RELI 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Gautama Buddha, Sacred Language, Abhidharma

• School: George Mason University
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELI 100
• Professor: David Dakake

Document Summary

Karma- actions (good or bad), determines how you move about the castes. Shudras are not twice born but all other castes are. Second birth = initiation into the teaching of the vedas. Sanyasin- step outside of all castes, seeking moksha, spend life wandering. Maya- everything other than the atman, all of the illusion. ~ most famous buddha, but not the only one in its consistent loss of reality. Samsara means wandering on, not in the sense of the sanyasin, the nature of this world. Nirvana means to blow out (like a candle)- we have to extinguish ourselves, state which. Shunyamurti: the buddha is the image of the void. Sutras: history of the life of the buddha. Vinayana: rules that the buddhist monks should follow.