Introduction
Buddhism is based on the teachings of an Indian prince turned ascetic turned sage, Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in the sixth to fifth centuries BCE. “The Buddha,” meaning “one who is awakened,” was concerned with the nature of human suffering and the possibility of removing it. Having witnessed such human problems as sickness, old age and death, the Buddha was determined to understand the source of human suffering. After six years of diligent and diverse meditative practice, Buddha revealed what are known as the Four Noble Truths – life is suffering; the cause of suffering is desire and craving; the extinguishing of all craving and desire, and hence all suffering, is possible; and the Eightfold path is the road out of the realm …show more content…
These aspects are dependent co-arising; the interconnected self; meditation and compassion.
Dependent …show more content…
137). Macy’s (1991) writings on the connection between dependent co-arising and general systems theory are useful in clarifying this concept even further and can be particularly helpful for the field of social work, which commonly employs systems theories. She writes:
Within that mutual causal perception of reality one is not a self-existent being nor are the institutions of society eternally fixed. They are mutable and they mirror our greed, as does indeed the face of nature itself. Co-arising with our actions, they, like us, can be changed by our actions. As our own dynamic processes can be transformed, so can them (Macy, 1991, p. 191).
Dependent co-arising is often illuminated by the image of Indra’s net, a net with a jewel at each node, each jewel reflecting in it all the other jewels, a metaphor for our universal interconnectedness. Consider the example of a table. Within the table are the wood, which needs water, soil, air and sun and the carpenter who made it, which is dependent on his or her parents, the people he learned carpentry from, the food that sustains him ad infinitum. When the table appears, the sun and the rain and the carpenter are part of the table. Based on a view of dependent co-arising, or mutual causality, every act is