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Buddhism is practiced today by over 500 million people worldwide. In recent years, many Americans and Europeans have also embraced the teachings of the Buddha or "The Middle Way", being moderate, avoiding the extremes of asceticism and of hedonism. The practical teachings of Buddhism are meant to carry us to safety, peace, happiness, tranquility and the attainment of nirvana - to salvation and individual emancipation through diligently developing wholesome, virtuous qualities and eliminating unwholesome, non-virtuous qualities from the personality. Enlightenment and peace result from training and study of this path of upward spiral movement. Aspirants begin with a small spark of wisdom which inspires them to moral action and meditation which expands the wisdom which bolsters the morality and leads to higher levels of meditative concentration and so on. Wisdom comes from cultivated right views and right intentions. To promote a happy harmonious life for both the individual and society and to build a foundation for higher states of consciousness, disciples must perform only moral actions.
Morality encompasses:
right action (abstinence from: killing, theft, debauchery, infidelity, deceit
and intoxicants); right speech (abstinence from: lying, backbiting, slander,
libel, gossip, defamation, calumny, vilification and disharmonious
conversations); right livelihood (abstinence from: jobs, trades, professions and
occupations that harm others).
Meditation or Concentration is the essential ingredient for nirvana. By contemplating universal truths and one’s essential beingness, your consciousness nurtures detachment and abstract understanding. Vipassana meditation is self-possessed, mindful concentration on the mind, emotions, thoughts, and dharmic principles. One recommended type of meditation is to charge the four corners of the earth with pure thoughts of compassion, empathy, friendliness, nonviolence, and generosity and then see them in your mind's eye, rippling out to the ends of the universe. There are two major schools of Buddhism, Mahayana and Theravada. The Great vehicle or Mahayana Buddhism is divided into many schools which for the most part agree with the doctrines of Theravada Buddhism with the exception that they identify a transcendent, eternal reality or Suchness, Truth, or Law that permeates and regulates the universe and coexists with the everchanging cycles of human existence. When one reach nirvana, one's 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. 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... Go back
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