Buddhism for Beginners

are you a beginner at Buddhism and want to know more we'll discuss Buddhism for beginners coming right up so I'm Doug Smith I'm study director at the secular Buddhist Association that secular Buddhism org if you're new to the channel and interested in living a wiser and a kinder and a less stress filled life consider subscribing so Buddhism should be seen or thought of as a way of life as a practice as well as being a religion and but I mean by that is that in the West we often think of of religions has involved with a certain kind of belief system I'll sort of a credo as it said in in Christianity that a certain group of things a certain group of propositions we have to believe in and that sort of is central to what religion is and Buddhism doesn't really have that approach it's more of a way of life it's more of a practice and central to that practice is ethics the ethical system is central an ethics of kindness of compassion of non harming and we do these things not because there's some kind of divine command there's no God that's gonna tell us what to do or what not to do it's not that the Buddha was some kind of divine being who is bringing down Revelation or anything it's rather that we're trying to find the best way to live now we're trying to find the way the way to live that creates the least harm that creates the least suffering and so the idea is that our ethical system of kindness and compassion and non-harming is the central attention to the sort of center of that of that kind of ethical approach to a practice and to that end many of us will have heard of the word Karma of course karma occurs a lot in the West it's sort of a part of our normal discourse in the West as well and so in general what we should take the word karma to mean in Buddhism is that actions have consequences that basically there's a difference between a wholesome action and an unwholesome action there's a difference between an intention behind an action that is wholesome or unwholesome so for example we may have an intention as I mentioned towards kindness or towards compassion we may also have an intention towards Greene towards owning things when we have an intention of hatred that leads us to do certain kinds of actions and the idea behind karma is that there's this distinction that there's a very plain natural distinction between certain actions that are wholesome or help be helpful or healthy and those that are not and the wholesome more skillful ones are ones that are that are better that will that will tend to make people happier and the unwholesome or unskillful ones are not so good because they will tend to make great greater suffering in the world now traditional Buddhists will also believe in rebirth due to this Karma that is to say that when our life ends the karmic baggage that we have accumulated during this life and during a beginningless number of lives before us will result in the in the next life in other words if we have done a lot of bad things then we'll have a worse next life and if we've done a lot of good things now more good things than bad we will have a better life that's the traditional view it's a view of what we might call perfect justice that all things are paid for in the end right so no matter what it is we do in this in this life or whatever where whenever we do it we'll get pay back and if we don't get pay back in this life we'll get payback eventually in a future life more secular practitioners like myself we tend to leave that aside we don't necessarily think there is such a thing as perfect justice what we're interested in is more of this life practice and it may be that we're reborn in a future life it may be that we're not but what matters for now is simply that we do we act as skillfully as we can and we and we try to purify our intentions to make them as pure as we can as skillful as we can trying to keep them towards kindness and compassion so that we avoid doing harm more harm than is absolutely necessary and the way but I see the world is that the only real constant in the world around us when we look around is change that all things change that all things pass away that nothing lasts forever there are however certain kinds of regularities within this change that we can use to our benefit and these revolve around the notions of pleasure and pain that is to say that the human mind on all sentient minds tend to make their their thought and their behavior their action around pleasure and pain and these can be both sense pleasures and mental pleasures that is to say we may have pleasures that you know a nice meal that tastes good a nice drink that tastes good we might have a a nice a bed that feels good good music that sounds good beautiful landscape or artwork that that looks good to us and we may also have pleasures of the mind certain things certain ideas that that make us happy let's say justice or or just other people doing well or whatever it might be certain things make us happy other things of course bring us pain other other thoughts in our mind bring us pain so these are the sort of sources of pain and pleasure there they come through the senses and through the mind and what we tend to do is we tend to gravitate towards the pleasant ones we tend to crave the pleasant ones we want them to remain we want them to stay with us and we tend to push away or are aversive to the painful ones we want them to go away if they're here and if they're not here we we worry about them coming back and these kinds of regularities that we find in the mind now the Buddha then put together in something called the chain of Tibetan dependent origination which is a quite large and complex I have a video on that if you're interested but for this purpose for the purposes of this video simply it's important to know the important the the critical place the pleasure in pain play in the human life and basically diverting us in making us want certain things to be other than they are in making us want things to remain a fairy if they're pleasant to us and wanting them to go away if they're not and so in this way pleasures and pains tend to push us off