Buddhism is the world's fifth largest religion with over 520 million followers. For many centuries, it was the dominant spiritual tradition in most parts of Asia including China, Korea and Japan where it has had a strong impact on intellectual, cultural and artistic life. It originated in India around year 400 BCE and includes a variety of traditions based on the original teachings of the historical Buddha and on his life.
The different schools place emphasis on different aspects of the original teachings and focus on different sets of practices to achieve Nirvana but retain the same core set of beliefs. There are two major branches - Hinayana (the Small Vehicle) and Mahayana (the Great Vehicle). The Hinayana tradition is the more orthodox variety while the Mahayana tradition is more flexible and this is the tradition which is dominant in Korea.
Buddhism is often considered to be more of a philosophical system, rather than a religion, because it does not involve a God who needs to be cherished and to whom one needs to show devotion. Instead, the Buddhist doctrine revolves around a core of central tenets on how one should live in order to overcome suffering, release oneself from the cycle of death and rebirth (known as achieving Nirvana) and attain knowledge of one's true self. The essence of this experience is to go beyond the world of intellectual distinctions and opposites and reach the world of Acintya, the non-thinkable, where reality appears as undivided, undifferentiated one (this is similar to the way reality is cenceptualised in the field of quantum physics).
Unlike the other major world religions, Buddhism is not so concerned with the origin of life and the nature of the Divine as much as with the human situation here in this life.
The Enlightened One
The historical Buddha was born around year 400 BCE under the name Siddhartha Gautama. He was a prince in a small territory along the present-day border between India and Nepal. Growing up in materially comfortable circumstances, he never felt contentment. There was always something missing and he didn't know what it was.
He left home at the age of 29 and went to live in secluded forests and mountains in order to search for a deeper meaning in life. While travelling, he witnessed misery, diesease and injustice for the first time and realised how sheltered from harsh realities his life up until that point had been. This strengthened his convicion to leave all comfort behind and to dedicate himself to an extremely ascetic life.
While doing this, he continued to question the meaning of existence. He studied under the best teachers and philosophers of his time but was not able to find the answer and contentment he needed. The more he studied, the more it wasn't enough.
Why was there all of this suffering?
Why was there all of this lack of contentment?
At the age of 35, under the full moon in May, he sat beneath the branches of the Bodhi tree (the Tree of Enlightenment) and meditated soulfully for 40 days and nights, contemplating the universe, life, consiousness, existence and what it all meant.
At the end of the 40-day period, he attained the clearest possible understanding of his mind (supreme enlightenment). Through mediatation, he was able to understand the nature of all things, the ultimate truth underlying existence. Having understood his true self, he no longer felt the effects of attachement, anger or dillusion. And from that moment onward, he was The Buddha. In 483 BCE, he died, passed into the state of Nirvana, a state in which the self no longer exists and is liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth (Samsara).
The Core Doctrine
The Four Noble Truths - How Buddha Understood Divinity
The historical Buddha set forth the Four Noble Truths in which he summarised the way in which he understood Divnity.
The first truth is: Everyone and everthing suffers (All of life is suffering);
Duhkha, the state of suffering, arises whenever we attempt to resist the flow of life and to cling to fixed forms.
The second truth is: The root of all suffering is desire;
The cause of suffering is Trishna - the attempt to cling to something. It arises from Avidya, the state of ignorance in which we are under the illusion that separate objects exist, that fluid reality (quantum physics) can be contained in fixed forms.
The third truth is: Enlightenment eliminates desire;
In Buddhist view, the way to elimate suffering by achieving the state of Nirvana, a state of consiousness beyond intellectual concepts where the oneness of reality is clearly perceived.
The fourth truth is: Enlightenment is achieved by following the Eightfold Path;
The Eightfold Path is the historical Buddha's perscription to end all suffering through avoiding extremes and choosing the Middle Way.
Suffering and Desire
According to Buddha, suffering stems from the illusion of an ego, the illusion of a soul, the illusion that we are individuals. What we call a living being is nothing more than a temporary fusion of living parts. If all these parts are present, the person is alive. If not, there is no such thing as a living being.
This teaching brings into focus the topic of permancence and impermanence. In Buddhist understanding, everything is impermanent - a temporary arrangement of particles - but the ego desires permanence and this is where suffering comes from.
If there is no permanent, solid and fixed Me, nothing can be Mine, so no desire can exist. Nothing we are, see or have is permanent - it is just a temporary arrangement of particles. There is no self to experience things and no things to be experienced by the self. However, experience itself exists. In fact, it is the only thing that exists. The Awakened Mind sees everything as an experience in the flow of consiousness. Nothing has an independent essence of its own. Everything is interconnected and interdependent - a web of causes and effects. We are but a dream experienced by the Universe - the Ultimate Self.
How can we transcend the Ego, the (mis)understanding that we exist as individuals?
The Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path, also refered to as the Middle Way, avoids the two extremes and perscribes balance through striving for right understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration. The first two place emphasis on the need for correct understanding of the human condition as a necessary starting point on the journey to Enlightenment. The next four perscribe the rules for the Buddhist way of life, the Middle Way between the two extremes. The last two sections describe the mythical experience towards which the journey leads.
As one walks on the Eightfold Path, one should always remain tolerant for it is through the virtue of tolerance that one gradually builds an understanding and compassion even for opinions and actions that they cannot embrace. Tolerance prevents anger and expands understanding.
The Law of Karma posits that what we experience is a result of our words, thoughts and actions. These generate our karma from which we cannot escape, from which noone can save us and for which we are solely responsible. Greed, hate, dilusion cause bad karma. Genrousity, compassion, wisdom result in good karma.
Accoridng to Buddhism, there is no God to bring you punishment or salvation. Your circumstances come from you. The repsonsibility is on you. No divine creator can interevene on your behalf in the workings of karma. In Buddhism, the focus is placed on the power of your thoughts to turn into words, to turn into actions.
The Mahayana School
As mentioned earlier, it is the Mahayana School which is most followed in Korea. The School was heavily influenced by the monk Nagarjuna whose arguements demonstrated that conceptual thinking prevents perceiving the oneness of reality.
He stated that emptiness, or Shunyata, is the essential nature of reality i.e concepts about reality formed in the human mind are null and void and do not capture its wholeness. Rational thinking creates categories, descriptions, and separates one thing from another. The mind cuts and disects the wholeness of the Universe in smaller bits and pieces (words, ideas of where one thing ends and another one begins, definitions) which prevents experiencing the oneness of reality.
Buddhism in Contemporary Korean Art
Korea hosts the annual Buddha Art Fair which aims to be the largest Buddhist art fair in the world. In addition to the many monks and artists who paint strictly religious paintings, Buddhism features in contemporary Korean art is one more way - many contemporary artists explore the illusion of permanence and the pain that comes from it. The transiency of life events and circumstances is a common theme in modern artistic creations, as is the interconectedness of all humans and nature.
