Pennsylvania State University Dhammapada Buddhism Asian Philosophy Paper I will post requirement, book, and essay samplePlease totally follow it800-1000 wo

Pennsylvania State University Dhammapada Buddhism Asian Philosophy Paper I will post requirement, book, and essay samplePlease totally follow it800-1000 wordswe use turnitin so 100% original Philosophy 7: Asian Philosophy (Spring 2019)
Paper Guidelines
Paper #2: Buddhism
Choose something central to the Buddhist texts we read: something that interests you,
or confuses you, or arouses wonder in you, etc.—something that you care about.
and
Analyze and explain it as thoroughly and precisely as you can, staying close to the text
(see more below), providing your own illuminating examples to aid your explanation.
You may choose one from the following two options:
1) an idea or concept (e.g., Anatman (no-self), the Bodhisattva, Karma, the Five
Aggregates [skandhas], etc.)*
or
2) a passage from a particular text: The Dhammapada, Diamond Sutra, or Heart Sutra
I want you to try to capture the essence of what you choose. You might imagine that what
you are trying to do is teach someone what the idea/concept or passage means within the
context of Buddhism (Theravada or Mahayana, depending on which text you choose).
I am looking for in-depth and detailed analysis/explanation.
*If you choose 1: all of the ideas we have learned interpenetrate. You won’t be able to
talk about one concept without talking about all (or at least most) of them. But try to
focus your efforts on one or on a small grouping, like the relationship between karma
and samsara in the Mahayana view, for example.
Paper Details
Due Date
Thursday, March 21st on Canvas by MIDNIGHT
Paper Length
2.5 – 3.5 full pages of text (“full” counting from the place on the page that your first
paragraph begins, not the top of the piece of paper)
Paper Format
Double-spaced
12-point font (of your choice, but nothing difficult to read, please)
1” margins
Terminology
Make sure your paper utilizes terminology and concepts appropriate to Buddhism.
Philosophical writing and reflection needs to be attentive to the specific weight that
concepts have, and work that concepts do, within a philosopher’s thinking. Obviously,
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Philosophy 7: Asian Philosophy (Spring 2019)
Paper Guidelines
we are not dealing with an author but a set of ideas; make sure you are able to explain
the concept/idea you choose within the full context of Buddhist thought, employing
appropriate Buddhist terminology.
Textual Evidence/Citations
I expect you to use the text, which means: offer quotes from the text that support your
explanation. Please simply cite parenthetically within the body of your text (no
footnotes), using the following model:
For The Dhammapada = (Dhammapada, verse #) or (Dhammapada, Chapter #:verse #)
E.g.: (Dhammapada, 142) or (Dhammapada, 2:35).
For The Diamond Sutra = (Diamond, section #) E.g.: (Diamond, section 3).
For the Heart Sutra, simply give the Novak page #
Since most students seem to be completely oblivious when it comes to in-text,
parenthetical citations, here is a paradigm to follow, in terms of grammar and
punctuation:
…Buddha replies, “stop thinking in terms of concepts” (Diamond, section 4). [not a real
quote]
The quotation marks designate only the quoted text, and the period goes at the end of
the sentence, after the parentheses. This is a rule that far too many students do not know
and/or follow. (And periods and commas go inside double-quotation marks).
**YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE OR CITE OUTSIDE SOURCES**
Final Comments
I will be grading these papers with an eye toward their presentation, which includes
grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation, etc. This is an execution-based assignment (see
Syllabus).
Likewise, I am looking for you to strive to articulate yourself clearly and with precision.
Admittedly, this is not an easy task when it comes to philosophical issues and especially
to ideas that exist beyond “name and form”—it takes practice and effort. I don’t expect any
of you to be the next Buddha or bodhisattva, but I am looking to see genuine effort to really
grapple with the text, make important connections, follow the movement of its thinking,
and attempt to offer an explanation that goes beyond a superficial reading.
If you struggle with writing, seek help at the University Writing Center:
https://pennstatelearning.psu.edu/tutoring/writing
Make sure you hand in a proofread, polished, college-level essay!
Good luck writing!
