what does buddhism say?

Question

what r the characteristics of buddhism?

Answer 1

Re-incarnation. Karma. If you kick a dog you will come back as a dog that gets kicked.

Answer 2

Buddhism says that there is a cause of everything and identifies the life and the sufferings of life, The reason for life and the sufferings we go through and then the solution to get rid of the sufferings so that we could have a better life.

This is the best I could condense it to. Buddhism is much deeper than that - if you are interested to know more, please contact me.


P.S. - King who ever - absolute rubbish - you don't know a thing :) !

Answer 3

Buddhism says that you are a god and that you also don't exist, neither does anything else.

Answer 4

1. free your heart from hatred.
2. free your mind from worries.
3. live simply.
4. give more.
5. expect less.

Answer 5

whatever may be the religion it says only one thing.

love all.

Answer 6

Buddha

Motivation:
It is deemed by many that there are significant similarities between Jesus and the Buddha to the extent that many suggested that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from the Buddha’s life stories. One of Buddha’s disciples betrayed him, a woman has broken a glass of ointment on his feet (Strong, 106), he was tempted by Mara to have authority over the world when he wanted to attain enlightment (Mara is the Buddhist evil power/devil). He was born in a miraculous way. He was – and still is – called “lord” by his followers i.e. he is received as a divine. There were prophecies about him before his birth. He was homeless and many more similarities. In addition, the Buddha’s teachings are close to the Christian teachings. It is the purpose of this article to assess this hypothesis – the hypothesis that both religions are similar – by examining the life of the Buddha and the Buddhist teachings. This paper does not explain Buddhism nor does it describe it; however, what is included here from the Buddha’s teachings or life or terminologies will be explained and thus one with no background can understand it. The paper will focus on conceptual implications behind the acts and not on technicalities. Issues dealt with will be discrete, each under its heading, which will make the paper brief, but to the point – in other words: succinct. It is important to note here that the paper is not meant to attack Buddhism or the Buddha. It is a mere expression of the opinions of a reader about Buddhism and the judgment on these opinions is left to the readers of the paper.




Buddhism, Science and logic
There are many things in Buddhism that are rightly called legendaries. Numbers about the Buddha’s previous lives and about his converts contradict logic and science. For example, the Buddha’s reincarnations in the previous lives were nearly infinite. The Buddha – before he was not Buddha because he wasn’t enlightened – first came to this world as an ascetic Brahmin 4 incalculable ages plus 100 eons ago (Strong, 20). After 1 incalculable age (i.e. 3 incalculable ages ago) he came as ksatriya named Vijitavin. Then, after another incalculable age, he came as a Brahmin named Suruci. An eon is 4320 million years and an incalculable age is about 10140 years (Strong, 22). Were there human beings at that time? Was there a universe to start with? If yes, was there Brahmanism at that time? Science has proposed that the universe’s age is about a score of billion years or 13.7 billion (13.7 × 109) years, with a margin of error of about 1 % (± 200 million years); while the Homo sapiens – primitive human beings – date back to 250 000 years ago and both numbers are far less than only one incalculable measure (Wikipedia). Another legendary story about the Buddha’s reincarnations is that he once came to the world as a lion (Strong, 20). Also he was reborn as a lord of the gods called Indra and a protective divinity – Yaksa (Strong, 20). The numbers of his converts are no less illogical. He converted 200 million people in a live show of his miracles (Strong, 108). 200 million people attending a live show in the 5th century BC is hard to comprehend. The Buddha’s miracles are also legendary. For example, the Buddha produces fire flames and water at the same time from different halves of his body, even from his nostrils; one produces flames while from the other emerges water (Strong, 108). In another occasion, Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin and enemy, bribed some guardians to release a man-killing elephant named Nalagari that was kept for war to kill the Buddha. The Buddha braced the violent elephant and told it that this was a bad act for it and would cause a great suffering for it in its future lives. The elephant bowed and apologized by gathering up dust from the ground by its tusk and placing it on the top of its head (Bercholz and Kohn, 38, 39). Even the elephant knows its spiritual benefit.


