NEW339H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Yogachara
LEC 1
Yogacara teaching: Provides the Buddhists with framework of
their meditation practice; It means that you are seeing many
Buddhists doing their meditation and they expect that by doing
meditation with dawn on them; It provides the practitioners with a
road map to watch the finest day of enlightenment; It provides us with
a stage by stage analysis of our observation, about things that are
blinding us to see so called reality, what makes up these observations
•The teachings are about the mind, how our mind works and
therefore there are areas that can be studied along side
western psychology because both systems are about analysis
about our mental factors, mentalities and psychologies
•Teachings are very philosophical
Buddhists do no believe in an almighty god that punishes and
rewards; It believes that everything is caused by something else,
including our mind and the way in which we perceive the world; If
there is no almighty god, then why do we suffer? Why do we have our
suffering? Well the Buddhist answer is that al of these sufferings are
caused by our own minds, we generate the sufferings; These
sufferings are unnecessary and yet we bring them to ourselves; we are
ignorant, we are unwise
We don’t see things how they are, we see things how we want to
see them: We see what we want to see
Yogacara: It is a combination of two Indian words (yoga +
acara)
•It means the practice of union or a set of practices that leads
the practitioner in a state of union with something
•It is about the union with the mind and the universe; You
have this in Buddhism and Hinduism
•i.e. This sort of union is just like putting a grain of salt back
into the ocean, this grain of salt came from the ocean but if
you put it back into the ocean it become one with the ocean,
it becomes one with the entire vast ocean you cannot isolate
that grain of salt, it can be found in all of the ocean
•union between the mind and the reality (this is not something
new or different from what we are seeing); being enlightened
does not mean that you are becoming different, you still look
the exact same but you are not just seeing the superficial
Document Summary
Yogacara teaching: provides the buddhists with framework of their meditation practice; it means that you are seeing many. We don"t see things how they are, we see things how we want to. Yogacara: it is a combination of two indian words (yoga + It means the practice of union or a set of practices that leads the practitioner in a state of union with something. The word yoga is related to the english word yoke (to attain. Why would the buddhist be concerned with obtaining a pursuit of: none of us has attained enlightenment, this is a cultural thing that when buddhism was founded, But when you go about your daily life you forget about this sympathy and you go back to who you are: they are about emotional/temporary changes. Buddhism in general is providing you a different kind of.