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Essence of the Dhammapada
The Buddha’s Call to Nirvana
BY EKNATH EASWARAN
NILGIRI PRESS
20180730
Table of Contents
Series Preface: The Wisdom of India
Introduction
1 Should I Go?
2 Setting Out
3 Finding the Courage
4 Love for All
5 Traveling Light
6 The Inner Journey
7 The Other Shore
Selected Verses
Glossary
Notes
PUB LISHER’S NOTE
This book has been produced by Eknath Easwaran’s senior editors, longtime students who worked closely
with him since his first book in 1970 and were charged by him with continuing to compile his books from
transcripts of his talks after his passing.
In his last editorial planning meeting, in 1998, Easwaran gave instructions about the books in progress that
he wanted completed from his unpublished transcripts, outlines, and notes. ESSENCE OF THE
DHAMMAPADA is the second of those posthumous projects to be published: the legacy of a gifted teacher
sharing his immersion in a sacred text, conveyed in his talks and informal sessions with some of his closest
students.
It was Easwaran’s longstanding desire to publish his commentary on the scripture that he felt contained the
direct inspiration of the Buddha’s words. It is a privilege to bring out this book for his readers around the
world.
S E R I E S P R E FA C E
The Wisdom of India
SOME YEARS AGO I translated
what I called the classics of Indian spirituality: the Upanishads,
the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada. These ancient texts, memorized and passed from
generation to generation for hundreds of years before they were written down, represent early
chapters in the long, unbroken story of India’s spiritual experience. The Upanishads, old before
the dawn of history, come to us like snapshots of a timeless landscape. The Gita condenses and
elaborates on these insights in a dialogue set on a battlefield, as apt a setting now as it was
three thousand years ago. And the Dhammapada, a kind of spiritual handbook, distills the
practical implications of the same truths presented afresh by the Compassionate Buddha around
500 B.C.
These translations proved surprisingly popular, perhaps because they were intended not so
much to be literal or literary as to bring out the meaning of these documents for us today. For it
is here that these classics come to life. They are not dry texts; they speak to us. Each is the
opening voice of a conversation which we are invited to join – a voice that expects a reply. So
in India we say that the meaning of the scriptures is only complete when this call is answered
in the lives of men and women like you and me. Only then do we see what the scriptures mean
here and now. G. K. Chesterton once said that to understand the Gospels, we have only to look
at Saint Francis of Assisi. Similarly, I would say, to grasp the meaning of the Bhagavad Gita,
we need look no farther than Mahatma Gandhi, who made it a guide for every aspect of daily
living. Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.
In India, this process of assimilating the learning of the head into the wisdom of the heart is
said to have three stages: shravanam, mananam, and nididhyasanam; roughly, hearing,
reflection, and meditation. These steps can merge naturally into a single daily activity, but they
can also be steps in a journey that unfolds over years. Often this journey is begun in response to
a crisis. In my own case, though I must have heard the scriptures many times as a child, I don’t
remember them making any deep impression. When I discovered the Bhagavad Gita, I was
attracted by the beauty of its poetry; I didn’t understand its teachings at all. It was not until I
reached a crisis of meaning in my mid-thirties, when outward success failed to fill the longing
in my heart, that I turned to these classics for wisdom rather than literary beauty. Only then did I
see that I had been, as the Buddha puts it, like a spoon that doesn’t know the taste of the soup.
Since that time I have dedicated myself to translating these scriptures into daily living
through the practice of meditation. The book in your hands is one fruit of this long endeavor.
Such a presentation can only be intensely personal. In my translations I naturally let the texts
speak for themselves; here I make no attempt to hide the passion that gave those translations
their appeal. To capture the essence of the Gita, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada, I offer
what I have learned personally from trying to live them out in a complex, hurried world. I write
not as a scholar, but as an explorer back from a long, long voyage eager to tell what he has
found.
Yet however personal the exploration, these discoveries are universal. So it is not surprising
that at the heart of each of these classics lies a myth – variations on the age-old story of a hero
in quest of wisdom that will redeem the world. In the Upanishads, a teenager goes to the King
of Death to find the secret of immortality. In the Gita, standing between opposing armies on the
eve of Armageddon, the warrior-prince Arjuna seeks guidance from an immortal teacher, Sri
Krishna. And behind the Dhammapada lies the story of the Buddha himself, a true story woven
into legend: a prince who forsakes his throne to find a way for all the world to go beyond
sorrow in this life. These old stories are our own, as relevant today as ever. Myth always
involves the listener. We identify with its heroes; their crises mirror ours. Their stories remind
us not only what these scriptures mean but why they matter. Like the texts themselves, they seek
a response in our own lives.
