Buddhism Influence On Religion

The wisdom that Buddha offers throughout his teachings allows for a depth of insight on suffering and morality in our lives. We are given a greater perception of who we are and where we stand in life. He forces us to face our true motives and decide if we are content with these. If not, he offers advice to help make us stronger and wiser individuals. Buddhism is a relevant philosophy today and in past societies for three important reasons. First, the Buddhist way of teaching the law of karma gives individuals purposes to live a moral lifestyle. Second, the concept of rebirth allows individuals to look at death as a positive experience, instead of grieving, people are able to focus of the life given after death occurs. Third, Buddhists teach …show more content…
The First Noble Truth simply teaches that with life comes suffering and essentially that suffering in this life does exist. You cannot live a full life without some sort of stress or discomfort. Because of the bodies we are given, we will endure illness, stress, and lack of sleep, aches, aging, and then death. Mentally we experience suffering as well. In a lifetime, we will experience dissatisfaction, disappointment, loneliness, depression, anger, fear, sadness, and embarrassment. We look for pleasure stimulus, but it is not that simple. To have pleasure you must also endure pain. The Second Noble Truth teaches that suffering is caused from personal desires. We are constantly searching for something other than ourselves to bring happiness into our lives. No matter how successful or joyful we are already, we look to someone or something more in a very selfish way and rely on that person to give us happiness because we can never stay satisfied with what we already have. Sadly, this person cannot be responsible for our happiness; in the end it will cause more suffering. Buddha teaches that this search for more comes from ignorance. We attach to people, ideas, things, in hopes to gain a sense of self-security, but no matter what we attach to in our lifetimes we never will think it is enough. We strive for more and never remain content. The previous relevance’s (karma and rebirth) that I have talked about are very closely related to the Second Noble Truth. The Third Noble Truth is the truth to an end of suffering. This is kind of like a cure to put suffering to a rest. Buddha taught that through practice we could become perfect and you could put an end to our cravings and thirst that makes you believe you aren’t enough. He believed that through this you could be enlightened in your life, which he says the state of being enlightened is called Nirvana. In the