Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Buddha - Panchasheela – Humanism

Prof. Gandham Appa Rao

BUDDHA - PANCHASHEELA - HUMANISM

Gautama Buddha was a human­ist par excellence who sacrificed all the comforts he enjoyed as a Prince in order to find out a cure to the age-long problem of suffering. Having met with an extremely old man and a youth suffering from incurable disease and finally a monk. Gautama felt a shock­ing change in his understanding of life and society. These pitiable sights ulti­mately led him to the path of sacrifice. He became a Sanyasi at the age of 29 with a determination to go in search of truth that lies at the root of all suffer­ing.

Soon Gautama developed deep into all available knowledge, he tried to unravel the secrets of yoga and ex­perimented with all aspects of yoga in­cluding HATHA YOGA. Adopting a sci­entific approach, he studied all as­pects of human predicament, he vis­ited places where he hoped to find answers to his questions. He met phi­losophers, scholars, Sramanakas, Udhakarma Putras who were currently working on human problems. But he was not satisfied with the teaching of these thinkers.

He debated with kindred souls, observed all aspects of human living, and found out that people were troub­led by the beneful influence of pseudo philosophies and faiths. He himself disciplined his body and mind by fast­ing and other methods as a prelude to achieving concentration and right thinking. After considerable struggle, he found the way out from human problems. He became the Buddha or the Enlightened. Established prin­ciples and their dialectics gave him the clues he had been searching for. He engaged scholars in debates and con­vinced them of the reasonableness of his approach and earned their admira­tion. It was not long, before philoso­phers, scholars and ordinary people accepted Buddha’s principles as the most valuable and satisfying. Buddha’s doctrine, otherwise known as Middle Path, is rooted in four noble truths (ARYA SATYA) handed down from generations of Indian Thinkers.

The question is how did Buddha Dharma come to be known as Middle Path?

Buddha’s contemporaries re­garded life as a source of misery. Several Thinkers of different persua­sions tried to solve the problem of life’s misery. They traced the origins of  misery and happiness to the acts which individuals committed in their previous births. They believed that Vedic rituals and the like helped man to secure Nirvana or liberation form the chain of births and deaths.

Charvakas and Jains rebelled against this view. The principles of Jainism were so taxing to ordinary people that they could not attract much following. The principles of Chavakas put too much stress of mundane pleasures. Through some of the followers of this doctrine re­nounced worldly pleasures, it had a bad effect on society. Again, the followers of Vedic creed pinned their faith in the liberation of individual soul and neglected the social obligations. Thus they failed. Gautama Buddha discov­ered the lacuna in these two doctrines and proposed his own middle course avoiding the extremes. This is known as Madhyama Marga, he believed that his doctrine was the last of the established truths which led to Nirvans, the final liberation of the soul. Buddha’s approach to deriving the quintessence of the established truths is unique. He used reasoning and experience of life. He examined life which was bound with superstition and found out the truth which was beyond it. Like a physician he regarded human misery as a disease, analysed it, and arrived at its source. He believed that the very process of approaching life? in this way was what the thinking mind out to do. That was how he thought him­self to be Buddha or the enlightened one, and gave man what he thought to be irrefutable truths.

Thereafter Buddha discontinued discussions and debates with philosophers and scholars. Those were the days when only a minority of people namely, kings, landlords and the like were able to lead a happy life and the rest were steeped in ignorance and misery. The poor, the miserable who constituted the majority, Buddha thought, must be helped. So he sought to use his doctrine for the benefit of the majority that is, Bahujana (Bahujana Hitaya Bahujana Sikhaya). He, therefore, explained his doctrine with illustrations, to those ignorant lotand showed them the rightness of the established truths which he called Ashtanga Marga.

Buddha lived sometime during the 6th Century B.C. Social Fabric ofhis time was loosely knit with social and economic disparities and divisions which were as deep as they were cor­rigible. Buddha tried his best to effect their reform and removal of  casteism but he could not succeed to the extent he struggled. He established Baud-dharmas where people without any distinctions of Caste of Status thronged to listen to him and follow his ideals, he is not only admitted the untouchables and the downtrodden classes into his fold that is, Aramas, and taught them out also treated them with compassion.

During Buddha’s life-time his, preachings deeply affected society without any distinction of race, caste or place. His preaching was one of universal brotherhood. What is known as the principle of Pancha Seela was the bed rock on which Buddha based his doctrine.

Pancha Sheela

The message of Gautama the Buddha has made longstanding friendship between neighbouring countries, India, China and Tibet.

