The Buddha's Golden Path: The Classic Introduction To Zen Buddhism
(eBook)

In 1929, when author Dwight Goddard wrote The Buddha's Golden Path, he was breaking ground. No American before him had lived the life of a Zen Buddhist monk, and then set out to share what he had learned with his countrymen. The Buddha's Golden Path is a true classic. It has touched countless lives, and opened the door for future generations in this country to study and embrace the principles of Zen. Dwight Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1861, and became a pioneer in the American Zen Buddhist movement. During his life, he authored and edited nine titles on Buddhism, including A Buddhist Bible. Introduction While buddhism has nothing dogmatic to offer, it does ask of the beginner that he free himself from all other dogma and superstitions. He must come to the study and practice of Buddhism with an entirely free mind. This is no easy thing to do by one who has been brought up from childhood in an atmosphere of Christian dogmatics and who, consciously or unconsciously, believes a lot of things as axiomatic which are not at all so. Buddhism is, first of all and last of all, an experience that each must interpret for himself, and to do so rightly one must start with a clear mind. As the Path unfolds it brings enlightenment and an ever-clearing spiritual insight. One must, from the very beginning, think humbly, carefully and truly, lest he deviate from the true path. All that Gautama asked of his disciples was that they be "honest and straightforward men." Gautama lived in India at a time when it was filled with abstruse philosophizing on the part of scholars and extreme superstitions on the part of the more ignorant, against both of which he protested. Nevertheless, there were many things that were commonly accepted which Gautama took for granted without necessarily ­endorsing or asking his hearers to accept without themselves being convinced of their truthfulness. Such things as karma, reincarnation and Nirvana were accepted in India centuries before Gautama's day; Gautama accepted them, but filled them with a new and richer content of meaning. Other things, such as the being and nature of God, the immortality of the soul and any self-conscious life after the death of the body, he warned his disciples against, because they were unprovable and their discussion tended to dissension and unrest of mind. In general he warned his disciples against accepting any ideas, even from him, that could not be examined and proved by their own observation and experience. He especially warned them to be on their guard against the common habit of logical exclusion: a thing must be either this or that. Gautama was too keen a thinker to be taken in by that. He insisted that there were many ideas that were neither this nor that, or were both this and that. One of the current conceptions which Gautama accepted in a general way, but which he developed and interpreted (and the great Buddhist philosophers after him still further interpreted), was the cosmological conception of the universe. In Gautama's day the universe was thought to be divided into more or less separate kingdoms-such as the physical plane in which we consciously dwell, below which was a plane of animal life, below that a plane of vegetable life, below that a realm of demons, and still lower, a realm of "hungry demons." Above the physical plane was conceived to be a world of "devas," superhumanly fortunate and happy and free, and above that a world wherein dwelt the gods. Between these different planes there was supposed to be a constant, never-ending transmigration. Such a naïve cosmology as this, in our more scientific age, is seen to be unconvincing and improbable; and yet it is not entirely false. For our day we must interpret it in a more scientific way that can be tested by our enlightened experience and logic. Our interpretation is this: There