Buddhist Beliefs
Buddhist beliefs about happiness
Buddhists believe that happiness and suffering arise from the mind. In particular suffering comes from negative minds called delusions; minds such as hatred, ignorance and craving. Happiness comes from positive minds such as love, patience and wisdom. By purifying the mind of its negativities and increasing its positive states we can attain increasingly happy states of mind. When the mind is completely pure we attain the ultimate happiness of enlightenment and become a Buddha.
Buddhist Beliefs about meditation
Meditation is a method for acquainting the mind with virtue. By focusing our mind on a virtuous object such as love we can become more familiar with it. For example if we regularly meditate on love our mind will naturally become more loving. To find out more about meditation please click here.
Buddhist beliefs about the mind
The mind is a formless continuum that functions to cognize or perceive its object. The mind is beginingless and endless. When we die our mind has to leave our body and pass on to our next rebirth, rather like a bird leaving one nest to fly to another. As already mentioned happiness as well as good karma arises from positive minds and suffering and bad karma arises from negative minds. All minds are habits, so by practising Buddha's Teachings we can gradually abandon all our negative mental habits and replace them with positive ones.
Buddhist beliefs about reincarnation
Because the mind is a beginingless and endless continuum, we take rebirth over and over again. At the moment our rebirths are out of control and in the nature of suffering, this state of existence is known as a samsara. By practicing Buddha's Teachings we can free ourselves from uncontrolled rebirth and attain the lasting peace of liberation.
Buddhist beliefs about karma
Karma is the law of cause and effect, we can create good, bad or neutral karma by engaging in good, bad or neutral actions. Whether an action is good or bad depends primarily upon our intention. All good fortune comes from good karma and all misfortune comes from bad karma.
Buddhist beliefs about Liberation
If we remove the delusions from our mind, in particular ignorance, we can attain a state of everlasting peace and happiness. This state is known as Liberation or Nirvana.
Buddhist beliefs about compassion
Compassion is the mind that wishes to release all living beings from their suffering. By practising Buddha's Teachings we can develop our compassion so that it embraces all living beings. Compassion is the essence of the spiritual path.
Buddhist beliefs about reality
The ultimate truth of reality is that it is a creation of our own minds. By gaining deep realization of this we will be able to free ourselves from suffering and take control of our own reality.
Buddhist beliefs about Buddha
A Buddha is a perfect being, someone who has removed all the delusions from their mind and perfected all their good qualities. Every living being without exception has the potential to become a Buddha.
The founder of Buddhism in our time is called Buddha Shakyamuni, please click here to find out more about him. To find out more about Buddhas please click here.