Was the Buddha All Wise?
Christianity claims that Jesus is all wisdom, he is God’s logos. The Buddha also is deemed by Buddhist to have attained a perfect enlightment. However, Buddhist ethics sometimes praises certain values of extremism that is not in conformity with ones conscience. For instance, the bodhisattva – the Buddha before enlightment – acted in an extremely generous manner that contradicts other human values. In one of his reincarnations, the bodhisattva was a prince. There was a single white elephant in the country which was considered an omen for success and good destiny and that was given to the prince to ride. In some situation, the bodhisattva aided some people on a ride by gifting them his elephant. People of his country were mad at him and they excommunicated him and denigrated him from his position. The bodhisattva took his wife and children and went away to the hills. People there found about his cause that he was too generous, so one decided to test drive the bodhisattva’s generosity and asked the bodhisattva to give him his children to become his slaves. The bodhisattva granted him. Another came and asked the bodhisattva to give him his wife (Strong, 30). He had the same reply.


Was the Buddha Arrogant?
There are some incidents that contrast an important difference between the Buddha and Jesus; that is humility. Jesus claimed to be the Lord. So did the Buddha. However, both were treated on earth in a different way. The Buddha seemed to suffer no persecution; everything went well with him unlike Jesus – or at least more ok. The bodhisattva in many incidents was helped by nature. If the weather was hot, the trees would bend to shade him, the elephants would shower him with water (Strong, 30). If he was hungry, trees would drop fruits to him. Although Jesus was the Lord, He never used his divine powers to satisfy himself which is another point that will be discussed in the miracles part. Even when he was starving, he refused converting stones to bread (Matthew 4:3, 4). Despite all that, circumstances and fate will be treated as exogenous factors that are not to be blamed on the Buddha even if he made them as a divine. Nonetheless, the Buddha’s treatment of himself resembled the exogenous circumstances. The point is that the Buddha liked to be venerated. In one of the situations he met people who did not consider him divine, so they did not bow to him. The Buddha was not satisfied with such a greeting. When they refused, he used his magical powers to ascend in the air, so by that they came to his feet – an indirect bowing to him (Strong, 92 and Bercholz and Kohn, 25, 26). The Buddha claimed to be a divine and wanted to be treated in that manner. In another incident, the Buddha met his father and his clan who did not bow to him; this triggered the Buddha to teach them that they have to worship him (Strong, 92). In another incident, he met somebody who greeted him as a friend. The Buddha reprimanded him for acting thus. On the contrary, we find the Lord Jesus to call his betrayer – Judas Iscariot – friend (Matthew 26:50). On a dinner in his late days before dying, the Buddha requested from Chunda – the man who invited him: “serve the pork dish to me alone and serve the other food to the community,” thus setting himself in a higher order than others (Bercholz and Kohn, 42).


The Buddha and Miracles
Except the fact that the Buddha’s miracles are fantasias, the philosophy and aim behind performing them is not divine. Many of the miracles of the Buddha would lie under the point of Buddhism, Science and Logic. A miracle was in fact mention in that point as an example; however, this is only one of many. Albeit the fact that miracles so not differ in concept; i.e. if one accepts Jesus miracles, why not the Buddha’s, yet it would be hard to deny that the Buddha’s miracles are more of fantasies. Therefore, in discussing the ethical values behind some of the miracles one should not forget to consider that point. In his youth in the last incarnation – final life – but before enlightment, the bodhisattva entered in many competitions that show his power and fierceness as a warrior since he was born a prince. Also in education, he was a formidable student who far surpassed his masters. In one occasion, his cousin Devadatta –who later became his enemy – tried to show his power in front of the people of the village by fighting an elephant and killing it. The bodhisattva did not indulge that scene and wanted to show off his powers too, so he held the elephant’s tail between his toes and drove it outside the village finally throwing it outside the town (Strong, 45). I do not doubt the bodhisattva’s power in doing that; I just doubt that the elephant’s tail can hold his body. That is not the argument, was this a miracle to save lives, to aim a better situation, to relieve people’s sufferings, or even to attract people to faith, which is not the case here as the bodhisattva has not yet attained enlightment and did not decide to teach the Dharma and minister it to the people. It was a mere show off, as many of his other miracles. In another incident, the bodhisattva was flying and finally came to a palace in which he saw in its second floor the queen lying, we was attracted by the scene that he hit the palace (Strong, 32). The Buddha also used to entering contests of performing miracles, in which the best would be the one who performs “more miraculous” miracles (Strong, 78). When the Buddha faced heretics, he challenged them. Both entered a competition of performing miracles (Strong, 108). The question is: Why did not the Buddha consider converting them instead of competing them? The Buddha never hesitated once in performing a miracle when asked. He even denied his disciples from showing off their super powers while explicitly exempting himself from that law (Strong, 107). On the contrary, Jesus never performed a miracle to show off. Indeed, Jesus did miracles and that was effective in attracting converts, however, He never performed miracles when asked to do so. He never wanted miracles to be the objective of the people for converting to Christianity. On the other hand, we find no showy miracles, but also no aimless miracles. They are not magical miracles as bilocation or flying in the air, they were all performed for the benefit of others.


