A Brief History of Buddhism

 By Todde Salén1 , Sweden

 THERE ARE MANY misunderstoods about Buddhism. In the Western world the generally known data might be summarised as follows: There was a man in India (Gautama Siddhartha) who founded a new religion and today the religion of Buddhism has entered the Western Hemisphere. It has even been quite successful in this.

 The Dalai Lama once said that before Buddhism could really seriously enter the Western world, the West had to develop its own form of Buddhism.

 Old Buddhist tradition is very clear about the fact that the religion that Gautama launched in India was not at all a new religion. Instead Gautama reformed the old religion (Brahmaism, which later developed into Hinduism) by introducing the idea that each individual himself can reach enlightenment through meditation. It was real news in those days that the Dharma (the Teaching) was only a form of assistance on the road to enlightenment for the ignorant being who had lost contact with his true self.

 What is Enlightenment?

 It is quite well known in the West that the word “Buddha” means “Enlightened One”. But very few know what you are supposed to be enlightened about. What kind of knowledge should you strive for, in order to reach and turn into real enlightenment (Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control)? The idea is that you should get yourself enlightened – finding truth that you yourself consider to be true by using your own judgement on “Dharma”, which is the teaching of the laws of life and the meaning of life. But old Buddhist tradition does not at all consider Gautama Siddhartha to be the only great Buddha or the last great Buddha. If you go to China, you will find in almost every place where they worship the Lord Buddha, that they have three different great Buddhas: The Amitaba Buddha, the Gautama Buddha and the Buddha Maitreya. However, in Tibetan and Indian Buddhism, there are supposed to be five great Buddhas, and not one of the five great Buddhas are human beings. Gautama Buddha was very clear about that. He said very clearly that he was not Buddha, but only a human being who had reached Enlightenment. By doing so he “became Buddha” or “met Buddha”. By meeting Buddha (reaching insights or cogniting), you assist Buddha to grow. Buddha means Enlightenment, and for every cognition that any human (or other kind of) being has on Earth (or elsewhere), the Buddha grows (Ref: Buddhadasa Bikku: Handbook for Mankind, The Buddhadasa Foundation. The Sublime Life Mission, 68/4 Trok Sathien, Tanio Road, Bankok , 10200, Thailand.)

 Buddhism and Writing

 The Buddhist tradition says there was a first great Buddha long before the art of writing was developed. So there is no written record available to describe the first great Buddha. But there are traces of the first great Buddha in our spoken languages. Whenever you use words with spiritual meaning that stem from Indo-European root words, look the words up in the American Heritage Dictionary, where the Indo-European etymology is referenced.

 These spiritual words help human beings to communicate on spiritual matters and are the traces left by the first great Buddha. When you learn Indo-European root words, you will often blow charge and feel relieved as you get realisations on the original meaning of the words. If you look up the word “meditation” in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find that the IndoEuropean root word for “meditation” is med- which means to take appropriate measures. You will also find that the same root word also appears in words like medicine and remedy. The logical conclusion is that medicine implies taking appropriate measures to cure the body, and meditation means taking the appropriate measures to make the spirit whole (holy) again. The Indo-European root word for -tion means “condition”. Thus meditation originally meant to reach a condition where you can take appropriate measure.

 If you were to do Wordclearing (define words) and clear all words that have Indo-European roots by looking up the Indo-European root word and its meaning, you would find that you would reach a much better understanding of words, than if you had not done etymological wordclearing. We [in Duga] have learned that word clearing by studying the etymology of words does greatly enhance the ability to reach better reality of the meaning of words.

 Etymological wordclearing is superior to just studying the present meaning of words in modern dictionaries. May I add that the American Heritage Dictionary has the best “appendix on Indo-European root words” that I have ever seen.

 The second great Buddha

 There is also the second great Buddha. It (not a human being, so do not use he or she), also appeared on this planet before any writing was available. Supposedly, the second great Buddha tried to teach human beings the subject of religion. The root word for religion is leig- and means to bind together. The same root word has formed words like LIEN, ALLY and RELY. The word religion is composed of re- and leig- and thus means to reunite or bind together again. The natural question then is: “What is supposed to be bound together with what?”

 May I suggest that it is your human nature that is supposed to be connected again (or obtain stronger ties) with the true self or Buddha-nature. If you say that leig- means contract and that religion is the study and learning about what this contract is all about, you could call religion the study of wisdom or the study of Dharma.

 But what is wisdom? The old Greek philosophers (Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates and many others) said that wisdom is true knowledge (referring to the unlimited spiritual world). Practical knowledge is knowledge about the limited physical universe in itself. However, there is also wisdom in the physical universe, but it exists behind the phenomena.

 For instance, you have practical knowledge on how to make shoes. Shoes can be made of a vast number of different materials, and there are very many practical details on how to improve the quality of shoes. Hence, the amount of practical knowledge about shoes is vast. The wise man, however, is not so much concerned about all that practical knowledge. The wise man wants to learn as much as possible about the idea behind all shoes, That is wisdom about shoes. The more wisdom about shoes you have, the easier it is for you to gain practical knowledge about shoes. Thus the human being who wants to produce shoes and make money by doing so, should try to gain as much knowledge about the idea behind shoes (which is not physical and does not exist in the physical universe, even if it interiorizes into our normal world, just as you yourself (your true self) also have interiorized into our world and thus became a human being (a false I).

