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Followers of Mahayana Buddhism believe that when you reach nirvana, your Buddha nature resonates with this Ultimate Reality and with enlightened grace and the ideal of the compassionate Bodhisattva. The Theravada Buddhists, however, believe that everything is fleeting and nothing is transcendent. To the Theravada Buddhists, Gautama Buddha was an enlightened being but not unique since anyone who follows the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path can also attain nirvana and freedom from suffering and the cycles of rebirth. Karmic Law, Pratityasamypadha, (The Law of Causation or Dependent Origination) is the cornerstone for Buddha's entire system of Buddhism teachings. Although all things are impermanent, all occurrences in one’s life are conditioned by others and with a turn of the wheel then form conditions for other occurrences. One event, action, or reaction, results in an effect and that in turn causes other events, actions, and reactions. During his "Discourse on Casual Relations", Gautama Buddha discussed the four characteristics of causation: objectivity, necessity, invariability and conditionality.
In order to get off the
karmic wheel one must initiate potent moral action in any moment of time so that
one's skandhas will be properly configured. A person consists of five skandhas:
a bodily form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. At any given
moment in time, you are an amalgam of these five groups. Any future blended
patterns are the result of prior causations.
Moral actions result in more propitious circumstances while wrongful acts lead to unfortunate conditions. This causal linkage continues from lifetime to lifetime until nirvana liberates you from the karmic cycles of rebirth. In the teachings of Buddhism there are Three Characteristics of Being. They are: All Constituents of Being Are Transitory; All Constituents of Being Are Lacking in Ego, and All Constituents of Being Are Painful Until... All Constituents of Being are Transitory refers to the observation that Impermanence and change are constant. Creation and this universe is ever evolving. Everything goes through transitions, cyclic growth, and seasons of life. People and physical objects come and go when you are enmeshed in samsara, the constant recycling of life energy due to residual karma. All Constituents of Being Are Lacking in Ego refers to the observation that the Buddha recognized the difference between the soul or spiritual Self and the personality, the personal self’s dharmic dance during a particular lifetime. One must detach, let go of fleeting pleasures, personal property, emotional attachments and cords and chords that generate memories of intense emotions.
Like a serviceable set of
clothes, your biochemical shell, your circumstances, surroundings and
possessions during any given lifetime have a certain timeframe of durability or
usefulness before they wear out and become entrophic and need to be replaced by
a new set of clothing to be used by your Self during its next incarnation... Continue on
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