Directing Life from Flux to Fixity

Buddha has often been called the rebel child of Hinduism, and the Hindus never allowed Buddhism to flourish in India. The seeds of Buddha teachings were taken to China by one of his disciples where it germinated, and the Chinese pronunciation of the word Dhyana or Concentration, became Chaan. Tao-an is thus credited with the establishment of this significant development in Chinese devotional Buddhism. Later, it came to a true flowering in Japan, and the word underwent still another transition, Zen, as we know of it today.

But the irony of it is that Buddha never thought of founding a new religious order. He only proclaimed the ancient and pure form of religion which had prevailed among the Hindus. During his time the nobility of the teachings of Vedas and Upanishads had degenerated into meaningless rites and ceremonies. The Brahmins, whose sole job was to practice virtue and 'receive and distribute' knowledge gained from the study of the Vedas, claimed honor merely by their birth, and were treated with undue lenience and the Shudras (lower castes with menial jobs) with undue severity. Buddha declared that merit, and not birth, determined the position of a man in society. The persecuted Shudras joined him in large numbers.

The gospel of Buddha is simple yet wonderfully profound. His was a deep introspection with a scientific frame of mind, of each single experience that you and I commonly undergo but hardly stop to notice or meditate upon, which made him realize the world-processes as it appears before us: the material world is in a constant state of flux - mutable, changing, impermanent and transitory - and when we attempt to cling on to what will inevitably change, it becomes the very cause of all our misery. This universal experience of sorrow or Dukkha is the starting point in Buddha's thought. Buddha did not preach pessimism; he was wonderfully optimistic, and he emphatically asserts that there is a way out.