The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (456 page)

Buddh
vatamsaka-s
tra
(Mah
y
na s
tra)
:

see
AVATAMSAKA LITERATURE
.

 
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(Skt., ‘intellect’). In Skt. (Hindu) literature, the higher mental faculty, the instrument of knowledge, discernment, and decision. Buddhi is understood in slightly different ways in the different philosophical systems.

 
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Buddhism
.

This began historically (although, of course, in its own account it has always been the truth, with a long pre-history) in the 6th and 5th cents. BCE, in India, with the enlightenment of Gotama, who became thereby
muni
of the
akya clan (i.e.
kyamuni) and (in his own self-description)
Tath
gata
. As presented now in the texts, he taught in the context of the basic components of Hindu
cosmology
and psychology (long cycles of time, and equally long periods through which a self or soul,
tman
, is reborn as it moves, controlled by
karma
as cause, toward freedom or salvation,
mok
a
), but modified them drastically: he saw all appearance as characterized by
dukkha
(transience,
anicca
, accompanied by the suffering which arises if one seeks something permanent or eternal in its midst). It follows that there cannot be a soul, but only the sequence of one moment giving rise to the next, constituting appearances with characteristic possibilities (human, e.g., as opposed to animal, through the
skandhas
, aggregations). The no-soul doctrine is referred to as
an
tman
.
The teaching of the Buddha is summarized in the
Four Noble Truths
(the truth of dukkha and how to escape it), the Eightfold Path (
a
angika-m
rga
) (the route to escape or enlightenment), and
paticca-samupp
da
(the analysis of the twelve-step chain of cause which gives rise to entanglement in
sa
s
ra