So what did the Enlightened Siddhartha do to Indian Religion?

Now this Buddha could not have been influenced by modern Hinduism but modern Hinduism could certainly have been influenced by his Buddhism. For example, many parts of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita can be read as attempts to answer questions posed for ancient Hinduism by ancient Buddhism (and quite apart from the theological challenge, as I’ve suggested in an earlier post, India was also largely dominated by Buddhism politically for a good five hundred years). Siddhartha is also sometimes called Maha Sramana (the Great Sramana). Jainism also followed the Sramana tradition but remains a more purely ascetic version of Sramana.

So why did he begin to teach (before I discuss what)? In Buddhism, teaching the truth is today highly valued and the truth is alleged to be the content of Buddhism. But initially Siddhartha was reluctant to teach. The reason for the initial hesitation was his many lifetimes of preparation as a Bodhisattva that he knew he alone could draw on in order to understand the truths he now believed he knew. What use would attempting to teach his subtle understanding be to anyone? In the tradition, he was persuaded by the deva Brahma to teach (as well as he was able).

Naturally he began with fellow Strivers. There are indications that he may also have initially preferred to create orders of monks rather than of nuns once he got used to creating orders of religious in the first place. The question therefore presents itself: was Siddhartha sexist? The answer is probably contained in his historical context. For the rest of his earthly life, he tended to refer to himself in the third person as the “thus come (Tathagata)”. One feature of his new existence was that it wasn’t concerned at all with discussing the concept of time (this lack of preoccupation may also have been reflected in the lack of early Buddhist history).

His first teaching was of the Four Noble Truths that I’ve already alluded to. To understand his teaching better we’ll have to get into this more later. His teaching style was apparently personal (and he eventually taught to a wide variety of people tailoring his advice masterfully) and not unduly abstract so he proved an inspirational and fine teacher. He was also seen as a great practical physician diagnosing humanity’s psychic ‘ailments’ or ‘cause of the pains’ and prescribing the pragmatic cure that he now knew.

He importantly never suggested that he had been given the answers from above (by any kind of divine revelation). This was something that it was possible for perfected humans to fully realise for themselves. As I mentioned earlier, Buddhists now believe that humans are actually in a better position than gods to realise the truth, in any case, and this belief comes from intensive study of Siddhartha’s many known teachings (and their own philosophical striving).

He also preferred not to teach Buddhism to any person who had not already asked to be taught it. He knew this stuff wasn’t easy so people needed to be ready to listen. They couldn’t be beaten over the head with it. Buddhists generally continue to follow this policy so they don’t evangelise much at all.

So the Four Noble Truths perhaps seem too easy but are they really? Well of course they aren’t self-evident. How then could they possibly really be taught?

First, Siddhartha had to teach people how to begin to think and he called this the teaching of upaya (skilful means) by which he meant things he knew for himself having learned them but that they should strive to know for themselves as they would be useful to know if they sought enlightenment. So it was as if he was giving the answers to a test and asking Strivers to find within themselves some quite difficult things for those who can’t see why these things are useful: what the questions are, why they are good questions and why the answers are the correct answers.

A certain amount of initial faith was obviously required, then, but he didn’t ask anybody to finally believe the upaya until they themselves knew them. Pondering the things would eventually bring a way to see the reason that they are true (perhaps after many lifetimes, though). Nobody was expected to immediately become a Buddha but certainly it seems to have been expected that several Bodhisattvas would be potentially set into train. The upaya he mysteriously likened to a raft for the crossing of a river saying that they could later be discarded once the psychic 'river' had been crossed.

Another feature of his discourses that is now well known to Buddhists is the fourteen major metaphysical questions (at least from the point of view of the askers) that he seemed to make a point of not answering. They include questions like: how did the universe begin; and how did man come to be? He did claim to know the answers (to at least many of them) but also claimed that being focused on those questions and answers would actually distract followers from his upaya. They were really the main game, after all. He gave the analogy of a man shot with a poisoned wooden arrow wanting to know the answer to a bunch of questions about the nature of its wood (such as how old the tree was when the wood was taken from it) before allowing himself to be treated. The treatment was really the main game.

Buddhists have done some work on this, though, and reckon that world systems are expanding into being and contracting out of it roughly every four billion years. This corresponds somewhat with Hindu views.