrine as the doctrine of the non-existence of an individual substantial simple and eternal "I", or soul (atman), usually called in Sanskrit anatmavada. This Buddhist doctrine distinguishes Buddhism both from most non-Indian religions and from other religions of India (Hinduism, Jainism), which recognize the doctrine of the "I" (atman) and the soul (jiva).

It is the individual “I”, the personality as an essence, simple and eternal, a substance identical to itself, that is denied. Such Buddhism does not find it in our experience and considers it as an illusory product of mental construction. Thus, in fact, Buddhism denies what is called jiva (soul) or pudgala (personality) in the Brahmin and Jain traditions. Some passages from early Buddhist texts about the absence of a soul are so reminiscent of the corresponding arguments of D. Hume from the Treatise on Human Nature that Buddhist scholars of the 19th century were shocked by the fact that such theories, which in the West were part of the skeptical and ultimately free-thinking and even anti-religious thought, in Buddhism are placed in a purely religious context.

But if there is no such entity as the soul, then what is a person? The Buddhists answer that personality is only a name for designating groups of psychophysical elements connected in a certain order. In the famous Buddhist philosophical monument “Questions of Milinda” (Milinda panha), the Buddhist monk Nagasena talks about this with the Greek-Indian king Milinda (Menander - first half of the 2nd century BC) - after the conquest of part of India by Alexander the Great in the 4th century. BC e. Indo-Hellenistic states were established there. The king argues that if the Buddhists believe that there is no soul and that none of the elements of the psychophysical composition of a person, as well as the totality of all these elements, is a person, then the Buddhists get that there is no personality at all. Objecting to the king, Nagasena points to the chariot and begins to ask the king what it is - are there wheels for a chariot? Or maybe the body is a chariot? Or are shafts or other details not the chariot? To all these questions the king gives a negative answer. Then Nagasena asks the king if the chariot is all this together.

Milinda again gives a negative answer, and this gives Nagasena the opportunity to say that in this case it turns out that there is no chariot at all. Then the king objects and says that the chariot is only a name, designed to designate the totality of all the listed parts and details. This answer enables Nagasena to say that in the same way, a person is only a name denoting a certain ordered unity of the five groups of elements of experience. What kind of groups are these? In the Buddhist tradition, they are called five skandhas (pancha skandha; "heap"). This is the group of the sensuous (rupa), that is, everything that we could attribute to the realm of the sensuously perceived and material; group of feelings (sensation of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) - vedana; a group of awareness of differences (round - square; white - black, etc.), as well as the formation of ideas and concepts - samjna; a group of motivating factors - volitions and motivating impulses (samskara); it is this group of elements that is responsible for the formation of karma and, finally, consciousness as such (vijnana). It should be noted that the order of enumeration of skandhas is not accidental - it reflects the order of perception of the object and its mastery by consciousness: first, only the sensory data themselves, then the feeling accompanying them pleasant or unpleasant, then the formation of a specific image of the perceived object and then the design of the installation for attraction to the perceived or aversion to it; all these processes are accompanied by the participation of consciousness in them, which is present even at the level of perception. It should be noted that here the concept of “personality” also includes the object area perceived by a living being.

A conversation about the foundations of the teachings of Buddhism should begin with one significant remark. The fact is that no "Buddhism" as such, "Buddhism in general" did not exist and does not exist. Buddhism (to which the classic of Russian and world Buddhology O.O. Rosenberg drew attention back in 1918) is historically presented in the form of various currents and trends, sometimes extremely different from each other and sometimes more reminiscent of different religions than different confessions within one religion. This is especially true with respect to the Mahayana, which, in essence, is a designation of very diverse and heterogeneous currents and directions. Therefore, one should always analyze and consider specific areas of Buddhism, and not some artificially constructed "Buddhism in general." By virtue of this circumstance, attempts to isolate a certain “true Buddhism” are doomed to failure in advance (which, for example, the so-called “critical Buddhists” — Hakamaya Noriaki, Matsumoto Shiro and their few followers — are trying to do in Japan in the 1990s); in fact, any impartial researcher is forced to recognize as "Buddhism" any teaching that was considered Buddhist by the tradition itself. Using language immanent to Buddhism itself, one can say, based on the doctrine known as anatmavada (principle of non-essence, “non-soul”), that Buddhism is only a name for directions and currents that consider themselves to be Buddhist.

Nevertheless, there is a certain range of ideas that, in one form or another, with one or another accentuation, are characteristic of all areas of Buddhism (although their understanding can be very different in them). It is this circle of basic ideas that we will call "the foundations of the teachings of Buddhism" and we will now turn to them. These basic ideas should first of all include Four Noble Truths, the doctrine of causal origin and karma, the doctrines of anatmavada ("non-soul") and kshanikavada (the doctrine of instantaneity), as well as Buddhist cosmology. All Buddhists believe that these principles were proclaimed by the Buddha himself, but if Theravadins (“Hinayanists”) consider them to be the complete and final truth, then for most Mahayanists they are only some conditionally true propositions proclaimed by the Buddha for propaedeutic purposes in order to prepare students for perception they are truths of a higher order, such as, for example, the identity of samsara and nirvana, or the endowment of all living beings with Buddha nature. But in any case, consideration of the teachings of Buddhism should begin with them.

Four Noble Truths (Chatur Arya Satyani) are formulations that are quite comparable with the formulations of a doctor who diagnoses a patient and prescribes treatment. This metaphor is far from accidental, since the Buddha saw himself as a doctor of living beings, called to heal them from the suffering of samsara and prescribe a cure leading to recovery - nirvana. Indeed, the first Truth (the Truth about suffering) is the statement of the disease and the diagnosis; the second (the Truth about the cause of suffering) indicates the cause of the disease (what is called “etiology and pathogenesis” in modern medicine), the third (the Truth about the cessation of suffering) is a prognosis, an indication of the possibility of healing, and finally the fourth (the Truth about the Path) is the course of treatment prescribed to the patient. Thus, from the very beginning of its existence, Buddhism was conceived as a kind of project for the transformation of man from a suffering and ontologically unhappy being into a free and perfect being. This project has, as it were, a therapeutic (we would say with a certain degree of metaphor - psychotherapeutic) character, and its creator or discoverer (with the proviso that, according to the teachings of Buddhism, there were Buddhas even before the historical Siddhartha Gautama), was Shakyamuni Buddha.

Let's take a closer look at the Four Noble Truths.

So, First Truth is the truth about suffering. What is it and what is suffering (duhkha)?

“Everything is suffering. Birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering. Joining with the unpleasant is suffering, separation from the pleasant is suffering. Indeed, all five groups of attachment are suffering. These words usually formulate the first Noble Truth. Buddhism, to a much greater extent than other religions, emphasizes the connection of life with suffering. Moreover, in Buddhism, suffering is a fundamental characteristic of being as such. This suffering is not the result of some fall into sin and the loss of the original paradise. Like being itself, suffering without beginning and invariably accompanies all manifestations of being. Of course, Buddhists by no means deny the fact that there are pleasant moments in life that are associated with pleasure, but this pleasure itself (sukha) is not the opposite of suffering, but is, as it were, included in suffering, being its aspect. The fact is that none of the possible "worldly" states is completely satisfactory for us. We are in constant dissatisfaction, constant frustration. We can experience strong physical or even spiritual (for example, aesthetic) pleasure and are ready to even exclaim: “Stop, a moment!” But the moment does not stop, the pleasure ends, and we suffer because it is gone, we strive to experience it again, but to no avail, which makes us suffer even more. Or vice versa: we strive for something, perhaps devoting our whole life to it. And now we have reached the goal, but we are bitterly disappointed - the fruit turned out to be not as sweet as it seemed to us, and life loses its meaning, because the goal has been achieved, and there is nothing more to strive for. And finally, death awaits all of us, which makes all our pleasures and pleasures finite and transient. But that's not all. We not only suffer (in the sense of suffering), but we also find ourselves in a situation of suffering, passive enduring all the time. Apparently, a man himself is the blacksmith of his own happiness, but in reality, being entangled in a tangle of causal relationships and connections, he does not so much forge as he himself is under the hammer of causality on the anvil of consequences. Speaking of suffering, Buddhism is by no means limited to the human lot. Animals suffer. Everywhere in nature the life of one species depends on another species, everywhere the life of one creature is bought at the price of the life of another, everywhere there is a struggle for survival. The sufferings of the inhabitants of hells are innumerable (a temporary state according to Buddhism; this religion does not know eternal torment), hungry spirits - pretas - suffer from never-satisfied cravings. Even deities (Vedic Brahma, Indra, Varuna and other gods) also suffer. They have to fight with demons - asuras, they know the fear of death, because they are also born and die, although their life span is huge. In short, there is no form of life that is not subject to suffering. Pain is absolute, pleasure is very, very relative. Here is a statement of illness, here is the diagnosis of a Buddhist therapist. But what is the cause of the disease?

