Nichiren Diashonin's Buddhism

The significance of the Buddhist teachings has impacted the everyday lives of Buddhist adherents as it provides a set of guidance, in which the goal of individuals is to improve themselves through effort and ultimately reach Nirvana, enlightenment. Through the Four Noble truths; The existence of Dukkha (Suffering),

The Buddhist path requires courage, patience, flexibility and intelligence. Compassion includes qualities of sharing, readiness to give comport, sympathy, concern, caring. In Buddhism, we can really understand others, when we can really understand ourselves, through wisdom. Buddhist teachings can be understood and tested by anyone. Buddhism teaches that they solutions to our problems are within us not outside. The Buddha asked all his followers not to take his word as true, but rather to test the teachings for themselves. (Brian White)

Happiness is something that all people, no matter what race, gender, or social class, strive for. Based on lifestyle or perspective each person has their independent idea of what happiness is, but everyone shares an end goal to live their definition of a happy life. Many people, though, struggle in finding their way to this goal. They face hardships and challenges that test their happiness every day. Happiness, though somewhat indirectly, does take learning and training to discover and maintain.

Happiness is a key to everybodys life. Even the most depressed man on earth has a little happiness deep down inside. Its what keeps us striving to fulfil our needs and wants on an everyday basis. There is not one kid who does not get excited over a dollar to spend at the candy shop. What about the feeling of getting a promotion at your job, or even finding the cure for cancer. Being happy is not just healthy, but it is also rewarding for each and every individual. We strive to find anything that will turn a bad day to a good one. Individuals will compromise to attain their happiness. You can not get what you want without giving something first.

Continuing with the theme of visual imagery from this icon, Buddhist icons often carry much meaning in the orientation of the body of figurines, and hand gestures. This standing Bodhisattva has his eyes shut in a meditative state, while the hands

It subtly explained that death is not permanent as it is merely a temporary state of one’s soul that will cycle on. The films depiction of impermanence gives the viewers the message of change and how it is a part of life we all go through, however, death is not permanent. Nothing is forever in life, everyone goes through changes that are positive and negative just like the films element of impermanence, that provide the natural changes in the challenges of life. For instance, when one of the reincarnates child’s father’s brother dies and they experience a difficult death, which is also showing that life is not finite. Another illustration of impermanence and a lesson of reincarnation is a scene where Lama Norbu explains what it means to reincarnate and its relation to the religion. He explains that “the mind and the body is like the content and the container”. He illustrates this by smashing his cup of tea, and states, “the cup is not a cup anymore. Yet where is the tea? […]just like the mind after one dies, the tea(content) moves from one container to the next, but it is still tea”. This is an important point about how the soul travels from vessel to vessel. The vessels change but the soul remains the same, like the tea in its cup, the floor, and in a

Buddhism see’s the Four Noble Truths as the Buddha’s way of explaining the truth of the human condition and are described as the essence of His teachings. The Four Noble Truths play an important part in understanding the Buddha’s teachings and are essential in realising the goal of His teachings, which is to show individuals how to overcome suffering and obtain Nibbana, a place of peace and happiness where an individual ceases to experience suffering (Dukkha). Buddhism can be described as a religion one must practice and experience in order to grasp a full understanding of, with the Four Noble Truths themselves coming from the personal experience of The Buddha. It is through experiencing the extremes of life that the Buddha had an awakening and ultimately came to understand the truth of the world, as elucidated in the Four Noble Truths. Buddhism see’s the Buddha’s experience and subsequent awakening as reason in itself to support the Four Noble Truths and of the possibility of attaining Nibbana for all sentient beings. Objections raised against the first Noble Truth, which states that there is suffering (Dukkha), and that everything in life is pervaded by dissatisfaction, revolve around

In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh provides a citation from the Buddha, which gives insight into the cure of our distress. “I teach only suffering and the transformation of suffering” (Thich Nhat