The unforeseen developments between China and India caused avoidable damage to the cause of peace between the neighbours. Never­theless, the right understanding and the spirit of friendship between our two nations, today, appear to be in the offing, thanks to the revival of the spirit of the doctrine of ‘PANCHA SHEELA’.

The Principle of Pancha Sheela was first taught by Gautama Buddha whose message travelled far and wide. Pancha Sheela literally means five kinds of behaviour which an individual should practice for the good of society. They form a spectrum of integrated personality. They are:

1. non-violence 2. non-stealing 3. abstinence from adultery 4. non-­telling of untruth 5. abstinence from alcoholic drinks.

During October, 1954, India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited China and renewed the age-old friendly relations between the two countries. It was on this occasion that the prime Minister of China, Chow enlai responded to Nehru’s sug­gestion of carving out a new PANCHA SHEELA from the enduring universal PANCHA SHEELA, first taught by Gautama Buddha. The modem Pan­cha Sheela was then sought to regu­late the relationships between different nations in order to bring about peace and international understanding. Cho enlai declared that all nations should be guided thus:

  1. Respect for sovereignty of every other nation.

  1. Strict observance of the policy of non-aggression against other countries.

  1. Non-interference in other countries, internal affairs.

  1. Promotion of equality among nations and striving for mutual welfare.

  1. Following the path of peaceful co-existence with other nations.

People were attracted by Bud­dha’s sense of purity, right conduct, spirit of sacrifice, non-violence, inter­est in world-peace and knowledge. His skill in teaching was central to the propagation of his doctrine conse­quently. Buddha Dharma prevailed in India and other countries. It shines like a beacon light to people in their quest for hope. It contributed to the growth of their creative thinking. According to Buddha, liberation that is, Nirvanas meant a state of mental equilibrium bereft of all attachment and hate. It is an experience of pure thinking, His five-fold advice to his pupils points to the same meaning of the term Nirvana.
Buddha did not mention the idea of rebirth anywhere in his doctrine. If he had done so he would not have told Malyanka Putra, Proshtapada and Ananda Pindaka what he did. According to Buddha, ‘Karma’ meant the karma or action done in the present, not that done in previous births. However Buddha’s teachings lacked clarity which lent support to the thinkers of Mahayana School of Buddhism.

Humanism of Buddha

Buddha’s teachings are unique in the sense that they either ignore or are indifferent to vague ideas about an Almighty God and related doctrines. Instead, they lay stress on discrimina­tion between good and evil, ethical aspect of life and right conduct. They encourage the faithful to see that what is inconconsistent with their belief in God is bad conduct and what is consistent with it is good conduct. Man is responsible forhis conduct and progress. Buddhism thus makes man central figure in all that affects human life. Buddha preached kindness an pity for all life and formulated constructive methods for progress and happiness of all in human society.

His technique of eight-fold path (Ashtanga marga), his prescription of five-fold path of meditations and du­ties to Panchavargiya Sanatana Bhik­shus, his cautions to monks - all these reflect his progressive humanist vi­sion.

Buddha practised what all he preached. His method of preaching was wholly rational and unambiguous. He never forced his views on others. He was not at all dogmatic. He offered his well-considered views honestly and sincerely. He used to tell his audiences particularly to Bhikshus thus: “take my views seriously; consider them dispassionately; accept them, if you find them reasonable, and only then follow them with all good heart.”

Buddha tried his best to wide out economic inequality in society not only in India but also in the then known world at large. He limited his work on economic equality among people to Buddhist monasteries alone because he was convinced that caste distinctions could be abolished unless economic inequalities are done away with. For this reason he made the monasteries open toall castes, even tothe so-called untouchables who only existed outside the social order and human-fold. Buddhist monasteries treated them as human beings with self-respect.
Buddha was thus the foremost of all men of vision who spent their life time for bringing harmony in all spheres of life and peace for all in society. Gautama Buddha is thus a great teacher, an integrated personal­ity and a complete man. It is, however, our misfortune that the real Buddhist thought and principles should in course of time get misrepresented and misunderstanding. Spurious works about these principles, and, tales that go against the grain of Buddhism have come to pass for Buddhist thought. Even Buddha could not escape being thought to be an incarnation of God.

WAY TO HAPPINESS

Where is thehappiness to be found? It is in the good life, in the avoidance of evil, in the pursuit of the good, in the true and the beautiful, in the cleansing of the heart, in the cultivation of wisdom and enlighten­ment. What then is evil? Evil is that which brings harm to oneself or the others of both.

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