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Buddhism, the 5 precepts and the 8 fold path
Buddhism, the 5 precepts and the 8 fold path
The Eightfold Path and the 5 Precepts
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Life Stinks?
To better oneself, the only human condition that continues to appear no matter who you look at in most modern civilization. The process in which people better them self is they base their condition on the amount of material things that you have. This not only a bad way to judge ones importance it is the exact way of how to judge ones unhappiness or unsatisfactoryness with ones current life. People spend their entire life trying to better them self and with each accomplishment is met with the same problem as before, “I am still not happy.” The void that people feel inside, like they are not complete, cant be filled with materialistic things. This longing that is there after accomplish or get some material thing is what make life unsatisfactory. This is a grand doctrine of the Buddha. In fact it is one of his four noble truths. By using those truths. That life is dukkha ( unsatisfactory), This suffering is caused, Can be healed, and the way to roughhouses is through the eight fold path. These four truths can help explain why man can never seem to be truly satisfied.
The first of these truths is that life is unsatisfactory. This is the hardest for people to admit. That they are not happy there is always something that hey want or need that they don not or can not have. Most people have to have a shelter and food to live but people go and get more like a elaborate house and th...
Humans, throughout recorded history, have searched for a proper way of living which would lead them to ultimate happiness; the Nicomachean Ethics, a compilation of lecture notes on the subject written by Greek philosopher Aristotle, is one of the most celebrated philosophical works dedicated to this study of the way. As he describes it, happiness can only be achieved by acting in conformity with virtues, virtues being established by a particular culture’s ideal person operating at their top capacity. In our current society the duplicity of standards in relation to virtue makes it difficult for anyone to attain. To discover true happiness, man must first discover himself.
This unit explored desire satisfactionism, a term that generally speaks for itself. Though it is an umbrella term because there are different types. There is local desire satisfactionism, which is the idea that if desires are satisfied, one is happy. Then there is whole life satisfactionism. It means that to be happy is to have one desire satisfied. This is the overarching desire that your most important desires be satisfied. It is prioritized assessment of one’s life as a whole. To compare local desire satisfactionism with whole life satisfactionism would be like comparing quality and quantity from a hedonist perspective. It is similar in regard to desire satisfactionism, two different types. Several individuals discuss whole life satisfactionism
The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler in “The Source of Happiness” shows that “One method is obtaining everything that we want and desire-all the money, houses, and cars; the perfect mate and the perfect body.” (Dalai Lama and Cutler 27). The Dalai Lama gave an example to how people choose to find happiness in the world and believes how pretentious these ideas can be. If a person cannot be satisfied with what they have then it allow for there to be a flaw in that person’s life. The Dalai Lama wanted us to understand that the desires that we have may just be something temporary and wants us to reanalyze what happiness is for us instead of looking for the answers in many things we see each day. Dalai Lama’s words can be inspected when he states that this way of life is flawed, due to the fact that desires can grow until it reaches a point where we cannot fulfill it no more (Dalai lama and Cutler 27). When it comes to the Dalai Lama, his answer to this was understanding that there is more than one way to live a materialistic life. Happiness itself is a goal which we should not achieve because eventually we all will lose our sense of satisfaction over these temporary things. In life, it is impossible to not long for what we want, but to enjoy what we have is a redeeming quality that Dalai Lama Mentions (Dalai Lama and Cutler 27).
happiness is found by living in accordance with human dignity, which is a life in accordance
The problem we have in today’s society is that people work to acquire as much money and possessions as they can and they think this will achieve happiness. Unfortunately, nobody told these people that happiness cannot be purchased and our possessions will fade no longer keep our interest. As we engulf ourselves in our daily busy work, our relationships are becoming strained and we are distancing ourselves from real happiness. We are seeking the means of work and money as an end, and we are chasing the wrong things in life. We hide from our unhappiness by watching television or partake in activities to distract ourselves from our problems. We need to find true happiness and this is found in becoming virtuous, creating good friendships,
Ashley Janowiak Human Happiness and External goods Happiness is a goal every human pursues, yet the ways in which it is pursued differs amongst people. Some believe prosperity will bring them happiness. Others believe material, power, fame, success, or love will bring them happiness. No matter what one believes is the right way to conquer this goal, every person will take their own unique path in an attempt to find it. But what is happiness like?
