Sentient beings (Buddhism)
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. In Buddhism, sentient beings are beings with consciousness, sentience, or in some contexts life itself.[1] Sentient beings are composed of the five aggregates, or skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha is recorded as saying that "just as the word 'chariot' exists on the basis of the aggregation of parts, even so the concept of 'being' exists when the five aggregates are available."[2] While distinctions in usage and potential subdivisions or classes of sentient beings vary from one school, teacher, or thinker to another, it principally refers to beings in contrast with buddhahood. That is, sentient beings are characteristically not enlightened, and are thus confined to the death, rebirth, and dukkha (suffering) characteristic of saṃsāra.[3]
However, Mahayana Buddhism simultaneously teaches that sentient beings also contain Buddha-nature—the intrinsic potential to transcend the conditions of saṃsāra and attain enlightenment, thereby obtaining Buddhahood.[4]
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"Those who greatly enlighten illusion are Buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about enlightenment are sentient beings."
In Mahayana Buddhism, it is to sentient beings that the Bodhisattva vow of compassion is pledged. Furthermore, and particularly in Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism, all beings (including plant life and even inanimate objects or entities considered "spiritual" or "metaphysical" by conventional Western thought) are or may be considered sentient beings.[5][6]
Definition
Getz (2004: p. 760) provides a generalist Western Buddhist encyclopedic definition:
Sentient beings is a term used to designate the totality of living, conscious beings that constitute the object and audience of Buddhist teaching. Translating various Sanskrit terms (jantu, bahu jana, jagat, sattva), sentient beings conventionally refers to the mass of living things subject to illusion, suffering, and rebirth (Saṃsāra). Less frequently, sentient beings as a class broadly encompasses all beings possessing consciousness, including Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.[1]
Classification
Early scriptures in the Pāli Canon and the conventions of the Tibetan Bhavacakra classify sentient beings into five categories—divinities, humans, animals, tormented spirits, and denizens of hell—although sometimes the classification adds another category of beings called devas between divinities and humans.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Getz, Daniel A. (2004). "Sentient beings"; cited in Buswell, Robert E. (2004). Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Volume 2. New York, USA: Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 0-02-865720-9 (Volume 2): pp.760
- ↑ David Kalupahana, Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. The University Press of Hawaii, 1975, page 78.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Kimura, Kiyotaka (1991). The Self in Medieval Japanese Buddhism: Focusing on Dogen; cited in Philosophy East and West; Volume 41, Number 3, July 1991. University of Hawaii Press: pp.327–340. Accessed 22 October 2008.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
- ↑ Keiji, Nishitani (ed.)(1976). The Eastern Buddhist. 9.2: p.72. Kyoto: Eastern Buddhist Society; cited in Dumoulin, Henrich (author); Heisig, James (translator); and Knitter, Paul (translator)(2005). Zen Buddhism: A History ~ Volume 2: Japan. With an Introduction by Victor Sogen Hori. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: World Wisdom, Inc. ISBN 978-0-941532-90-7
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
