Lesson video

Hello, welcome back, my name's Ms. Pauvaday.

Welcome to this lesson on Buddhism.

Today we're going to be looking at some very specific ideas in Buddhism, slightly different to the ones that we might find in Hinduism.

We're going to be looking at Karma, Dhamma and Rebirth.

So for today's lesson you will need a pen, some paper and we need our mind switched on.

It's important that I tell you that today we're going to be talking about some difficult ideas that are relative to ideas of death, suffering and violence.

Again, these are the kind of ideas that pop up in RE now and again, and particularly when we look at Buddhism when we start to think about this nature of suffering.

So, if you need to do this with a parent or a guardian that's completely okay, and as always I recommend that you talk to someone afterwards.

Share share what you've learnt, have a good discussion, it's always a good thing to talk about.

If anything's upsetting you then do go and speak to a parent or a guardian.

Okay.

Now what I'd like you to do is find a nice quiet place in your home, away from distraction.

Move away from anything that's going to distract you so that we can get on with the lesson and we can focus nicely.

So go ahead and pause and do that now.

So today we are going to be looking at ethics.

Very, very interesting topic.

And we're going to look at Karma and Dhamma which you probably have heard of before and might know something about already.

I'm sure you do.

We're going to kind of see where this fits in with the cycle of samsara we've kind of touched on that already, and we're going to look at some of the differences in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs with regards to samsara.

So, the first thing I want to ask you is, can you think of anything that is universally wrong? And what I mean by that is something that you think is wrong no matter what.

So no matter which culture you live in, which time, if I went back 500 years, it doesn't matter about my gender, my sexuality, the languages that I speak or anything.

Anything.

The idea of being universally wrong is that it should be wrong for all times, for all people.

So I want you to go and have a pause, have a think about it and think, what might we give an example of as something that wrong, absolutely wrong? Universally wrong? So go ahead and pause, have a think about it and join me in a moment.

Okay, so, you might have thought of murder, killing, that's the common one that comes up in my classes.

And of course most of us would think taking a life is a serious business.

It's not okay to do that, but again we're talking about absolutely wrong here so it has to be wrong, no matter what the circumstances, culture, time, place, that kind of thing.

And if you think about war, throughout war, we have this kind of sanctioned killing, so if we killed lots of Nazi Germans, Nazi soldiers during the Second World War, for example, and therefore it's justified, but it's still killing, so we have to be careful about what we mean by murder and killing.

There starts to become all these different definitions, and you might even think about things like violence towards people that can't, that you know, is difficult to find any justification for that, and the one, this is slightly challenging, but it's interesting for you to know, the one that comes up which is very interesting, again in my classes, is rape.

Or, you know torture, that kind of thing.

And if you think torture and rape have been used by invading groups as a way of kind of really psychologically attacking their enemy.

And of course most of us would think that's completely abhorrent, it's terrible, it's not a good thing to do, but we have got examples in history, and actually not that far, not that long ago, where these kind of tactics have been used as a way of extracting information or weakening your opponent, and so those people might see it as a good thing, whereas most of the rest of the world might think no, that's absolutely disgusting.

So again that doesn't quite fit in to what we mean by absolutely wrong.

And another common one is theft, but what do you do if you're hungry, if you, you know, stealing food to survive? That's a common one.

Racism, again, most people would say racism, sexism, homophobia, all of those things might be seen as universally wrong, but you don't have to go that far back in history to see people's rights being taken away.

And many people still arguing that those rights aren't quite there, particularly with things like the Black Lives Matter movement, people talking about something called systemic racism, where people don't feel like they getting, they're not really being seen as people but rather than the colour of their skin, that kind of thing.

Many, many people are arguing that there is still gender inequality in the world, where men and women are treated differently.

Various things.

So it's not, gender and inequality isn't just against women, it's also men who might feel that they don't get the same rights to their children, for example, compared to women.

And homophobia certainly is still an issue in many countries where people of different sexualities are not safe.

They're not treated necessarily with, their rights aren't really protected.

So.

So this leaves a problem then because then how do we work out what's right and wrong? We can't say that there are certain things that are right and wrong, because if we look throughout history, that rightness and wrongness has kind of changed.

And, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to give some terms to think about.

It will help you frame this understanding of ethics, and when you do get to this is school, you're going to be super prepared for it already, and you're going to look like a genius in front of your teacher.

So, the first thing I'm going to tell you is, this term, what ethics means.