Second Noble Truth- the truth about the cause of suffering. This reason is attraction, desire, attachment to life in the broadest sense, the will to live, as A. Schopenhauer, who was fond of Buddhism and other Indian teachings, would say. At the same time, attraction is understood by Buddhism as broadly as possible, because this concept also includes disgust as the reverse side of attraction, attraction with the opposite sign. At the heart of life is attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant, expressed in appropriate reactions and motivations, based on a fundamental delusion, or ignorance (avidya), expressed in a misunderstanding that the essence of being is suffering. Inclination gives rise to suffering, if there were no inclinations and thirst for life, then there would be no suffering. And all nature is permeated with this thirst. It is, as it were, the core of the life of every living being. And this life is regulated by the law of karma.

The doctrine of karma is the doctrinal core of Buddhism. The word "karma" itself can be translated as "deed", "action" (and in no way as "fate" or "destiny", as is sometimes thought); in Chinese, “karma” is translated by the word “e”, which in modern language even means “occupation”, “specialty” or “profession”. In Vedic times, karma was not understood as any action, but only ritually significant (for example, performing a rite) that gives the desired result, or “fruit” (phala). Gradually, the meaning of this concept expanded, and it began to mean any action or act, and in the broadest sense of the word - a physical act (action, deed), a verbal act (word, statement) and a mental and volitional act (thought, intention, desire). ). By the way, this triad “body, speech, thought” itself is very ancient and is recorded not only in Indian, but also in early Iranian texts (the Gathas of the Avesta, the sacred text of the Zoroastrians - Mazdeans), which indicates its deep Indo-European roots.

Thus, karma is an action, and necessarily having a consequence, or result. The totality of all actions performed in life, or rather, the total energy of these actions, also bears fruit: it determines the need for the next birth, a new life, the nature of which is determined by the karma (that is, the nature of the completed actions) of the deceased. Accordingly, karma can be good or bad, that is, leading to good or bad forms of birth. Actually, karma determines in a new birth what existentialist philosophers call "abandonment": the country in which a person is born (if it is the human form of birth that is acquired), the family of birth, gender and other genetic characteristics (for example, congenital diseases), the main features character, psychological inclinations and the like. In this life, a person again performs actions that lead him to a new birth, and so on and so forth. This cycle of births and deaths is called in the religions of India (not only in Buddhism) samsara (cycle, rotation), the main characteristic of which is suffering arising from drives and desires. Therefore, all the religions of India (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and partly even Sikhism) set as their goal liberation, that is, getting out of the cycle of samsara and gaining freedom from suffering and suffering, to which any living being dooms samsaric existence. Samsara is beginningless, that is, not a single creature had an absolutely first life, it remains in samsara from eternity. And consequently, samsaric existence is also fraught with the repetition of situations and roles, the painful monotony of the cyclic reproducibility of the same content. Both Buddhism and other religions of India are completely alien to the idea of evolution - unlike non-traditional forms of occultism like Theosophy, the transition from life to life forms in Indian religions not a ladder of improvement and ascent to the Absolute, but a painful rotation and transition from one form of suffering to another. Therefore, if a person with a materialistic or simply non-religious Western upbringing can even find something attractive in the idea of rebirth (“the Hindus came up with a convenient religion that we, having given up the ends, do not die for good,” Vladimir Vysotsky sang), then for an Indian it is associated with a feeling captivity and painful enslavement, causing the need for liberation from this whirlwind (“When will deliverance from the bonds of samsara come, O God?! This thought is called the desire for freedom,” wrote one Brahmin philosopher). The doctrine of karma and samsara arose back in the pre-Buddhist period within the framework of late Vedic Brahmanism (apparently, no later than the 8th-7th centuries BC), but it was Buddhism that carefully developed it, clearly articulated it, made it a formative part of its teaching, and already in its final form, again "transferred" to Hinduism. However, there are some differences between the Buddhist and Hindu understanding of karma. So, in the theistic directions of Hinduism, it is believed that the consequences of karma are determined by God, distributing the reward for certain actions. But Buddhism is not a theistic teaching, there is no place for the concept of God in it, and therefore karma is understood by Buddhists not as some kind of retribution or retribution from God or the gods, but as an absolutely objective basic law of existence, as inevitable as the laws of nature and acting just as impersonal and automatic. In essence, the law of karma is simply the result of transferring the idea of the universality of cause-and-effect relationships to the field of ethics, morality and psychology.

In addition to the human, Buddhism recognizes five more possible forms of existence: birth as a deity (deva), a warlike titan (asura) - these two forms of birth, like the human, are considered “happy”, as well as an animal, a hungry spirit (preta) and an inhabitant ada - unhappy forms of birth. It should probably be repeated that there is no idea of spiritual evolution in this scheme: after death as a deity, one can be born again as a human, then go to hell, then be born as an animal, then again as a human, then go back to hell, etc.

It should be noted here that only a person (according to some Buddhist thinkers, also deities and asuras) is able to generate karma and thus be responsible for his actions: other living beings only reap the fruits of good or bad deeds committed by them in previous human births. Therefore, for example, animals suffer innocently in some way, and their human karmic "predecessor" is to blame for their suffering. Here, the Buddhist position is largely close to the arguments about the innocently suffering dumb creatures of the elder Zosima from the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov".

Buddhist texts constantly say that the human body is a rare treasure and the acquisition of it is a great happiness, since only a person is able to achieve liberation, and therefore it is highly unreasonable to miss such a rare opportunity. Tsongkhapa (Tsongkhapa), the famous Tibetan religious reformer at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries, compares the probability of acquiring a human body with the probability that a turtle swimming in the depths of the oceans, emerging to the surface, will immediately fall headlong into the hole of a single wooden circle, someone thrown into the ocean. And therefore, the best thing a person can do, teaches Buddhism, is to embark on the path of liberation, whether of oneself (as taught by Hinayana) or of all living beings (according to the teachings of Mahayana).

I. Past life (more precisely, the interval between death and a new birth, antarabhava).

Avidya(ignorance). Ignorance (in the sense of not understanding and not feeling) the four Noble Truths, delusion about one's own nature and the nature of existence as such causes the presence of -
Samskar(forming factors, motivations, basic subconscious drives and impulses) that attract the deceased to a new experience of being, a new birth. The intermediate existence ends and a new life is conceived.

II. This life.

The presence of samskaras causes the appearance of consciousness ( vijnana), unformed and amorphous. The presence of consciousness determines the formation -
Names and forms ( nama rupa), that is, the psychophysical characteristics of a human being. Based on these psychophysical structures,
Six bases ( shad ayatana), i.e. the six organs or faculties (indriya) of sense perception. The sixth indriya is manas (“mind”), also considered the organ of perception of the “intelligible”. At the time of birth, the six organs of perception come to −
Contact ( sparsha) with objects of sensory perception, resulting in -
7. Feeling ( vedana) pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. The feeling of pleasantness and the desire to experience it again, lead to the appearance of -
Attractions, passions trishna), while the feeling of unpleasantness forms disgust. Attraction and repulsion as two sides of one state form -
Upadana(grasping, attachment). Inclinations and affections constitute the essence -

Life, samsaric existence ( bhava). But this life must certainly lead to -

III. next life.

new birth ( jati), which in turn will certainly end -
Old age and death jala marana).

And, finally, the last, narrow circle, forming, as it were, the rim of a wheel, is divided into twelve segments corresponding to the twelve nidanas of the chain of causal origin. Each nidana corresponds to a symbolic image. For example, ignorance is symbolized by the image of a person whose eye has been hit by an arrow, impulses - samskara - by the figure of a potter making pots on his potter's wheel, consciousness - by a monkey jumping from branch to branch (consciousness is unstable and tends to jump from one object to another), the name and form by two people in the same boat, six bases of perception by a house with six windows, contact of the senses with their objects by a copulating couple, and so on.

And here we can go directly to the third Noble Truth.

Third Noble Truth- the truth about the cessation of suffering, that is, about nirvana (synonymous with nirodha, cessation). Like a doctor giving a favorable prognosis to the sick, the Buddha states that although suffering permeates all levels of samsaric existence, there is nevertheless a state in which suffering is no more, and that this state is achievable. This is nirvana.

So what is nirvana? The Buddha himself never gave a direct answer to this question and tried to remain silent when this question was nevertheless asked. Here the Buddha turns out to be the direct predecessor of the famous philosopher of the 20th century, L. Wittgenstein, who proclaimed that what cannot be spoken about must be kept silent. Even in the early Upanishads - Brahmin texts of a philosophical nature - it was said that the Absolute (Brahman) can only be spoken of in negative terms: “neti, neti” (“not this, not that”), since the Absolute is transcendent to our experience, incomprehensible to thought and inexpressible in words and concepts. The Nirvana taught by the Buddha is not God and not the impersonal Absolute and its silence is not an apophatic theology. Nirvana is not a substance (Buddhism does not recognize substances at all), but a state, a state of freedom and a special impersonal, or transpersonal, fullness of being. But this state is also absolutely transcendent to our entire samsaric experience, in which there is nothing like nirvana. Therefore, it is even psychologically more correct not to say anything about nirvana than to compare it with something known to us, because otherwise we will immediately construct “our” nirvana, create some mental image of nirvana, a completely inadequate idea of it, we will become attached to this idea, making it so thus, and nirvana as the object of affection and the source of suffering. Therefore, the Buddha limited himself to the most general characteristics of nirvana as a state free from suffering, or as a state of supreme bliss (paramam sukham). Subsequently, Buddhists will develop many different concepts of nirvana, but the recognition of its extra-sign, non-semiotic nature will remain in Buddhism forever. Therefore, for the time being, we will also confine ourselves to the brief outline that is given here.

