Is the ultimate goal of a Buddhist to cease to be? Or is it to enter a Christian/Muslim like paradise? I just assumed a Buddhist’s Nirvana was a place of indescribable pleasures for eternity, but after researching it, though I’m not certain, it sounds like the goal is to just stop existing! Is this true? If it is, what is the point? Permanent reincarnation sounds better than annihilation.
No, Buddhism is spiritual comedy. Sorta like Satanism, christianity, and all the rest. It's very serious too.
I think once you understand nirvana you'll not want to be reincarnated.... its like nirvana is a mansion on the beach in the bahamas with sexy little servant girls doing everything you want....and incarnation would be like a trailer house in detroit.... kind of a bad analogy but it gives you an idea
well... buddhism sprang from hinduism... and hinduism had a never-ending round of rebirths - now a human, now a beast, now a god, now a demon... and it never ever stops... the buddha saw a way to avoid the rebirth cycle (having to do with one's clinging-to or thrusting-away)... which was a form of ultimate liberation... nirvan may be envisioned as the flame which passes from candle to candle finally being extinguished... some have compared it to a drop of water, travelling from raindrop to lake to cloud to stream to mist to river to snow &cetera, to the raindrop finally rejoining the great ocean...
well put, gnrm23. also, achieving nirvana isnt necessarily like going to some other paradise. it´s the extinguishing of everything - it´s a hard concept to grasp. im not even close to understanding it. but as far as ending reincarnations, that´s good because we´re constantly going through the suffering of life. so to get out of that cycle would free you from all these negative things. at times, buddhism can sound pessimistic, but it´s really not. a lot of problems come from translating certain words into english. some words that we understand to be part of buddhism really dont mean what they should. kinda make sense?
read the upanishads....they are considered to be the most profound and revolutionary statement on the nature of reality which mankind had as yet made althought they are mostly hindu, buddhism was also derived from the same philosophy... it'll tell you basically that nirvana is shedding the cycle of birth and death, pleasure and pain to enter into a state of pure love
It is not nothingness, It is a loss of the ego mind. In a way this is nothingness, but it is the only way to have clear insight. With clear insight the ego mind( that which makes us individulas) is no longer necessary. Many blame buddhism for creating apathy. This is not true. If the path is followed closely, and carefully, detachment is not a cause of apathy. If you become detached, without following the path set forth by the Tathagata you will certainly become apathetic. [edit] Sorry my words come from reading too much tibetan literature [/edit]
Gravity, Your confusion results from a misunderstanding of Buddhist thought. Budhism is not about ending your personal existence. When they talk about loosing the ego they are talking about ending the illusion of the ego. The ego, your seperate self does not exist in the first place as a seperate entity. It is an illusion dependant on your thought process. There is no you seperate from everyone and everything else, so there is no person to cease to be. Now when this happens you will still exist, you will still pay taxes, you will still eat and excrete. But you will know that all of this is conditional upon everything else. You cannot exist in a vacuum. To conceive of a paradise is to also invoke a hell. There can be no paradise if there is not something that is not paradise. This is a duality. There are no dualities in Buddhism. The idea of stopping existence would be an example of dualistic thinking, again. To stop existence there must first be existence. If something exists, how do you stop it? If you stop it, how does it exist? Where is the connection? Where would it go? Where did it reside when it existed? This is all dualistic thought. Now, Buddhism does not require you to believe any of this nonsense...it asks you to investigate what it tells you and see if it is right.
Buddhism is all about looking beyond dualities and realizing that all things are one, including dualities,and arise from the same Universal-Mind, Spirit, God, Allah, Brahman, Tao...what ever divine name you would like to use! This is exactly what the others have been saying. You have to redefine certain words, or else you will find conflicts in understanding Buddhism. This is also true of Taoism and Hinduism. Emptiness just means to see things in accord with the true nature of things and not having opinions based on a bias or bad perception. Non-self simply means that you do not exist on your own. You, yourself, rely on the universe to survive. Of course you are yourself, but you do not exist on your own or in a seperate world from everything else. To help out with your understanding, check out books and lectures by Alan Watts, Chuangtse, Suzuki, or Thich Nhat Hanh. (please correct my speliing if wrong :& ) Those guys should help to clear up misunderstandings in the good books I hope this helps, Ben.
Right. It is important to recognize that in the East, people use different metaphors in their speech. (metaphors are more common than you or I realize) Since these religions are reletively new to the West, the reader either has to carefully select books for Westerners, or ,in a sense, learn a new language.
