Role the Buddha-life story shape his understanding of the world?

Role the Buddha-life story shape his understanding of the world?

Discuss the role the Buddha plays in Buddhism. How does his life story shape his understanding of the world?

Role the Buddha-life story shape his understanding of the world?

Firstly, Watch: “The Buddha”
Documentary – The Buddha – PBS Documentary (Narrated by Richard Gere) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc7_VyVXDLs&feature=emb_title)

Discuss the role the Buddha plays in Buddhism. How does his life story shape his understanding of the world?

Who Was the Buddha?

Secondly,  “Buddha” means “one who is awake.” The Buddha who lived 2,600 years ago was not a god. He was an ordinary person, named Siddhartha Gautama, whose profound insights inspired the world.

Buddha is not a name, but a title. It is a Sanskrit word that means “a person who is awake.” What a buddha is awake to is the true nature of reality.

Simply put, Buddhism teaches that we all live in a fog of illusions created by mistaken perceptions and “impurities” — hate, greed, ignorance. A buddha is one who is freed from the fog.

When a buddha dies he or she is not reborn.He passes into the peace of Nirvana, which is not a “heaven” but a transformation of state of existence.

Most of the time, when someone says the Buddha, it’s in reference to the historical person from foundation of Buddhism. This was a man originally named Siddhartha Gautama who lived in what is now northern India and Nepal about twenty-five centuries ago.

Is There a Buddhist Bible?

Not exactly. For one thing, the several schools and denominations of Buddhism do not all use the same canon of scriptures. A text esteemed by one school may be unknown in another.

Further, Buddhist scriptures are not into consideration to the revelation of words of a god that must be accept without question. The Buddha taught us to accept no teaching on authority alone, but to investigate it for ourselves.  The many sutras and other texts are there to guide us, not to indoctrinate us.