Buddhism: Buddhism and Eight-fold Path Essay

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World Religions Buddhism is the only world religion I find makes the most sense to me or that I believe in what they teach. It’s a sense of reality – from the beginning of the Four Passing Sights where he escapes the material world he was living in and sees a sorrowful old man, an ill man, a dead man, and a monk calmly walking alone in a yellow robe; he wakes up only to realize the world he was living in and seeing wasn’t it all. I couldn’t agree anymore with the Four Noble Truths – First: Life is suffering, a state of existence we cannot avoid, no matter how hard we try. It’s frustrating and painful; we all have an ending, something we do not control. Second: Suffering has a cause; a desire that leads us to attachment to the illusion that there’s something permanent and unchanging in life. We suffer because we’re constantly trying to prove our existence; the harder we struggle to establish ourselves and our relationships, the more painful our experience becomes. Third: We’re not trapped, there’s a release from the suffering of life; the cause has an end. Our struggle with the world, the effort to prove ourselves and our relationships, is unnecessary. The ability to abandon our expectations of how we want things to be and simply accept things as they are ends our suffering. Fourth: The way to find release is to follow the eight-fold path. The practice of awareness, practice of being mindful of everything we use to manipulate ourselves; develop awareness about the way things really are. I believe the eight-fold path is accurate; from the first step of viewing the world the right way – recognizing the three marks of existence to the last step of correct meditation – absorption of things as they are, leaving the state of being absentminded. Everything in between simply connects with one another. I strongly believe nothing is fixed or permanent and life continuously changes from moment to moment as the metaphor of life as a river explains. Through childhood, adulthood, and old age we never remain the same; our age, feelings, thoughts and perceptions, mentality and appearance is always changing. The understanding and acceptance of impermanence – We can’t control or change the process of growing old, getting sick, dying, the decay of things that are perishable or the passing away of what’s liable to pass. The escape is through Nirvana; not a state after death such as “heaven” but a cessation of ignorance; a cessation of the struggle to prove our existence to the world. Buddhism seems to be a simple, straight-forward approach of life and existence, there’s no sugar coating manipulating illusions to it; everything exactly what and how it is. I believe humans seek a pillow to lie on, comfort for every situation or question they face so they develop ways to make themselves feel better such as believing in “gods” or phrases such as “everything happens for a reason.” My perception on all that is that they’re living in an illusion trying to make things as they’d like them to be rather than the reality of what they are which allows me to agree with Buddhism. On the other hand it only makes sense that I find Christianity to be the religion that makes no sense to me. It opposes all the thoughts I believe in. I only find it the most confusing or the most appropriate religion to discuss because I was raised by a Catholic family with expectations of me to follow in that religion that not once made any sense to me. There are a lot of unanswered questions within Christianity. The most important aspect I don’t
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