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Do You Believe Buddhism Is The ONLY path to inner liberation. or Can one find his own inner peace!
I personally believe there are people who don't practice buddhism and have found inner peace.and are happy!
Let's not talk about cycle of rebirth for a minute or enlightenment or even what buddha was supposed to have said.
What ate your own thoughts on this! Do you think one can find his own inner peace and stability in his/her life?
There must be so many paths to the same destination. And that destination being inner peace. (Nothing to do with what buddha said) just to find inner peace there must be millions of ways to it.
Just as there are millions roads to one place to another!
Thoughts friends?
Let's not talk about cycle of rebirth for a minute or enlightenment or even what buddha was supposed to have said.
What ate your own thoughts on this! Do you think one can find his own inner peace and stability in his/her life?
There must be so many paths to the same destination. And that destination being inner peace. (Nothing to do with what buddha said) just to find inner peace there must be millions of ways to it.
Just as there are millions roads to one place to another!
Thoughts friends?
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Comments
There are many paths to freedom, but some are quicker then others.
They are happy, they die happy. They die in peace.
Thats conditioned inner peace. Conditioned happiness. Right circumstances. Right choices.
With metta.
Go with whatever religion/philosophy/teaching feels right. (You are the one who knows what you need the most...well, you and your mother in law.. lol
There are 84,000 methods of how to train the mind and gain release from suffering and find true inner peace but these only came with Buddha.
The Buddha taught the path as an expedient means. It greatly increases the chances of awakening.
I like Buddhism, but I also take in some ideas from some of the traditions I listed above, and even Native American spirituality.
Namaste'
Kwan Kev
So maybe people who achieve contentment, compassion, and all that other nice Buddhist stuff by other means could be considered paccekabuddhas.
Outside of any grounding in Buddhist tradition, though, I'd say my opinion is that Buddhism is the _best_ way to achieve happiness, but not the only way. I think certain ideals like contentment and equanimity are absolutely essential to happiness, but you don't need to mention Buddhism in the same breath as those things.
There have been non such as Buddha who taught the path to liberation and enlightenment. The techincality of the anaylsis of the mind and the correct medicine for it is something Buddha gave. Where as others have reached many profound levels of concentration they have never gone beyond the peak of samsaric concentration but Buddha surpassed even this now what can compared with methods such as these deep in their meaning ?
Pratyekabuddhas have no such aid, but upon nirvana choose not to teach, or are possibly in a situation where no instruction could be given. The Buddha himself almost became a pratyekabuddha until he was coerced into teaching others.
There are many paths to liberation.
Buddha said his path is the only way for the (100%) purification of beings
certain paths can bring peace & happiness but not 100% peace & happiness
if emptiness has not been realised, to maintain 100% peace & happiness cannot be guarranteed
If Buddhism makes YOU happy, great.
But you can't say other people's peace & happiness is not genuine. You don't know.
Buddhism is about psychological reality. It does not make YOUs happy. It makes MINDS happy
Buddhism knows. Buddhism knows the various degrees of peace & happiness of people & paths. One of the titles of the Buddha is lokavidu or "knower of the worlds"
They must have been "practising Buddhism" and don't know it!
But, just to engage this question---If another being spontaneously, having received no teachings on Buddhism in her or his uncountable previous lifetimes, utters instructions with the potential to liberate or practices in such a way as to become liberated by whatever means, it's something to rejoice in...period. May everyone gain liberation in the quickest and easiest manner possible. Still the scriptures say that such a being probably had contact with Buddhas in previous lives and the ability to achieve liberation in isolation is most likely the result of karmic ripening from those previous teachings and practices engaged in in connection with them.
If practitioners of other faiths engage in the type of moral behavior taught by their faith (for all major religions, at least), and develop true compassion towards others and love for them (wishes to remove their suffering; wishes to provide them with what they need to be happy), then they will have no choice but to experience great happiness in future rebirths, which may well occur in celestial realms. And even if you don't believe in any of that stuff about past and future lives such a person would achieve a state of deep contentment and happiness in this life by serving others, not acting selfishly, not getting angry, not having excessive attachment, being vigilant of his/her mind, being reluctant to engage in non-virtue; seeking to practice nonharm, compassion, and love, etc. Engaging in such virtuous mental actions increases the habit energies that develop into virtuous minds. (yeah, that's called Karma). Having a mind that rejoices in all virtue of self and other is a very blissful mind and such a person may have a very happy life.
Still, what I have described above is not the same as liberation. It's important to know the difference. Ignorance is not removed through virtuous acts alone, since ignorance of how mind itself exists and how phenomena exist cause us to reify self and outer objects and prevent achieving Nirvana or the status of a Buddha. That's the fundamental difference between what the Buddha taught and what other great teachers of the time taught. Only the Buddha taught about the kind of pervasive suffering that comes from ignorance; the mind that can't help but feel that they have a self that has some kind of real essence, truly exists. Believing that, they misperceive the truth about self and thereby continue to create the causes and conditions for cyclic existence because they are attached to existence itself, identifying it with the self.