The teachings of many of history’s religious and philosophical figures are timeless, but are often mistakenly taken at face value.
Category: Buddhism
In the strict sense of the word spiritual life begins when a living entity fully identifies oneself as a soul, being completely absorbed in a spiritual atmosphere, and not for a moment forgetting about it and constantly acting in this mindset.
Another words it begins with the Bhava stage, which means an ecstatic love of God. And this is the moment of the genuine spiritual life.
Learn what the Buddhist teachings tell us about reincarnation, our current existence and what we should strive for.
By Helen E. Williams, Dreamcatcher Reality
The concept of reincarnation and rebirth is subject to a great deal of misunderstanding. We are faced with questions like:
Can we be reborn as an animal in our next life? Can the soul transmigrate into some animal or another person? Is there a difference between reincarnation and transmigration? Is there any difference between the karmic system and fate?
These are just a few examples of the questions many people ask.
500 BC
BUDDHA, THE WORD (The Eightfold Path)
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS THUS has it been said by the Buddha, the Enlightened One: It is through not understanding, not realizing four things, that I, Disciples, as well as you, had to wander so long through this round of rebirths. And what are these four things? They are the Noble Truth of Suffering, the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering, the Noble Truth of the Extinction of Suffering, the Noble Truth of the Path that leads to the Extinction of Suffering.
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” -Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, also known as the Buddha lived 500 years before Jesus Christ. Siddhartha, born into a ruling class family, became disillusioned with his royal existence and wanted to experience and discover what reality had to offer. He began to explore the outer world that he had only seen glimpses of from his privileged palace.
No-Self
In Buddhism one of the ‘Three Characteristics’ is No-Self (the other two are impermanence and suffering which are closely associated with this). This refers to the illusion of reality having a permanent and separate self.
There is this notion that there is a permanent “I” or “me,” which is a separate entity that can be found. The obvious assumption of we are our body sounds good until we look at it and say “this is my body,” which implies at that moment that whatever owns the body wasn’t the body.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Mandalas have been used around the world in religious and spiritual contexts to express beauty, creativity, complexity and things about the nature of life that are not easily put into words. Sometimes they seem to depict energy, sound, light, inner worlds or outer spaces. Are they magic? Can you meditate on them and achieve anything contemplating them? Some say the sacred geometry or universal balance and porportion of some mandalas can take you special mental places or planes of consciousness.