To be Buddhist is to follow the path laid out by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), emphasizing the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path to achieve enlightenment (awakening) and liberation from suffering and the cycle of rebirth (samsara). Key practices include meditation, cultivating compassion, and living ethically according to precepts like refraining from harming, stealing, and lying.
Core Teachings
The Four Noble Truths:
Dukkha (suffering): Life involves suffering, unease, and dissatisfaction.
The Origin of Suffering: Suffering arises from craving, attachment, and desire.
The Cessation of Suffering: It is possible to end suffering.
The Path to End Suffering: The Noble Eightfold Path provides the way to end suffering.
The Noble Eightfold Path: This is the "Middle Way" that leads to awakening and includes right understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.
Karma and Rebirth: Buddhists believe in a cycle of life, death, and rebirth called samsara, which is influenced by one's past actions (karma). The ultimate goal is to break free from this cycle.
Key Practices and Beliefs
Meditation: A core practice to develop wisdom, clarity, and insight into the nature of reality.
Ethical Conduct: Adhering to guidelines such as refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and intoxicants.
Compassion: Cultivating goodwill and friendship towards all living beings.
Enlightenment (Nirvana): The ultimate goal is to reach a state of profound wisdom, peace, and liberation from suffering and the cycle of rebirth.
What Being a Buddhist Means
Being a Buddhist is not just about intellectual understanding or ritual but about experiential practice and self-discovery. It involves incorporating the Buddha's teachings into daily life to cultivate inner peace, compassion, and wisdom.
So what do these guys do here..
Dukkha (suffering): Life involves suffering, unease, and dissatisfaction.
The Origin of Suffering: Suffering arises from craving, attachment, and desire.
The Cessation of Suffering: It is possible to end suffering.
The Path to End Suffering: The Noble Eightfold Path provides the way to end suffering.
Where's this suffering comes from.. like.. wtf with these guys, eh? Like why do they need this buddha guy? So what do they do about homeless people.. they go.. oh you can just come live at my place. Meanwhile they're like meth fentanyl zombies standing there hunched down in the street. lol. Or you give them 20 bucks and it's gone in 2 hours and they're hungry in a few hours later. Those are not solutions.
Within buddhist tradition there is the saying, "If you see the buddha on the road, kill him."
The meaning is that the buddha is NOT a man but an understanding. Only literalists believe in buddha as person, and to do so is to misrepresent and will accomplish nothing.
Another story has a monk and a priest sharing a cabin in the woods in the winter and freezing. To survive, the priest takes a statue of the buddha and throws it into the fireplace, making a fire. The ignorant monk yells, 'You can't do that!' in protest. When the fire is done, the priest takes a poker and stirs the ashes, causing the monk to ask, "Why are you doing that?" The priest replies, to find the ashes of the buddha." That was meant as a lesson to the monk about the difference between literalist thinking and the use of symbols vs understanding the reality.
Exoteric vs esoteric understanding. What is the difference? It's lost on the literalist.
You don't get to misrepresent something you misunderstand and then critique it from that misrepresentation. The same is true with gnostic vs orthodox christianity. One is a lesser literalistic perversion of the deepest tenets.
Now do Zen.
Can't wait to see the sophomoric slant given to that with half understanding.
a) Buddha/bheudh - "be aware, make aware"... https://www.etymonline.com/word/Buddha
b) Awareness requires ones analytical mind...others suggest buddhism to tempt ones mind into a consensus, within which each member becomes a buddhist. Member/memory implies a synthetic mind...
-ism (suggestion) + -ist (consent) imply a contract/covenant/pact that binds ones free will of choice, hence making one unaware.
c) A buddhist ignores buddha by consenting to buddhism...as suggested by someone that wasn't buddha.
d) All perceivable generating each ones perception implies buddha giving awareness. Ones consent to any suggestion of another implies ones lack of awareness aka "In Buddhism, the opposite of a Buddha is often considered to be an "unawakened" person or someone who has not attained enlightenment."
a) IN (within) VOLVERE (to roll). Nature utilizes linear progression to separate each being within from one another... few suggest fiction to roll many into a consensus.
Rock & Roll aka rocking free will of choice with suggested information from one side to another, which rolls whoever consents into circular logic within self; while turning into conflicts of reason against one another.
b) Suffer aka sub (under) bher (to carry)...whatever one carries becomes a burden upon self, dragging on under.
Being (life) implies in-between over (inception) and under (death), hence being passed down (dying), while struggling to rise up (living). Neither the infant; nor the elderly has the potential to carry anything...only during the process of adulteration has one enough potential to temporary hold onto...letting go thereof represents the struggle of temptation aka the need to resist want.
RE (to respond) LIGO (to bind)...that's why joining any religion binds ones free will of choice from refraining (restraining self). Adherence implies "sticking to"...others shape religions to tempt ones consenting choice to stick to it.
Nature moves and sticking to anything within it tempts a living being to die faster. Or in other terms...nature (procession) > being (potential) > sticking (possession).
Sleight of hand for those with eyes to see... https://genius.com/Rem-losing-my-religion-lyrics
Because you think the other half has to come from the suggested explanation of another. In reality...only within whole (perceivable) can each partial (perception) discern self.
Nature implies singularity...others suggest pluralism (forces) to distract ONE from discerning self as a singular unit within the singularity of nature.
There cannot be more than all nature offers to each being within...others suggest creationism aka creatio ex nihilo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo to tempt one to ignore everything perceivable for something created by suggestion out of nothing.
From the religious perspective...if there's only only one God, then why do you believe in multiple forces? How could the created be a multiplication of the creator aka more than God?
Nature (motion) nurturing (momentum) native (matter)...being implies essential part within spiritual separation of natural whole.
Nature animates being...spirit/spiro - "to breathe" implies the force of nature moving through (inception towards death) each being (life).
a) Everything implies sound/sanus - "whole; entire; all"...calling something implies the articulation of sound by words aka spell-craft aka a jew tempting gentiles to establish the sum of all things (mosaic law) by branding moving sound with affixed words/labels/brands/idols/ideals etc.
b) The center of motion implies momentum (balance) for each matter (choice).
c) Central implies each one at "center of all"...nature (all perceivable) moves through each being (ones perception). Others utilize suggestion to tempt ones consenting choice off-center, to establishes a central consensus among many, controlled by a chosen few.
All perceivable lowers ones perception, which in return permits each one to grow self discernment, while being tempted by one another's suggestions to ignore that.
What if dimension isn't a different place, but differentiation (being) during equality (nature)?
Work implies energy (internal/inherent power)... https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/energy
Being implies EN (within) ERGOS (work)...