My Beliefs: A Personal Analysis

I was born and grew up in Vietnam, in which Buddhism is dominated in my culture. I sometimes question about my beliefs by asking myself why I am doing this instead of that, or why I think doing this is right and doing that is wrong. I gradually realize that my actions and thoughts are profoundly shaped by a set of core beliefs, which are influenced by my family, culture, and especially religion. In this paper, I will discuss my beliefs about text and scripture in religion, moral actions and consequences, life after death, helping people, and loving our parents.
First of all, I believe that it is helpful, but not required to know the text and scripture in order to believe in a religion. One does not need to be an expert in a religion to believe …show more content…
In this life, if we do the good things to other people, we will be rewarded with a better life in the next life. I also think all the people that we meet in this life are the people that we already met in our previous life. All of the places that we have been in this life are the places that we had been to in our previous life. Deja Vu is one of the examples of reincarnation. There are many people that I first met, but I felt like I knew them. However, they did not know me, or had any mutual friends or anywhere near my radius. Besides, there are places, in which I feel like I know pretty well since my first visit. It is quite hard to describe, but I believe this life is the continuity, or repetition of the previous life. Therefore, even though there is no sufficient evidence for my belief about life after death and reincarnation, I still believe in it. I think it is better to believe in it. Like Pascal 's Wager argument about the existence of God, I believe in the argument about life after death in the same way. I find myself better off believing in life after death rather than not believing in it. What if it is true that someone who does bad things in this life will be punished by being reborn having a miserable life in the next life. I would rather believe in life after death to commit myself to live morally in order to have a better life in my next life. If it is not true, then all I will lose is …show more content…
This means that I believe in the positive side of human being. If I have a choice to help people without knowing whether he/she is good or not, I will assume that he/she is good. I am going to tell a story that happened to me to show that bad people does exist but it does mean that the rest of the world are bad. One night, at about nine o’clock at night, a middle aged man approached me and ask if I could help him with a few bucks so that he could get home, which was a couple hours away from Saint Louis. I debated for a while whether I should help him or not. I asked myself, what if the guy was a robber, he would kill me and take everything. Another thought came to my mind was that I did not know if he was lying to me or not. I got in my car and refused to help him, but two minutes later, I turned my car around, opened the window and gave him ten bucks. I took the chance of being deceived and put myself in danger to help him because I chose to believe him. If he wanted to kill me then it was my destiny, I could not avoid it. If he lied to me, then all I lost was ten bucks. Two years later, I met that same guy at the gas station, which was only one mile away from where I first met him. The guy told me the same story and asked for money. I told him that I met him before and that he told me the exact same story. He said it