But how to achieve liberation, nirvana? Talks about it Fourth Noble Truth- the truth about the path ( marga), leading to the cessation of suffering — that is, the Noble Eightfold Path ( arya ashtanga marga).

I. Stage of wisdom.

Correct view. At this stage, a person must learn and master the Four Noble Truths and other basic provisions of Buddhism, experience them internally and make the basis of the motivations for their actions and all their behavior.
Right resolve. Now a person must decide once and for all to embark on the path leading to liberation, guided by the principles of Buddhist teachings.

II. stage of morality.

Correct speech. A Buddhist must avoid lying, slander, perjury, slander, and the spread of rumors and gossip that feed enmity in every possible way.
Correct behaviour. Lay Buddhists take the minimum number of vows that contribute to the accumulation of good karma. They are:
1. Non-violence, non-harm to living beings: “without a stick and a sword he goes through life, full of love and compassion for all living beings”;
2. Refusal of bad speech (lie, slander, etc., see above);
3. Non-appropriation of what belongs to another; refusal to steal;
4. Correct sexual life (including in the sense of "do not commit adultery");
5. Refusal to use intoxicating drinks that make the mind cloudy and behavior difficult to control.
Monks and nuns have many more vows (several hundred). They are described in detail in the Vinaya section of the Buddhist Tripitaka (the text called Pratimoksha/Patimokkha is especially important). The vows of the monks orient their lives no longer towards the improvement of karma, but towards its complete exhaustion and the achievement of nirvana.
Right way of life. This is the same correct behavior, but taken as if in a social dimension. A Buddhist (whether monk or layperson) should refrain from engaging in any form of activity that is inconsistent with right conduct. He must refrain, for example, from trading in living beings, people and animals, from trading in weapons (at the same time, Buddhism does not forbid laymen to serve in the army, since the army is seen as a means of protecting living beings in case of aggression, while the arms trade provokes conflicts and creates prerequisites for them), from the distribution of alcohol and drugs, from prostitution and any professions associated with deceit (fortune telling, fortune telling, horoscopes, etc.).

III. stage of concentration.

Right diligence. This stage and all its stages are intended mainly for monks and consist in constant Buddhist yoga classes. The Sanskrit word "yoga" is derived from the root "yuj" - to bind together, harness, conjugate. Therefore, the word "yoga" is related to the Russian word "yoke" and the English word "yoke" - "yoke", "yoke". The word "yoga", thus, means concentration, concentration, binding into one bundle of all forces to achieve the goal. Since ancient times, this word in India has been called various very complex systems of psychophysical training (“psychopractice”, “psychotechnics”), aimed at changing consciousness and transition from a profane, mundane, samsaric state to a sacred state of “immortality and freedom”. Yoga in the narrow sense of the word is one of the orthodox Brahmanistic religious and philosophical systems (darshan), created by the rishi (sage) Patanjali in the 4th-5th centuries AD. e. Yoga in a broad sense is any form of psychopractice aimed at achieving liberation from samsara (nirvana, moksha, mukti, kaivalya); in this sense, one can speak of Buddhist yoga, Jain yoga, Hindu yoga, etc. Yoga, as a rule, was practiced by ascetic hermits and members of various religious monastic communities. “Right determination” is here spoken of in the sense of developing an attitude towards an in-depth and traditional practice of yogic contemplation in order to move into nirvana.
Right mindfulness. Holistic and comprehensive control over all psycho-mental and psycho-physical processes with the development of continuous awareness. The main methods here are shamatha (calming the mind, stopping the agitation of the psyche, getting rid of affects and psycho-mental instability) and vipashyana (analytical contemplation, which involves cultivating good, from the point of view of Buddhism, and cutting off bad states of consciousness).
Right concentration, or right trance. Achievement of Samadhi proper, the ultimate form of contemplation, in which the differences between the contemplative subject, the contemplated object and the process of contemplation disappear. The Buddhist tradition describes numerous types of samadhi, some of which do not lead to nirvana. The correct practice of samadhi eventually leads the monk to liberation, and he becomes an arhat (“worthy”; the Tibetan etymology of this word “victorious of enemies”, that is, affects - klesh, is not philologically correct).

Why does Buddhism deny the existence of an eternal self? In answering this question, we are immediately confronted with the difference between Indian thinking and European thinking. As is well known, Kant considered belief in the immortality of the soul one of the postulates of morality. Buddhism, on the contrary, claims that it is the feeling of “I” and the attachment to “I” that arises from it that is the source of all other attachments, passions and drives, everything that forms kleshas - a clouded affectivity that drags a living being into the quagmire of samsaric existence. What exactly is the "I" that Buddhism denies? We note right away (this is important for considering some further topics) that Buddhism does not say anything about the Atman described in the Upanishads, that is, about the absolute subject, some higher transpersonal Self, the same for all beings and ultimately identical to the Absolute (Brahman). This Atman is neither recognized nor denied by Buddhism. Nothing is said about him (at least in the early texts). It is the individual “I”, the personality as an essence, simple and eternal, a substance identical to itself, that is denied. Such Buddhism does not find it in our experience and considers it as an illusory product of mental construction. Thus, in fact, Buddhism denies what is called jiva (soul) or pudgala (personality) in the Brahmin and Jain traditions. Some passages from early Buddhist texts about the absence of a soul are so reminiscent of the corresponding arguments of D. Hume from the Treatise on Human Nature that Buddhist scholars of the 19th century were shocked by the fact that such theories, which in the West were part of the skeptical and ultimately free-thinking and even anti-religious thought, in Buddhism are placed in a purely religious context.

What are these groups?

In the Buddhist tradition, they are called five skandhas (pancha skandha; the word "skandha" literally means "heap"). It -

the group of the sensible (rupa), that is, everything that we could attribute to the realm of the sensuously perceived and material;
group of feelings (sensation of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) - vedana;
a group of awareness of differences (round - square; white - black, etc.), as well as the formation of ideas and concepts - samjna;
a group of motivating factors - volitions and motivating impulses (samskara); it is this group of elements that is responsible for the formation of karma and, finally,
consciousness as such (vijnana).

It should be noted that the order of enumeration of the skandhas is not accidental - it reflects the order of perception of the object and its development by consciousness: at first, only the sensory data themselves, then the feeling of pleasant or unpleasant accompanying them, then the formation of a specific image of the perceived object and then the design of the installation for attraction to the perceived or disgust for him; all these processes are accompanied by the participation of consciousness in them, which is present even at the level of perception.

Attention should be paid to the fact that here the concept of “personality” also includes the object area perceived by a living being. This circumstance is very important for understanding the specifics of the Buddhist understanding of personality. As at the dawn of the 20th century, O.O. Rosenberg, for a Buddhist thinker, there is no separate "man" and "sun", but there is a certain unified field of experience - "a man who sees the sun". Here the sun is no longer an external object outside the personality, but a part of the personality included in it through the process of perception. This is no longer a “sun in itself” (very little interest in Buddhists), but a sun already perceived by a person and therefore becoming a part of his inner world, a part of a given human personality. This is not the world we live in, but the world we experience. We will return to this topic and the consequences arising from it more than once in the future.

But here we can say that even if Buddhism denies a single simple soul, it still recognizes certain substances, certain “bricks”, of which the personality is composed; these bricks are the five skandhas.

However, this is not at all the case: skandhas are in no way substances, they are precisely groups of elements, and those that are allocated rather conditionally and formally - it is the elements that are real (and even then, according to the teachings of most Buddhist schools, only relatively) and not their groups - skandhas. And here we come to one of the most complex and central topics of Buddhist philosophy - the doctrine of dharmas, that is, to Abhidharma (Buddhist philosophical psychology; more precisely, this is neither philosophy nor psychology, but precisely Abhidharma, but for us it will be clearest of all, if we explain this word through a combination of words familiar to us - "philosophical psychology"). The theory of dharmas is so important for Buddhism that one of his main works (the book was first published in England) by the outstanding Russian Buddhist scholar Academician F.I. Shcherbatskaya called it: “The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word “Dharma”” (“The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word “Dharma””). The doctrine of dharmas - elements that form groups (skandhas), which in turn form what we call a personality, should now be addressed.