Ethics is a very big branch of philosophy which is really the study of how do we work out what's right and wrong.

And the study of what we call moral behaviour.

So how people behave, that's attached to rightness and wrongness of actions, for example.

And, there are lots of different ways of thinking about this, but I'm going to just give you two, two kind of umbrella terms. And the first one is absolutism, which we've kind of touched on.

And that is the idea that there are some things that will universally, absolutely, always be wrong throughout time, place, doesn't matter the circumstances, that thing is just wrong, according to absolutism.

And often that absolutist thinking, when we think about rightness and wrongness, absolute rightness and wrongness, we often attribute it or link it to God.

This higher being.

So people that believe in a higher being, this higher entity that kind of bestows, gives human beings the law, the moral law as to what, how to behave, what's right and wrong.

And often they are kind of revealed in holy books.

So, you're going to find it in the Koran, you're going to find it definitely in the Bible.

The Bible you will know it as the 10 Commandments.

So the first, the classic one that most people are familiar with is Thou Shalt Not Kill.

And that's a commandment from God, and therefore God is saying, killing, the act of killing, is morally wrong.

But we've already seen that there are some problems with that.

Now Relativism on the other hand holds the view that rightness and wrongness really depends on, and is relative to the time and place, and the situation.

So therefore morality, actions are not fixed to be, there aren't good or bad actions.

There are good and bad responses to different kind of circumstances.

So, theft, for example might be seen as absolutely wrong, but from a relativist perspective, if you were, I don't know a spy for a country that was trying to win a war and you were being oppressed, maybe you, you need to steal some plans or something like that to protect your country.

So, that might be seen as an okay thing to do.

That might be seen as the good thing to do.

Depends on the circumstances.

So, see if you can remember some of this.

Have a go at matching some of these key terms. What are ethics? What are absolutism? What is relativism? So go ahead and pause, write them down, these are good to keep with you, and resume once you're finished.

Okay, so hopefully you've had a good think.

Let's have a look at the answers.

So ethics: this is the philosophical study of what is right and wrong.

Absolutism: this refers to actions that are universally right or wrong.

So they, no matter what, they are always right or they are always wrong.

And relativism is the idea that it depends on the time, place, culture, situation.

That kind of thing.

Good.

So I'm sure you know all that.

I'm sure you did that brilliantly.

Now, okay.

We're going to come back to Buddhism.

We had a quick detour then towards ethics, but I mean it's important to know the ethics, these kind of branches of philosophy have always been found in the Indian traditions, but they obvioulsy have different answers and that's what we're going to look at today.

Though in Buddhism it's not strictly relativist or absolutist.

Buddhists have different ideas about how right and wrong can actually occur, and again, looking at the Indian traditions, usually it starts with the mind.

What happens in the mind? How do we perceive things? How do these illusions create, you know, negative, positive and negative behaviour.

So if you think about the Vinjana Skanda, those of you who remember the lesson on Skandas, how images, how experience is presented to the mind, Vinjana Skanda, that stage is where, as human beings, we might look at something and we start to attach rightness or wrongness to it.

So as a human being, you might be in a supermarket and you see a banana, and you pick up a banana, that's just the action and you become aware of the banana, but we start to attach things like rightness or wrongness.

So, one of the things that I might do, for example, I might look to see if it's Fair Trade, for example.

So I'm starting to look at this banana, not just as an object, but now as something that has a sense of morality to it.

And even if you think about things like slavery.

Slavery was sadly justified, depending on the experiences.

So this is an important thing to understand, particularly in Buddhism, that right or wrong, much of it happens because of the experiencer, how we see things depends on whether it's right or wrong.

Now it's really important to know that, well Buddhism says that this is exactly the problem.

That is the problem.

The problem is in the mind.

The way that we see things, the way distort reality and good things can come from this and bad things can come from this.

And you definitely know this term, you've definitely heard of it.

The Pali Sanskrit term is known as karma.

Often kind of misunderstood but that's what it means.

That's what karma is about.

The kind of good actions and bad actions that come from our perceptions.

So let's have a quick think.

So do you think Buddhists would agree with the absolutists view, or with right and wrong, or with the relativist view? Okay, so, Buddhists, they're not strictly absolutist, and they're not strictly relativist.

They would say that much of rightness and wrongness actually comes from the mind, the way we perceive things.

So they're not strictly either.

It's important to know that.

So, I'm just going to move my face again to over here.

