These are questions that occurred to me while I was reading Rahula. Click on the page number of the question to get the answer page. Please add questions of your own about anything you don’t understand, as well as answers when you have them.
Not everyone needs to answer every question. Pick ones you want to focus on, maybe because you know the answer, because you don’t know the answer but want to figure it out, or maybe just because no one else is working on this one.
Wherever possible, try to answer questions with actual lines from the text.
A lot of the answers to the earlier questions become clear with information from later chapters. Don’t feel like you have to answer them right away. Keep reviewing as we go to see if you have new insights.
Before we start, let me explain what I mean by “[explain].”
Preface
xii What is Rahula saying in the paragraph that starts, “But there is a point . . .”? Do you agree? Can you give some examples or illustrations from Buddhism? What if, instead of What the Buddha Taught, you were writing a book on What Americans Believe?
Chapter 1
1 “A man and only a man can become a Buddha.” Why? A man as opposed to what? A boy? A woman? An animal?
3 Explain what Rahula means by the relation between doubt and belief.
4 EXTRA CREDIT! Someone see if they can find or figure out what the issues were about karma between the Buddha and Mahavira and why they mattered.
8 What does “penultimate” mean?
8a What is Rahula saying about the role of “belief” in Buddhism?
10 What is the connection between what the Buddha says about the line of teachers on the top of the page and maintaining truth on the bottom?
12 What does he mean saying that the teaching is like a raft? And why, on that basis, should you give up both good and evil things?
Chapter 2
17a Do you agree with what he says about the optimism or pessimism of Buddhism? By contrast, is science optimistic or pessimistic?
17b What does the word “suffer” mean in English, anyway?
18 Try to make sense of the three things to be understood about sense pleasures. See if you can restate them in your own words in a way we can understand.
19 Try to make sense of the three aspects of dukkha.
20a Why are the five aggregates and dukkha “not different things”?
20b Explain the five aggregates so that they make sense to us.
22 Explain karma.
23 A computer could technically perceive/recognize blue without being conscious of it. By saying that “consciousness should not be taken as ‘spirit’ in opposition to matter,” I think he is suggesting that it be thought of as an activity—something we do, not something we are. Why would it be important to know this, remembering what the Buddha was quoted as saying on page 14, that we should only bother with truths that are useful?
24 Explain the story of Sati so that we can see what his mistake is and how the Buddha’s comment resolves it.
24b Explain Buddhagosa’s explanation.
26 What does it mean to say that “human life is like a mountain river”? Why is this important? (Hint, explain how thinking this way alleviates suffering or, conversely, how fairly to think this was leads to suffering.)
26b Explain the opposition on the bottom of the page between the Buddhist view and the Cartesian cogito ergo sum.
27 Why does the Buddha say “The first beginning of ignorance is not to be perceived in such a way as to postulate that there is no ignorance beyond a certain point.” Why is this important? (See p. 14 and Hint to p. 26.)
Chapter 3
29 Explain the three kinds of desire, “thirst,” or “craving,” in terms that make sense to us now.
30 Why does he say that desire “has as its centre the false idea of self arising out of ignorance”? Help us see it for ourselves.
31 Why does he say “the arising of dukkha is within dukkha itself”? Why is this important? (See p. 42.)
33 If “‘I’ is only a convenient name or a label given to these combinations” of the five aggregates, where does that leave reincarnation?
Chapter 4
35 Explain “Nirvana” in such a way that we can see for ourselves why “the question ‘What is Nirvana?’ can never be answered completely and satisfactorily in words.”
36 What does “Absolute” mean?
40 Make it make sense that “The realization of thie Truth, i.e. to see things as they are without illusion or ignorance, is the extinction” of desire.”
42 Explain “Within this fathom-long sentient body itself, I postulate the world, the arising of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to cessation of the world.” Why is it important? Why is each part of it important?
Chapter 5
Explain the Path.
| ||||||||||||||||
|
