Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

Liberation does not depend on a creator, nor does the question lead to it

Pas de Dieu créateurIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon, the Buddha does not deny the existence of gods (devas), but places them within the cycle of rebirth, subject to impermanence. The Brahmajala Sutta (DN 1) explains, almost ironically, how the god Brahma, the first being to appear in a new cycle, comes to believe himself creator of the world, and how others give him credence. The Kevaddha Sutta (DN 11) shows Brahma unable to answer a fundamental question and sending the monk back to the Buddha. Faced with metaphysical questions — whether the world is eternal, whether the Tathagata exists after death — the Buddha keeps silent and, in the Cula-Malunkya Sutta (MN 63), compares one who demands answers to a wounded man who refuses to have the arrow removed until he knows who shot it. What matters is the end of suffering, not a creator.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

Nothing observed in oneself is «I» or «mine»

Il n'y a pas de soi permanentIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon, the Buddha examines the person as five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. In the Anattalakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59), addressed to his first five disciples, he shows that none of them can be a self, since all are impermanent, produce dissatisfaction and do not obey our will; of none can one say «this is mine, this I am, this is my self». The Alagaddupama Sutta (MN 22) explicitly rejects the idea of an eternal self identical with the world, the Upanishadic thesis. What we call a person is a process of conditioned elements arising and ceasing. Clinging to the idea of a self, whether to affirm it or to deny it with attachment, is a source of suffering; seeing the absence of self in the aggregates leads to detachment and liberation.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Suffering has a cause, craving, and therefore an end

Le désir et l'attachementIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon, the Buddha's first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11), formulates the four noble truths: conditioned existence is unsatisfactory (dukkha); its origin is thirst or craving (tanha), craving for pleasures, for being and for non-being; its cessation is possible when that craving is extinguished; and there is a path, the noble eightfold path, leading to it. The Mahanidana Sutta (DN 15) develops dependent origination, the chain of conditions in which ignorance, mental formations, contact, feeling and craving lead to clinging, becoming, birth, ageing and death. Suffering is neither punishment nor mystery: it has observable causes, and what has a cause can cease. That is why the Buddha presents himself as a physician rather than a theologian.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

As long as there is craving there is rebirth; on the liberated one after death, silence

Renaissance selon le karmaIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon the Buddha affirms rebirth as part of what he saw on the night of awakening: he recalled his former lives and saw beings dying and being reborn according to their deeds. As long as ignorance and craving persist, death gives way to a new existence in one of the possible destinations; liberation (nibbāna) is precisely the end of that cycle. But rebirth does not imply a soul passing from one body to another: the canon denies a permanent self and describes a conditioned process. And there is one question the Buddha expressly leaves unanswered: whether the Tathāgata, the liberated one, exists or does not exist after death. In the dialogues with Māluṅkyaputta and with Vacchagotta he declares that such theses do not lead to awakening and that, like an extinguished fire, the liberated one cannot be said to go in any direction.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

The Eightfold Path: ethics, concentration and wisdom extinguish the craving that causes suffering

Par une pratique disciplinéeIl le dit expressément

In the Pali Canon, the Buddha's answer is formulated from his first discourse (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11): there is suffering, it originates in craving, it ceases with the extinction of that craving, and the path leading to cessation is the Noble Eightfold Path, a middle way between indulgence and mortification. Tradition groups it into three trainings: ethical conduct, meditative concentration and wisdom, understood as direct insight into impermanence, suffering and the absence of a permanent self. Nirvana is not received from a god nor obtained through rites: each person attains it by their own effort. According to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, his last words urge perseverance with diligence, since all compounded things are subject to passing away.

Faut-il un maître ?

Buddhas only point the way; the effort belongs to each person

Utile mais pas indispensableIl le dit expressément

In the Pali Canon, the Buddha presents himself as one who has discovered and shows a path, not as one who walks it for others: the Tathagatas only point the way, each must make the effort (Dhammapada 276). Before dying, according to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, he urges his disciples to be an island and refuge to themselves, with the Dhamma as island and refuge, and declares that after his death the Dhamma and the discipline will be their teacher. This does not make the guide superfluous: in the Samyutta Nikaya he states that noble friendship, the company of admirable people, is not half but the whole of the holy life. The teacher and community are valuable conditions, but each person realises liberation.

Le monde est-il réel ?

Neither existence nor non-existence: everything arises dependent on conditions

Un réseau de causes sans substanceIl le dit expressément

In the Pali Canon, the Buddha avoids asserting either that the world exists in an absolute sense or that it does not exist. In the Kaccanagotta Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 12.15) he explains that whoever sees with wisdom the arising of the world does not hold to its non-existence, and whoever sees its ceasing does not hold to its existence: the Tathagata teaches by the middle, through dependent arising, the chain of conditions by which, this being, that arises. Moreover, the Buddha brings the question back to experience: in the Sabba Sutta (SN 35.23) he defines «the all» as the senses and their objects, setting aside what lies beyond as an object of useless speculation. The world is a conditioned, impermanent process without a substantial self.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