Let us briefly define the very concept of “dharma”, which, however, is very difficult, and even such a great Buddhist scholar as F.I. Shcherbatskaya, tried to avoid an unambiguous definition. The word itself is derived from the Sanskrit root dhr - "to hold". That is, dharma is a "holder" or "carrier". Holder of what? Your own quality. Thus, dharma is an indivisible element of our psychophysical experience, or an elementary psychophysical state. Is it possible to consider dharma as a substance? Again, no, and for two reasons at once. Firstly, according to the Indian understanding of substance and substantiality, which, for example, was adhered to by the Nyaya Brahmin school, one of the main ideological opponents of Buddhism, substance is always the bearer of many qualities that are associated with it in different relationships, while in Buddhism each dharma carries only one quality, its own. Secondly, the Indian substantialists asserted the principle of difference between the carrier (substance) and the carried (accidents, qualities), which was expressed in the formula dharma - dharmin bheda, where dharma is the carried quality, and dharmin is its substantial carrier. Buddhism, on the other hand, asserts that dharma and dharmin are identical, the carrier and the quality carried by it coincide. There is also a third fundamental difference: the substances of the Brahmanists are, as a rule, eternal, while the dharmas are momentary. But we will talk about this in more detail later.

Speaking of dharmas, one more important circumstance should be noted, to which the contemporary St. Petersburg Buddhist scholar V.I. Ore. The fact is that in many (though not all) Buddhist schools, dharmas are considered, on the one hand, as dravya sat, that is, elements endowed with an ontological status, real elements, and on the other, as prajnapti sat, that is, as only conceivable , or conventional, units of the language of description of experience. That is, our experience is constituted by dharmas, but we also describe dharmas themselves in terms of dharmas. Here we can give such an example, albeit a somewhat crude one: our speech consists of words, but we also describe words with the help of words. This feature of the Buddhist understanding of dharmas brought them closer to resolving the so-called paradox of mental processes, which European psychology began to realize only in the 20th century: we always describe consciousness not in immanent terms (terms that reflect its inherent properties), but in terms of either the external world or other consciousness. By introducing the concept of dharma as an ontologically relevant element of consciousness and experience in general and as an element of the language for describing consciousness (and experience), Buddhists, in essence, found one of the variants of the language of description immanent in consciousness. This is the undoubted contribution of Buddhism to Indian and world philosophy.

Thus, summing up what has been said above, it should be noted that Buddhism looks at a person as only a name, designed to designate a structurally ordered combination of five groups of non-substantial and instant elementary psychophysical states - dharmas. This is a fairly strict formulation of the anatmavada principle (“without-I”, “without-soul”), more precisely (at least from the point of view of Mahayana Buddhism), one of its two aspects - “the essencelessness of the personality” (pudgala nairatmya). Its second aspect - "the essencelessness of dharmas" - we will consider in a lecture on the philosophical schools of Mahayana Buddhism, since it is recognized not by all Buddhists, but only by Mahayanists.

Buddhist philosophical (Abhidharmic) literature contains various lists and classifications of dharmas. Thus, the Sarvastivadins (Vaibhashiks) school contains a list of 75 dharmas, and the list of Yogacharins (Vijnanavadins) already includes 100 dharmas. If we talk about the classifications of dharmas, then, firstly, they can be classified according to skandhas (dharmas related to rupa skandha, vedana skandha). This fivefold list can be reduced to binary: 1) the dharma of the rupa skandha and 2) the dharma of all other skandhas (in accordance with the division of the personality into nama and rupa - mental and physical); in this case, the second group of dharmas is called dharma dhatu (“dharma element”), since the “dharmas”, as members of the “dharma dhatu” group, are objects for the “mind” (manas), which, as we remember from the analysis of the chain of causal origin , refers by Buddhists to the senses (perception abilities). The dharmas related to the samskara skandha are also generally divided into "psychic" (chitta samprayukta) and "non-psychic" (chitta viprayukta).

Secondly, dharmas are divided into "included in the composition" (Sanskrit dharma) and "not included in the composition" (asanskrit dharma). The first type is, so to speak, empirical dharmas, that is, the elements that constitute our samsaric experience, dharmas included in the five skandhas of a living being. The second type is "supra-empirical" dharmas, that is, dharmas that do not belong to ordinary experience. This is an absolute space, or, as some Buddhists (V.I. Rudoy, E.P. Ostrovskaya) suggest, the space for the deployment of mental experience (akasha) and two types of “cessation” (nirodha; that is, the suppression of the functioning of empirical dharmic flows, nirvana) - "cessation associated with knowledge" (pratisankhya nirodha) and "cessation not associated with knowledge" (apratsankhya nirodha). In addition, dharmas are divided into "expiring affects" (sasrava) and "not expiring affects" (anasrava). The first are dharmas that involve the cycle of samsara; in the process of practicing Buddhist psychopractice, they are subject to gradual elimination. Naturally, only the dharmas “included in the compositions” belong to them. However, the dharma “truth of the path” (marga satya) stands apart: although the path to nirvana, as well as nirvana itself, can be an object of attachment, however, this attachment does not lead to attachment of affects to this dharma, since they do not find support in it. . But in general, these dharmas should be considered "unwholesome" (akushala). The second type of dharmas, on the contrary, contributes to the acquisition of good (kushala) qualities and advancement on the path to nirvana. These also include those dharmas that are not "included in the compositions."

Dharmas constantly arise and disappear, being replaced by new, but conditioned, previous dharmas according to the law of causal origin. These constantly arising and disappearing non-substantial dharmas in their totality form a stream or continuum (santana), which is empirically found as a "living being". Thus, any being, including the human person, is understood in Buddhism not as an unchanging entity (soul, atman), but as a stream of constantly changing elementary psychophysical states. The ontology of Buddhism is an ontology of a non-substrate process.

Another very important feature of the Buddhist worldview is closely connected with the theory of dharmas, namely the doctrine of instantaneity (kshanikavada). Buddhism states that the following characteristics are characteristic of samsaric existence:

everything is impermanent (anitya);
everything is suffering (duhkha);
everything is essenceless, or everything is devoid of self (anatma);
everything is impure (ashubha).

The doctrine of instantaneity follows directly from the first thesis about the universality of impermanence. It states that each dharma (and, accordingly, the whole complex of dharmas, that is, a living being) exists only for one negligible moment, in the next moment being replaced by a new dharma, causally conditioned by the previous one. As the famous song says: “Everything in this raging world is ghostly, there is only a moment, hold on to it. There is only a moment between the past and the future, it is he who is called "life".

Thus, not only is it impossible to step into the same river twice, but there is no one who could try to do it twice. In essence, every new moment there is a new personality, causally connected with the previous one and conditioned by it.

Thus, according to the theory of instantaneity, the flow of dharmas that forms a living being is not only continuous, but also discrete at the same time. To use a modern metaphor, it is best compared to film: it is made up of individual frames, which, however, we do not see when we watch the film and perceive it as a pure continuum. At the same time, the differences between two adjacent frames are completely insignificant, and they appear to the naked eye to be practically identical, while the differences grow and appear gradually. In this example, each new life is a new episode of the beginningless series, nirvana is the end of the movie.

Here, however, the question may arise: if there is no soul, then what then is reborn and passes from life to life? The answer to it is quite paradoxical: nothing is reborn and does not pass. Contrary to popular misconception, there is no doctrine of reincarnation or reincarnation in Buddhism at all. Man in Buddhism is not an embodied soul, as in Hinduism. He is a stream of states - dharm, a series of frames - moments.

Therefore, professional Buddhist scholars try to avoid such words as "rebirth" or, even more so, "reincarnation", and prefer to talk about cyclic existence or the alternation of births and deaths. Two examples sometimes given by contemporary Buddhist preachers are pertinent here. The first example is with billiard balls: the cue (the karmic impulse of sanskara) hits the ball (conditional personality - pudgala), which thus receives a certain acceleration and trajectory. This ball hits another ball, to which it transfers acceleration and determines its trajectory, etc. Here, so to speak, only energy is transferred, which connects this existence with the existence of its “karmic successor” (such a “charge transfer” occurs, according to being, and in every moment of the same life). At the same time, “mind” (manas), based on the previous time moment, provides memory and a sense of personal identity. By the way, Buddhism teaches that the Buddha remembers all “his” previous lives, on which, in particular, the plots of jataka (from jati - birth), didactic stories about the lives of Siddhartha Gautama - Buddha Shakyamuni that preceded the awakening, are built.

The second example is related to the image of a kaleidoscope: a certain combination of colored glasses (a set of dharmas, expressed empirically as “a given person”) after turning the kaleidoscope (a karmic effect that determines the nature of the next life) changes to another (the glasses are rearranged), causally determined by their initial position and karmic impulse and expressed in direct experience in the form of another living being, causally connected with the first. Here it is appropriate to recall once again that the law of karma in Buddhism is not retribution or retribution (unlike the theistic directions of Hinduism, in which the almighty Lord - Ishvara distributes karmic fruits); the law of karma is quite objective and inevitable, like the laws of nature in their European scientific understanding.

