How much of Yogasara's teachings close to original Buddhist doctrine - Essay Example

For instance, the central focus of many religions is God or gods leading to scholarly question of whether Buddhism is a religion or not. Harris calls Buddhism, "the richest source of contemplative knowledge that any civilization has developed. Currently, there exist three main branches of Buddhism tradition; The Theravada -Doctrine of the Elders, the Mahayana -Great Vehicle and the Vajrayana -Diamond Vehicle simply known as Tibetan Buddhism, (Olson 56). Furthermore, many scholars agree that the origin of Buddhism is Northern India in the 5th century B.C.E .

By meditation and analysis, Budha resulted to enlightened state of personality that marked the end of suffering and thus, upon his death, release from the cycle of rebirth (samsara). His teachings are mostly summarized in the Four Noble Truths, hence providing a basic guide for how to live in the world. Buddhas immediate teachings following his awakening focused on the key Noble Truths, which forms the basis of Buddhism. The truths are the truth of suffering (dukkha), the cause of suffering (samudaya), truth of the end of suffering (nirhodha) and the truth of path that frees indivindual from suffering (magga).

The Truth of Suffering -This discourage many people new to Buddhism beginners to Buddhism .However they are encouraged by Pali word dukkha that means anything that is temporary, conditional and compounded of other things either precious or enjoyable will end. They thus relate the nature of life to that of self, That we are also temporary, conditional and made of many parts .According to Buddhism , understanding life and death is only possible after understanding the self. Thirst (tanha) is seen as the main suffering cause; therefore, people continually look for something external to make them happy.

But no matter how successful we are, we never get full satisfaction. Furthermore, Buddha observed that this thirst