So this book is both the fruit of a journey and an invitation. If you like, you may read it as a
traveler’s tale rich in the experience of some distant place, enjoying the sights and adventures
without the travail of actually making the trip yourself. But this place is really no more distant
than the heart, so if you find that this description calls you to your own voyage of exploration,
my highest purpose in writing will be fulfilled.
Introduction
IT WAS MANY years
ago that I fell in love with the Buddha – not as a god, not as an angel, but as
a man who was the finest flower of our five-thousand-year-old Indian civilization. There are
many reasons to love the Buddha and to want to be like him, but most of all I was drawn to him
because he fulfilled the long, long journey of human evolution. In his language, he reached the
end of the way; he crossed the river of life.
Why did this man, born a prince named Siddhartha into whose lap the gods poured all their
gifts, turn his back on everything that means so much to every one of us? In the age-old way of
India’s saints and sages, he went in search of the answer to a question that has tormented
humanity since the dawn of creation: Is there no way to cross the river of life, from a world of
change and separateness to a far shore of unity, joy, and peace?
Once he began to seek an answer, Siddhartha did not rest until he found it. For six long years
he searched and struggled, inflicting heroic experiments upon his body and mind. He would not
go by what tradition had handed down: he would not accept what theology taught; he would not
even trust reason and intellect. There was only one way in which he could know the truth, and
that was to realize it for himself through hard self-discipline and even harder experience. For
the Buddha, religion did not mean theology, metaphysics, dogma, or even faith. He sought
personal experience, personal realization, which he finally achieved on the night of his
enlightenment under the bodhi tree.
When Prince Siddhartha came into this life there was only a thin veil of illusion separating
him from full enlightenment. He was born in the royal Shakya line, in a beautiful area at the foot
of the Himalayas, destined to inherit his family’s warrior tradition. As a young man he was
taught by the best teachers and became proficient in the arts of peace and war, a superb
horseman and archer. As a youth he was surrounded with all the pleasures of life: palaces,
gardens, music, and dance. With a loving and beautiful wife, he had a son who promised to
continue the royal tradition. All this Prince Siddhartha had, and yet nothing would satisfy him.
All these appeared so small to him because, after many lifetimes of seeking, it was his destiny
to reach the end of the way in this life, and to become the teacher of countless millions.
More than twenty-five hundred years ago, on the full-moon night in the month of May, the
young prince became the Buddha. On that night Prince Siddhartha awoke from the long sleep of
separateness in which all of us are still dreaming and became the Buddha, the Awakened One.
This tremendous experience is the foundation for everything that came afterward. All of the
Buddha’s teachings rest on this supreme experience of awakening. Afterwards, for forty-five
years the Buddha wandered all over the dusty paths of northern India, showing everyone –
prince and pauper, beggar and merchant, young and old, man and woman, householder and
mendicant – the life-fulfilling way beyond suffering. Wanting to preserve his priceless words,
his disciples collected his teachings in the Pali Canon, memorized and passed down from
generation to generation until written down in the first century B.C. A part of the Pali Canon, the
Dhammapada conveys the Buddha’s teaching in vivid, practical verses that use the everyday
language of the villagers rather than the lofty discourse of the priests. In time, as Buddhism
spread throughout Asia, the Dhammapada became a much-loved scripture translated into many
languages, from Tibetan to Chinese. Wherever the message of the Buddha traveled, the
Dhammapada became a kind of spiritual handbook.
In this handbook we are going right to the source, to the very words of the Buddha. Where
the teachings of the Buddha are concerned, there is a lot of tradition, a lot of teaching not from
the Buddha but from his followers – some useful, some spiritual, some scholarly, and some
neither scholarly nor spiritual. But the Dhammapada, I believe, must have come from the
Buddha directly. Every verse throws light on life with the kind of simple, homely, vivid
phrases that the Compassionate One must have used.