The doctrine of anatmavada, the theory of dharmas and the doctrine of instantaneity form the basis of the Buddhist ontology, which is the ontology of a non-substrate process.

To complete our review of the foundations of Buddhist teaching, a few more words must be said about Buddhist cosmology. But first it is necessary to point out the specifics of the very attitude of Buddhism to cosmological topics.

The central and, in essence, the only problem of the Buddhist teaching is the living being (man) and his liberation. Actually, all the most seemingly abstract problems discussed over the centuries by Buddhist philosophers only seem to be so. Buddhism is a completely pragmatic doctrine, and knowledge just for the sake of knowledge is of little interest to it.

The Buddhist thinker is not an ancient Greek philosopher who at his leisure indulged in the search for truth for the sake of truth itself. This is a monk who strives for liberation himself and wants to bring other people to it as well. It is liberation that is the motive of Buddhist philosophizing. What is a person, how is his consciousness arranged, what are the mechanisms of its functioning and how should it be transformed so that a person turns from a suffering samsaric being into a free one, from a layman into a saint, from a darkened being into an enlightened being. Hence the interest of Buddhism in psychology and problems of consciousness. However, Buddhism treated problems that did not directly lead to liberation or were neutral with respect to this goal. In response to various kinds of abstract metaphysical questions, which, moreover, do not have an adequate expression in the language (there are fourteen such questions in the Buddhist tradition), the Buddha kept a "noble silence." Also well known is the parable of the wounded man, which the Buddha once told his disciples, who pestered him somehow with very abstract questions. Here, said the Buddha, a poisoned arrow has hit a man in the eye, and a doctor has come who can heal him. But that man told the doctor that he would not let him take out the arrow until the doctor told him everything about his ancestors, relatives, the sciences he studied, and also did not answer his other questions. Such a person, the Buddha concluded, would die before he knew everything that interested him. The parallel is quite understandable: Buddha is a doctor, and his foolish disciples are like the wounded man in the parable. Buddhism, however, claims that the Buddha is inherent in omniscience (sarvajnata), that is, he is aware of all the truths of a metaphysical order. However, this omniscience is acquired in the act of awakening, to achieve which one should diligently practice the Noble Eightfold Path, and not indulge in empty verbiage (as wandering philosophers - shramanas liked to do) or useless (and aimless) intellectual games, which are the same shramanas, and orthodox brahmins were also very committed.

This attitude of Buddhism completely determined its attitude to the question of how the world works. Almost all schools of classical Indian Buddhism did not doubt the existence of a world outside the consciousness of the perceiving subject, and the Vaibhashikas - Sarvastivadins were even sure that it is quite accurately and adequately reflected in the human consciousness in the process of perception. But this objective world in itself did not interest Buddhists at all and in principle. The world of Buddhist cosmology is a psychocosm, that is, a world already reflected in the consciousness of a person and, thus, included in his consciousness, or, more precisely, in the dharmic stream that forms it, which has become, as it were, a part of what can be called "personality". After all, only the things of this world mastered and appropriated by the subject can be desired, only they can be disgusted and, in general, have any affective states.

The world, as an objective reality, is completely indifferent to us, being “in serenity” and inaccessibility beyond our consciousness and our interest. At the same time, Buddhists were well aware that this world is completely different for different types of living beings: the world as a “residence” clearly correlates with the level of deployment of the consciousness of different living beings, and the same world in itself turns out to be completely different psychocosmos for different living beings. creatures. As one Mahayana thinker would later say, what is the river Ganges for man will be a stream of pus and sewage for a hungry preta spirit and a stream of ambrosia-amrita for a deva deity. And only the Buddhists of the Yogachara school did not consider it possible to assert that behind these subjective "Ganges" there is some objective "correct" Ganges.

An example can be given here from modern philosophy. The Estonian biologist and philosopher von Uexkül specifically dealt with the problem of the relationship between the bodies of animals and their perception of the environment. Here is an elementary example from his conclusions. Pine grows. For a forester, this is a tree that should either be protected or used for firewood. For a fox, a pine tree is a home and a refuge, because under the roots of a pine tree is its hole. And what is a pine tree for a bark beetle that lives in a pine tree and feeds on it at the same time, one can only guess. But if for the Estonian scientist the bodies of animals adapt to their environment, then for Buddhists, on the contrary, the environment is, as it were, formed for a given type of living creatures.

Thus, in Buddhist cosmology, it is not the physical universe that is described, but the psychocosm, primarily the human psychocosm. What does this psychocosm look like?

If in reasoning about the nature of personality, dharmas, instantaneity and other similar issues, Buddhists thought quite logically, rationally and discursively, then their reasoning about cosmology is clearly permeated with archaic mythologism, which, however, was passed through the prism of worldview premises and doctrines of Buddhism. Buddhists, in essence, did not create a new cosmology, but borrowed it from the common Indian cultural heritage, slightly modifying it in accordance with the principles of their teaching. However, Buddhists have never attached any exceptional ideological significance to their picture of the world and quite calmly transformed it in the regions where Buddhism was spread under the influence of local ideas and cosmological systems. And such an authoritative figure in modern Buddhism as the Dalai Lama XIV once said that if being a Buddhist means believing in the world mountain Sumeru, the continents located around it and the hell located underground, then he is not a Buddhist at all.

Traditional Buddhist ideas about the world - the psychocosm - are as follows: the universe is trinity in nature (remember the archaic ideas about the three worlds - lower, middle and upper), it consists of three levels, or three worlds (loka; cf. Latin locus - "place" ) - the world of desires (kamadhatu), the world of forms (rupadhatu) and the world of non-forms (arupadhatu). Because of its three-layered nature, this universe is often called the "three-world" or "three-cosmos" (Trayalokya). The world of desires (kamadhatu) is the place where almost all living beings live (or are experienced), with the exception of some higher deities and extremely advanced yogis. The desire realm is inhabited by the inhabitants of hells, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, and most of the gods. In the center of the flat earth is Mount Sumeru, rising to an unimaginable height, around which are the palaces of the thirty-three gods of the world of Brahma. Mount Sumeru is surrounded by several mountain rings formed by various metals. Behind them stretches the expanse of the world ocean, in which there are four continents, one of which is “our” continent (its name is Jambudvipa; in medieval sources, this is usually called India). Under the earth are the dwellings of pretas and the system of ten (“cold” and “hot”) hells, the lowest and most terrible of which is called “niraya” (“without deliverance”), since the period of stay in it is incredibly long, although it is still finite. .

There are immeasurably many worlds-tricosms similar to ours, they exist according to the same laws, as if parallel to our world.

Cosmic time is cyclical and without beginning, that is, none of the cycles can be considered the first. The world has not been created by anyone, the idea of divine creation is fundamentally rejected by Buddhism for a number of reasons, both ethical (a good God could not create the world, the essence of which is the suffering of living beings), and metaphysical nature (they will be discussed in a lecture on Buddhist philosophy) . The reason for the existence of the worlds is the energy of the total karma of living beings of the previous world cycle (just as the future life of a being is determined by its karma at the time of death).

After the destruction of one universe, there is only an infinite space (akasha), in which at some point certain winds begin to blow, gradually growing stronger and turning into a powerful hurricane, gradually thickening to a state of “diamond hardness” and acquiring the shape of a circle. This circle of hardened wind forms the foundation of the new world. And it is nothing more than the objectified energy of the total karma of living beings of the destroyed universe (compare with the objectified will as the physical basis of phenomena in the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer; especially his work “On Will in Nature”). Further formation of the world takes place from top to bottom. First, a heavenly palace suddenly appears with the god Brahma on the throne, after which the other thirty-three gods of the heavens of the desire world appear around him. They see Brahma and exclaim: “It is Brahma! He is eternal, he has always been! He created us all! - this is how faith in a creator god arises. The golden-colored clouds swirling in the heights begin to pour rain, which floods the disk of the wind below and gradually forms the world ocean. From the turbidity dissolved in it, continents and Mount Sumeru are formed. Hells are the last ones to appear.

The people who appeared on earth after the formation of the continents are at first divine and like the gods of the world of forms; their life span is 84,000 years. The earth at this time is covered with a special earthen cake, exuding an incomparable aroma. People may not eat at all, but this aroma attracts them so much that they start eating earthen cake, and gradually eat it. Meanwhile, their lifespan is gradually reduced, the bodies coarsen, the digestive organs are formed, and by the time the whole pie covering the earth is eaten, people can no longer do without food. Then they have no choice but to start growing rice. But there is not enough rice for everyone, and then people begin to draw boundaries, separating their land from someone else's, property appears. However, as rice becomes scarce and scarce, some people begin to violate the boundaries of other people's fields and steal rice. Chaos reigns, and clashes between people begin. Then people decide that the time has come to restore order, and decide to elect the most worthy of their number to maintain order. This is how the first king appears. He selects the most respected people as his assistants, so that they directly maintain order. This is how the class of kshatriyas (warriors and rulers) appears. At this time, Buddhas begin to appear in the world.