Women Equality in Buddhism
This is one of the miscellaneous issues about Buddhism. To begin with, a Buddha can not be a woman. One might say that Christianity also does not allow women to be priests. There is quite a big difference. To be a Buddha, this is a spiritual state; it is like being a saint in Christianity. A woman can be a saint and can perform miracles. Priesthood is something different; it is not a spiritual state but a job. And any job has to have some job qualifications, one of which is to be a male. The Buddha in another incident refused to have female nuns. Not only that, he was asked by Ananda – his disciple and personal attendant – to reconsider this issue three times. Finally he granted women their wish, but increased the laws to be followed by them by introducing 8 new rules (Strong, 93). And this leads to another important point; did the Buddha know his message?


Did the Buddha Know His Message?
Unlike Jesus, the Buddha did not know his message from eternity. Even the prophecies about the Buddha were not sure. The Brahmins who visited his family in his birth party prophesied that the child would either be a cakravartin – universal king – or a Buddha (Strong, 41 and Bercholz and Kohn, 6). The Buddha himself did not know whether to teach people and preach or not (Bercholz and Kohn, 18). In other circumstances the Buddha refined his teachings as mentioned earlier when he refused then accepted female nuns. In fact, the Buddha “year by year refined the formulation of various aspects of his doctrine” (Bercholz and Kohn, 36).



Buddhist Theology: Does It Answer Man’s Most Simple and Fundamental Questions?
An astonishing fact about Buddhism is that ignores man’s most fundamental questions, which anyone exploring religions will first look at. In Buddhism, you do not know your creator. There are several gods, but there is no one known of them to have created the universe. More puzzling, these gods might be reincarnated humans. The Buddha himself was twice reincarnated as two different gods and his mother reincarnated as a goddess after her death (Strong, 20, 144). Another puzzling fact is that the Buddha is more divine than the gods. He used to teach his mother the Dharma in heaven when she was a goddess and he was a Buddha on earth (Strong, 144). Divinities used to venerate the Buddha. Although the Buddha was called “lord”, there is no mentioned that he created us. Even if he did, how did he create us as a Buddha if he himself was not a Buddha except in this eon? Another major debate would be that there were many Buddha’s before him, which one created us, and who created them?



Resolving the Similarities
There are much more differences between the Buddha and Jesus than similarities. Some of which were mentioned before. In addition, the Buddha was married and had a child called Rahula (Bercholz and Kohn, 7). He exceeded the age of 80 and was not killed but died in peace (Bercholz and Kohn, 44). The disciple who betrayed him – Devadatta – tried to kill him by stabbing him not plotting against him as did Judas with Jesus (Bercholz and Kohn, 38). Devadatta did not commit suicide; he rather repented but failed to get forgiveness from the Buddha as he felt ill and died (Bercholz and Kohn, 40). Jesus resurrected, the Buddha did not. The Buddha’s teachings also are very much different. The style of the Bible and the Tripitaka is different. Also the Bible was written in different ages by different authors unlike the Tripitaka (Bercholz and Kohn, 46). Differences are actually more than what can be included in this paper, but similarities are not much of similarities as much as they are slightly matching, while things that are truly similar are rare.








References


Bercholz, Samuel and Sherab Chozdin Kohn. “The Buddha and His Teachings.” Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston, Massachussets, USA. 2003

Strong, John S. “The Buddha: A Short Biography.” Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow, the United Kingdom. 2001.

The Bible. King James Version.

Wikipedia.