This video is sponsored by curiositystream. Get access to my streaming service nebula when you sign up for curiositystream using the link below. Buddhism, the religion probably most associated with peace, tranquility, and bald guys. One of the oldest surviving religions Buddhism started 2500 years ago in India and is now the world's fourth-largest religion. With over 520 million followers, or 7% of humanity. Almost all located within this circle. And if you live outside of this circle you might not know a lot about Buddhist beliefs. So what is Buddhism? Who is The Buddha? And Is life an endless cycle of pain, misery, disappointment and death!!! WELL, LET'S FIND OUT. INTRO MUSIC, which slaps So who was The Buddha, well, let's travel 2500 years into the past. Around 480BCE the Buddha was born as Prince Siddhartha Gautama in modern day Nepal, right here. Siddhartha's dad was a powerful ruler of a Hindu republic. But due to a prophecy he was terrified that Prince Siddartha would become a religious leader instead of taking his place on the throne. To avoid the prophecy he hid human suffering from Siddartha. Siddartha lived in fancy palaces, had the finest clothes and jewelry, ate and drank what he pleased, and married a beautiful bride. His dad fired sick, ugly, aging servants and no one could speak to Siddartha about any of life's miseries, like death. This could obviously never backfire. Siddartha felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction with this luxurious life. At 29 years old after finally being allowed to go on a trip outside the palace, Siddartha saw an old man, a sick man, and finally a corpse. He spiralled into an existential crisis. He thought why do anything in life when old age, sickness, and death would eventually get everyone. ANYWAAAAY! On another visit outside Siddhartha came across a homeless monk that had given up all possessions. This guy seemed pretty wise and happy. So Siddhartha decided he would abandon his princely life and become a wandering monk in search of an answer to life's suffering. Siddartha spent the next six years learning from India's greatest yoga and meditation masters. He joined a group of hermits in the forest that practice extreme fasting and intense meditation. But after six years of eating nothing but seeds that had blown into his lap Siddhartha was little more than a living skeleton. He realised he wasn't any closer to an answer to suffering. In fact the starvation had clouded his thinking. HE WAS EVEN FURTHER AWAY FROM AN ANSWER THAN WHEN HE STARTED. Something clicked. The path to Enlightenment lay between the extremes of a Prince's life of luxury and a hermit's life of starvation. So Siddartha would have to follow a Middle-Way. And so he began eating again. Reenergised, Siddartha sat beneath a tree and vowed to meditate until he found an answer to human suffering. In a deep state of meditation Siddartha sat there for days. He realised that by ending desire, he could end suffering. We only suffer because we want things to be a certain way. His fear of aging, sickness and death slipped away. He realised all things are always changing and that the only thing he could do was accept and love those changes. Freed from desire, his mind and senses purified. He was filled with a sense of compassion and joy for everything on Earth. Under that tree, now called the Bodhi Tree, Siddartha achieved Enlightenment or Nirvana. He was now an Awakened One, a Buddha. So how exactly did the Buddha become Enlightened. Well, luckily he laid out a handy dandy guide for everyone to follow. The four noble truths are the basis of Buddhism. The First Noble Truth Is... Life is suffering Wait wait. I know this sounds dark but it's actually not. The actual first truth is Life is Dukkha. Which is an ancient Sanskrit word that is normally translated as “suffering,” in English. But it's more like dissatisfaction. Life will always be disatifying because humans cling to temporary things. Old Age, Sickness, and Death are Dukkha. Things changing when you don't want them to is dukkha. Not getting what you want is dukkha. Things never measuring up to our expectations is Dukkha. Dukkha suggests that even when life is not physically painful it can be disappointing and unfulfilling. The Second Noble Truth is that Dukkha is caused by desire. Humans desire and cling to possessions, people, power, and life itself. So they end up constantly disappointed. Because all of those things end. People want things they don't have and want things they have to never change. But everything is always changing. Everything we think we own is really borrowed. We want to live forever and want our loved ones to stay the same forever. But you can’t catch a running stream. You can't have a permanent relationship with an impermanent world. It always ends in disappointment. Eventually you discover that the bottomless breadsticks are in fact bottom’d. Desire fuels suffering in the way that wood fuels a fire. Fire consumes everything you feed it and will always demand more fuel. The only way to kill the fire is to stop feeding