The philosophy of Buddhism was created by Siddhartha Buddha, but the religion appeared in many different groups, created by ordinary human needs. It has existed for nearly 2500 years.
Buddhism also teaches basically the same thing as Taoism: to reach complete freedom (no limitation). Still, there are two main differences between them.
The first is that Buddhism teaches much different systems for reaching the final goal. More than a hundred thousand books have been written to explain the true strength of life, which shows that Buddhism has a much deeper and detailed understanding.
The second is that according to Buddhism, to reach complete freedom of life (the final goal of Taoism) is just the beginning of Spirits. The true goal of Spirits is to use wisdom and compassion to help other lives reach complete freedom, which is not the main subject of Taoism.
After becoming free without limitation and then sharing this wisdom with other lives as eternal compassion is the main aim of Buddhism. Not only to be unlimited oneself, but to be unlimited to help other lives, as a bodhisattva or Buddha.
There are three main subjects in Buddhism, which are quite confusing for people. These are: Emptiness, No “I” and No God.
Emptiness
Emptiness doesn’t mean that nothing exists. To reach a goal of being nothing makes no sense. So in philosophy, you read “Emptiness is not empty, it’s just like empty”. This idea means there is some essence that is so pure and complete that it exists without any form.
Empty can also mean being free from trying to hold or being grabbed by anything, and being free to observe until you are fully aware of everything. So empty is truly full, just as empty space is everywhere.
What’s more, because life is continually changing, nothing can truly remain the same, except emptiness itself. Since nothing is going to stay the same, everything will eventually disappear and become emptiness.
No “I”
No “I” is an even more difficult concept to understand. Buddhism follows the system of reincarnation, so if there’s No “I”, who or what is reincarnating?
The Buddhist idea of “I” refers to “I” as the your ego feeling and the physical “I” you hold onto. Neither of these are eternal; they are constantly changing unbelievably fast (for example our body is built by atoms, and each of them is moving at an enormous speed).
When you are alive, there is no true “I”, so during reincarnation there is no need of true “I” either. True spirits only appears if the reincarnation no longer affected our completely free sub-consciousness (the seed of true spirit).
To put it another way, our true spirit is not a temporary, limited “I”. When you put all your attention on that temporary ego, you cannot develop your awareness towards the unlimited truth of life.
To liberate your consciousness to be aware of everything, not just to be limited by “I”, is the idea of no ‘”I”.
No God
No God doesn’t mean there are no highest spirits. It’s the opposite, because every consciousness, through learning the truth of life, can become a highest consciousness, free like a god.
What this means is that there’s no such thing as an ego god, who is the highest force above everything, and doesn’t allow other consciousness to reach an equal level.
Highest consciousness means completely wise, free, and perfect. If this highest consciousness cannot help another consciousness become completely free and perfect in the same way, its ability already has a limitation.
Highest consciousness also represents true spiritual love: kindness and compassion. If the perfect power is not interested in other consciousness becoming perfect, then it would actually be a perfect devilish egoistic force. True spiritual consciousness will not be tricked this way.
Because human beings don’t understand what a true highest consciousness is, they use their own egoistic way to imagine one greatest egoistic god. That’s why Buddhism says “No God”.
Reblogged this on Awaken with Katrina.