Buddhism For Beginners by Jordan Bryant - HTML preview

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SUM UP

 

The aim of philosophy is to ultimately lead man to find the meaning of his life and existence. It is true to its core in the case of the philosophy of Buddhism. The four noble truths that Buddha proposes touch the very existence of humans, which leads one to understanding the sufferings and miseries of life, and to go beyond to attain nirvana, a perfect state of happiness and bliss. The eightfold path of Buddhism is moreover a daily guide for everyone to lead a virtuous life. The doctrine of pratityasamutpada is a reasonable description about the cycle of human life. The doctrine of momentoriness has profound philosophical implications in the present scenario, where people chase the momentary pleasures of the world without realizing its impermanence. The doctrine of non-soul or more precisely the denial of a permanent soul would be a unique notion of Buddhist philosophy. Apart from all these, we find a logical sequence in the entire philosophy, where different ideas are mutually connected and related. The four noble truths are the basis of Buddha’s teachings and from this follow all other notions such as the eightfold path, the doctrine of dependent origination, the doctrine of momentoriness, the theories of karma, non-soul, rebirth, etc. The various theories of the different philosophical schools are a direct evidence to understand the richness of Buddhist philosophy, and how seriously the study on the teachings of Buddha is carried out. Even today, deeper and wider study is done on the various themes of this philosophy to explore the new horizons of the meaning it contains.