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THE ROAR LEARNING GUIDE SERIES

Learning Guide No. 7 Lesson Title: Buddhism: Beginnings, Origins, and

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”

Loving Father, come be with us today. Fill our hearts with joy. Fill our minds with learning. Fill
our lessons with fun. Fill our friendships with kindness. Fill our school with love. Help us grow in love with
the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in kindness to be more like Jesus every day. Amen.

II. Objectives
a. Content Standard: The learner demonstrates understanding of the elements of
Buddhism: Founders, Sacred Texts, Doctrines, God, Sects, Issues
b. Performance Standard: The learner stimulates a particular yoga and writes a
reflection paper on his/ her insights.
c. Formation Standard:
 Analyze the brief history, core teachings, fundamental beliefs, practices, and
related issues of Buddhism.
III. Meaning-making / Method
In June 2015, the United States weekly entertainment magazine Variety released an interview
with Al Jean, the executive producer of the long-running animated television situation comedy
series The Simpsons. It was revealed that the lead couple Homer and Marge Simpson will finally
break up in the twenty seventh season, which led to disappointed comments from Filipino
viewers: Walang forever. (“There is no (such thing as) forever.)
IV. Most Essential Learning Competencies
 Analyze the brief history, core teachings, fundamental beliefs, practices, and related
issues of Buddhism.
V. Activities / To-do list
Lesson 7: Buddhism
(Refer to pages 60-88 of “Pilgrimage to Sacred Spaces: An Introduction to World Religion” for
the discussion)
The Beginnings
Buddhism began in India in the sixth century BCE as another interpretation of Hindu Dharma.
Like Jainism, another alternative interpretation of Hindu Dharma, it rejected the authority of the Vedas
and offered liberation from the endless cycle of samsara based on the efforts of the individual. But,
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unlike Jainism, the founder of Buddhism proposed a “middle way” between worldliness and extreme
asceticism, giving an appeal among Indians for several centuries.
Two centuries after the death of its founder, Buddhism teaching convinced the convert Ashoka
Maurya, the powerful emperor who ruled India from 268-232 BCE, to reform his court and make it
more compassionate to all living beings. Like the Roman emperor Constantine, Ashoka used his
imperial power to aggrandize what his chosen religion, which was a mere struggling religious sect.
While Buddhist missions in Sri Lanka, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia were a
sweeping success, a resurgence of Hindi Dharma in India and later Muslim conquests lead to the
decline of Buddhism in its land of birth.
The Life of Siddhartha Gautama
Buddhism began in history with a founder, Siddhartha Gautama, best known by his title “The
Buddha” Or “The Enlightened One” and preferred to by East Asian Buddhists as “the Shakyamuni”
or “sage of the Shakya people”. The life and teachings of the historical Buddha are absolutely
essential to understanding the character of the Buddhist worldview.
Siddhartha [a name which means “one who has achieved (his) goal”] was born about 563 BCE
in a forest at Lumbini in northern India. He was the son of Suddhodana, a Kshatriya raja [“king”]
belonging to the clan of the Brahmin seer, Gotama, among the Shakya people at the foot of the
Himalayan mountains in northern India. After his mother, Maya, died giving birth to him, Siddhartha
was raised by Mahapajapati, his mother’s sister who became his father’s second wife.

So, Siddhartha grew up confined in the palaces of Kapilavastu surrounded by luxury, youth,
beauty, and health. He moved through the ashrama or stages of Hindu Dharma first as a Brahmacarin
(or student), and later as a Grihasthin (or householder). At nineteen, he entered the ashrama of a
Grishasthin and married his cousin, the beautiful princess Yashodhara. They ended up having one
child, a son named Rahula [” fetter”].

