BUDDHA - PANCHASHEELA - HUMANISM
Prof. GANDHAM APPA RAO
Gautama Buddha
was a humanist par excellence who
sacrificed all the comforts he enjoyed as a Prince in order to find out a cure
to the age-long problem of suffering. Having met with an extremely old man and
a youth suffering from incurable disease and finally a monk. Gautama felt a
shocking change in his understanding of life and society. These
pitiable sights ultimately led him to
the path of sacrifice. He became a Sanyasi at the age of 29 with a
determination to go in search of truth that lies at the root of all suffering.
Soon Gautama developed deep into all
available knowledge, he tried to unravel the secrets of yoga and experimented
with all aspects of yoga including HATHA YOGA. Adopting a scientific
approach, he studied all aspects of human predicament, he visited places
where he hoped to find answers to his questions. He met philosophers,
scholars, Sramanakas, Udhakarma Putras who were currently working on human
problems. But he was not satisfied with the teaching of these thinkers.
He debated with kindred souls, observed all
aspects of human living, and found out that people were troubled by the
beneful influence of pseudo philosophies and faiths. He himself disciplined his
body and mind by fasting and other methods as a prelude to achieving
concentration and right thinking. After considerable struggle, he found the way
out from human problems. He became the Buddha or the Enlightened. Established
principles and their dialectics gave him the clues he had been searching for.
He engaged scholars in debates and convinced them of the reasonableness of his approach and earned their admiration. It was not long, before
philosophers, scholars and ordinary people accepted Buddha’s principles as the
most valuable and satisfying. Buddha’s doctrine, otherwise known as Middle
Path, is rooted in four noble truths (ARYA SATYA) handed down from generations
of Indian Thinkers.
The question is how did Buddha Dharma come to
be known as Middle Path?
Buddha’s contemporaries regarded life as a
source of misery. Several Thinkers of different persuasions tried to solve the
problem of life’s misery. They traced the origins of misery and happiness to the acts which individuals committed in
their previous births. They believed that Vedic rituals and the like helped man
to secure Nirvana or liberation form the chain of births and deaths.
Charvakas and Jains rebelled against this view. The principles of Jainism were so taxing to ordinary people that they could not attract much following. The principles of Chavakas put too much stress of mundane pleasures. Through some of the followers of this doctrine renounced worldly pleasures, it had a bad effect on society. Again, the followers of Vedic creed pinned their faith in the liberation of individual soul and neglected the social obligations. Thus they failed. Gautama Buddha discovered the lacuna in these two doctrines and proposed his own middle course avoiding the extremes. This is known as Madhyama Marga, he believed that his doctrine was the last of the established truths which led to Nirvans, the final liberation of the soul. Buddha’s approach to deriving the quintessence of the established truths is unique. He used reasoning and experience of life. He examined life which was bound with superstition and found out the truth which was beyond it. Like a physician he regarded human misery as a disease, analysed it, and arrived at its source. He believed that the very process of approaching life? in this way was what the thinking mind out to do. That was how he thought himself to be Buddha or the enlightened one, and gave man what he thought to be irrefutable truths.
Thereafter Buddha discontinued discussions
and debates with philosophers and scholars. Those were the days when only a
minority of people namely, kings, landlords and the like were able to lead a
happy life and the rest were steeped in ignorance and misery. The poor, the
miserable who constituted the majority, Buddha thought, must be helped. So he sought
to use his doctrine for the benefit of the majority that is, Bahujana (Bahujana Hitaya Bahujana Sikhaya). He,
therefore, explained his doctrine with illustrations, to those ignorant lot and
showed them the rightness of the established truths which he called Ashtanga
Marga.
Buddha lived sometime during the 6th Century
B.C. Social Fabric of his time was loosely knit with social and economic
disparities and divisions which were as deep as they were corrigible. Buddha
tried his best to effect their reform and removal of casteism but he could not succeed to the extent he
struggled. He established Baud-dharmas
where people without any distinctions of Caste of Status thronged to listen to
him and follow his ideals, he is not only admitted the untouchables and the
downtrodden classes into his fold that is, Aramas, and taught them out also
treated them with compassion.
During Buddha’s life-time his, preachings
deeply affected society without any distinction of race, caste or place. His
preaching was one of universal brotherhood. What is known as the principle of
Pancha Seela was the bed rock on which Buddha based his doctrine.