it breadsticks. The Buddha taught that the secret to a happy life is to enjoy what you have without attachment and not want what you don’t have. The third Noble Truth is there’s an end to suffering. Since we cause our suffering we can also cure it. We cannot change the things that happen to us, but we can change our responses. The fourth Noble Truth is the Eightfold Path that leads to the end of suffering. The Noble Eightfold Path or the Middle Way, is an eight step guide to deprogramming the desire addicted brain. It's called a Path but you should think of it more as a wheel with 8 spokes that should be spun together at the same time. The Eight parts are: Right View: Right View is accepting the 4 Noble Truths. That suffering exists and that by following the Buddha’s teaching there is a way out of it. Right Thought: The Buddha said "Your worst enemy can not harm you as much as your own thoughts". So don't let negative thoughts like greed, fear, and anxiety cloud your mind. Fill your mind with positive ones coming from love, kindness, and compassion. Right Speech: Focus on positive words and stay away from negative ones like gossip, hurtful words, and lies. These only cause suffering to yourself and others. Right Action: The Buddha taught the philosophy of ahimsa or non-violence. Instead of hurting others you should try to have endless love for all life. Good actions include conquering anger with love, evil with good, meanness with generosity, lies with truth, and smikty smashing the likeity like button and clikity clake the scripity subscribe button. Bad Actions include killing, stealing, drugs, and engaging in non-consensual sex. Right Livelihood: Avoid jobs that involve death, weapons, slavery, the harm of animals, drugs, and any kind of explotation. But livelihood is not just occupation. Be an honest and kind parent, friend, and partner. The next 3 are related to Meditation. You have: Right Effort: Right Effort builds on Right Thought. It means putting effort into welcoming and creating good thoughts and pushing out bad thoughts. Violence, hatred, greed, and anxiety begin as negative thoughts. Using Right Effort in your little mind garden you water your positive thought flowers so they grow. In a garden full of kind and compassionate thoughts, greed weeds will find no space to grow. Right Mindfulness: Mindfulness is paying attention. Paying bare attention in every moment. Remaining in the present without judging or labelling your experiences and without letting distracting thoughts bring you out of the present. If you're eating ice cream, eat ice cream. Don't let that memory of that one time you pee'd your pants at school, and then slip on your own pee, and afterwards everyone called you PeepeePants McSlippy Pee because they were uncreative distract you from your ice cream moment. Mindfulness helps you understand your mind and body so you can see what causes positive and negative reactions from you in each moment. Right concentration: While Mindfulness is like a giant net catching everything, Right Concentration is like a laser. Right Concentration is what people would recognise as meditation. Using Right concentration you focus your mind on a single thing while meditating. Whether that be your breath or thoughts. The point is to focus on that one thing without distraction so that you can gain insight into reality. Concentration gives you insight into your thoughts and why they happen. So you can nip them in the bud, and stop yourself from desiring. Each of these 8 parts has endlessly complex additions and extra steps that we don’t have time to cover. The main takeaway is that the Buddha taught that the Eightfold path would free people from suffering. Following this path does not mean you give up on life, abandoning friends and family, and to stop feeling all emotions. The Truths and Path are about realising that you won't find happiness by clinging to the world. Happiness comes from clearing your mind of Desire and replacing it with joy and compassion for all things. Instead of trying to control what happens, you accept what happens, and enjoy every moment as it is. Along with the Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path there are some other important Buddhist Core Beliefs. Like: Karma is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning action. But actions that have consequences. When you commit bad or good actions it causes a chain reaction that will later come back to you in this life or the next. Buddhists see Karma more like a natural law like gravity rather than some sort of judgmental system of reward and punishments. It’s a system of cause and effect. Think of Karma like seeds. As you sow, so shall you reap. If you plant a mango seed you eventually get a mango tree. If you plant a murder seed, MURDER TREE. Or the worst one of all if you plant corriander...straight to hell. According to Buddhism "If you want to know about your past life, look at your present body. If you want to know your future life, look at your present mind." Even though Karma affects your life conditions it is