In his late twenties, Siddhartha became restless and went with his charioteer, Channa, on brief
incursions outside the palace among the common people. On separate occasions, he encountered four
deeply disturbing sights: a wrinkled and bent elderly person; a man wasting away from a disease; a
rotting cadaver; and a serene wandering ascetic. Through these experiences, he became aware that life
always involves pain and suffering, that sickness, old age, and eventual death cannot be avoided. The
deep anguish caused by these experiences was relieved only by the sight of the itinerant Hindu ascetic
or sannyasin- whose way offered, he thought at the time, the best way to deal with the sad plight of
humanity.
Unable to continue living his usual life of ease and plenty as a pampered prince due to these
insights, he took his best horse Kanthaka and abandoned his sleeping wife and son. After covering
some distance, he sent home his horse with his servant Channa, shaved off his hair, and traded his
clothing with a beggar’s, starting his quest for answers to life’s miseries as a wandering ascetic.
Eventually he arrived at the royal city of Rajagaha.
Siddhartha thought that the answers to the questions troubling him were to be found in
philosophy, so he studied for sometime with Brahmin sages, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta.
He was convinced that one cannot find enlightenment nor release from the cycle of samsara as long as
one continues to enjoy the pleases of the flesh.
Siddhartha tried everything that was unpleasant, painful, or disagreeable, convinced that these
were means of attaining release from pain and suffering- even to the point of fasting by living only on
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a single grain of rice a day. At his mid-thirties, he fainted from extreme physical weakness and fell
into a stream. Reflecting upon the experience, he realized that despite having done beyond the ascetic
he did not attain the enlightenment.
He then chose to meditate in a way that did not cause bodily pain, since that had not worked for
him. Meditating under a tree with a mind cleansed and concentrated., Siddhartha had a vision of the
endless cycle of birth and death that is the plight of humanity and the significant insight that tanha
[“desire, thirst, craving, grasping”] keeping people like himself imprisoned in this cycle. He had
desired enlightenment and sought it through knowledge and asceticism, but never found it; only when
he had ceased desiring enlightenment, did he find it.
The Buddha reportedly died in 483 BCE at the age of the eighty, after having eaten truffles or, in
some traditions, spoiled pork curry, his last words being: “Subject to decay are all component beings.
Strive earnestly to work out your own salvation.”
Sacred Texts
Soon after Siddhartha Gautama died, around five hundred followers led by his most revered
disciple, Mahakasyapa, assembled at the Saptaparni caves near Rajagaha in northern India in what is
now known as the First Buddhist Council. This Council intended to identify and accurately record
the teachings of Siddhartha, relying on two devoted bhikkhus renowned for their outstanding
memory: Ananda, the cousin and personal assistant of Siddhartha, and Upali. These Bhikkhus would
memorize Siddhartha’s words and teach them diligently to their novices, establishing an unbroken
chain of oral tradition.
At the command of King Vattagami, scribes in Sri Lanka at around 30 CE eventually wrote down
this oral tradition in Pali, a west Indian literary language. This came to be known as the Pali Canon,
or more commonly as Tripitaka, “Three Baskets,” consisting of three collections.
 Vinaya Pitaka [“Basket of Discipline”]
The first and briefest part of the Tripitaka. It comprises lists of disciplinary rules for Buddhist
monastic life, with 227 regulations for bhikkus and 311 bhikkunis. These regulations ensure living according
to the ideals of the material simplicity, celibacy, and inoffensiveness.
 Sutta Pitaka [“Basket of Threads”]
The second and largest, the heart of the Pali Canon. The Pali sutta or Sanskrit sutra refers to
authoritative teachings “sewn” together like threads in written collections. It contains over ten thousand
sayings attributed to the Buddha as memorized by his cousin Ananda and also recited the First Council.
 Adhidhamma Pitaka [“Basket of Higher Teaching”]
The third, represents a later philosophical elaboration of earlier Buddhist doctrine, a pure and highly
advanced form of the Buddha’s teaching revealed after his death.
In addition to the Tripitaka, adherents of the Mahayana variety of Buddhism recognize other writings, which
express Mahayana concepts-e.g., the bodhisattvas and liberation through devotion- as sutras, or “threads”
of truth.

Activity #1
1. What role did the bhikkus play in the development of the sacred texts of Buddhism?
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2. Why did the followers of the Buddha need to identify and accurately preserve his teachings through
the Pali Canon or Tripitaka?
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VI. Suggested Resources

VII. Parent’s/Guardian’s Comments and Suggestions

VIII. Teacher’s Feedback

Prepared by: Noted by:

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LUIGI CHRISTIAN R. BRACAMONTE RONALD D. DAVID
Subject Teacher OIC – Office of the Principal