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Buddhism Eightfold Path

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The essence of Buddha 's teaching can be summed up in two principles: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Buddhists ultimate goal is to reach nirvana, the end to all suffering. They can accomplish this by following the eightfold path mentioned in the four noble truths. The eightfold path is comprised of eight guidelines which Buddhists use in their everyday lives. These guidelines will help Buddhists avoid the three poisons; hatred, greed, and ignorance. The eight guidelines are; right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, concentration, and mindfulness. Right view is based on the idea of seeing and understanding wisdom rather than intellectual understanding. Right intention focuses on what controls our …show more content…

The eightfold path shares many similarities with the values upheld by many practicing Catholics today. For example, Buddhists believe in the concept of right speech. This means they are against lying and spreading unwelcomed rumors about others in hopes of tainting one 's image. Similarly, in the Ten Commandments, Catholics believe “thou shalt not lie”. However, Buddhism and Christianity also differ in some aspects of their beliefs. For instance, Buddhists believe in nonviolence towards all living things. This virtue is illustrated within the eightfold path guidelines, right action and right livelihood where one is not allowed to kill another living thing nor raise an animal for slaughtering. Although Christians believe in the commandment “thou shalt not kill”, it does not include the forbidding the raising animals for slaughter. Catholics do eat meat because they believe god has given us these animals to provide for us. The eightfold path is explained through the wheel of life. Each of the eight guidelines of the eightfold path is a spoke on a wheel. When every virtue is nurtured equally the wheel will keep on turning. However, if one does not nurture all the virtues equally the spokes of the wheel will be uneven and it will be unable to roll. When the wheel comes to a halt it refers to you experiencing

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