Monday, November 11, 2013

The Silence of Buddha thoughts and reflections

Ryan Otto, World. History                                                                              11/11/13
Thoughts and Reflections on: The Silence of Buddha

     Perhaps one of the greatest differences between Buddhism and other religions is that Buddhism does not seek to answer the question "how did we come to be?" Instead, Buddhism focuses on the escape from suffering. Gautama Buddha had great contempt for those who pondered on such questions, equating the speculation of how we were created to fishwives tales and ghosts stories. Much like Confucius, he was not concerned with the creation of man. This question was one of the fourteen questions to which Buddha refused to try and provide an answer. This was because he did not believe that the answers to these questions, if ever discovered, would help humanity escape suffering. He believed that any time spent pondering on these matters was wasted, and that if a creator did exist, he or she was the reason for humanity's suffering and for the long and difficult path to nirvana. 

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