It is interesting that Buddhism, which arose in the Kshatriya environment, describes in detail the appearance of the military estate, almost ignoring the priestly (the first Brahmins are only reported that they were people prone to solitude and contemplation). In addition, if in Brahminism estates are divine institutions that express the sacred world order, then in Buddhism they (and, above all, kshatriyas as the ruling varna) are the result of a kind of “social contract”. By the way, Buddhism (as well as Mohism - the teaching of the philosopher Mo-tzu, or Mo Di in ancient China) is one of the teachings that first proclaimed the principle of a social contract as the basis of the state.

Speaking about the social doctrine of Buddhism, one should once again emphasize its rejection of the doctrine of the divinity of the estate-caste system and its exclusive orientation towards secular royal power. Interestingly, all the major pan-Indian empires of the pre-Muslim period (the Mauryan and Gupta states) were either Buddhist or patronized Buddhism. Interestingly, outside of India, in the countries of Southeast Asia, the monarchs, strengthening the central secular power, systematically ousted Brahmanism and the priesthood, asserting Buddhism and the Buddhist concept of the state (this process is especially well studied on the example of Thailand). Buddhism opposed the idea of a king ruling on the basis of Dharma, the principles of Buddhist teachings (dharma raja) to the Brahmanic idea of a “divine king” (deva raja).

But back to cosmology. Gradually, human morals degenerate more and more, and selfishness becomes so great that people literally cannot bear even the sight of each other. In proportion to this moral degradation, the life span is also reduced, gradually reaching ten years (this does not mean that people die as children - the entire life cycle unfolds in ten years, like a cat or dog). Finally, people disperse through the forests, trying not to meet, but when they meet, they immediately try to kill each other. And now, during the most terrible moral degradation, there is a person who has the idea that it is no longer possible to live like this, that it is necessary to change the attitude towards his fellows. He goes to other people and teaches them friendliness. After this, morals begin to improve, and the life span gradually increases to eighty-four thousand years, after which the period of degradation begins again. The period of decreasing life span and moral degradation was called the "period of decrease", the opposite phase of the cycle - the "period of increase". These segments become a conditional measure of the time of the entire cosmic cycle, even those periods when there were no people or other living beings. The entire mahakalpa (“great period”), that is, the cosmic cycle, is divided into four small kalpas: voids (from the destruction of one world to the beginning of the formation of another), formation, stay (when the cosmos is stable) and destruction. Each of these four kalpas consists of twenty periods of increase and decrease, that is, the duration of the entire world "eon" is equal to eighty periods of increase and decrease.

During the kalpa of the world's presence in the world, Buddhas and chakravartins appear. Chakravartin (the Sovereign Turning the Wheel) is a world ruler, a perfect universal monarch, who has the same thirty-two signs as the Buddha (remember the life of Siddhartha Gautama - Shakyamuni Buddha and the prediction of the astrologer Ashita), but they are less pronounced. A Buddha and a Chakravartin cannot appear at the same time. Chakravartins differ in the type of chakra (literally - “wheel”, here we mean a combat throwing disc), which is their attribute: a chakravartin with a golden chakra, all people themselves ask him to rule them; a chakravartin with a silver chakra begins to gather troops to conquer the world, but does not have time to gather them, as all states recognize his authority; An iron chakra chakravartin moves troops on a campaign, but his enemies surrender without a fight: non-violent rule is the hallmark of a chakravartin.

After twenty periods of increase and decrease of human life, the accumulated bad karma leads to the fact that the world gradually begins to collapse. The first sign of this is the cessation of birth in the hells, since the hells are destroyed first (perhaps, the Buddhists say, at this time the deeds leading to the birth in hell are not performed, or maybe people with such karma are born in the hells of other world systems). Finally, all creatures perish, and the host world is engulfed in fire. The last to die is the burning palace of Brahma, and the world ceases to exist, giving way to a kalpa of emptiness; in this void the breezes begin to blow again, and the whole cycle repeats itself.

Subsequently, already within the framework of Mahayana Buddhism, there were disputes between Buddhists about whether it could ever happen that all living beings would reach nirvana and samsara would cease to exist once and for all. Opinions on this issue were divided: some Buddhist schools recognized this possibility, others considered it impossible, adopting the doctrine not only of beginninglessness, but also of the infinity of samsara.

All of the above characterizes the "lower" world of Buddhist cosmology. What are the other two worlds - the worlds of forms and non-forms?

The world of forms is so called because the group of the sensuous (rupa) is much less represented there than in the world of desires. These are pure forms, without gross materiality. The world of forms is inhabited by higher gods who do not interfere in the affairs of the world of desires. The period of their existence is extremely long, since the world of forms (and non-forms) is not subject to destruction and re-creation.

The world of non-forms (like the hells according to the yogacharins) are pure states of consciousness without their respective locations. There is no time, no space, no perception, no non-perception. And yet it is not nirvana, but part of samsara. In the world of non-forms, an ordinary living being cannot be born. Only yogis who already during their lifetime unfold their consciousness at this level can manifest themselves here after death. But one should not strive for this in any way - the term of "life" here is so long that even the time of the duration of a great kalpa is nothing compared to it. But then the power of karma and sanskaras will certainly manifest itself, and the yogi who “got” here will certainly be reborn again at lower levels of samsara, gaining nothing, but losing precious time that could be used to gain nirvana. Therefore, "birth" here is considered as inauspicious as being born in hell. And this means that Buddhism does not approve of purely technically sophisticated psychotechnics, devoid of a focus on liberation. Here it is appropriate to recall that the Buddha also entered the final nirvana not from the highest level of the eighth stage of contemplation, but from the fourth level.

It originated in the middle of the first millennium BC in the north of India as a current that was opposed to the prevailing Brahmanism at that time. In the middle of the VI century. BC. Indian society was going through a socio-economic and cultural crisis. The tribal organization and traditional ties disintegrated, and class relations were formed. At that time, there were a large number of wandering ascetics in India, they offered their vision of the world. Their opposition to the existing order aroused the sympathy of the people. Among the teachings of this kind was Buddhism, which gained the greatest influence in.

Most researchers believe that the founder of Buddhism was real. He was the son of the head of the tribe Shakiev, born in 560g. BC. in northeast India. Tradition says that the Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama after a carefree and happy youth, he acutely felt the frailty and hopelessness of life, the horror of the idea of an endless series of reincarnations. He left home in order to communicate with the sages to find the answer to the question: how can a person be freed from suffering. The prince traveled for seven years, and one day, when he was sitting under a tree bodhi, illumination dawned on him. He found the answer to his question. Name Buddha means "enlightened". Shocked by his discovery, he sat under this tree for several days, and then went down to the valley to the people to whom he began to preach a new doctrine. He delivered his first sermon in Benares. At first, he was joined by five of his former students, who left him when he abandoned asceticism. Subsequently, he had many followers. His ideas were close to many. For 40 years he preached in North and Central India.

Truths of Buddhism

The basic truths discovered by the Buddha were as follows.

The whole life of man is suffering. This truth is based on the recognition of the impermanence and transience of all things. Everything arises to be annihilated. Existence is devoid of substance, it devours itself, which is why in Buddhism it is designated as a flame. And only grief and suffering can be endured from the flame.

The cause of suffering is our desire. Suffering arises because man is attached to life, he craves existence. Because existence is filled with sorrow, suffering will exist as long as one lusts for life.

To get rid of suffering, you have to get rid of desire. This is possible only as a result of achieving nirvana, which in Buddhism is understood as the extinction of passions, the cessation of thirst. Is it not at the same time the cessation of life? Buddhism avoids a direct answer to this question. Only negative judgments are expressed about nirvana: it is not desire and not consciousness, not life and not death. This is a state in which one is freed from the transmigration of souls. In later Buddhism, nirvana is understood as bliss, consisting in freedom and spiritualization.

To get rid of desire, one must follow the eightfold path of salvation. It is the definition of these steps on the path to nirvana that is the main one in the teachings of the Buddha, which is called middle way that avoids the two extremes of indulgence in sensual pleasures and the torture of the flesh. This teaching is called the Eightfold Path of Salvation because it indicates eight states by mastering which a person can achieve purification of the mind, tranquility and intuition.

These are the states:

correct understanding: one should believe the Buddha that the world is full of sorrow and suffering;
right intentions: you should firmly determine your path, limit your passions and aspirations;
correct speech: you should watch your words so that they do not lead to evil - speech should be truthful and benevolent;
right actions: one should avoid non-virtuous deeds, restrain oneself and do good deeds;
right way of life: one should lead a worthy life, without harming the living;
right effort: you should follow the direction of your thoughts, drive away all evil and tune in to good;
right thoughts: it should be understood that evil is from our flesh;
proper focus: one should constantly and patiently train, achieve the ability to concentrate, contemplate, go deep in search of truth.

