This line of future research also could include the effects of obeying the precepts, which is comprised of practicing compassion and acting morally. Though Buddhism is thought to be practiced in all cultures, it developed and is mainly practiced in Asia.
One might ask whether it is uniquely suitable to certain cultures. For example, the Buddhist core concept of avoidance of desire-driven pleasure can be found across cultures Joshanloo, ; Joshanloo and Weijers, The NT provides a sophisticated framework to explain a possible mechanism for these universal effects and phenomenon. There have been very few empirical studies or theories directly targeting Buddhist teachings.
This paper is the first to postulate an academically respectable theory based on a full consideration of Buddhist teachings. The hope is that the present research has helped to fill these conceptual gaps, because it suggests that Buddhism provides a reliable and useful way to cope with life's adversities. It guides us toward authentic, durable happiness, and it contributes to the solution of a variety of mental health problems.
Thus, the intention of this article was to offer a theory to guide future and innovative research into the potential mutual enrichment of Buddhism and current psychological theory, research, and practice. Although more research is needed on this front, it is hoped that the NT will open significant new avenues for mental health research and unravel the secret of why Buddhism has lasted for thousands of years. The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and approved it for publication.
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Cognitive-emotional interactions: attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends Cogn. E , and Ming C. Each had its own contribution to the region. During the Zhou Dynasty, for example, writing was standardized, iron working refined, and famous thinkers like Confucius and Sun-Tzu lived and shared their philosophies. Learn more about the history and rich culture of Ancient China with this curated resource collection. People with ancestral roots in Asia and the islands of the Pacific have been integral to the story of America.
The month of May was selected in recognition of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants in the United States on May 7, , and the significant contributions of Chinese laborers to the completion of North America's transcontinental railroad on May 10, Currently, those from Asia and the Pacific Islands account for more than 4.
And those numbers do not account for the Asian diaspora scattered throughout the rest of the world. Celebrate and learn more about their heritage through this collection.
Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism were the three main philosophies and religions of ancient China, which have individually and collectively influenced ancient and modern Chinese society.
Jainism is one of the three ancient religions of India, with a value system that puts nonviolence above all else. Due to the limited nature of the information we have about ancient Egypt, the historical figures that we call key is a more limited group than it would be in contemporary times. The article explores three groups of key figures: those involved in developing the form of the pyramid, famous Egyptian rulers, and important non-Egyptian rulers. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students.
Skip to content. Photograph by Joe Scherschel. Dukkha is universal. People are unaware of it merely because they are so used to it for so long that they take it for granted. This does not make the life of a Buddhist melancholy or sorrowful at all, as some people wrongly imagine. According to Buddhism, all kinds of suffering are but reactions of the mind, and both their arising and cessation are separately brought about by the mind.
And according to the causal vehicle, karma is the activity of cause and result. According to the resultant vehicle, it is unnecessary to divide cause from result. As Buddhism tells us, although there is suffering in life, one who believes Buddhism should not be gloomy over it, and neither should one be angry or impatient about it.
At the beginning we should grapple with the question of suffering with good understanding and deal with it fearlessly and patiently, and once our bias and subjective thoughts about the phenomena before us are wiped out, suffering would be turned into happiness. From this, it can be seen that the Buddhist outlook of the universe and human life is active, positive, complete and universal.
It is a common fallacy that the Buddhists see the world as bad and the source of evil and suffering. In fact, the Buddha never claimed that this world is purely evil, or that sentient beings are objectively evil. And the Avatamsaka Sutra also states that:. When our selfish mind takes control of us, it will directly influence our interpretations of the world and affect the way we act on the world. Directed by the selfish mind, when something is beneficial to us, we will wish to obtain it, thus giving rise to greed.
With a hateful mind, hatred arises when someone takes away what we like. With a jealous mind, jealousness arises when others are more fortunate or stronger than us.
The more our mind is defiled by greed, hatred, and delusion, the less we can see the reality of the world and the easier for us to deduce that the world is bad and evil.
Therefore, from the Buddhist perspective, whatever considered to be bad in the world comes from the deluded minds of sentient beings who created it from their own habits.
Although Buddhism holds that sentient beings with deluded perception would experience suffering, it does not call the world evil [3]. On the contrary, it sees that it is possible for the continuous suffering of this delusion to cease since each being has the potential to recognize the cause and result of suffering, and then transform this suffering into happiness and peace.