Goodwill towards all beings, like a mother towards her only child

Une compassion sans limitesIl le dit expressément

The Pali canon carefully distinguishes two forms of love. The first is clinging affection (pema, piya), which the Dhammapada identifies as a source of grief and fear: from what is dear, sorrow is born. The second are the four sublime abidings (brahmavihāra): goodwill (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekkhā), which are cultivated in meditation by radiating them without limit in all directions. The Karaṇīya Metta Sutta asks one to wish for the well-being of all beings, seen and unseen, near and far, and to guard that goodwill as a mother guards her only child with her life. In the simile of the saw, the Buddha demands that the mind remain benevolent even if bandits were to sever one limb by limb. This love is not attachment to particular persons but a boundless disposition that frees the one who cultivates it.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

Intention is karma: not everything comes from past, god or chance

Le karma et le choixIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon the Buddha explicitly rejects three doctrines that, in his view, nullify moral life: that everything experienced is due to past actions, that it is due to the creation of a supreme god, or that it happens without any cause. Were any of them true, he argues, there would be no desire or effort to do what should be done (AN 3.61). His position is that intention (*cetanā*) is karma itself (AN 6.63): the past conditions, but every present intentional act is a new cause. The simile of the salt crystal (AN 3.100) refines this: the same act weighs differently depending on who bears it; a pinch of salt makes a cup of water undrinkable, not a river.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Establishing mindfulness of body, feelings, mind and phenomena to see impermanence

Voir la réalité telle qu'elle estIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon meditation is the central means of liberation, and its purpose is to see things as they are. The *Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta* (MN 10) presents it as the direct path for the purification of beings: establishing mindfulness of the body, feelings, mind and phenomena, observing how they arise and cease. The *Ānāpānasati Sutta* (MN 118) guides practice from the breath, in sixteen steps that end in contemplating impermanence, dispassion, cessation and relinquishment. Calm (*samatha*) prepares the mind, but what liberates is clear seeing (*vipassanā*) that everything conditioned is impermanent, unsatisfactory and without a self.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

A Dhamma profound and beyond reasoning, which each one verifies

L'ultime est au-delà du mentalIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon, after the awakening, the Buddha hesitates to teach because the Dhamma he has understood is profound, hard to see, peaceful, sublime and beyond the scope of mere reasoning (*atakkāvacara*), to be experienced only by the wise (MN 26). He also rejects metaphysical speculation: whoever demands to know whether the world is eternal or whether the Tathāgata exists after death he likens to a man struck by an arrow who will not be treated until he knows who shot it (MN 63). This does not lead him to ask for blind faith. He advises the Kālāmas to accept nothing on tradition, logic or a teacher's authority, but to verify for themselves what leads to harm and what to well-being (AN 3.65). Discernment prepares; liberation is direct seeing.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

Household life is dust; going forth into homelessness is open air

Se retirer pour trouverIl le dit expressément

In the Pali canon the Buddha left his home, his wife and his son to seek awakening, and founded a community of monks and nuns (saṅgha) who renounced household life. Several discourses repeat the formula according to which domestic life is cramped, a path of dust, while going forth into homelessness is like the open air, and it is not easy, living in a house, to lead the holy life, complete and pure. Renunciation is the ideal framework of practice. But the canon does not despise the world: the Buddha teaches lay people and kings, gives in the Sigālovāda Sutta a detailed ethic for the householder — duties towards parents, teachers, wife, friends and workers — and in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta lists the conditions for the welfare of a republic. The monastic community also depends on the laity, whom it repays with teaching.

Centros en todos los continentes (sede histórica: Dhamma Giri, Igatpuri, India) · Internacional

Vipassana meditation courses (Dhamma.org)

Vipassana Meditation – centros de la tradición de S. N. Goenka

The Vipassana courses taught by S. N. Goenka, in the line of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, pass on a technique of observing bodily sensations that this tradition traces back to the Buddha himself. The format is demanding and sober: ten residential days of silence, with a daily discipline of many hours of meditation and recorded talks explaining the method. Nothing is charged, not even food or lodging; everything is sustained by donations from those who have already completed a course. There are centres on every continent, and the website, in dozens of languages, lists each centre's calendar.

Lumbini, provincia de Lumbini · Nepal

Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha

Lumbini Development Trust (Gobierno de Nepal)

Lumbini, on the plains of southern Nepal, is where tradition places the birth of Siddhartha Gautama. The Maya Devi Temple shelters the archaeological remains associated with that moment, beside the sacred pool and the pillar the emperor Ashoka had raised in the third century BCE with an inscription commemorating it. The World Heritage site is managed by the Lumbini Development Trust, a Nepali government body that also looks after the monastic zone, where various Buddhist countries have built monasteries, and other places linked to the Buddha's life such as Kapilvastu, Ramagrama and Devadaha.

Bodh Gaya, Bihar · India

Bodh Gaya: the Mahabodhi Temple

Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee

Bodh Gaya is the place where, according to tradition, Siddhartha Gautama attained awakening beneath the Bodhi tree, and the most important of the four great Buddhist pilgrimage sites. The Mahabodhi Temple, a World Heritage Site, stands beside a descendant of that tree and the stone platform marking the Buddha's seat. It is run by a management committee that holds daily sessions of chanting and meditation at dawn and evening chanting, in Pali and in the Mahayana tradition. Around the temple, monasteries from many Buddhist countries welcome pilgrims and students throughout the year.