The Dhammapada by Mahinda Palihawadana - Essay Example

Buddha was brought up in royalty where he was trained to become an heir of the kingdom after his father. This training brought a lot of suffering to his life resulting in his escape from pleasures and royal privileges. Siddhartha was not pleased with the continued practice to become a ruler. For this reason, he escaped his royal home spending many days in the forest. His escape was based on a mission to find different ways of acquiring deliverance from all suffering (Batchelor, 21).

The Buddha had three main aims in his teachings, which included current human affairs and their welfare, favorable rebirth in the subsequent life, and attainment of ultimate high quality. The last one is divided into two parts, which include establishing happiness and morality does not exhaust its significance in human felicity. These aims show different ways in which man can leave in peace with himself and his fellow men.

According to the Buddha's teachings, the mind plays an important role in the enhancement of wisdom in the mind. If the mind is not steadfast, wisdom never becomes perfect for all those who are not in favor of good teaching and strong faith. Dhamma offers directions elucidating the factual character of the way of life and showing the path that leads to liberation (Palihawadana, 44). The Buddha used different methods and instructions to illustrate different ways to pain freedom.

Karma is a volitional action springing from intention and may manifest itself as speech, deeds, thoughts, desires, and emotions. It helped the people in memorizing the teachings of the Buddha. This is because the willed proceedings a human being performs in the path of his existence may perhaps become forgotten, but once performed they leave memories in the mind. These memories are seeds that are capable of fruition in the future on receiving conditions of ripening. This is about the Buddha’s teachings, which show that life is not an inaccessible incident starting unexpectedly with delivery and ending at death (Batchelor, 27).

Buddhism and Confucianism emphasize the significance of ethics and morals in the growth of a person’s life. Buddhism had already been practiced for a long time before confusion came to the scene. However, the latter gave an intellectual approach to this worship and his ideas were followed. Buddhism lacks ethical components like those in Confucianism, which include xi, li, wen, ren, yi, zhi. Read More