In short, to depart from suffering means the removal of a deluded mind. In Buddhism there is no other concept as difficult to explain or to make believe as the question of Reincarnation and Transmigration. According to Buddhism, all living beings of this world are subject to rounds of birth and death, life after life, in different states of existence. As a matter of fact, Buddhists have to care for their basic wants and to work for their living every day just like other human beings.
Not only should they live with a remarkable self-reliant spirit, they should also cultivate awareness incessantly in everyday life so as to prevent themselves from going wrong and to free themselves from all suffering. This can be shown clearly in the following Buddhist dictums [1] :. Furthermore, Buddhists should never be away from sentient beings no matter where they are. The Buddha teaches all his disciples to be always in close touch with sentient beings and not to forsake them on any account, as The Avatamsaka Sutra says:.
A true Buddhist is therefore definitely not a negative and pessimistic escapist. How can one claim that Buddhism is unrelated to life? It is paradoxical to pass the criticism on Buddhism that Buddhists merely urge people to do well. In fact the fundamental thing of Buddhism is that, in one hand it teaches people to practise virtues, and in the other hand it teaches people not to abide in the virtues.
Otherwise enlightenment can never be achieved. Bodhidharma was asked by the Emperor what merits the latter would get for his work in building temples, allowing new monks to be ordained royal consent was necessary at that time , giving alms and entertaining the Order. His reply was that these would bring no merits at all [6].
Why did Bodhidharma give such an answer? The explanation made by the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng was:. Merits are to be found within the Dharmakaya, and they have nothing to do with practices for attaining felicities…He who is in the habit of looking down upon others has not got rid of the erroneous idea of a self, which indicates his lack of Gong good deserts.
That is why they miscounted the Buddhists as melancholy or gloomy ones. Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? Meditation is the vehicle used on to reach enlightenment. According to Buddha, in The Dhammapada Through meditation, wisdom is won, through lack of meditation, wisdom is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss so conduct himself that wisdom may grow [10]. Like so many words I am finding in my readings that are difficult to translate in English in a way that truly explains their concepts, the term dukkha is difficult to translate in order to convey its true meaning.
The first type consists of those painful experiences related to being physically human birth, sickness, aging, and death. The second type is happy or pleasurable. These experiences occur in our present unenlightened state and are therefore transient.
We suffer when we perceive them, when the intensity of the experience ebbs, as temporal and short-term yet we desire to have them be permanent. I have found an explanation that helps to understand the paradox of happiness as suffering. The suffering of change is perceived as suffering because happiness and joy are on the opposite end of a continuum where pain and painful experiences represent the opposing end.
From a dualistic perspective, they are the relief, or opposite of pain. And because change is a part of life, joy inevitably and eventually changes to something else, resulting in the experience of dukkha. The third type of suffering is the existential realization that suffering will always be present as long as we continue to live in an unenlightened existence.
There will always be something that causes suffering. This realization can lead to an existential crisis. Perhaps happiness, one end of the continuum, with unhappiness or dukkha at the other end, causes suffering if one attaches to keeping the feeling.
Personally, though, I could recognize the feeling of happiness as an illusion and attachment and either choose to remain detached from the feeling or experience the physicalmental- spiritual sense in the moment and let it go neutrally until the next moment. I wonder how Buddhists who live happily really experience it. He further expounds on the concept by breaking down the word. The two words taken together therefore refer to that which is bad because it is empty, unsubstantial, unsatisfactory or illusory.
It refers to a state of unsatisfactoriness if one may use the expression. So, it seems that human beings, by the act of reincarnation and being born, are contractually bound to dukkha by the initiatory experience of birth. One can feel despair at just being born. Dukkha is inherent in living in this third-dimensional existence. It is as if an animal sense of survival is necessary, which is dukkha. It is a package deal the vehicle of the physical body and existence come standard with dukkha.
I find this viewpoint both helpful and hopeful. Translator Moore JH [11] explains suffering as craving. Any craving creates an attachment to something. The something exists in our world, which is transient and illusory. Therefore, whatever we crave will not last. Put another way, this world is an illusion samsara in Sanskrit , so whatever object we crave is also an illusion.
The loss of the object creates feelings of grief and loss, which generates more attachment by the intensity of these feelings. It becomes an endless cycle. The Bhikkhu Silacara dispels the assertion that Buddhism, because of the concept of dukkha, is pessimistic.
Pessimism is an attitude of mind toward a fact, and what the Buddha does in the first Four Noble Truths is only to call attention to a fact, not a word being said to prevent one from adopting whatever attitude he chooses toward the fact [13]. In the Dhammapada, Buddha states:. All existing things are transient.
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