Dharma

According to tradition, the Buddha taught the core of his teachings, the Dharma, during his first sermon. These teachings were not written down until four centuries after his death. The orthodoxy of Buddhist traditions was, and still is in Theraveda Buddhism, maintained through a series of councils, the first of which took place a week after the Buddha's death.

The first Buddhist texts are called the Tripitaka (The Three Baskets) or the Pali Canon, because they are written in Pali rather than Sakskrit

The Pali Canon (Tripitaka)

The Three Jems: The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha

 
The Four Noble Truths The Dalai Lama's Teachings

Life is suffering (Dukha). Suffering has a cause: desire. There is cessation: Nirvana. There is a path: The Middle Way.

1) Life is suffering. This is not a pessimistic but a realistic statement.
Life is imperfection, impermanence, emptiness.
Buddhism does not deny happiness but acknowledges that happiness is transitory.
At the peak of all suffering is death itself; death turns dreams and hopes into dust and ashes.
Ordinary suffering includes: birth, old age, sickness, death.
Suffering is also associated with unpleasant persons or conditions, with separation from loved ones and pleasant conditions, with not getting what one desires.with grief, lamentation, distress.
Dukha comprehends all forms of physical and mental suffering.
Suffering is produced by change: attraction to beautiful objects leads to suffering.
Happiness is not permanent for change is inevitable: this leads to suffering.
Suffering as a conditional state: being or ego is only a combination of ever changing mental and physical forces or energies.

 

2) Duhkha has a source: Desire, Thirst, Craving
Suffering has a cause. It is not a matter of chance and caprice.
If it were uncaused, there would be no way to illuminate it.

We desire all of the following:

Not just things but ideas themselves beliefs can be the object of desire.

All the problems in the world arise out of thirst.

Karma in Buddhism has a special meaning.
In Hinduism is signifies action; in Buddhism, volitional action.

While there is good and bad karma , the goal is to produce no karma.

Rebirth is caused by the mental volition or will to re-exit to continue to become. At death, forces and energies of aggregate propelled one forward into the next life by will, volition, desire, thirst.

If there is no self what is there to be reborn?
Aggregates and Karma nothing permanent
Like a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball.

3) Cessation of Dukkha

There is emancipation, liberation freedom from suffering, and it is Nirvana (Nibbanna = blowing out extinction)
Nirvana is inexpressible.
Ignorant people get stuck in words like an elephant in mud
Nirvana = Truth
Buddha often speaks of truth rather than Nirvana
What is the Absolute Truth
There is nothing absolute in the world everything is relative, conditioned, impermanent, no unchanging everlasting absolute substance.
To see things are they are with no illusion or craving is cessation is Nirvana
It is not produced; you must realize it.

Nirvana - Buddhism uses the word nirvana to describe the cessation of samsara. At one point in their dialogue, King Milinda asks "Reverend Nagasena does the Buddha still exit?" Nagasena's answer seems at first to contradict this teaching, but his meaning soon becomes clear.
"The Lord has passes completely away in Nirvana, so that nothing is left which could lead to the formation of another being. And so he cannot be pointed out as being here or there."
"Give me an illustration."
"What would your Majesty say -- if a great fire were blazing, would it be possible to point to a flame which had gone out and say that it was here or there?"
"No, your Reverence, the flame is extinguished, it can't be detected."
"In just the same way, your majesty, teh Lord has passed away in Nirvana .... He can only be pointed out in teh body of his doctrine, for it was he who taught it."
"Very good, Reverend Nagasena!"
(From Milindapanha, in The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan, edited by William Theodore de Bary pp. 30.)

If there is no self - no Atman, Who realizes Nirvana?
Nothing.
Once this is truly realized, the forces which produce karma cease and samsara ceases.
Nirvana is realized in this life.
One who has realized the truth is happy free of work attachment suffering.
One lives fully in the present and appreciates everything without concern about its passing away.
One is free of desire, hatred, ignorance, conceit etc.

4) The Magga the path
There is a way leading to the cessation of Duhkha: the middle path that avoids extremes.
Buddhism rejects the search for happiness through the pleasures of senses and it rejects the path of asceticism: pain and self mortification.
The Middle path is the Noble Eight Fold Path

The Eightfold Path A colourful site Swan Lake and the Eightfold Path

Conduct

1. Right Speech
2. Right Action: Ahimsa, Compassion
3. Right Livelihood

Mental Discipline

4. Right Effort
5. Right Mindfulness
6. Right Concentration

Wisdom

7. Right Thought
8. Right Understanding

Four Noble Truths Sammaddhitti Sutta

 
 
The Twelvefold Chain of Causation
 
From ignorance arises mental formations and impulses, from impulses self-consciousness, from self-consciousness name and form, from name and
form the senses and the thinking mind, from the senses perception, from perception feelings, from feelings craving, from craving clinging, from
clinging conception, birth, old age and death.
 

five aggregates
1) matter
2) sensation
3) perception
4) mental formation
5) consciousness

I as an individual is only a convenient term applied to a combination of five groups that are never the same from moment to moment.
There is nothing permanent behind them.
No Atman, individuality is nothing. There is nothing to call I.
The idea of I false idea.

"Mere suffering exists, but no suffering is final; the deeds are, but no doer is found."

 
Anatman - For Buddhists, one is simply an aggregate, a conglomeration of impermanent things, none of which is free from change. The self is an aggregate of feelings, emotions, perceptions, cravings, thoughts, and so forth. In a famous dialogue between the Greek King Melinda (Menander) who ruled in mothwestern India in the middle of the second century b.c.d., the Buddhist philosophy Nagasena uses the simile of the chariot to explain the composite nature of the individual.
 
"Your Majesty, how did you come here -- on foot, or in a vehicle?"
"In a chariot."
"Then tell me what is the chariot? Is the pole the chariot?
"No, your Reverence."
"Or the axle, wheels, frame, reins, yoke, spokes, or goad?"
"None of these things is the chariot."
"Then all thses separate parts taken together are the chariot?"
"No, your Reverence."
"Then for all my asking, your Majesty, I can find no chariot. The chariot is mere sound. What then is the chariot? Surely what your Majesty has said is false! There is no chariot!" (From Milindapanha, in The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan, edited by William Theodore de Bary pp. 22-23.)

Life is a movement like a flowing stream.
This idea is dramatically opposed to the Cartesian "I think therefore I am."

 
 
 
For students interested in primary Buddhist sources, I recommend William Theodore de Bary's volume (New York: Vintage Books, 1972) as well as Buddhism in Translations by Henry Clarke Warren (New York: Atheneum, 1963). These volumes often appear in sale bins or in second hand bookstores.