Essay, Research Paper: Buddhism Essay

Buddhism Essay The four noble truths in Buddhism are: the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the cessation if suffering. The truth of suffering means that all is suffering. This can be explained in three ways. One way is to say that pain is suffering. This is the easiest of the three examples to understand. An example of pain is suffering is having a piano dropped on you from a ten story building. This is pain, which is suffering. The second way to explain that all is suffering, is when you become too attached to a person or object. When this object goes away, changes, or dies, you become hurt and begin to suffer. This is because you miss what you are attached to. An example of this is when a loved one dies. You become really attached to that person during your lifetime and when they pass away, you miss them and suffer. The third and final way to explain that all is suffering, is the most difficult one to understand. It is that pleasure is suffering. The Buddhists teach this because they say that pleasure is just an illusion, like a reflection on a pond, which distorts reality. An example of this would be being given a new car for your sixteenth birthday. This would be pleasurable to you, but might cause you to think that everyone will receive a new car when they turn sixteen. However, this is not reality. All of this suffering in general is caused by desire, which is cause by ignorance. The way this can be understood is if you look at the first way suffering is expressed which is pain. If you are getting robbed by a man with a gun, but refuse to hand over your money, then your desire for money and your ignorance to think that money is more important then your life, will get you shot and cause you pain, which is suffering. The way to get away from these sufferings is to gain wisdom to reach nirvana. This wisdom is gained by an understanding of the concept of no self. This is an idea of impermanence. This means understanding that no thing or person will always be exactly the same forever.
My personal thought on the concept of all is suffering, is that it is for the most part not true. One reason I think this way is because if all was suffering, then how could there be pleasure, which the Buddhists talk about. This contradicts their own statement that all is suffering. Another reason why I think this way is because I can not understand how pleasure itself is suffering. I don t understand how winning the World Series can be considered suffering? I think that the outlook the Buddhists have on life, at least from what I understand, is very pessimistic. It seems that one can not have pleasure because they say that in its self is suffering. Nirvana appears not to be a good thing to me because it means that one must not become attached to anyone or anything. That means never falling in love or having any desires. Personally, I think that Buddhism is very pessimistic. Also, I think that the statements they say sometimes contradict themselves. They say that they do not worship any gods, but then they worship celestial beings who live in the heavens and have powers to heal and protect. To me that sounds like a they worship gods. This contradicts the statement that they do not worship gods. Not only is Buddhism contradictory, but it is very hard to understand. There are a lot of deep concepts one must understand to get the full meaning of what it means to be a Buddhist. One example is the concept of no self . This means that one must understand the concept that you are just a state of change and are never the same. That can be hard to grasp. These are my feelings on Buddhism.