not destiny. Buddhism teaches that at every moment each person can change and make their lives better. When it comes to Karma intention matters. If you squash an ant by accident then you don't generate any karma. If you stamp on it with pure hatred and anger as if it was coriander then that will generate negative karma. Karma also influences how you will be reborn after death. Buddhists believe we live in a beginningless and endless cycle of birth, suffering, and death called Samsara. When the Buddha reached Nirvana he escaped the cycle of rebirth. Desire and Karma push the cycle on and on. When a life ends in one body, karma drags that life into a new body, with no memory of the previous life. Karma even if it's good or bad karma keeps people stuck in the cycle. The only way to break out of the cycle is to stop desire, stop suffering, stop the creation of karma and reach Nirvana. Nirvana or Enlightenment isn’t a place for you to go. It’s not Heaven. It's a state of mind. The Buddha reached Nirvana and lived another 45 years. Although some Buddhist traditions do have heavens and hells they're inside the cycle. Nirvana is an escape from the entire Samsara cycle. Nirvana means ‘blowing out’. You blow out the Fire of Desire. When you stop thinking of yourself as ME and I and instead fill yourself with compassion for all things. Once you do this you stop generating Karma and you stop being reborn. Anyone that wants to achieve Nirvana can with the right effort. And that’s why, the Buddha spent the remaining 45 years of his life after Enlightenment wandering the Indian subcontinent, teaching others how to escape suffering before he died at the age of 80. After Siddhartha's death his community of monks known as the Sangha spread his teachings or Dharma out of India and throughout Asia. Buddhism eventually declined in India but took hold across East and South-East Asia. His teachings of the Noble Truths, and Eightfold Path aren't strict rules and not following them won't result in punishment from a God. There is no capital G God in Buddhism. There are gods but they're stuck in the same Cycle as the rest of us, and you can be reborn as one if you've got great karma. The Buddha's teachings are a guide to escape suffering, leave the cycle, and achieve Nirvana like he did. The important part is using the teachings that work for you in your unique life circumstances. As The Dalai Lama once said "If you find that the teachings suit you, apply them to your life as much as you can. If they don’t suit you, just leave them be.” This is why there are dozens of different kinds of Buddhism, but they can be divided into two major branches. Theravada and Mahayana. Theravada means “School of the Elders'' and is the oldest surviving branch of Buddhism. For Theravadans reading is fundamental. They use a series of texts called Suttas, which are based on oral teachings of what the Buddha taught. They date back almost to the time of the Buddha and are written in the ancient Pali language and so these texts are called the Pali canon. In general Theravada has less religious rituals than other forms of Buddhism and they believe the Buddha to be a much more human figure. They see Siddhartha as the only Buddha of the current era and that he left behind his Dharma and Sangha to help others achieve enlightenment. Theravada Buddhist countries include Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Mahayana meaning Great Vehicle is younger than Theravada and is found mostly in East Asia. Unlike Theravada which sticks with the Pali Canon, Mahayana has loads more texts and teachings. At the center of Mahayana is the bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings that instead of leaving the cycle of rebirth have decided to stay in order to help other non-enlightened beings achieve enlightenment. Mahāyāna Buddhism believes that you can ask Bodhisattvas, other Buddhas, and holy beings for help in this world. So you will see people praying to different Buddhas in the same way people would pray to Saints or Gods in other religions. Mahayana is primarily practiced in Nepal, Mongolia, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Mahāyāna contains dozens of smaller traditions such as Zen and Pure Land Buddhism. Another tradition under Mahayana is Vajrayana or Diamond Vehicle. This is what many people call Tibetan Buddhism. Vajrayana uses mantras or repetitive chants, the drawing of mandalas, and the use of secret rituals, incantations, and deep meditation while visualising different supernatural beings to try and achieve Nirvana faster. This school has a huge emphasis on using gurus or teachers known as lamas to assist you on your journey. The famous Dalai Lama is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. If you’d like an even better explanation of the Buddha and his teachings I can highly recommend Buddha episode of the series Genius of the Ancient World over on CuriosityStream. It covers the Buddha’s entire life, his teachings, and includes interviews with Buddhist experts. 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