of what we might call normal equanimity so there's a kind of equanimous state or a state of happiness with the way things are no matter they are that either is difficult to achieve where that goes away when we tend to grasp toward certain things and be aversive towards others and basically what happens is that we we get ourselves into these states of wanting certain things or being aversive to certain things and this causes suffering this causes us let's say mental rumination or mental proliferation we tend to obsess around things not being the way we really want them to be if there's something let's say a vacation that's coming to an end of the last day while we're in our hotel room looking out on the beach we may be ruminating over the fact that you know the next tomorrow we're going to be back to work if if we are in bed with some kind of painful illness we may also be ruminating or proliferating mentally around that around that illness around that pain and in these ways this mental proliferation this mental rumination this mental lack of equanimity is itself a source of suffering it's a second source of suffering over and above the pain itself or over and above the lack of pleasure that the end of pleasure itself so that in a nutshell is the way Buddhism sees the world and sees the way that the world is and then on top of that Buddhism suggests a group of practices that we can use to sort of overcome some of these some of the worst examples of parts of the world that we can have an effect on in particular that we can have an effect on with ourselves because we can only work on ourselves directly and so the first practice is one of what we might call calming meditation so for example we follow the breath we we sit quietly in a chair on a cushion or we lie down and we simply follow the breath as it comes in and goes out and by following the breath we will find naturally that the that the body and the mind calm down and that calming itself can on its own helped to relieve some some of our suffering by quieting down the mental chatter by quieting down this kind of rumination this kind of mental proliferation that happens when we're stuck in either craving certain things or are being aversive towards others it also by calming the mind helps to clarify the mind because the mind in a certain sense is there described as like a pool and we know when a pool is very agitated the water is agitated we can't see to the bottom that's sort of a metaphor for the mind that is active and and proliferating it and ruminating but when the mind calms down the water gets clear and limpid then we can see through to the bottom and the same way when the mind is calm and quiet relatively so anyway we can see clear more clearly well how how the mind acts and reacts towards things in the world towards problems that towards things that are pleasant towards things that are painful and we can see directly rather than intellectually cognitively but directly in our own minds how we tend to to crave and cling or be aversive and this general process is known as mindfulness meditation so as we do this kind of mindfulness meditation we gain insight into the way that the mind works we gain insight into the way that the mind craves and clings and is aversive and we gain insight we begin to realize how these kinds of activities of the mind lead to our own suffering and lead to making our own experience in the world worse for us and worse for everybody as we let's say we have a pain we begin to see how that pain leads to anger in ourselves and leads maybe to hatred and maybe leads to an outburst that we that we get angry at our husband or our wife we get angry at somebody on the street and that makes things worse and as we see these in ourselves we'll find overtime it's a long slow practice but over time we begin to see that the mind starts to relax around these things we find that the craving and the clinging and the aversion may come out but they don't come up with as much intensity or as frequently as the mind begins to see the way that suffering arises due to these things so we begin to see our way out begin to see our way towards getting better towards a veteran of our own internal mental chatter let's say and towards a better external ethical behavior in the world and in that way over time we begin to see our way towards equanimity towards a more economists mind towards a more economist interaction with the world we're where we are ready for things that are both pleasant and unpleasant we're more able to deal with them more able to deal with them without getting ourselves into trouble so that is both a view of the beliefs that Buddhism has the way that the Buddhists see the world and the way that the Buddhist make or Buddhism makes a kind of practice out of that in a way of approaching the world an ethical practice to to guarantee to gain the best sort of life we can for ourselves and for the rest of sentient life in the rest of the world if this kind of activity interests you check out some of the other videos on my web page or my YouTube page there's a lot of material there which obviously I can't get into in a short video like this this is really an introduction if you're interested also in and checking out more in supporting the channel check out my patreon page which is linked here down below thanks so much to all of my patrons it's it's really wonderful to have your support if you have any questions please do leave them down below I do love reading them and I'll try to answer all the ones that I can or we'll see if other other people can answer as well and meanwhile well I should say I hope to see you on other of these videos and meanwhile whether I see you or not please be well

Channel: Doug's Dharma

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Keywords: buddhism, buddhist, buddha, secular buddhism, secularbuddhism.org, secular buddhist association, doug's secular dharma, secular dharma, philosophy, secularism, secularbuddhism, buddhism for beginners, intro to buddhism, buddhism introduction, buddhism explained

Id: pbngKOUgCDY

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 13 2018