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Dependent Origination

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We are often the source of our own problems yet fail to realize that we have the ability to cease our involvement and creation of them. No one has explored this universal idea more than the honorable Buddhist monk known as the Dalai Lama. He asserts that the human mind serves as both the cause and solution to almost all of our problems in life, whether internal or external. While this may seemingly pose as an oxymoron, it is unquestionably true if one looks at the scenarios in his or her or another’s life. He explores this idea greatly in his work Ethics for the New Millennium, where he goes through many lengths to explain how humans must exhibit a dedication to ethical and spiritual acts, in order to avoid dissatisfaction with his or her life. …show more content…

Dependent Origination can be summarized in three main parts. The first is that everything functions as a result of cause and conditions. Everything can be linked back to one concept, which can be linked back to another and this would repeat forever. The second is that every whole finds itself comprised of parts, and those parts are also wholes comprised of parts and this would also repeat forever. The third and most important is that no object can be identified as an independently-existing thing. Every object only exists because of its relation to other objects. Dependent Origination is very important because it allows humans to relate to other people and therefore reach a certain standard of compassion and empathy. Empathy is extremely important because it is what truly serves as the solution to many of our problems. No individual likes to be unhappy. In reality, the human agenda is to strive for happiness. The Dalai Lama asserts that actual happiness comes from genuine concern for others: “…Alongside our natural ability to empathize with others, we also have a need for kindness, which runs like a thread throughout our whole life” (Dalai Lama, 65). By empathizing we find genuine concern for others and when they feel any negative emotions driving their lives, we feel the same way. We do not desire to feel these emotions and therefore try our …show more content…

Within this story there are prisoners within a cave and puppeteers in control of them construct the prisoners’ realities thus giving them a false mindset. Afterwards, their minds begin to respond to the external stimuli and create from its imaginative forces a separate falsified consciousness: “By every measure, then, reality for the prisoners would be nothing but shadows cast by artifacts” (Plato, 210). The prisoners’ minds create what they undoubtedly believe to be real, yet this poses as a problem when they are actually exposed to the real world outside the cave. They become dissatisfied with the outside world and return to their unreal past lifestyle. Their brain creates the problem for them and they have no escape unless they force themselves to accept the world outside of the cave. Though that is only if their brain is willing to deal with the harshness of the sudden change. Ultimately, The Allegory of the Cave poses as a very accurate representation of the power our brain has to create problems and solve them. It is a fundamental philosophy that almost all beliefs can be traced back to so it is not surprising that there are striking similarities in terms of the plethora of positive and negative effects the mind can

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