History
In Buddhism, instead of looking for any external saviour, most Buddhists believe one can take refuge in oneself. From the Dhammapada:
160. One truly is the protector of oneself, who else could the protector be? With oneself fully controlled one gains a mastery which is hard to gain. 165. By oneself is evil done, by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone, by oneself is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself--no one can purify another.The Mahaparinibbana sutta states, "For that which I have proclaimed and made known as the Dhamma and the Discipline, that shall be your Master when I am gone."
Read more about this topic: Refuge (Buddhism)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)