Noble paths and karma: Buddhism 101

The master says to his student: "If you have a stick, I will give it to you. If you have no stick, I will take it away."

Huh? Where does that absurd saying come from? Three retro-looking black telephones stand in a row on a table, objects of an exhibition. One is invited to pick up the receiver and dial a number. I choose the third phone, dial 9, and a male voice reads me the above-quoted koan — to use a term from Zen Buddhism. A koan is spoken by a Zen master with the intention of stimulating thought and meditation in his student. And it often presents a riddle difficult to solve, at least by means of logic.

World religion or philosophy?

The Western fascination with Buddhism goes back a long way. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Buddhist teachings. Reading Schopenhauer, the composer Richard Wagner represented Buddhist thought in his operas Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal — and even planned a Buddhist opera that was never written: Der Sieger (The Victor). The author Hermann Hesse made Buddhism the subject of his novel Siddhartha. 1960's counter-culture was impacted by the Beatles' discovery of the religion.

Roughly 360 million persons in the world profess to be Buddhists, most of them living in Tibet, Sri Lanka, Korea, China, Japan and the countries of southeast Asia. But because the religion lacks central institutions, the exact number is difficult to ascertain. More than 200,000 active Buddhists are said to live in Germany.

The name Buddha translates as "The Enlightened One." But: "The Buddha is not a god but rather a wise man who found a path to Enlightenment," says the Taiwanese monk Bhikkhu Vupasama Thero, who came to the exhibition called "Next Stop: Nirvana" in Zurich. On the most valuable exhibit — precious stones from a grave-site being shown in public for the first time — he adds: "These jewels symbolize the fact that the Buddha was a real human being and not an invented story."

Man at the center of the cosmos

That historical figure named Siddhartha Gautama is said to have been a prince born in northern India 2,500 years ago. The young man lived a life of privilege but discovered at one point that there is suffering in the world. Turning his back on his life of ease, he lived as a hermit in poverty, but found that self-negation did not deliver him or others from suffering either. Discovering a way of moderation, he learned to bring body and soul into a state of harmony. After reaching Enlightenment, he had a number of disciples who carried his teachings forth into the world. Written documents originated only centuries later.

Like other religions, Buddhism has various schools of faith and movements. The Buddhist cosmology is populated by good and evil spirits. But unlike the monotheistic book religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Buddhism knows no single, personified creator of the universe. It is a faith without God, priests or churches.

"Man is the focus here, and he can only be happy as a consequence of his actions," says the exhibition's curator, the Indologist and religion scholar Johannes Beltz. The supreme goal of this faith is Nirvana, which, however, is not comparable to paradise. "The concept describes a state of being that is beyond the scope of conventional language," says Beltz. "But there are also Buddhists who believe that one can reach Nirvana during one's own life."

Faith and meditation

Faith is the central element in some religions, but in Buddhism, faith is the foundation of wisdom — and meditation an instrument for attaining it. The precondition: one must find the source of suffering in one's self and change accordingly. Doing so incorporates teaching and action.

The teachings include the Four Noble Truths: 

First: life is suffering.

Second: the causes of suffering are greed, hate and ignorance.

Third: future happiness depends on the end of suffering and the avoidance of these causes.

Fourth: The avoidance of suffering and the attainment of happiness are the results of action.

What action? That leads to the next step: the Noble Eightfold Path, with the eight elements divided into three categories. "Wisdom" includes Right Understanding, which gives direction and orientation. Secondly, and of central importance, is Right Thought, because in Buddhism, thought determines the quality and value of life.

The category of "Moral Virtue" has three elements: Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood. These rules of conduct include things like avoiding lying, harsh speech or idle talk and respecting life, property and personal relationships. In this teaching, negative thoughts result from egoism and its limitations, while happiness results from selflessness.

Finally, the three elements in the "Meditation" group: Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. 

A modern religion

If that seems like a lot of information at first encounter, one might focus instead on the concept of karma, the force that connects man to the world. Even more: through karma, all things are interconnected. Karma insures that every action has a cause and an effect. Every existing thing — be it matter or of spirit — exists out of a confluence of various factors. The Buddhist inquires, "Why is the world as it is?", and his task is to seek to understand the world and to examine how phenomena originate.

That sounds like science, even like physics — and it comes as no coincidence that the great physicist Albert Einstein once said, "If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism." 

Buddhism is constantly being questioned even by its closest adherents — and in a fully practical manner. "This exhibition is an occasion to think again about what Buddhism is and about whether the teaching is right or not," says Bhikkhu Vupasama Thero. "That includes asking the question: Does it really help? And if not, we should think about what the right Buddha teaching is. That is the most important consideration: how to help people like you and me." 

Thinking about the right Buddhist teaching would go beyond my own level of knowledge at this time, so I'll continue to brood over that stick I didn't have that was taken away and the one I did have that was then given to me.

The exhibition "Next Stop: Nirvana" in the Museum Rietberg in Zurich is open until March 31, 2019.