For Buddhism to be established as a coherent system, it must, at the theoretical level, answer three fundamental questions that concern everyone.
The first question is: does rebirth really exist? After a person dies, do they become a ghost or some other form of life? This is actually extremely important. Many people lack reverence for karma precisely because they don’t understand this—they assume it is merely talk. If they truly saw a ghost, they would be so frightened they would break out in a cold sweat!
But ordinary people simply cannot see such things, because our six sense faculties are limited. Our eyes are not as sharp as an eagle’s, our sense of smell is inferior to a dog’s, and our hearing is nowhere near that of a dolphin. Dolphins can emit ultrasonic waves, and whales can hear the calls of their own kind from hundreds of kilometers away… So our sensory organs are actually quite poor. The only thing we are relatively strong at is thinking.
However, thinking is only inference; it cannot provide direct valid cognition (pratyakṣa, pratyakṣa). We can infer the existence of the six realms of rebirth, but we cannot directly perceive hell, hungry ghosts, or heavenly realms. What we can directly perceive are only two realms—the human realm and the animal realm—and even bacteria can only be partially seen. Because we can directly perceive only two realms, it is indeed very difficult for us to believe in rebirth through direct perception. Still, we can arrive at it through logical reasoning.
We often indulge in idle seculation, thinking that humans have a soul—that when a person dies, this soul leaves the body, flies off somewhere else, enters a mother’s womb, and is then born again. In fact, this is a mistaken idea; no such things exists. Buddhism does not accept the notion of a soul. This is what is known as an “eternalism.”
What does eternalism mean? It is the belief that the world works in this way—that after death, a soul emerges and then enters another embryo to grow again. This very idea of a soul is itself eternalism, and it is a mistaken form of cognition.
Buddhism offers many theoretical explanations of rebirth, including Madhyamaka (Madhyamaka) and Yogācāra (Yogācāra), which we will explain gradually later on. To explain this clearly is not something that can be done in just one or two years. In fact, I have spent decades trying to find flaws in these theories, and in the end I could not find any—what I did find instead were a whole lot of loopholes in modern science.
The second question is: does karmic cause and effect truly exist? People often say, “Good deeds bring good results; evil deeds bring evil results.” Does this actually hold true within Buddhism? Yes, it does—and it has a solid theoretical foundation. It is not about prostrating twice to pray for protection, nor about lighting two sticks of incense to wish for wealth. Buddhism offers a very detailed and rigorous theory of karma (karma, karma) and karmic result or maturation (vipāka, vipāka).
The third question is: can our lives truly attain liberation? Can we really reach everlasting happiness? Buddhism answers this question through the Three Seals of the Dharma—the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena (impermanence, anitya), the selflessness of all phenomena (non-self, anātman), and the peace of nirvana (nirvāṇa, nirvāṇa). These are not merely theoretical statements; they can be verified both conceptually and through actual practice.
Therefore, the only philosophy that can truly be realized is Buddhism. As for the materialism, subjective idealism, and objective idealism I mentioned earlier, none of them can actually be realized in practice—and their theories are not complete either. I genuinely do not believe that anyone has truly seen God. Even if you were to see a luminous being who appears before you and speaks many wondrous things, all of which later come true, you still cannot be certain that this being is an omniscient God. It is entirely possible that he is merely an ordinary deity. If you insist that he is omniscient, then you yourself must also be omniscient to make that claim. And if you say that you are omniscient, then you yourself have become God. Therefore, objective idealism is theoretically self-contradictory.
Only Buddhism teaches that every person is a Buddha, and that in the end you can realize the same omniscience as the Buddha. This is also theoretically self-consistent. That is precisely why one must study Buddhist theory.
Although Buddhism is not philosophy in the conventional sense, it does have its own philosophical systems. Within Buddhism, there are three major philosophical frameworks: Madhyamaka (Madhyamaka), Yogācāra (Yogācāra), and Tathāgatagarbha (Tathāgatagarbha). These three systems explain the world at its most fundamental level. Of course, in addition to these, there are many foundational śrāvaka texts such as the Abhidharmakośa, as well as cognitive and philosophical approaches like logic-based Yogācāra and Buddhist epistemology (pramāṇa, pramāṇa). But at the root, these three are fundamental: Madhyamaka explains emptiness; Yogācāra explains how the world operates; and the Tathāgatagarbha teachings explain the state we reach after attaining the stillness of nirvana. Together, these three systems precisely answer Buddhism’s three fundamental questions.
—Excerpted and edited from Buddhist Worldview and Modern Life
This article is a preliminary translation draft and has not yet been reviewed or proofread by the speaker.
