Chapter 8 - Outstanding Facts In Buddhism

The Buddha dhamma is a complete discovery of a dynamic cosmic order. So to say, complete scientifically because it accounts not only for human life, but also for the life of all sentient beings from the lowest to the highest; and also complete morally because it includes all these forms of life in the one moral order. Buddhism, in fact, teaches a cosmic law that exists everywhere; hence the same moral law of spiritual evolution must prevail everywhere. Cosmic law and moral order in Buddhism are related to one another as they are not in any other religious systems.

Apparently, Buddhism does not condemn anybody to eternal hell just because he happens not to be a Buddhist. If a being goes to the regions of great woeful misery after death, it is only because his own bad deeds have sent him there, and not because he happens to believe in the wrong set of dogmas. The Dhamma only teaches that whatever suffering a man may bring upon himself is commensurate with the gravity of his own evil actions — neither more nor less. He may suffer through several lives because of some very heavy evil actions (garu akusala kamma), but sometime that suffering must come to an end when the evil that has been generated has spent itself. The atrocious idea or view that a being may be made to suffer throughout eternity for the sins committed in one short lifetime does not exist in Buddhism. Neither does the equally unjust doctrine that he may wash out all his sins by formal acts of contrition or by mere faith in one particular deity or God for whom man has invented with his own idea.

In Buddhism, there is no personal judge who condemns, but only the working of an impersonal law that is just like the law of gravitation. Buddhism indeed indicates that the natural law is immutably just, in other words, it is an absolute truth or cosmic principle for which one has to keep up oneself with love, compassion, morality, nobility, holiness, wisdom, etc., that only makes oneself divine or supreme.

In Buddhism, the first and foremost fact, most difficult to understand is "rebirth" (jati) that one oneself has created with ones own action. An ordinary person may surely find very hard even to appreciate series of lives until and unless he understands cause effect cycles of the Dependent Origination (paticcasamuppada). The very inexplicable question that this present life is out of measureless eternity, is still unsolved and undiscovered by modern scientists and philosophers. But the Enlightened Buddha, since over 2,500 years, had vividly shown the ample light of the theory of Kamma and rebirth, that life series and samsara are so long that the beginning as well as the end of beings is unknowable.

Naturally, a serious thinking person, seeing the various sights of inequality amongst mankind is by no means satisfied as to why one becomes differentiated from another and ever in quest of obtaining an appropriate answer of the real cause or reason. Evidently, there are untold numbers of blind, deaf and dumb, mentally deficient and diseased human beings whose pitiful conditions are not due to any fault of theirs in this present life, nor any remediable defect in the organization of human society.

In this respect, Buddhism is alone in presenting rebirth as a scientific principle. When I say here scientific, I mean that it is a principle in accordance with other universal laws which can be understood scientifically and even investigated by scientific methods. The principle of change (aniccata), serial continuity (santati) and passing away (vaya ) is one that runs throughout nature; all scientific principles are based on it. The three fundamental characteristics of existence taught by the Buddha are common to each and every one and everywhere. They are: "all conditioned things are impermanent, all conditioned things are suffering and all things are insubstantial". What is transient that is painful; what is painful that is soulless, impersonal or insubstantial (anatta) i.e. the absence of a permanent unchanging self or soul or ego in anywhere or in anybody.

All beings must come into being as the result of past Kamma and pass away again just as we do here in our human existence. As we all are subject to these three characteristics of impermanence (anicca), suffering dukkha ) and insubstantiality or soulless or egoless ( anatta), all sentient beings also follow just the same universal principles. For instance, the composition of an aggregate of every being is changing all the time, not remaining the same even for two consecutive moments.

Similarly, the Four Noble Truths — suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the way to cessation of suffering — are quite universal principles relating to each and every being. And this being so, the three characteristics and the four Noble Truths are utterly valid wherever life exists.

Moreover, with regard to the phenomena of mind and matter, the Buddha also taught that every being is composed of mind and matter, yet one finds very hard to know the real fact of these two phenomena. So one must strive to realize the differentiation between mind and matter of his own physical and mental being. This also is quite a valid principle for each and every one of humankind.

In the last but not the least, the ultimate release, the attainment of the everlasting unchanging state of Nibbana is something, so to say, the most supreme Peace and happiness of life, that man can reach since man is the supreme master of himself. This very state of Nibbana is to be attained only by eliminating all the factors of rebirth that are rooted in the two fundamental defects of defilement, i.e. ignorance ( avijja) and craving (tanha), in other words, the three kinds of canker, greed (lobha), hatred (dosa) and delusion (moha). Nibbana, which the Buddha described as the Unconditioned (Asankhata), the Ageless (Ajara), the Deathless (Amata) and the Ever permanent (Dhuva) is the Absolute Reality that lies outside the realms of conditioned and illusory cycles of rebirths (samsara). In reality, Nibbana can be reached only by the actual practice of giving charity (dana), of morality ( Sila), and of mental development by meditation (bhavana); in other words, giving charity (dana) eliminates greed (lobha), loving kindness (metta) or morality (Sila) eradicates anger (dosa), and mental development (bhavana) roots out ignorance (moha). In this way, when all cankers or defilements are exterminated then only Nibbana can be attained.