Pan

Pan

Psychist

Part two.

The four noble truths.

The Dharma. We threw this word around, Willius Nilius. What does it mean?

The Dharma is essentially the cosmic order, the great order of all things. But in day-to-day use amongst your Buddhist friends, you'll probably use it to refer to the teachings of the Buddha. Think of it like Andrew's favorite philosopher at the moment, St. Thomas Aquinas. We've got natural law, the big thing, but natural law really just refers to the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas in his ethical system. So when we say the Dharma, we're referring to the teaching of the Buddha. There are three refuges, in other words, three sources of authority for Buddhists. We've got the Buddha, I use teachings. We've got Dharma, which is that thing I've just mentioned, the order of things in the Buddha's teachings. And we've got Sanga, which is the community of monks. And that's where you learn all the things you need to know about being a good Buddhist. Yeah, and I think it's worth mentioning that Buddhists believe that the Dharma is eternal. And in some text actually mentions that the Dharma will outlive Buddhism itself, that there will be a time where Buddhism itself will disappear, whether it's because of, I don't know, environmental collapse or the sun explodes.

But that this Dharma is the truth of the universe, an underlying truth within the universe itself that objectively exists and will outlive

potentially even this universe. Cool. Do you want to kick off with some epistemology then?

How does the Bullists arrive at these great truths about the world and the human condition?

The Buddha, and we said this in our first episode, was quite selective with what he thought could be considered truth.

And more importantly, he was very careful with his words and would decide to either say, I'm prepared to comment on this, whether it's one, I think that you can actually handle this message in the right way.

Or somebody would ask him something about something

in where he would just have to say or not say nothing at all let's just not say anything about

that and focus on the stuff that I can tell you about why is that though well he says that most

of the types of truth of the communities of people that he was around at the time were unsatisfactory.

And you can imagine what those sorts of things might be.

So somebody might make a simple appeal to authority and say,

this is the way that the Vedas have always taught us and therefore we must continue down this path.

Or it's simply our community and the elders have said something and I will follow that too.

Or I just have faith in something.

So I have a belief that it is true.

...