insight by www.buddhaviews.com The Practicing Dhamma expounder for today

Learning Dhamma in a small way

Gaining a Dhamma knowledge

 

What Gautama Buddha advised

An important understanding one should have on Gautama Buddha’s preachings to mankind is that Buddha solely aimed all his teachings for the annihilation of dukka or suffering or sorrow but nothing else. Once he said that the knowledge he has on all matters is immense but those will not help people to relive from suffering. Only the necessary dhamma to overcome the samsara has been expounded by him to the Sangha and the lay people. Ref-1

 

Gautama Buddha had been the teacher to the Humans and Gods as well. He has kept aside one fifth of the time of a day, the midnight portion (10pm-2am) , specially for the Celestial Beings, ex. Devas and the Brahmas. Here we need to understand that the preaching to them would have been on an entirely separate platform that is different from the human beings. Buddha has in few occasions explained some of the discourses he had given to the devas. One should not try to go deep in to these as it will hinder the path into the Dhamma due to the complexity of the subject. What we need to do is to understand the explanations and the practical ways the Buddha has disclosed to overcome the Dukka or the unsatisfactoryness of the humans lives. We have to make use of the Dhamma which remains in the form of around 18000 discourses in the written form specially preached to the Sangha and the lay devotees during the Buddha’s life time.

We can try to make inroads to the fabulous Dhamma matters Buddha has disclosed and anyone in his own assessments can see the truthfulness and the satisfactoriness that one will be able to feel in this life itself following Buddhas path.

Buddha always told that one should be his own master and Buddha can only show the path to the freedom from the unsatisfactoriness.

If that is the fact, should not we try to learn from the Buddha’s teachings and practice it for the well being of our lives.

Matters discussed in Buddha’s discourses are by no means simple but needs much attention to understand even the subtlest thing as we need to use our mental faculty to discern them. So let us try and hope these articles help one to understand even a small portion of Buddha’s knowledge to learn and understand and to make it useful to our daily life. Let it be a very small beginning to treading into the Knowledge base of the Buddha as we still are fortunate enough to access his prime teachings.

To facilitate this, the Basic and most important foundations for the Dhamma knowledge will be pointed out here. A person who has a special interest can also find more useful explanations on each term searching dhamma web sites such as http://www.accesstoinsight.org, and http://dhammawiki.com

As a beginning, only a list of important Dhamma words which needs to be clearly understood will be put forward. It is intended to discuss in detail each Dhamma word during coming updates.

Gautama Buddha advised that one should be proficient with the understanding of Dhatu, Ayathana, Paticca Samuppada and Thana Thana. As a first step, Dhatu will be discussed in detail with the aid of discourses.

 

Ref-1

The Buddha and his Teachings- by Narada Thera -

Buddhism does not profess to provide an explanation to all ethical and philosophical problems that interest mankind. Neither does it deal with idle speculations and theorisings that do not tend to edification. Buddhism has a practical and specific purpose-the cessation of suffering-and with that goal in view all irrelevant side issues are completely set aside. Nevertheless, every encouragement is given to keen investigation into the real nature of life