 Practical versus spiritual wisdom

 Ancient greek philosophers frowned on practical wisdom and insisted that only the beautiful wisdom of the spirit (knowledge about the ideas behind the phenomena) was worthwhile. The word philosophy comes from the Greek philos, which means love or friendship and sophia, which means wisdom. According to tradition the word philosophy was coined when someone asked Pythagoras: Are you wise? and he answered: I am not wise, but I am a friend (philos) of wisdom (sophia).

 Not very many religions today live up to being a study of wisdom. Even Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism) have deteriorated and have become misunderstood subjects filled with rites and rituals whose significance is no longer understood. Considering the tremendous number of wise women and men who have been around teaching wisdom to their fellow human beings, the lack of such true religions, may make you ask yourself, What went wrong? or Why do the original words of wisdom get lost? Could it be that the teachers of wisdom had it all wrong, or is there something in human nature that prevents wisdom from spreading among humans? Regardless of the answer to these questions, the effort of the first two great Buddhas was clearly to assist human beings on planet Earth to reach out of the material (limited) world and into the spiritual (unlimited) world.

 Third and fourth great Buddhas

 Then there was a third great Buddha (again not a human being, but a spiritual principle,) and we even have his name in many Indo-European languages. It is named Dharma, which stems from the Indo-European root word dher-², which means to hold firmly, support.

 The idea of Dharma is that a being lost in the swamp of ignorance (on spiritual matters) needs support to get out of the trap, as a human lifetime is too short to make it possible to get anywhere on the road to enlightenment without support. So there are many Dharmas around on the planet, but not as many as there are religions.

 The fourth great Buddha (which Gautama tried to show us), realised that the trapped human being had no use of a Dharma that did not make him think the thoughts/ideas he needed to get out of the trap. Only by becoming enlightened through your own realisations (cognitions), could you get out of the trap of believing that you are only a limited human-nature being with only a short (some 80 years) lifetime. In the Eastern world they had the idea that you would succeed better in becoming enlightened if you withdrew from the world and sat down to meditate in a tranquil place. Some of the old Greek philosophers had a different idea. Socrates launched the idea that it is only through dialogue that you can lift yourself out of the trap you are in. It is through dialogue, that the individuals involved ask each other questions and come to realisations that improve their awareness of the unlimited (spiritual) world. But the religion of the East that delivered already four great Buddhas to us has not given up on us yet.

 The Fifth great Buddha

 There is the Buddhist prophecy that there will be a fifth great Buddha, when the East meets the West, and true friendship among races and nations starts to develop. This fifth great Buddha is the Buddha Maitreya, and this great Buddha hopefully will give birth to a new and better civilisation. Maitreya (or Sangha) means friend. Sangha means association or group from Indo-European root word gwhen-¹,  meaning to press together).

 Future of Buddhism and a New Civilization

 If you consider the era of the five great Buddhas (which will last for another almost 2000 years), and the idea behind this very, very old subject of religion, you should be able to see that the Buddhism that we learn about today, where monks and nuns cloister themselves in monasteries is not enough to deliver the message of the fifth great Buddha. There is a need for a much more vital and causative religion, if the new civilisation is going to be a significant improvement of the civilisation we are already living in.

 The new civilisation will not be created in a single moment. It will only be created individual by individual. With every individual that gets enlightened (on the priciples of Dharma) and then joins a group of true friends a new part of the new civilisation gets created. One step at a time. One individual at a time.  

 Nostradamus predicted that a new religion would appear and replace Christianity before the 1000-year Kingdom could be established. He also said that the new religion would refine itself and develop as it was disseminated to more and more people who were not the effect of fame, wealth or death.

 There can be a bright future on this planet if we work for it, but hiding without reaching for our fellow human beings will accomplish nothing. The problems of this world will not be solved by people who remove themselves from the worka-day world. Philosophers who have taken responsibility for the political situation on this planet during certain periods of our history, have done immensely more to improve conditions on this planet than those who have barricaded themselves within the walls of convents and monasteries and lived from the handouts of those who do produce and work for their living. If you reach out into the world, you will not only reach out into the spaces of nice people, but also into areas where not-so-nice beings work to oppress their fellow men. So there is a need to confront evil for the job to get done.

 Written by Todde in the year 2007

 References: Buddhadasa Bikku:. Handbook for Mankind. The Buddhadasa Foundation, The Sublime Life Mission, 68/4 Trok Sathien, Tanao Road, Bankok, 10200 Thailand.

 Todde has, together with his wife, Renée, founded and runs the centre DUGA in Göteborg. He has written a book in Swedish on Buddhism with the title Buddhas Dharma (= the Dharma of Buddha).

 You can find out more on DUGA at www.duga.se

 The DUGA foundation is using a Modern Socratic Method and it's Philosophy of Life is inspired by Modern Western Buddhistic and Socratic Philosophy

Also check: http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2016/09/acknowledgement-from-science-regarding.html

Also check the application of a "Modern Socratic Method" at

https://www.duga.se/ - Use google translate