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Essay Buddhism
- Vak
- Buddhism
- Instelling
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
Complete essay for the course Buddhism at the VU. I got an 7,5 on this essay. It's about the core of Buddhism.
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1Name: Fabienne van der Linden
Studentnumber: 2738727
Course: Buddhism
Teacher: Bee Scherer
Date: 29 October 2023
Word count: min. 1823
Is meditation the core of buddhism ?
The research question of this essay is; is meditation the core of Buddhism?
As of today, buddhism is one of the largest religions in terms of population. With an
estimated one billion buddhists in the world, buddhism fits right after the greatest world
religions Christianity, Islam and Hinduism (Prothero, 2020, p.86).
The main problem of Buddhism is suffering and the solution to this problem is nirvana.
Nirvana is the end of desire, aversion and confusion. There are different types of
techniques that are used to reach Nirvana. These techniques are meditation, chanting,
visualization and devotion. “Buddhism is a tradition of monks, nuns and ordinary people
who seek to overcome suffering and reach the bliss of nirvana or simply a better rebirth
through various contemplative and devotional practices.” (Prothero, 2020, p.89).
As mentioned above, meditation is a technique used within buddhism to reach nirvana. To
be more specific about this matter, nirvana can’t be reached but is something that remains
when the wholly unreal adventitious factors that obscure it are purified away (Higgins &
Drszyck, 2016, p.383).
“The term meditation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training at-
tention and awareness to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and
thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such
as calm, clarity, and concentration” (Walsh and Shapiro, 2006, p. 228).
Meditation techniques vary enormously in aims, scope, and difficulty (Matko, 2019, p.1)
The practice of Vipassana meditation, for example, focusses on body sensations while
Zen practice involves an open and undirected awareness of the present (Austin, 1999, p.
4) In the last thirty years, meditation was transformed in the West into “mindfulness”. Since
then its popularity extended remarkably until it attained the astonishing pervasiveness we
see today (Giraldi, 2019, p. 5)
, 2
The basic teachings of Buddha which can be referred to as the core of Buddhism are; the
three universal truths, the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path.
“The main message of Buddhism is that awakening and enlightenment can be achieved by
practising the Middle Way during one’s life—essentially by attaining specific states of con-
sciousness and liberating oneself from the existential sufferings of life” (Giraldi, 2019, p.5).
This suffering is due to the wrong identification of the atman with anatman (Collins, 1972,
p.131). This means identifying the self with non-self because of a person’s ignorance. This
ignorance brings the miseries of birth en death. They consider their evanescent body as
real and identify theirselves with it. This way they are bound as the caterpillar by the
threads of its cocoon (Sanikara, Vivekachudamani 137).
The “middle way” mentioned above refers to a Buddhist understanding of practical life. It
means to avoid the extremes of self-denial and self-indulgence. The middle way refers to
the resistance to accept any extreme forms of viewpoints or practices. So a vibhajyavadin,
one who asserts propositions conditionally rather than an ekantavadin, one who maintains
one absolute position (Sarao & Long, 2017, p. 775-778).
The three universal truths are; impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction
(dukkha) and not-self (anatta). Anicca or impermanence means that everything is
impermanent and changing, this leads to suffering, imperfection, which is dukkha. And the
anatta or no self stands for the fact that the self is not personal and unchanging. The four
noble truths are Dukkham, Samudayo, Nirodha, and Patipada. The four noble truths are
the most fundamental teaching of Buddhism because it was the one that made Koṇdạ ññā
realize the path and thus the way that the buddha set the Wheel of dhamma in motion for
all humanity (Anderson, 2016, p. 3).
“The four truths should be understood descriptively: the buddha was simply describing the
truths—the ultimate and real truths—that he realized while sitting under the bodhi tree dur-
ing his experience of enlightenment” (Anderson, 2016, p. 6).
The first noble truth is Dukkham. Dukkha is the painful reality;
“Birth is painful, aging is painful, illness is painful, death is painful; sorrow, lamentation,
physical pain, unhappiness and distress are painful; union with what is disliked is painful;
separation from what is liked is painful; not to get what one wants is painful; in brief, the
five bundles of grasping-fuel are painful” (Harvey, 2013, p. 52). The buddhist path aims at
lessening this pain. The second noble truth is samudayo which is a form of craving that
leads to rebirth.”It is a craving for desire, craving for existence and craving for existence to
fade away” (Anderson, 2016, p. 9). Besides craving, dukkha is also caused by views. For
example when someone is attached to their beliefs or opinions and it gets criticized or
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