When an average person seeks happiness, most often they search in the wrong place: "If only I could have that I would be happy." For ages, man has been seeking happiness from outside, not within. People have the misconception that material things and materialistic goals will bring them ultimate happiness, but in truth those only bring transient happiness. True and lasting happiness can be reached from within when one realizes the ultimate truth. This ultimate truth, the main focus of transcendentalism, can be reached through self-reliance, nature, and oversoul, the main principals of the philosophy. By meditation, by communing with nature, through work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty, goodness, and truth.
The pursuit of happiness ultimately leads to disappointment and a lack of satisfaction because people’s cravings can never be entirely fulfilled. Dalai Lama once said “When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.’” This quote shows that having high expectations of anything leads to disappointment when the expectation is not met. Also, having anticipations for what happiness is makes attained happiness irrelevant and inadequate relative to what one wanted to get
Veronneau, M. H., Koestner, R. F., & Abela, J. R. (2005). Intrinsic need satisfaction and well-
We live in a materialistic culture that thrives on having "things." Yes, we must have things in order to live (shelter, food, water, etc.), but the word is misused. Our culture has become so materialistic that we forget what is really important. The "have" mode has almost become the norm, especially with our generation. Even though we subconsciously practice the mode of “being,” many people do not realize it which makes it difficult to appreciate life and all the aspects of “being.” “Because the society we live in is devoted to acquiring property and making a profit, we rarely see any evidence of the being mode of existence and most people see the having mode as the most natural mode of existence, even the only acceptable way of life” (Fromm 25). Majority of people want to be as successful and rich as possible that this idea takes over their mind and eventually lives. Every young person is obsessed with “fitting in” and having the latest and greatest items. This attitude causes adolescents to lose sight of what is important and lose touch with their emotions. Our culture needs to begin to think less about material items and being rich and more about his/her emotions and what it means to be truly happy. It is important to focus on the “bigger picture” and how one must become the best person he/she can be to benefit
I agree with Aristotle in the thought that man’s telos is to acquire knowledge and that our inherent human nature is to be “happy.” However, I believe that human nature is driven by a desire to find the answer to one question: what is the meaning of life? I believe that through everything we do, whether it seems like we are learning or not, we are being taught more and more about the world and our purpose in it. Striving to put everything together and creating a sense of understanding of the question “why” leads us to behave and act the way that we do. Although finding an answer is an unattainable goal in a human’s lifetime, the act of living out their lives in a way that was constantly questioning and searching for the meaning of our existence is enough to achieve total happiness.
Daisy Grewal, who holds a BA in psychology from UCLA and PhD in social psychology from Yale University, put an article on scientificamerican on February 18, 2014 —“A happy life may not be a meaningful life.” This essay points out that happiness and meaning do not always go together.
Suppose one was to record their pleasures down on paper using a graph. At first, one might be confused as to how to go about quantifying their happiness. After consideration of the quality of ones varying pleasures though, one is more able to deduce whether it is a higher or a lower pleasure and graph them. This enables one to distinguish which things promote the greatest pleasure, which translates itself to strive for happiness. For example, consider the attainment of food or sex in contrast to mental and spiritual growth. When one is only interested in satiating their appetite for food or sex, the pleasure acquired is minuscule when compared to the acquisition of mental and spiritual growth. Thus, attaining mental and spiritual growth will bring o...
Society has identified happiness to be a necessity that consist of wealth and pleasure and materials in order to feel satisfied. Therefore, people feel satisfied with the materials that they obtain and can become dissatisfied with their self. The good life focuses on obtaining intellectual virtues and the fundamental truths. Also, to live a good life they must obtain character virtues For example, a person must become virtuous by improving their character and obtaining reason. Also, the person must know the difference between good and bad actions. To be happy we must acquire the excellence of character and the mean between excess and
Society seems to have improved through time, but has not yet reached the point of perfection in which everyone is happy. The truth is, not everyone will always be hap...