What is Buddhism? You might be surprised. The most concise answer is Buddhism is the religion of awakening since the Indo-Aryan word “buddha” simply means, ‘awakened’.
Next, we might ask to what, specifically, do we awaken? We would not be off the mark to say that one who becomes Buddha awakens to ultimate reality, or the same, the Dharma. This is made clear when the Buddha reflected in his mind the reality or Dharma he had just newly discovered.
“This Dharma that I have discovered is deep, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, not within the sphere of reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise” (S. i. 136).
We gather from this that awakening to such a Dharma and becoming Buddha is not easy. Nor, for that matter, is the process of awakening easy to teach even for a Buddha. What he teaches always remains subject to misinterpretation by those being taught. Nevertheless the process to awakening can be taught.
The problem of Dharma as ultimate reality for those who are unawakened is that it is beyond all phenomena making it difficult to realize in normal ways. The senses cannot detect this reality (dharma) nor even the discursive intellect. Adding to this, is phenomenal unrest felt as suffering along with ignorance. Such a state of mind believes the world of phenomenal appearances offers a path beyond suffering.
In order for us to discover ultimate reality or Dharma, we must put away our deep desire for phenomenal appearances that inevitably lead to the continuation of suffering and rebirth.
In such a world of suffering, the Buddha teaches nirvana or the same, transcendence. Also, we might think of nirvana as being in the presence of true reality so that we experience the undying (amrita) and eternally blissful. Indeed, nirvana discloses such an experience of ultimate reality described in the Udana as:
“Not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be apparent no escape from this here that is born, become, made, compounded.”
We can derive from this that nirvana carries with it an overwhelming sense of escape from the suffering of phenomenal reality (sarvadharma) while, at the same time, it is also the direct entry into the transcendent plane of true reality (saddharma). This is the same reality from which phenomenal reality (sarvadharma) is understood to be dependently originated (pratityasamutpada) and composed.
Such a religion as Buddhism is the religion of awakening. Buddhism awakens us from the deep sleep of phenomenal reality. We see from what such a dreamlike world is composed which is a superessential reality eternally free and independent of its compositions. By the same token, we come to realize that our true self has always been independent of the temporal psychophysical body except that we have clung to and craved it—following it so as to suffer with it needlessly; never able to escape the sphere of phenomenal reality in which it exists.
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