So, and important note, this is something that's really important to know, people get confused by this, Buddhists are not saying that there are, they're not, it's not really saying that rightness and wrongness is completely in the mind.

So that's why I said it's not strictly one or the other because there are some things that Buddhists are going to say are wrong, are definitely wrong, universally wrong.

The difference is, in Buddhism there isn't really this God, you know, it's not like, the Buddha doesn't really talk about it very much.

It's not to say there is no God, there are definitely Buddhists who believe in God, there are definitely Buddhists who are out and out atheists, that's not really something that Buddhism is really that interested in, and the point of it is then that there isn't this kind of judging figure that is going to determine whether you've been good or bad.

In the Abrahamic faith, life is about finding your way kind of back to paradise, back to goodness, your life means something because you need to act well in order to find your way back to God, effectively.

And at the end of your life you're going to be judged by your actions, how you behaved.

And the way you behaved is going to determine what happens after you die, whether you go to heaven or hell.

In Hinduism and very specifically Buddhism, that doesn't really exist.

So what happens to you next is based on your own behaviour, your own thoughts and your own behaviour.

And that's karma.

There are certain things that you just can't really do.

One of the main teachings is Ahimsa which is non-violence, so if you go back to, again, Hinduism, this idea that you have got Brahman, this one energy from which all life comes from, all life manifests, if you then do something that extinguishes that life, or causes violence to that life, then that has serious kind of karmic consequences because you've effectively, from a Hindu perspective, you have killed something that's divine.

That's why in India, most people are vegetarians.

Hindus and Buddhists tend to be vegetarian.

Not strictly.

I mean you will find Hindus and Buddhists that do eat meat.

Remember that religion is this journey.

But one one of the reasons why many, many don't, many are vegans or vegetarians, it's because of this idea of Ahimsa, non-violence.

And you might have come across that particularly if you've ever studied something to do with Gandhi, about how Gandhi used this teaching of Ahimsa to stand up to the British government when they invaded India in a peaceful non-violent way to try and get the British to leave.

So, what we need to remember here is your negative actions to yourself or others produce what we call bad karmic fruits.

It creates a bad consequence and it can negatively affect the spiritual evolution of other beings.

So it's not, it's not a good thing.

So, in kamma, kamma from a Buddhist perspective, it actually means action, it's driven by your intentions.

So how you think.

Remember thoughts are also seen as something that, particularly from a Hindu perspective, something that is produced, is a manifestation of Brahman.

For Buddhists, your thoughts are really, really important, because from your thoughts come actions.

And karma is kind of seen as like this kind of cosmic law, this cosmic law of cause and effect that kind of keeps things in balance.

And it's important to, again, to state the that this happens not through divine action, this isn't a God making things happen, this happens through human action, so what you do counts.

This is kind of where the idea of what goes around comes around has kind of been used, but it's often misunderstood, I think.

And in a Buddhist perspective, it refers to this idea of what we call Dependent Arising.

So whatever you think or feel or do, creates certain consequences and may become, they are the consequences of your actions and that's sometimes linked to this idea of Dependent Arising.

And the main thing that we need to remember, is that all of this leads to rebirth.

It keeps you in this cycle of samsara.

So your karma is really, really important, and the ultimate aim, I guess, for Hindus and particularly Buddhists, is to just stop producing karma.

Stop producing consequences, and therefore rebirth won't occur.

So let's have a look at this this section from the Dhammapada.

What I want you to do is, I'm going to read it and I want you to think, what do you think the Buddha is talking about when he says, "In the sky, mountain clefts", could be the forest as well, or "evil deeds"? So if you want to pause, go ahead and pause.

I'm sure you've got this, because it's very, very similar to the things that we've been talking about.

But if, if you're, but don't worry, we're going to go over it together.

So, not in the sky, nor in the mid ocean, nor by entering into mountain clefts.

Nowhere in the world is there a place where one may escape from the results of evil deeds.

So have a think about this.

What do you think Buddha is talking about, particularly when he says in the sky, mountain clefts, results of evil deeds? So, okay.

So when we, when we look at this, Buddha is saying that not in the sky, so it's really referring to this idea of it's not going to be from a god, that's going to tell us what's right or wrong.

So it's not in the sky, it's not in the mid ocean.

That might be referring to kind of Greek or Roman gods as well.

It's not here, basically.

It's not in mountain clefts.

Now that's interesting because remember at the time of the Buddha, there was this tradition, this aesthetic tradition of holy men would go and they'd take themselves away from society.