Kwan Yin reflects the Mahayana Buddhist concept of bodhisattva, a being of pure compassion. “A ‘bodhisattva’ is a person who delays his or her full enlightenment in order to aid in the liberation of all beings.” Bodhisattva literally translates to “Buddha to be”, and it is only when all

When first asked, I believed that happiness was simply fulfilling a desire, but through topics discussed in class, I now realize that there is so much more to happiness. The road to happiness includes using virtues to receive gifts from God and from others. From the Beatitudes, we can learn to use what Jesus has taught us, to gain happiness in our everyday lives. We are taught that when we believe in God, mourn, be gentle, seek righteousness, show mercy,

Watson and Yampolsky (1990) note that Buddhism was introduced to Japan via the Paekche kingdom of Korea, and eventually, Buddhism had such a prevalent status within Japanese society and government, that as the population looked to their government officials for guidance and support regarding religious mattes, Buddhism served as a promoter of social harmony and peace (1-3). According to Murano (2003), Nichiren was a devotee of the Tendai-school, and dedicated himself to the promotion and restoration of T’ien-t’ai Buddhism, heavily based on the Lotus Sutra, as well as to re-establish the worship of the Syakyamuni Buddha, which Honen’s Nenbutsu practice had largely disregarded (5-6). Born in Awa province as a fisherman’s son, Nichiren began his Buddhist study at age 11, and by age sixteen, was ordained as a Tendai monk on Mt. Hiei (Osuka, slide 8). By 1253, he established that the only true route to enlightenment was through the Lotus Sutra, was intensely critical of other Buddhist teachings, and maintained an air

In the United States there are over four million buddhists, one thousand temples, study groups, or Buddhists associations (Monroe 108). This number has come from just one man searching to find happiness and eventually enlightenment. Buddha’s story is how buddhism became a religion all over the world. It teaches a peaceful manner, reveals the key to happiness for the mind, and eliminates the desire in life. Not just the history of buddhism is important, but how it has spread through the world and what it looks like today.

Happiness… It could be said that there is no one in this whole wide world who does not want to be happy. We live every single day in hope to find happiness, which also known as pursuit of happiness. We strive to bring happiness in our life. Nonetheless, along the journey to find happiness, some people stumble and find themselves unhappy instead. One might question why, but actually we all have different value and understanding to describe happiness. Therefore, we have our own unique approach to pursue happiness and there is no telling to the exact cause of our wrongs and errors in the process. What might have been the cause, which most people hardly notice, is their perception of happiness. There are three most common misconception of happiness that lead to unhappy life.

It is common sense that all the human beings would like to live a happy life and they will spare no efforts in order to realize the purpose of really living a happy life in the end. However, different people have different definitions toward what a happy life is and they tend to have different standards as for how a life is that can be regarded as a happy life. There is no doubt that people will then try different means in order to pursue a happy life based on their definition toward what a happy life is. Therefore, the following will talk about the pursuit of a happy life from the perspectives of both Dalai Lama in The Art of Happiness and Viktor E. Frankl in Man’s Searching for Meaning, during which the experiences of some characters from the film Forrest Gump will be applied as evidence. Generally speaking, the pursuit of a happy life in the minds of Dalai Lama and Viktor E. Frankl can be achieved via experiencing sufferings and adversity. It is hoped that this analysis can help people understand what a happy is from a different point of view.

By implementing Buddhist perspectives on this issue, individuals may detach themselves and their respective mindsets from materialism and consumerism and, ultimately, from the religion of the market economy. It’s important to understand that through these attachmentments lies suffering. This concept is best illustrated in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The first noble truth is that everything is suffering, the second is that the origin of suffering is desire, the third is that there exists an end to suffering, and the fourth is that there is a path that leads to that end to suffering. Fortunately for the crisis we now face, within Buddhism there is also a way to end suffering, represented by the third and fourth truths. Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s perspectives can help provide a traditional understanding of Buddhist teachings and practices in solving a modern day predicament. Nhat Hanh argued that, “We classify other animals and living beings as nature, acting as if we ourselves are not part of it. Then we