BELIEF SERIES LECTURE

Do Buddhists Believe in Anything?

Does spirituality depend upon belief?

Dr Mahinda Deegalle

Bath Spa University

14 March 2005

Even though I come from Sri Lanka, where we have Theravada Buddhism, my talk will consider Buddhism more generally. In today’s presentation, I plan to discuss the nature of Buddhist belief. The term belief itself is quite problematic, hence the title of my talk. The Ved is understood, and in the English language cannot be quite applied to this belief tradition. Belief is always cognitive, and less to do with experience, which however the Buddhist tradition emphasises. In Buddhism, Experience is crucial, so belief has less significance.

We are talking about very personalised, individual experience, in meditation or whatever religious practise or spiritualities it may be. Experience is the key in the practise of Buddhism, not necessarily theology or doctrine, but what you can make out of your five senses. There may be some beliefs in the Buddhist tradition, but perhaps not in a central role, as in Christianity. In Christianity, it’s impossible to think of Christ without thinking about the Crucifixion, or that he’s the Son of God. There is nothing similar in Buddhism.

I have been looking at our understanding of the term Belief. Not having my Oxford Dictionary to hand, I consulted my American Heritage Dictionary, so you may not agree. There we find that Belief is the mental act, condition or habit of placing Trust or confidence in another; or conviction in, that is mental acceptance, in the religious sense, of the truth, actuality or verity of something. Some of these senses, concerning the reality of the world, salvation etc, can be applied also to Buddhism; or a tenet or set of tenets accepted by a group. This may be the usual sense, a set of concepts, principles or ideologies, which it would be hard to use for Buddhism, where such notions are not crucial.

We are living in a fourth modern world, in which there are no paradigms or grand narratives, and everything must be tested, proved and scrutinised. Perhaps we are arrogant. As I found from TW Allport; ‘We believe our eyes, and in the proposition that twice two are four.’ Here, there is no mystery. What our senses perceive, and what we learn, are very important, as are what can be clearly stated, and demonstrated. But most of what is called belief we cannot prove, or demonstrate, so in the secular age we live in, the fourth modern world, belief is going out of the window, becoming subject to a pragmatic attitude, which rejects that which is mysterious, supernatural, beyond our senses. That’s the challenge that religions have to face. Although it may have some problems too, Buddhism deals with these issues in a different way.

Within the Buddhist tradition, there is a kind of confidence in the Teacher, as in the first definition we discussed, involving trust, so one might argue that Buddhists have a certain kind of belief, namely belief in the Buddha. Confidence is very important for Buddhists, but confidence of a different kind, as we shall see. Rather than dogmatic belief, only verification through experience is important. Rather than reliance upon a text or a teacher, the approach is pragmatic. Buddhists in fact have many texts, none of them claiming to be the words of a Divine Being, and the validity of Buddhist teachings is a matter of judgment much debated. Most Buddhists have high precepts, something like rules, but they are not obligatory, and develop gradually. So it’s tricky question.

The Buddhist path is called the Middle Path, comprising eight elements, particularly in the Theravada tradition, which Buddhists believe is the way to lead the world. That Path starts with the Right View, such as impermanence, and acceptance that there is no Self. There are guidelines, but they are used in a subjective manner.

• Impermanence. Everything changes from moment to moment, nothing remains the same; this flux causes suffering, or unhappiness or unsatisfaction. This is key Buddhist Teaching.

• Dependant origination, also quite crucial, the understanding of which allows a person almost to see the Buddha.
• Causality; cause becomes affect, which becomes another cause, leading to another effect etc; the theory of causation.
• Karma. A lot of Indian religious groups, Hindus, Buddhists and Janes, all have a notion of Karma, and usually it is translated as action: in Buddhism - Intentional Action. The motivation or volition behind certain actions.
• Rebirth. Outside this life, there can be many future lives, indeed many past lives.
• Samsåra, the idea that each of us is just a traveller, our present life of sixty or eighty years being just a temporary stop. These Asian groups, Hindus, Buddhists, the Janes believe that there is an infinite number of lives. Buddhists see Samsåra as a problem, being reborn is painful, is a problem, Karma and Causality are a problem. From these problems one seeks to be free, which is called liberation, Nirvåna, or emptiness.

Buddhism literature speaks of two types of Confidence. One is called baseless, offering no verification or rationality, and is rejected. The other, known as rational, is based on reasoning, and trust of the Buddha, who went through the process and saw the truth, is accepted, and is an important starting point for the long journey. This rational confidence in the Buddha is a practical necessity, but each person who embarks on the journey has to test it, in a rational way. The relationship between the Buddha and the follower could be compared to the relationship between a doctor and a patient. If the patient wants to be cured of a sickness, then he takes the medicine and has trust in the doctor. In our world, you wouldn’t just go to see anyone, you would want to verify that the doctor is qualified and licensed. So the Buddha can be.

seen as a doctor, when we are unhappy and in pain. There is an element of belief there, in the Buddha’s guidance along the path, but her cannot save you.

There is in Buddhism a Radical Attitude to Belief, to be found in an old canonical text, the Kålåmas Sutta, whose quite radical, even false-modest critical spirit can appeal very much to the Western mind. The Buddha went to visit the Kålåmas, who were distrustful of doctrines which other religious teachers tried to enforce upon them, and gave them this advice:

Among these ten points, some of which may be related to belief, we find the words revelation, which is not quite but roughly the sense in English, and tradition and hearsay, but the important point is that their appearance in scriptural texts, whether in other traditions or even in Buddhism, must not be taken at face value. Reason, and theological arguments concerning the existence of God, the problem of evil, the explanation of why bad things like tsunamis happen to good people, and issues like that, can also take one away from the spirit of reality. Finally the mention of questions over religious teachings is where find the serious question mark, or doubt, over belief, and over the kind of basis one should use for one’s religious assertion, whatever it may be.

