-: Religious Paths :-

Buddhism | Sikhism

By the sixth century BCE, the specific doctrines and customary social and religious practices associated with the Aryans had been in place for nearly a millennium. The social formation known as "caste" had introduced certain rigidities into Indian life, and though some of the early texts, such as the Upanishads, of the religion that much later would be known as Hinduism suggested a climate of open intellectual inquiry and a predilection for metaphysical thinking, Hinduism had most likely become reduced to a set of ritual practices and dogmas. It is against this backdrop that one must view the emergence of the so-called heterodox systems, Buddhism and Jainism. Both these systems questioned the authority of the Vedas, and of the sacerdotal caste,the Brahmins, entrusted with the preservation and interpretation of the Vedas; and both condemned the excessive ritualism associated with the religion, such as the various sacrifices. The Buddha and Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, alike stressed the importance of ahimsa or non-violence, and the increasing turn towards vegetarianism among Indians after the sixth century BCE can be attributed to the influence of Buddhist and Jaina teachings. Both Buddhism and Jainism introduced the monastic conception of life into India.

The fundamental precepts of Buddhism are, in the first instance, associated with the teachings of the Buddha, though the history of Buddhism embraces, as one can well imagine, the institutionalization of the religion into specific schools of thought. The Buddha taught the "Four Noble Truths", namely: all existence is suffering (dukha); the cause of suffering is ignorance (avidya) and selfish desire; if there is suffering, there is a cure for it; and the cure for suffering lies in the eight-fold path of right beliefs, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort, right mindedness, right meditation, and right aspirations. The knowledge of the roots of sorrow, and the elimination of desire, leads to the state of nirvana, which is also the state of wisdom and compassion.

Photograph: "Vinay Lal, Copyright: 1996"
 

Thus the representation of the Buddha as the compassionate one.) In the teachings of the Buddha are found more than a mere glimmer of the doctrines contained in the Upanishads, and to some extent he can be seen as resuscitating the earliest philosophical teachings of Hinduism. However, the Buddha articulated more specific principles of philosophical thought, such as the law of dependent origination, or the idea that there is nothing permanent in the empirical self.

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