He wasn’t looking for religion, as such; he wasn’t particularly interested in religion. The Buddha wasn’t a god; he wasn’t even a Buddhist. You’re not required to have more faith in the Buddha than you do in yourself. But what did the Buddha intend when he taught? For the next forty-five years, he taught how to work with the mind: how to look at it, how to free it from misunderstandings, and how to realize the greatness of its potential. A work with chi is “living” in the sense that this primal vitality can actually be seen in the work. His power lies in his teachings, which show us how to work with our minds to realize our full capacity for wakefulness and happiness. Fighting the battle of the bulge might not sound that frightening, but during the eighth season premiere of “The Biggest Loser,” the usually uplifting show got supersized scary. Except this poem would sound a lot different in other places around the globe. When we researched, we had seen that a lot of deities wear simple but charming cloths & very small amount of gold ornaments. I found in my forty years of classroom teaching that a lot of my students started off presuming that Buddhism was not a religion but a “way of life.” Once confronted with the above, most changed their opinion.

If we look at the life of Siddhartha, we can see that he found the truth and freedom he was seeking only after he abandoned religious practices. I can also say that Buddhism is a philosophy of life – a way to live that maximizes our chances for happiness. To get rid of cruelty, unjust matters, and the darkest part of human life you should choose some ways to enter the life of spirituality. Many of us long for this return from exile and then discover that it leads us toward existential danger – the deconstruction and rearrangement of our very sense of self and reality. If we relate to the Buddha’s teachings as final answers that don’t need to be examined, then we’re practicing Buddhism as a religion. I am fascinated by the different and changing positions of Brotherhood branches and clerics vis-à-vis the Shia and the Iranian Revolution and then the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian converts to Islam chose to become Shia rather than Sunni in the early centuries of the religion as a protest against the ethnic Arab empires that treated non-Arabs as second-class citizens.

In Islam Muhammad is considered the last of a series of prophets (including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and Jesus), and his message simultaneously consummates and completes the “revelations” attributed to earlier prophets. Islam is a religion of peace and merrymaking. But without something ultimate – beyond which it is impossible to go – the system at hand is not a religion. In addition, in order to be considered a religion, the system must offer some clear and distinct path, or choice of paths, to the experience of that ultimate reality. Finally, are Buddhists who attain the experience of ultimate reality “transformed” by their experience? Of course they are. Like wolves, they’re extremely smart – much smarter than domestic dogs (except yours, of course). Kid Buu – Was described like a God of Destruction by Shin. Your attachment to that text can be as religious as you like – but resultant awakening may shake your faith. Muslims believe the Quran is the divine words or revelations on which they base their faith.

Eventually we’re able to overcome the confusion that makes it so hard to see the mind’s naturally brilliant awareness. He saw beyond all belief systems to the profound reality of the mind itself, a state of clear awareness and supreme happiness. What Streng meant to say was that for something to be considered a religion, it must posit a clear and distinct ultimate reality. Buddhism offers an ultimate reality. In its travels, Buddhism has been many things to many people. So many villages have gambara devathas, who tell about their villages & people to Gambara Siddha Suniyam god. And with computer manufacturers adding more power to each new model, video game makers who can use code will have opportunities to create increasingly vivid game worlds. Siddhartha was a truth seeker, nothing more. At the start of his own spiritual quest, Siddhartha left his royal home determined to find answers to life’s most perplexing questions. Whether it’s the eightfold path that we find in Theravada, the bodhisattva path of Mahayana, or something else altogether, Buddhist practitioners are always provided with a straightforward series of practices that culminate in enlightenment. Not necessarily. I can argue that Buddhism is a science of mind – a way of exploring how we think, feel, and act that leads us to profound truths about who we are.