If we were to meet Buddha today and ask him what he thought about
the modern world, what would he say?
Well let's get
know Buddha through his opinions of the modern world.
After reaching
Nirvana (liberation) Buddha had an epiphany on how to counter suffering
throughout the world. He called his method the Middle Way. This basically meant
that we should live in moderation, not dying by being poor by being extremely
generous or living extravagant lives while others suffer. Another step Buddha
asked us to take was to follow his 4 Noble Truths. The first truth is
that there is suffering in this world and we need to counter our desires to
relieve it. If we don't realize this truth then we can never move on to the
other three. If we realize this truth of constant dissatisfaction we might even
become less stressful with our own lives. The second truth I already
hinted to was that our suffering comes from our desires. This is could not be
more true for college students. We desire to become successful individuals but
we have to suffer the consequences of missing social events and communication
with people so we can succeed for our future. Our desires will always lead us
to suffering a loss of something either way. We must decide whether our desires
are worth the suffering. The only way to remove the suffering is by managing
our desires to a practical form. This is the third noble truth. If you want to
be a millionaire, that desire might make you lose friends on the way, you
manage your desire by either communicating to your friends your goals or by
changing your desire all together. Buddha would hate how college students view
the world because we always say that we are unhappy because we are broke.
Buddha would say we are unhappy because we are greedy since there are people in
this world who have less than a middle school education the same age as us. The
fourth noble truth is called The Noble Eightfold Path, this last truth was a
way to make yourself a better person that will understand all the other truths
and in turn understand suffering clearly ("About Buddha"). The eight ways were: Right intention,
right speech, right view, right concentration, right action, right livelihood,
right effort, right mindfulness ("About Buddha"). These were to be followed throughout your
daily routine to work out your mind and soul much like our muscles. Buddha
wanted the world to live in moderation, yet this is something he himself did
not do. While trying to achieve Nirvana Buddha almost killed himself by going
hungry for days. We also don't follow these values and we should, not
because we believe in Buddhist spiritual beliefs, but because his method allows
us to view the world through suffering and how we can cure it. Here is a video
describing all this in 6 minutes.
Works Cited.
"The Buddha- Eastern Philosophy." YouTube. School of Life, 14 Nov. 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tilBs32zN7I
"About Buddha." About Buddha. About Buddhism, 2007. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.
aboutbuddha.org
Thanks for broadening our palate, Fariz. Before taking up the Little History I've always used texts that discussed non-western traditions ,including Buddhism. I'm going to find supplemental readings to redress this omission.
ReplyDeleteI find non-western traditions to be important but it seems that western philosophy addresses western culture more than eastern and that makes it reasonable to understand western philosophy more for westerners than eastern philosophy. It definitely would be a nice addition to this class.
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