THE DHAMMAPADA IS practical,
free from speculation and theory. It’s suitable for people living
in the world, with a family, a career, and all the problems of daily life. Most of the Buddhist
scriptures are addressed to monks and nuns, but the Dhammapada is addressed to all, without
any discrimination based on caste or wealth or religious faith. If we look at the Buddha’s life,
we see that those attracted to him were often ordinary men and women like you and me. And if
we look closely at the teachings, we see that they are universal. In later centuries the body of
Buddhist scripture grew to be more voluminous than the Bible, but I would say that we need
nothing more than the Dhammapada to answer the Buddha’s call to nirvana. It is the perfect
map for the spiritual journey.
Some people who saw the Buddha during his lifetime saw only a simple monk in humble
robes, nothing more. Those who looked at him with a deeper understanding saw a remarkable
figure. When the sage Sela saw the Buddha walking along in his saffron robe, carrying his
begging bowl, the authority of love beaming from his eyes, Sela greeted him, “You look every
inch a king, a victorious lord of the wide rose apple land!”
The Buddha answered, “A king am I indeed, O Sela, a king of the dharma.” Many kings have
walked the face of the earth, but there is only one like the Buddha, who threw a crown away
and put on the faded robes of a mendicant.
“Through the dharma I turn the wheel that rules the whole world, the wheel of the law.” The
wheel of the law of love set in motion by the Buddha may never be stayed. It will go on and on.
Wherever war is waged, however selfish people become, the teaching of the Buddha will
inspire ordinary men and women because, once like us, he transcended all human conditioning
and fulfilled human evolution.
From the human point of view, then, there are two Buddhas: one, Prince Siddhartha Gautama
who became the Buddha, and the other, the Buddha principle: impersonal, inexpressible,
eternal. We need the human Buddha, who lives as we do, talks as we do, laughs as we do,
weeps as we do. We respond to the man, so accessible, so personal, so tender, and we are
inspired to follow in his footsteps. Yet by virtue of illumination the Buddha has gone beyond
personality, beyond individuality.
In a few of the magnificent representations of the Buddha, he is not shown at all. We see only
an empty seat. There is nobody there. It’s the perfect image, because the eternal Buddha cannot
be described. How can we describe in human language the Awakened One, free from all
conditioning? How can we describe a man or woman who has become universal, who will
always act in freedom? Such a person is not individual, not personal. He or she has become an
eternal force which can come to life in every one of us.
We are drawn irresistibly to the Buddha because we all respond deeply to goodness and
wisdom. We may say we do not believe in God, we may say we don’t follow the spiritual life,
but everywhere people are searching for someone leading a selfless, loving life. When we see
someone who can suffer patiently under attack, remain calm in the midst of turmoil, and return
good will for ill will, we feel an innate attraction.
Such people shine like the Himalayas. When you approach the Himalayas from the dusty
plains of India, you see a glorious sight you can never forget. Just so the Buddha’s appeal will
never change. The Buddhist scriptures are lavish in their praise for their great teacher, the
Tathagata, “the one who has understood things as they are,” because after all the tributes were
paid, his disciples felt there still remained about the Buddha a core that was unknown, an
essence of mystery. Words could not express it because thoughts could not follow. Even after
twenty-five hundred years, we are forced to agree with the words of the disciples: “Deep is the
Tathagata, immeasurable, incomprehensible as the sea.”
The Buddha combined within himself two extraordinary qualities seldom seen in the same
person. On the one hand, he was a man of rich and responsive human sympathy, of unfailing
patience, infinite gentleness, and universal good will. On the other hand, he had an intellect as
sharp as a razor’s edge. He seems to have combined within himself the two almost conflicting
roles of a passionate lover of mankind and a philosophic genius, harmonized beautifully into
one single radiant personality.
The Buddha had a well-trained intellect but he never drew attention to it. He would never
enter into arguments and could never be drawn into a controversy, choosing to maintain what
the commentaries call a “noble silence.” On one occasion, a few of his disciples began to
doubt. Maybe their teacher didn’t have the answers after all. “Perhaps the Blessed One is
afraid of engaging in philosophical disputes?” they asked.
“The very thought that I could be defeated in argument,” the Buddha replied, “is
impossible.” He would not be drawn into futile discussions that have nothing to do with things
as they are. By his very silence he taught: these questions are mere theories and dogmas.
The Buddha doesn’t even ask us to believe in God. He asks us to cross the river of life and
find the peace he called nirvana. He doesn’t ask us to take anything on faith but proposes a
grand experiment: step-by-step research into the depths of our consciousness. Because of this
approach, the Buddha has been called an atheis…
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