The first two steps signify the attainment of wisdom or prajna. The next three are moral behavior - sewed. And finally, the last three are the discipline of the mind or samadha.

However, these states cannot be understood as rungs of a ladder that a person masters gradually. Everything is connected here. Moral conduct is necessary to achieve wisdom, and without mental discipline we cannot develop moral conduct. Wise is he who acts compassionately; compassionate is he who acts wisely. Such behavior is impossible without the discipline of the mind.

On the whole, it can be said that Buddhism brought to personal aspect, which was not previously in the Eastern worldview: the assertion that salvation is possible only through personal determination and willingness to act in a certain direction. In addition, Buddhism clearly shows idea of the need for compassion to all living beings - an idea most fully embodied in Mahayana Buddhism.

Main branches of Buddhism

The early Buddhists were only one of many heterodox sects competing at the time, but their influence increased over time. Buddhism was supported primarily by the urban population: rulers, warriors, who saw in it an opportunity to get rid of the supremacy of the Brahmins.

The first followers of the Buddha gathered in some secluded place during the rainy season and, waiting for this period, formed a small community. Those who joined the community usually renounced all property. They were called bhikshu which means "beggar". They shaved their heads, dressed in rags, mostly yellow, and had only the bare necessities with them: three pieces of clothing (top, bottom and cassock), a razor, a needle, a belt, a sieve to filter water, choosing insects from it (ahimsa) , toothpick, begging cup. Most of the time they spent wandering, collecting alms. They could only eat until noon and only vegetarian. In the cave, in an abandoned building, the bhikkhus lived through the rainy season, conversing on pious topics and practicing self-improvement. Near their habitats, the dead bhikkhus were usually buried. Subsequently, monuments-stupas (dome-shaped structures-crypts with a tightly walled entrance) were erected at their burial sites. Various structures were built around these stupas. Later, monasteries arose near these places. The charter of monastic life was formed. When the Buddha was alive, he himself explained all the complex issues of the teaching. After his death, the oral tradition continued for a long time.

Shortly after the death of the Buddha, his followers convened the first Buddhist council to canonize the teachings. The purpose of this cathedral, which took place in the city Rajagrih, was to work out the text of the message of the Buddha. However, not everyone agreed with the decisions taken at this council. In 380 BC a second council was called in Vaishali in order to resolve any disagreements.

Buddhism flourished during the reign of the emperor Ashoka(III century BC), thanks to the efforts of which Buddhism became the official state ideology and went beyond the borders of India. Ashoka did a lot for the Buddhist faith. He erected 84 thousand stupas. During his reign, the third council was held in the city Pataliputra, which approved the text of the sacred books of Buddhism, which amounted to tipitaka(or Tripitaka), and a decision was made to send missionaries to all parts of the country, up to Ceylon. Ashoka sent his son to Ceylon, where he became an apostle, converting many thousands of people to Buddhism and building many monasteries. It is here that the southern canon of the Buddhist church is affirmed - Hinayana, which is also called Theravada(the teaching of the elders). Hinayana means "small vehicle or narrow path of salvation."

In the middle of the last century BC. in the north-west of India, the Scythian rulers created the Kushan kingdom, the ruler of which was Kanishka, an ardent Buddhist and patron of Buddhism. Kanishka convened a fourth council towards the end of the 1st century. AD in the town Kashmir. The Council formulated and approved the main provisions of a new trend in Buddhism, called mahayana -"great chariot or wide circle of salvation." Mahayana Buddhism developed by famous Indian Buddhist Nagarajuna, made many changes to the classical doctrine.

Features of the main directions of Buddhism are as follows (see table).

Main branches of Buddhism

Hinayana

Mahayana

The monastic life is considered ideal, only a monk can achieve salvation and get rid of reincarnations
On the path of salvation, no one can help a person, it all depends on his personal efforts.
There is no pantheon of saints who can intercede for people
There is no concept of heaven and hell. There is only nirvana and the cessation of incarnations
No rites or magic
Icons and cult sculpture are missing

Believes that the piety of a layman is comparable to the merits of a monk and ensures salvation
The institute of bodysattvas appears - saints who have achieved enlightenment, who help the laity, lead them along the path of salvation
A large pantheon of saints appears, to whom you can pray, ask them for help
The concept of heaven appears, where the soul goes for good deeds, and hell, where it goes as a punishment for sins Attaches great importance to rituals and sorcery
Sculptures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas appear

Buddhism originated and flourished in India, but by the end of the 1st millennium AD. it loses its positions here and is supplanted by Hinduism, which is more familiar to the inhabitants of India. There are several reasons that led to this outcome:

the development of Hinduism, which inherited the traditional values of Brahmanism and modernized it;
enmity between different branches of Buddhism, which often led to open struggle;
a decisive blow to Buddhism was dealt by the Arabs, who conquered many Indian territories in the 7th-8th centuries. and brought Islam with them.

Buddhism, having spread in many countries of East Asia, has become a world religion that retains its influence to this day.

Sacred literature and ideas about the structure of the world

The teachings of Buddhism are expounded in a number of canonical collections, the central place among which is occupied by the Pali canon "Tipitaka" or "Tripitaka", which means "three baskets". Buddhist texts were originally written on palm leaves, which were placed in baskets. The canon is written in the language Pali. In terms of pronunciation, Pali is related to Sanskrit in the same way that Italian is related to Latin. The canon is in three parts.

Vinaya Pitaka, contains ethical teaching, as well as information about discipline and ceremonial; this includes 227 rules by which monks must live;
Sutta Pitaka, contains the teachings of the Buddha and popular Buddhist literature including " Dhammapada", which means "the path of truth" (an anthology of Buddhist parables), and " Jataku» - a collection of stories about the previous lives of the Buddha;
Abidhamma Pitaka, contains the metaphysical representations of Buddhism, philosophical texts that outline the Buddhist understanding of life.

The listed books from all branches of Buddhism are especially recognized by the Hinayana. Other branches of Buddhism have their own sacred sources.

Mahayana followers consider their sacred book "Prajnaparalshta Sutra(teachings on perfect wisdom). It is considered the revelation of the Buddha himself. Due to the extreme difficulty of understanding, the Buddha's contemporaries deposited it in the Serpent Palace in the middle world, and when the time was right to reveal these teachings to people, the great Buddhist thinker Nagarajuna brought them back to the world of people.

The sacred books of the Mahayana are written in Sanskrit. They include mythological and philosophical subjects. Parts of these books are Diamond Sutra, Heart Sutra and Lotus Sutra.

An important feature of the Mahayana sacred books is that Siddtarha Gautama is not considered the only Buddha: there were others before him and there will be others after him. Of great importance is the doctrine developed in these books about a bodisattva (body - enlightened, sattva - essence) - a being who is already ready to pass into nirvana, but delays this transition in order to help others. The most revered is the bodysattva Avalokitesvara.

Of great interest is the cosmology of Buddhism, since it underlies all views of life. According to the basic provisions of Buddhism, the universe has a multi-layered structure. In the center of the earthly world, which is cylindrical disk, there is a mountain Meru. She is surrounded seven concentric ring-shaped seas and as many circles of mountains dividing the seas. Outside the last mountain range is sea which is visible to people. On it lie four world islands. In the bowels of the earth are hell caves. They rise above the earth six heavens, on which 100,000 thousand gods live (the pantheon of Buddhism includes all the gods of Brahmanism, as well as the gods of other peoples). The gods have conference hall where they gather on the eighth day of the lunar month, and amusement park. Buddha is considered the main god, but he is not the creator of the world, the world exists next to him, he is as eternal as Buddha. Gods are born and die at will.

Above these six heavens - 20 heavens of Brahma; the higher the celestial sphere, the easier and more spiritual life in it. The last four, which are called brahmaloka, there are no more images and no rebirths, here the blessed already taste nirvana. The rest of the world is called kamaloka. All together form the totality of the universe. There are an infinite number of such universes.

The infinite set of universes is understood not only in the geographical, but also in the historical sense. Universes are born and die. The lifetime of the universe is called kalpa. Against this backdrop of endless creation and destruction, the drama of life is played out.

However, the teaching of Buddhism deviates from any metaphysical assertion, it does not speak of infinity, nor of finiteness, nor of eternity, nor of non-eternity, nor of being, nor of non-being. Buddhism speaks of forms, causes, images - all this is united by the concept samsara, cycle of incarnations. Samsara includes all objects that arise and disappear; it is the result of former states and the cause of future actions that arise according to the law of dhamma. Dhamma- this is a moral law, a norm according to which images are created; samsara is the form in which the law is realized. Dhamma is not a physical principle of causality, but a moral world order, a principle of retribution. Dhamma and samsara are closely related, but they can be understood only in conjunction with the basic concept of Buddhism and the Indian worldview in general - the concept of karma. Karma means specific the embodiment of the law, retribution or reward for specific affairs.