They would meditate, they would do all these different types of meditation to try and understand the link between the mind and the body, or the nature of reality.

And often they would go to mountains, and that's where they would spend a long long time, years, years and years and years, trying to meditate.

So he's saying, "Look, it's not there".

It's not there.

It's not in the sky.

It's not in the mountain clefts.

There's nowhere that you can escape from the results of evil deeds.

And what he means by that is kind of bad intentions the thoughts that arise, the kind of negative thoughts that arise from illusion, the thoughts that arise from desire or greed or ignorance, all of those kind of things, are going to create evil deeds.

And it doesn't matter where you go, you can't hide from them and you can't ask a god to take them away from you.

This is what the Buddhists believe.

It's really down to you.

You have to face your own karma.

And that's an interesting thing, because Buddhism is really, and but Hinduism to certain extent, is saying, "it's on you," you know? What happens to you is on you.

There's not going to be something else that's going to save you.

And I suppose for some Buddhists and Hindus they find that quite refreshing, because it means that they've got control.

So, kamma is really important, it's seen as an important law governing all the lives in existence and it will also determine what kind of life that you are reborn into.

So if you have good karma, you might have, and you develop good karmic fruits from your actions and your thoughts, you might be born into kind of really nice, a really nice setting.

Now, I don't think, and I think most Buddhists texts would agree with this, that's not saying that if you have good karma you're going to be then born into a mansion with 20 cars and all that kind of thing, it's really the idea that you will be born with the mental qualities to cope with life.

So you could have very very good karma from your previous life, and then be born into a slum in India, but you have the mental fortitude to cope with it and still be happy, compared to someone who has maybe bad karma and then is born into a really rich part of London, for example, or New York and has everything, but they still might, might not have the kind of mental strength to cope with suffering.

So that's what we need to really remember here is, it's not necessarily about, you know, the place that you're born in.

Sometimes that can happen.

All of this is very mystical, so it's very difficult for us to know, but what we do know is, people who have developed good karma is they tend to have, kind of mental, this mental fortitude.

They're strong in their minds, and therefore they can cope with suffering a lot more.

And we need to think about how this works, because consider like planting, consider, look at plant, is karma like planting seeds? If you plant a certain seed you want certain fruit.

So if you want to plant some tomatoes, for example, you choose good tomatoes, you have the intention of, of growing good tomatoes, you look after them, and then you will receive those, those rewards.

Whereas if you, if you don't care, you leave the seeds for years and you don't really take care of it properly, you're not even sure what the seeds are, you don't know what you're planting.

It's not very clear, or sometimes you might be planting something that's not actually very good for you, and by doing that you're kind of living out of sync with the laws of the cosmos and this also can create suffering because it means that you're living out of harmony with the universe, according to Buddhism.

So, lots of information that I've given you there again, but really crucially the important thing you need to think about is, where does good and bad begin according to Buddhism? Where does it come from? Where does it begin? Okay so, karma.

So it begins in your mind.

It begins with your intention and your actions and through that you develop good karma or bad karma.

If you develop good karma, then you are creating good things in the world.

If you're developing, thinking bad things and letting your greed and your desires take over, then what you're doing is you're creating bad karma for yourself.

And all of those have consequences.

And like I said it's intention that matters.

So, Buddhism, Hinduism, very very much about the mind, very very much about psychology.

The quality of your mind.

How well intentioned are you.

What kind of seeds you're planting, and that kind of thing.

And this is where it's important to think back to the eight fold path, and that's what the eight fold path is trying to do.

It's trying to strengthen your ability to plant good karmic seeds, and we're going to look at that another time.

And, as we mentioned before, you know, karma, like who cares, who cares if it's bad or good? Well, for Hindus and Buddhists, they care because if you keep creating bad karma, then you are going to end up somewhere not very nice.

You're not going to be in a very good existence.

Whereas if you develop good karma then you will cope.

You will be, you're more likely to be happy whichever circumstances you end up in in the next life.

So, and that's why I can guarantee that just existence just keeps changing.

Remember, Buddhists and Hindus, they see that death isn't the end and that's symbolised by the Trimurti in Hinduism and the idea of the Atman and Moksha, going back to this pure state.

For Buddhists, it's Rebirth.

There we go, there's the Trimurti.

Now, tricky question for you.

Do you think that Buddhists might, why do you think they might not agree with reincarnation? And there's a hint there: The Three Marks of Existence.

