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Buddhism
The religious and philosophical system founded by
the Buddha Gautama, teaching that all human sorrows arise from desire and can be eradicated by following the disciplines
of his eight-fold path. ‘Buddha’ (Sanskrit: enlightened, from budh-’: awake, know, perceive) is the title of the
successive teachers, past and future, of Buddhism, especially of its founder, the Indian religious teacher Gautama. Oxford Dictionary
Contrary to popular belief, Buddhists are not actively
pursuing peace-on-earth per se. The Buddhist’s Ultimate Reality is called ‘The Parinirvana’ (Complete Nirvana) or
the freedom of spirit brought about by release from the body. According to the Buddhist analysis of the human situation,
delusions of egocentricity and their resultant desires bind humans to a continuous round of rebirths and its consequent
suffering (dukkha). It is release from these bonds that constitutes Nirvana, or the experience of Enlightenment. Now,
‘Nirvana’ – in Buddhist religious thought and spiritual philosophy – is but the initial goal of the meditation
disciplines and practice in that it signifies the transcendent state of freedom achieved by the extinction of desire and
of individual consciousness.
That this is only the inaugural objective is very clear to
the discerning eye because – while liberation from rebirth does not imply immediate death and thus release into the
Ultimate Reality – the physical death of a perfected person (an Arhat or a Buddha) does. Thus while the immediate aim
of the Buddhist path is release from the round of phenomenal existence with its inherent suffering by attaining Nirvana
(the enlightened state in which the fires of greed, hatred, and ignorance have been quenched),
Nirvana is not to be confused with total annihilation because, after attaining Nirvana, the enlightened individual will
continue to live, burning off any remaining karma until the state of Final Nirvana (Parinirvana) is attained at the
moment of physical death.
It may be noted that, during the early centuries of Buddhist history, not only
were there the three major pilgrimage centres – the place of Mr. Buddha’s birth at Lumbini, the place of his
Enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, the Deer Park in Varanasi where he preached his first sermon – but particularly the
village of Kusinara, (or Kushinagara) located in the eastern district of Deoria, which is the place of his Parinirvana.
Quite obviously, this is a very ‘self’-seeking approach to life on
earth … something that all metaphysical peoples are guilty of. The quest to secure one’s Immortality in some
spurious After-Life is unambiguously selfish ... peace -on-earth is readily sacrificed for the
supposed continuation of the imagined spirit after physical death.
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