Buddhist wheel of life5/7/2023 ![]() Whatever it is that we consume, use and do business with must be non-violent in all ways, not to kill, maim, and cause distress. Holistic Livelihood, Samma Ajiva, means ‘non-energy being’ and refers to what we use in our work and life daily. Holistic Outcome should not cause violence in any manner, physically, emotionally or mentally. Holistic Outcome results when the outcome aligns with the Holistic Intention we start with. Buddha said that truth is not Truth if it harms another creature. Holistic Communication must be non-violent, compassionate, gentle and truthful in all expressions of sensations, emotions, thoughts, communication and actions. Buddha considered non-violence and compassion as essential elements of dharma. Our karma, actions and values, must be aligned with our dharma, the universal and individual belief system. Holistic Intention is to ascend to our natural energy state. Such action accumulates karma that takes us away from the Truth. ![]() What interferes with this ascent is acting against our dharma, the way to be. The life and death cycle that relates to our material casing can be overcome as we ascend to our natural energy state. Holistic Perception is based on the truth that we are energy beings encased in matter. ![]() These eight are traditionally grouped into three parts, Awareness, Conduct and Disengagement. I give below the Sanskrit equivalent of the original Pali word, and my English interpretation of the word, in the context of a holistically proper pathway. It’s in that context I shall comment on the Dharma Wheel of Buddha’s Arya Ashtanga Marga, the Noble Eight Pathways. It is not about right or wrong, but the totality of what follows the word in each of the actions, mostly in terms of non-violence and compassion that Buddha advocated. For whatever reason, modern translators chose the word right, which may not be right. It’s a guide for humans to realise their spiritual potential.Īll the Pali words in the 8-fold pathway start with the word samma or samyak, which can mean true, complete, proper, holistic or right. It’s a pathway to move from matter to energy. These eight Dharma pathways, as spokes, centre around the hub of the ultimate Truth as a virtuous wheel to enlightenment.īuddha’s Dharma Wheel framework is a coaching framework to exit from the cycle of life and birth. It helps to extinguish attachments with an 8-fold noble pathway, Arya Ashtanga Marga. As is well known, in Buddhist terms that ending is called nirvana, which literally means "extinction." Representations of the Buddha's passage into final nirvana typically show him exercising full control over his last transition, in contrast to his unenlightened disciples, who bemoan his passing and express their grief over impermanence.The 4th Noble Truth that the Buddha provides is a framework to alleviate the uncertainty and sadness of life. Only fully enlightened beings are capable of escaping from the potentially unending and painful process of death and rebirth. At the end of this transitional period, the person will be reborn again in one of six possible destinies: as a god in heaven, a demigod, or a human, or, less happily, as an animal, hungry ghost, or hell being.1īuddhist traditions also hold out the prospect of a good death, in contrast to the bad death that most of us will suffer. When unenlightened beings die, they will be subject to judgment in a series of courts in the underworld administered by stern magistrates and demonic guards. One common Buddhist theory states that forty-nine days after death, after passing through a process of judgment roughly comparable to European notions of purgatory, the person again assumes bodily form. Instead, the end of any single lifetime leads inevitably to the beginning of another. From this perspective, it is a mistake to conceive of death as a terminus. When Buddhists talk about what happens at the end of a person's life, one of the things they say is that until final deliverance is achieved, each death is followed by a rebirth. ![]() Collection of Rubin Museum of Art, item no. ![]()
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