So who is the Buddha?

The name means ‘one who is knowing,’ the one who has awakened himself to, not who invented but just discovered, the reality. His role is quite limited, just introducing the truth which is already exists in the world. He was born Siddhartha (‘he who will succeed’), and became known as Shakyamuni, his father being Shuddhodana, of the noble Gautama clan of southern Nepal, and a leader of the Shakya peoples. Some have seen him as a god, but Buddhists see him as an extraordinary person, not a divine person, but a human being who elevated himself to a higher state, through his religious explorations, and importantly became a human teacher. When did he live? We are not sure of his exact dates. According to the Sri-Lankan tradition, the oldest living Buddhist tradition, dating from the 3^rd century BC, he was born in 624 BC and passed away in 544 BC, but these texts were composed in the 5^th - 6^th centuries AD, over 1000 years later. In another chronology, familiar in English and American books, the dates are 566-486 BC, about 100 years later. A third version, based on Chinese and Japanese sources, are another century later, 448-368 BC. We must recognise much uncertainty over the Buddha’s dates, compared to research on Jesus. (Interjection from chair: these questions only seemed to arise after 1000 years, as also for Zarathustra, and 450 years for Jesus. People weren’t very worried.) No, it didn’t bother them, and only recently has the Buddha’s birthplace been discovered, so there are a lot of grey areas.

The key aspects to belief in Buddhism are Effort and Motivation, relating to Karma. Effort is very important. To elevate your situation as a human being, you have to work hard. A person on the path to enlightenment, not having yet achieved but seeking it, is known as a bodhisattva. He gives priority to others rather than himself. So how did the Buddha, in his previous lives, decide to become a Buddha, many, many lifetimes ago? At that time, when he saw another Buddha, he was motivated by that enlightened person, he made a kind of intention will, saying:

Here there is an intentional deliberation; he wanted to become a Buddha to help the people, and is seen in the Buddhist tradition as a teacher, a guide, a provider of rules or guidelines set in enlightenment. So tradition sees there an aspiration to help humanity.

Buddha cannot do anything; basically, Buddha is useless. He is not a saviour, only a guide. In Japanese Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, one meets some radical ideas, for example like the rhetorical instruction: ‘If you meet the Buddha, kill him!’ The idea is to take away the ego, because if you assume that you are Buddha you can be quite arrogant, and need to concentrate on experience and meditation.

So what do Buddhists believe?

One may say that they believe in ethical action. Therein lies a strength in Buddhism, and indeed one of the similarities between Christianity and some of the other religious traditions. Buddhism may not have a strong set of beliefs, but it believes in ethical and compassionate action, in self-perfection, doing the virtuous thing, and in cause and effect; that in helping others, in whatever way it may be, it will elevate their situation, and make a great difference in one’s own life. Buddhists recognise the human potential. Buddhism is less concerned with the other world, has rather a very strong worldly orientation in the here-and-now. In Buddhism, what is real is the present. Buddhism holds that criminals are created by society and circumstances, not normally at birth, and by appropriate location one can change one’s life and potentialities. Effort is essential, to be free in social and spiritual terms. It’s not optional. Buddha cannot do it for you. You yourself have to do it. Buddhism says there is no self, but recognises the individual journey, and says that,

by making an effort, all can achieve liberation. Buddhism has beliefs, but they are not theoretical beliefs nor a set of principles, but rather belief in human actions.

Is then Buddhism a faith?

In western religious traditions, faith tends to have a connotation of trust, a secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will. Narrowly defined by such an interpretation of the English term, with the assumption of an omnipotent creator, the term ‘faith,’ as with ‘belief’, cannot be applied to Buddhist traditions. It’s partly an issue of language, which is useful for communicating certain ideas with which we are familiar, but brings with it the danger of imposing a wrong assumption. If perhaps we neutralise the term, and broaden its definition with the notions of adopting and adapting, then we can see ‘faith’ as a way of life, a way to live in this world and flourish as a human being, and in that sense Buddhism can be included.

Is Buddhism selfish?

With its emphasis on the experience of the individual, may it properly be accused, as it often is as a self-centred religion, of being a selfish religion? In Buddhism there is an assertion, unless first one changes oneself, that one cannot change another. If one wants to change the world, one should start with oneself. Buddhism sees as good that which is good for all around you, and that to resolve the problem one must address the person. That doesn’t justify seeing Buddhism as selfish.

What of belief in a Supreme Being?

Without any discussion of a Supreme Being, Buddhism proposes ethical action, not unlike the world-view of Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle. Plato talks of the force of goodness independent from a divine principle. Less to do with belief, in Buddhism, happiness is the motivating factor, utilitarian in orientation, with an ethic based on individual experience. With regard to a question about rebirth in the next world, Buddha gave a very open-ended answer, emphasising the importance of virtuous life, and saying that if one is engaged in ethically right activities, then even if there is a next world after death, one need not be worried. The problem is, if you are not virtuous here, if there is a next world, then you are going to encounter trouble.

So, to the question in the title of this talk, ‘Do Buddhists believe in anything?’ One may answer that Buddhists have no need of beliefs, other than in virtuous action in the present moment, which with commitment and dedication, living happily, and harmlessly to others, can bring you close to enlightenment.

Summary by Martin Sturge