Buddhism Essay Example
As stated in Prothero, “The Buddha is just a human being in the earliest forms of Buddhism.” Buddhist’s beliefs towards what happens before and after life are very different from other religions. For every religion, the value of the human life is substantial. For Buddhists however, human’s statuses are ranked at the lower end of the spectrum. While having a main purpose of seeking out the Dharma, humans can be seen as respectable because they have the accessibility to seek out the dharma. Buddhists are seen as uniquely different from religions such as mine because they focus on pleasing their upper powers because they will then be reborn into human figures after they die. For other religions and a majority of society, we are focused on living in the moment and not about what will happen to them after they die and before they were born. Human life is judged very differently between different religions. The Buddha believes humans have no soul. The core teaching of Buddhism is Anatman, which means “no soul”. Buddhism also believes we have no soul. This is very different from other religions because others believe that everyone has a soul that makes them who they are. The usage of “I” and “mine” is believed by Buddhists to bring about an increased ego and cause us to think about ourselves before anything else. This is very far-fetched from other religions because we feel as though the individual is most important and we revolve the way we act around what our desires are. Their desires were supposed to be focused on discovering how to live an “authentically good human life.” Another unique belief of Buddhists is that instead of believing one’s spirit dies along with death, Buddhists believe that the spirit will venture to a new body for a new life. The place they end up going to next is based on the karma of their past life. Although my thoughts on being human is very different from those of Buddhists, both thoughts are logical. For Buddhists, spirits never