An important concept in Buddhism is the concept "apshan". It is usually translated into Russian as "individual soul". But Buddhism does not know the soul in the European sense. Atman means the totality of states of consciousness. There are many states of consciousness called scandas or dharma, but it is impossible to find the carrier of these states, which would exist by itself. The combination of skandhas leads to a certain act, from which karma grows. Skandas disintegrate at death, but karma continues to live and leads to new existences. Karma does not die and leads to the transmigration of the soul. continues to exist not because of the immortality of the soul, but because of the indestructibility of his deeds. Karma is thus understood as something material from which everything living and moving arises. At the same time, karma is understood as something subjective, since it is created by the individuals themselves. So, samsara is a form, an embodiment of karma; dhamma is a law that comes to light by itself through karma. Conversely, karma is formed from samsara, which then affects subsequent samsara. This is where dhamma comes into play. To get rid of karma, to avoid further incarnations is possible only by achieving nirvana, about which Buddhism also does not say anything definite. It is not life, but not death, not desire and not consciousness. Nirvana can be understood as a state of desirelessness, as complete peace. From this understanding of the world and human existence flow the four truths discovered by the Buddha.

Buddhist community. Holidays and rituals

The followers of Buddhism call their teaching Triratnaya or Tiratnaya(triple treasure), referring to the Buddha, dhamma (teaching) and sangha (community). Initially, the Buddhist community was a group of mendicant monks, bhikkhus. After the death of the Buddha, there was no head of the community. The unification of monks is carried out only on the basis of the word of the Buddha, his teachings. There is no centralization of the hierarchy in Buddhism, with the exception of a natural hierarchy - by seniority. Communities living in the neighborhood could unite, the monks acted together, but not on command. Gradually, the formation of monasteries took place. The community united within the monastery was called sangha. Sometimes the word "sangha" denoted the Buddhists of one region or an entire country.

At first, everyone was accepted into the sangha, then some restrictions were introduced, they stopped accepting criminals, slaves, minors without the consent of their parents. Teenagers often became novices, they learned to read and write, studied sacred texts, and received a considerable education for that time. Those who entered the sangha for the duration of their stay in the monastery had to renounce everything that connected them with the world - family, caste, property - and take five vows: don't kill, don't steal, don't lie, don't commit adultery, don't get drunk; he was also required to shave off his hair and put on monastic robes. However, at any moment the monk could leave the monastery, he was not condemned for this, and he could be on friendly terms with the community.

Those monks who decided to devote their entire lives to religion underwent the rite of passage. The novice was subjected to a severe test, testing his spirit and will. Acceptance into the sangha as a monk imposed additional obligations and vows: do not sing or dance; do not sleep in comfortable beds; do not eat at the wrong time; do not acquire; do not use things that have a strong smell or intense color. In addition, there were a large number of minor prohibitions and restrictions. Twice a month - on the new moon and on the full moon - the monks gathered for mutual confessions. The uninitiated, women and laity were not allowed to these meetings. Depending on the severity of the sin, sanctions were also applied, most often expressed in the form of voluntary repentance. Four major sins entailed exile forever: carnal copulation; murder; stealing and falsely claiming that someone has superhuman strength and the dignity of an arhat.

Arhat - this is the ideal of Buddhism. This is the name of those saints or sages who have freed themselves from samsara and after death will go to nirvana. An Arhat is one who has done everything he had to do: destroyed desire, the desire for self-fulfillment, ignorance, wrong views in himself.

There were also women's monasteries. They were organized in the same way as the men's, but all the main ceremonies were performed by monks from the nearest monastery.

The monk's attire is extremely simple. He had three garments: an undergarment, an outer garment, and a cassock, the color of which is yellow in the south and red in the north. He could not take money in any case, he did not even have to ask for food, and the laity themselves had to serve it only to the monk who appeared on the threshold. The monks, who had renounced the world, every day went into the homes of ordinary people, for whom the appearance of a monk was a living sermon and an invitation to a higher life. For insulting the monks, the laity was punished by not accepting alms from them by overturning the alms bowl. If in this way a rejected layman was reconciled with the community, then his gifts were again accepted. The layman has always remained for the monk a being of a lower nature.

The monks had no real manifestations of the cult. They did not serve the gods; on the contrary, they believed that the gods should serve them, since they are saints. The monks were not engaged in any work, except for daily going for alms. Their occupations consisted of spiritual exercises, meditation, reading and copying of sacred books, performing or participating in rituals.

The Buddhist rites include the penitential assemblies already described, to which only monks are allowed. However, there are many rites in which the laity also participate. Buddhists adopted the custom of celebrating the day of rest four times a month. This holiday is called uposatha, something like Saturday for Jews, Sunday for Christians. These days the monks taught the laity and explained the scripture.

In Buddhism, there are a large number of holidays and rituals, the central theme of which is the figure of Buddha - the most important events of his life, his teachings and the monastic community organized by him. In each country, these holidays are celebrated in different ways, depending on the characteristics of the national culture. All Buddhist holidays are celebrated according to the lunar calendar, and most of the most important holidays fall on the days of the full moon, since it was believed that the full moon has a magical property to indicate to a person the need for diligence and promise liberation.

Vesok

This holiday is dedicated to three important events in the life of the Buddha: the birthday, the day of enlightenment and the day of passing into nirvana - and is the most important of all Buddhist holidays. It is celebrated on the full moon day of the second month of the Indian calendar, which falls at the end of May - beginning of June of the Gregorian calendar.

On the days of the holiday, solemn prayers are held in all monasteries and processions and processions are arranged. The temples are decorated with flower garlands and paper lanterns - they symbolize the enlightenment that came to the world with the teachings of the Buddha. On the territory of temples, oil lamps are also placed around sacred trees and stupas. The monks read prayers all night and tell believers stories from the life of the Buddha and his disciples. Lay people also meditate in the temple and listen to the instructions of the monks throughout the night. The ban on agricultural work and other activities that can harm small living creatures is especially carefully observed. After the end of the festive prayer service, the laity arrange a plentiful meal for the members of the monastic community and present them with gifts. A characteristic rite of the holiday is the washing of Buddha statues with sweetened water or tea and showering them with flowers.

In Lamaism, this holiday is the most strict ritual day of the calendar, when you can not eat meat and lamps are lit everywhere. On this day, it is customary to circumambulate stupas, temples and other Buddhist shrines clockwise, spreading out on the ground. Many vow to keep a strict fast and remain silent for seven days.

Vassa

Vassa(from the name of the month in the Pali language) - seclusion during the rainy season. The preaching activity and the whole life of the Buddha and his disciples was associated with constant wanderings and wanderings. During the rainy season, which began at the end of June and ended at the beginning of September, travel was not possible. According to legend, it was during the rainy season that the Buddha first retired with his disciples in Deer Grove (Sarnath). Therefore, already at the time of the first monastic communities, the custom was established to stop during the rainy season in some solitary place and spend this time in prayer and meditation. Soon this custom became an obligatory rule of monastic life and was observed by all branches of Buddhism. During this period, the monks do not leave their monastery and engage in a deeper practice of meditation and comprehension of Buddhist teachings. During this period, the usual communication of monks with the laity is reduced.

In the countries of Southeast Asia, the laity themselves often take monastic vows during the rainy season and for three months lead the same way of life as the monks. During this period, marriages are prohibited. At the end of the period of seclusion, the monks confess their sins to each other and ask for forgiveness from their brothers in the community. Over the next month, contacts and communication between the monks and the laity are gradually restored.

Festival of Lights

This holiday marks the end of monastic seclusion and is celebrated on the full moon of the ninth month of the lunar calendar (October - according to the Gregorian calendar). The holiday continues for a month. In temples and monasteries, rituals are held to mark the holiday, as well as the exit from the community of those who joined it during the rainy season. On the night of the full moon, everything is illuminated by lights, for which candles, paper lanterns, and electric lamps are used. It is said that the lights are lit to light the way for Budce, inviting him to descend from heaven after he delivered a sermon to his mother. In some monasteries, the statue of Buddha is removed from the pedestal and carried through the streets, symbolizing the descent of the Buddha to earth.

These days it is customary to visit relatives, visit each other to pay their respects and make small gifts. The celebration ends with a ceremony kathina(from Sanskrit - clothes), which consists in the fact that the laity give clothes to members of the community. One robe is solemnly presented to the head of the monastery, who then passes it on to the monk who is recognized as the most virtuous in the monastery. The name of the ceremony comes from the way the clothes were made. Pieces of fabric were stretched over the frame, and then sewn together. This frame was called kathina. Another meaning of the word kathina is "difficult", meaning the difficulty of being a disciple of the Buddha.

The kathina rite has become the only ceremony in which the laity are involved.

There are many sacred places of worship in Buddhism. It is believed that the Buddha himself identified cities as places of pilgrimage: where he was born - Capilawatta; where he reached the highest enlightenment - Gaia; where he first preached Benares; where he entered nirvana - Kushinagara.