Why do you think they might disagree with that? With reincarnation? Okay so Buddhists, they would not agree with reincarnation because of anatta.

Anicca and anatta.

There is nothing permanent, the self doesn't have a permanent part, it's just this kind of constant stream of consciousness that takes us into the next life.

And the conscious continuation of thinking creates karma and it's that kind of that kind of action that ends up in the next life.

So it has very, very serious, serious implications according to Buddhism and Hinduism.

Being born into either negative or positive conditions.

Now in the West, Buddhist, Buddhism in the West tends to focus on kind of mental states.

How, I mentioned that before how you can kind of cope with adversity, difficult things.

So good karma and bad karma can lead to kind of different mental states.

Other traditions, they, particularly for example in Theravada you've got different realms of existence, which the Buddha talked about.

He described these places and they are seen as different kind of realms of existence.

So you've got the idea of the World of the Hungry Ghosts, for example, and this is a world where desire and appetite are really heavy, so people, these, the beings in this world are really driven by that and therefore they're not very happy.

Whereas there are other realms where there are beings that are seen as perhaps more enlightened and happier.

And this is problem when we come back to Samsara, when you look at Sankhara Dukkha, the type of suffering, for Buddhists this going round, this merry-go-round going round and round and round, of endless cycles of rebirth because of karma causes pain, you know? It puts a stress on the mind and the body and therefore it's painful.

That's why they're trying to reach Nirvana this kind of ultimate end goal.

And this is the realm, I'm just going to move my face over here.

This is the example, this is what I mean by the different realms. So you might see pictures like this in a book or different ideas like this perhaps if you go to a Buddhist temple, you might see these kind of things.

They describe the different realms that the Buddha talked about.

So that moves us on to the idea of Dhamma.

Dhamma means, has quite a few meanings.

Later on you're going to see that it's used quite a lot in reference to the teachings of the Buddha himself.

The Dhamma.

But it also is, it pops up in Hinduism and in, and also in Buddhism because it's seen as a kind of another law that the universe is governed by alongside Kamma.

And loosely translated it means to hold or to maintain.

And Dhamma was always a really important vedic concept, so it existed a long time before the Buddha.

After the Buddha reached his enlightenment, his first sermon was called Turning The Wheel Of Dharma and this can refer to the third and fourth stages of the Noble Truths.

So they are kind of linked, his teachings and universal Dhamma are kind of linked.

The idea is that by, by following his teachings you have a greater understanding of how the cosmos is and how to kind of escape this cycle of Samsara.

So sometimes it's seen as this kind of way out of or refuge out of this cycle if you learn the conditions in which you live in, eventually you'll be able to escape and experience pure joy.

And those beings that have achieved that are known as enlightened beings and they have reached a state called Nirvana.

So, what is Dhamma in Buddhism? So Dhamma in Buddhism is known as, lots of different meanings but it can mean, like it can be seen as a law of the universe that kind of upholds the universe, this kind of turning of events, but it can also be seen as the teaching of the Buddha.

How to know about the nature of the universe and also how to escape it.

How to escape the cycle of samsara, very specifically.

Okay, I'm sure you nailed that one.

Right so, this is your task for you to think about.

Let me see if I can make myself smaller.

So have a go at this 12 mark question.

Not that long ago we did some, some practise of these questions.

What I've done is I've added some agree statements and disagree, disagree statements.

So look at the statement.

The statement is: We will forever be stuck in the cycle of samsara.

It's worth 12 marks.

Here are some ideas that might agree with the statement and here are some ideas that might disagree with the statement.

It's up to you.

These are here as a, as a kind of model for you to use, but you don't have to use them.

Have a go at answering this question.

You need probably about four or five paragraphs.

Two or three points for each either agree or disagree and a conclusion.

Don't forget the conclusion.

Really, really, really important part to show what you think.

What do you think about this question? That's what's really important here.

So, some tricky concepts again for you to look at but I think that you will have found them quite interesting and hopefully be able to know distinctly the difference between the Hindu ones and the Buddhist ones.

What I'd like you to do now is to do two things: go ahead in a moment and do the quiz, make sure that we're consolidating this terminology; and secondly as usual again to consolidate this knowledge and make sure that we keep practising , keep recalling it to make sure it goes into our long term memory go and tell someone about it.

Go and explain to someone the difference between kamma in Buddhism and karma in Hinduism and challenge people when they say, "Oh karma is what goes around comes around" because now you know better.

And I'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.