Pancha Sheela
The message of Gautama
the Buddha has made longstanding friendship between neighbouring countries,
India, China and Tibet.
The unforeseen
developments between China and India caused avoidable damage to the cause of
peace between the neighbours. Nevertheless, the right understanding and the
spirit of friendship between our two nations, today, appear to be in the offing,
thanks to the revival of the spirit of the doctrine of ‘PANCHA SHEELA’.
The Principle of
Pancha Sheela was first taught by Gautama Buddha whose message travelled far
and wide. Pancha Sheela literally means five kinds of behaviour which an
individual should practice for the good of society. They form a spectrum of
integrated personality. They are:
1. non-violence 2. non-stealing 3. abstinence from adultery 4. non-telling
of untruth 5. abstinence from alcoholic drinks.
During October, 1954,
India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited China and renewed
the age-old friendly relations between the two countries. It was on this
occasion that the prime Minister of China, Chow enlai responded to Nehru’s suggestion
of carving out a new PANCHA SHEELA from the enduring universal PANCHA SHEELA,
first taught by Gautama Buddha. The modem Pancha Sheela was then sought to
regulate the relationships between different nations in order to bring about
peace and international understanding. Cho enlai declared that all nations
should be guided thus:
People were attracted
by Buddha’s sense of purity, right conduct, spirit of sacrifice, non-violence,
interest in world-peace and knowledge. His skill in teaching was central to
the propagation of his doctrine consequently. Buddha Dharma prevailed in India
and other countries. It shines like a beacon light to people in their quest for
hope. It contributed to the growth of their creative thinking. According to
Buddha, liberation that is, Nirvanas meant a state of mental equilibrium bereft
of all attachment and hate. It is an experience of pure thinking, His five-fold
advice to his pupils points to the same meaning of the term Nirvana.
Buddha did not mention
the idea of rebirth anywhere in his doctrine. If he had done so he would not
have told Malyanka Putra, Proshtapada and Ananda Pindaka what he did. According
to Buddha, ‘Karma’ meant the karma or action done in the present, not that done
in previous births. However Buddha’s teachings lacked clarity which lent
support to the thinkers of Mahayana School of Buddhism.
Humanism of Buddha
Buddha’s teachings are
unique in the sense that they either ignore or are indifferent to vague ideas
about an Almighty God and related doctrines. Instead, they lay stress on
discrimination between good and evil, ethical aspect of life and right
conduct. They encourage the faithful to see that what is inconconsistent with
their belief in God is bad conduct and what is consistent with it is good
conduct. Man is responsible for his
conduct and progress. Buddhism thus makes man central figure in all that affects
human life. Buddha preached kindness an pity for all life and formulated constructive
methods for progress and happiness of all in human
society.
His technique of eight-fold path (Ashtanga marga),
his prescription of five-fold
path of meditations and duties
to Panchavargiya Sanatana Bhikshus,
his cautions to monks - all
these reflect his progressive humanist vision.
Buddha practised what
all he preached. His method of preaching was wholly rational and unambiguous.
He never forced his views on others. He was not at all dogmatic. He offered his
well-considered views honestly and sincerely. He used to tell his audiences particularly to Bhikshus thus: “take my views seriously; consider them
dispassionately; accept them, if you find them reasonable, and only then follow
them with all good heart.”
Buddha tried his best
to wide out economic inequality in society not only in India but also in the then known world at large. He
limited his work on economic
equality among people to Buddhist monasteries alone because he was convinced
that caste distinctions could be abolished unless economic inequalities are
done away with. For this reason he made the monasteries open to all castes, even to the so-called untouchables
who only existed outside the social order and human-fold. Buddhist monasteries treated
them as human beings with self-respect.
Buddha was thus the foremost
of all men of vision who spent
their life time for bringing harmony in all spheres of life and peace for all
in society. Gautama Buddha is thus a great
teacher, an integrated personality and a
complete man. It is, however, our misfortune that the real Buddhist thought
and principles should in course of time get misrepresented and
misunderstanding. Spurious works about these principles, and, tales that go
against the grain of Buddhism have come to pass for Buddhist thought.
Even Buddha could not escape being thought to be an incarnation of God.
WAY TO HAPPINESS
Where is the happiness to be found? It
is in the good life, in the avoidance of
evil, in the pursuit of the good, in the true and the beautiful, in the
cleansing of the heart, in the
cultivation of wisdom and enlightenment. What then is evil? Evil is that which
brings harm to oneself or the others
of both.