Buddhism is named after its founder, the Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama, whom his followers called Buddha, the „Awakened One”. Siddharta lived in the 5th century BC and grew up in splendid palaces. Despite his wealth, he realised that something was missing in his life. So, at the age of 29, he left his comfortable life behind and set off on a journey. It was there that he realised how much of human life is made up of suffering and dissatisfaction. During years of contemplation and fasting, he became preoccupied with the question of the cause of suffering and how to end it.
This led to the ‘four noble truths’ (Sanskrit catvāri āryasatyāni), which he proclaimed in his first public discourse in the Indian town of Sarnath:
* Life in the cycle of existence is ultimately suffering.
* The causes of suffering are greed, hatred and delusion (‘mental poisons’).
* When the causes cease, suffering ceases.
* The Noble Eightfold Path leads to the elimination of suffering.
Many people followed Siddhartha Gautama and called him “Buddha”. Buddha did not see himself as a god, nor as the bearer of a god’s teachings. He did not receive the teachings (Dharma) through divine revelation, but came to an understanding of the nature of his own mind and the nature of all things through meditative contemplation. In this view, Buddhism is more like a tradition of thought or philosophy, but a closer look at Buddhist practice reveals it to be a path to salvation or a religion of works righteousness, one that has been continually “expanded” with esoteric and occult magical elements.
All branches of Buddhism adhere to the “Four Noble Truths” of suffering, its origin, its overcoming and the “Eightfold Path” leading to the overcoming of suffering (understood as liberation from the “shackles of delusion and attachment”).
According to Buddhist teachings, all “unenlightened” beings are subject to an endless cycle of suffering (samsara) of birth and rebirth (= false doctrine of reincarnation). How one behaves in one’s present life should determine as what (human, animal, bodhisattva, ascended master…) one will be reborn in the “next life”. The aim of Buddhist practice is to get out of this cycle of otherwise perpetual suffering. This liberation from suffering is called Nirvana as the “extinction” of greed, hatred and delusion, which is the goal of salvation common to all Buddhist denominations. The only differences are the paths taken to get there. The Eightfold Path, for example, describes the Buddhist path of practice through which people should gradually transform themselves and ultimately transform all aspects of their lives.
The goal and ‘salvation’ in Buddhism is therefore to leave the cycle of rebirth and enter Nirvana. In truth, Buddhist teachings are anti-God ways of attempting self-redemption. According to this teaching, salvation is not given to man by grace – as God intended – but must be “worked for” step by step (i.e. a typical system of works righteousness).
Buddhism has many faces. It appears, for example, as a cult that deifies Buddha, builds temples and altars to him, depicts him in figures and worships him in numerous rituals (from a biblical perspective, this is nothing other than idolatry), or it is mixed with elements of folk religions (such as ancestor worship) and other religious traditions. The incorporation of occult practices and elements such as the invocation or appeasement of demons, divination, astrology, the wearing of amulets, numerology, sacrificial rituals or magical acts unfortunately also play an important role, especially in rural areas.
In Thailand, for example, miniature ‘spirit houses’ are built into new buildings to appease local spirits by offering them food. Meditating monks are also known to be the source of certain supernatural powers.
Judgement from a biblical perspective:
Buddhism is a doctrine that does not believe in a Creator God, it is a “godless religion” or a-theistic. As a result, its adherents do not believe that there is a world created by God, but rather “view the creation of the world and the cosmos on the basis of a dynamic, progressive and self-regulating development without divine intervention” [quoted from bibliography 4]. In Hinduism, on the other hand, Buddha is regarded as the 9th incarnation of Vishnu, a “form of the divine”.
Buddhism is a man-made philosophy.
Source: Netzwerk-Esoterik-Ausstieg
