Buddhism 101 - Open your Journey

Learning Objectives:

  • Provide guidance or opening your journey into Buddhism
  • Explore resources to discover Buddhism

Motivations - Discovering Buddhism is an individual journey. No two Buddhists have gone through the same, due to regional differences, or personal circumstance. In addition, Buddhism is a diverse and still active domain of thought seeing new forms emerge regularly.
As I was once a beginner myself, I tend to think one should let beginners discover Buddhism on their own. I do not wanting to interfere with their journey. For that, this page propose a couple of starting links to initiate that journey by yourself.
That being said, there are a couple of mistakes and wrong expectations that could be helpful to debug so you start without too many illusions or pre-conceptions or projections. This page provides a couple of aspects to be aware of when you start your journey, and traps to avoid.

What to be aware of

True Buddhism is an illusion - Every Buddhist school, tradition, movement, is deeply rooted in a specific historical context, in a specific culture. From the Tantric Tibetan Buddhism to the Secular Buddhists, all traditions old and new derive from multiple origins, have gone through many transformations, and influence one another all the time. Yet, many schools claim to be expressing “Original Buddhism” or “True Buddhism”. This is an illusion. All forms of Buddhism are cultural, and based on roots that are impermanent and interdependent.

Being aware of those roots is important to understand and locate the respective teachings of those schools, and put them in perspective from one another. It also avoids the claim that only your form holds the one true Dharma. Whenever you read an introduction to Buddhism, whenever you listen to a Dharma talk, try to be aware of who’s talking and in which context they are.

More on this topic: Theravada, Early Buddhist Schools, Hinayana, Mayahana, Zen, Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Secular Buddhism, etc

Wrong Buddhism is very real - Buddhism is often viewed as a philosophy of life that inspires only peace and morality. But, like in any other social group, Buddhist Sanghas also can harbor toxicity, indoctrination, manipulation and violence. This is sadly the reality, denying it is just another case of buddhist exceptionalism.

No specific school is exempt from abuse of power, harrassment or coercion. If you join a Buddhist group, please don’t overlook this. Be aware of the power dynamic in the group. Try to gauge if the group has a healthy way of dealing with issues, has a proper way of discussing and processing abuse reports; what way do they look at the victims, how do they explain or excuse the abusers.

More on this topic: NKT report website; Healing our Sanghas website; “Will Sanghas Learn from the Scandals in the Buddhist World?”, Tricycle 2019; “Buddhists Go to Battle: When Nationalism Overrides Pacifism”, New-York Times, Nov 2017, etc…

Contradictions are opportunities - The intellectual architecture of the Buddha Dharma is complex. Many concepts that are laid out through the scriptures are conflicting with one another (ex: karma and impermanence). Those contradictions, instead of representing an obstacle, can be seen as an opportunity for practice. When you journey through scripture, ask yourself: how could they be embraced as is? (I am not gonna expand on that for now).

Also, non-monolithic scripture is actually a good sign, it can be considered an evidence of authenticity (a filtered/edited teaching would surely have been redressed).

Finally, incongruences and their challenge to the mind can ensure diversity: a healthy community contemplating at contradictions cannot be restricted to one single totalitarian view of what the Dharma is or should be. I think this is why the Dharma has been and remains an active field of discovery, meditation, contemplation, study and debate.

Don’t try too hard to find a pure and diamond-like theory or philosophy. And if you find one, beware.

More on this topic: “Opinions sur l’Histoire de la Dogmatique”, Louis de la Vallée Poussin, 1908 (French); additional notes in progress.

Things to avoid

Fundamentalism is rooted in ignorance (of the impermanence of scripture) - Like all other religious scriptures, Buddhist scriptures have gone through transformations. They have been first written down after a couple centuries of oral tradition, being only remembered and recited. Then, they have been compiled, translated, edited, filtered, re-compiled, commented, etc. That process was human, and necessarily introduced bias, errors, inaccuracies.

Also, those scriptures have been subjected to creative work: long after the passing of the Buddha, some unknown authors created brand new Sutras as inspired by their faith and practice, and presented them as if they had been spoken at the time of the Buddha himself (nobody can possible know if that’s true or not). Those introduced brand new concepts, or had a different emphasis than previous scriptures. With time, translation and propagation, those new Sutras became new canons, revered and recited by many Buddhist schools today.

In short: no scripture or canon can pretend to be the one permanent untouched scripture that should be taken entirely literally.

More on this topic: “Pali Oral Literature”, L.S. Cousins, 1983; “A Short History of Buddhism”, E. Conze, 1980 ; History of Prajnaparamita Sutras on Wikipedia

Consumerism ruins everything - Once we’ve established the diversity of the Buddhist practices, it might feel natural to start picking and choosing any form you like from one school, combine with teachings from another you like too, drop practices you don’t like one day, pick new ones you like better another day, etc. There are two problems with that.

The first is that this desire to consume teachings will be met by a lot of grifters trying to sell you books, workshops, initiation sessions, paid coaching, and maybe even food supplements and whatnot. At the end of the day, these tap into very typical unwholesome traits of human nature. They will set very attractive expectations, but will fail to deliver.

The second is more fundamental: it goes against the Dharma itself. Picking and choosing, adopting a teaching just because you like it, rejecting a teaching just because you dislike it, many of the Buddhist schools would identify this as a form of attachment, desire, grasping, ultimately leading to suffering. I believe it is fine to not address this desire for spirituality at the very beginning of your journey (one problem at a time, let’s get your practice started first). But soon enough, consuming teachings like products and assembling your own comfortable Dharma is going to be a blocker for progress along the Way.

So, be aware of that impulse during your practice. Why are you taking on this new practice? What makes you attracted to it? Is this relationship healthy and why? How do you establish a solid and consistent foundation in your practice if you add this new element into it?

More on this topic: Spiritual Materialism

Introductions

Having said all that, the amount of available material online is just so vast that there’s no point in even trying to make a representative subset.

Below you’ll find a few links, mainly from Theravada or Secular traditions. I’ll work on upgrading those with more links.

Useful links for finding content

  • A Handful of Leaves has a Library with many available books in pdf to download (please consider buying if you like them, preferably used)
  • AudioDharma.org - “This site is an archive of Dharma talks given by Gil Fronsdal, Andrea Fella and various guest speakers at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA.”
  • SuttaCentral.net - “SuttaCentral contains early Buddhist texts, known as the Tipiṭaka or “Three Baskets”. This is a large collection of teachings attributed to the Buddha or his earliest disciples, who were teaching in India around 2500 years ago. They are regarded as sacred canon in all schools of Buddhism.”

Podcasts