Earlier in the summer, I was learning about Buddhism in my Religion class. I learned how the Buddha was born to a man and woman of great power. The symbol on the Buddha's foot symbolized that he was meant to be a great leader someday. His father wanted this to lead to a life of political power, but the Buddha had other things in mind. When he came of age to leave his father's palace, he saw things that he had never seen before. He had been sheltered from all of the bad his whole life. He had his eyes opened up to four key things; old age, sickness, death, and poverty. He hadn't ever realized that these things were an actual thing. The suffering broke him down emotionally, and he wanted a way to fix it.
Briefly, the Buddha went on a journey, left his family behind, to find a sense of Enlightenment. Enlightenment on how to help those in the world that is suffering. After many attempts of finding Enlightenment, such as fasting and almost dying, he sit by a tree and vowed to not leave until he found the Enlightenment that he was looking for. Devaputra Mara, the greatest of all demons, is said to have fought against the Buddha in his search. She surrounded the Buddha with other demons, three fiery arrows at him, and tempted him with his three daughters. This is thought to be the internal fight within the Buddha to overcome his internal conflicts. Once the Buddha overcame all of these things, he reached Enlightenment.
The Buddha found that the problems in the world was caused by desire. Suffering included losing those you love, losing the things that you possess, etc. These are all apart of the desire process. We desire to be with someone romantically, we desire to have close friends and family, we desire to reach our dreams in the world, and so on. The Buddha set up a plan of overcoming desire through his Four Noble Truths; 1) Realizing that there is suffering 2) Realizing that suffering is caused by desire 3) Finding the way to end suffering 4) Implementing that knowledge with a plan.
The Buddha was trying to end all desire in the world, so that no one would have to suffer in the world. Though, what he was doing was taking happiness and love out of the world. Love might bring suffering, but it is the best thing that we have in the world. Nothing or no one is going to last forever. We are going to lose those that we love, we are going to fail at dreams, we are going to lose loved material objects, but if we didn't have these things in our lives, how could we be happy? Without love, we cannot feel the pain that comes with loving someone so much. It hurts, but being able to love someone or something so much that it physically hurts means that you at least found a love you can hold dear forever.
Plus, the Buddha created a system that we find Enlightenment within ourselves. There is no superior being, or God, that we can lay our every burden and worry on. We have to depend on ourselves to get us to a point of moral goodness and the loveless happiness that the Buddha seems to infer. But what is happiness without love? I couldn't imagine a world without God. He is the one that can bring you out of the suffering that love can entail. He's the one that protects us and keeps us safe. He is the one that provides us with a will, and a way to fulfill that will. A world without God is a world with no point.
In general, I can't imagine a world without suffering. Happiness sometimes brings suffering, but without it, we wouldn't have friendships and loving marriages. It's okay to suffer sometimes. It's normal. It is what drives us to move further in our lives. It is what motivates us to fix the relationships in our lives, and support each other. Suffering isn't the end, with God, happiness is the end. In no way am I trying to bash the Buddhist belief. They have a lot of good points for finding happiness within yourself, but I choose to let God take care of my problems. God wants us to lay our burdens to Him, and let Him work it out. Fill your life with love. I promise that it will lead to suffering and sadness sometimes, but it won't lead to an empty life.
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