Soteriology - Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is devoted primarily to liberation from suffering, ignorance, and rebirth. The purpose of one's life is to break free from the Wheel of Life to be able to achieve moksha (release) from the cycle of birth-and-pain-and-death and achieve nirvana. All types of Buddhism, Hinayana or Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana or Tantric, tend to emphasize an individual's meditation and liberation, which is to become enlightened.

In Theravada Buddhism the apparent 'individual' takes this spiritual journey alone. Along this journey, they discover in experience that they are empty of being an individual, they are selfless. Mahayana Buddhism is the spiritual journey of helping others. People who make the pledge to help others before they help themselves are called Bodhisattva. Vajrayana Buddhism is the spiritual journey of transformation, where awareness is transformed into a deity. In all of the three forms of Buddhism, one gradually moves towards liberation, and away from suffering, and as a result the natural state of Enlightenment becomes the dominant experience in that individual's life.

Buddhist philosophies vary on the subject of the afterlife, but they tend to emphasize an individual's meditation and appeal to the Buddha's teachings, often through an intermediary monk, priest, or teacher who is seen as a "link" (through the direct contacting of an enlightened being) or "helper" in their attaining of 'nirvana'. Amongst other things, Nirvana is an ultimate realization that the afterlife is not important, and because of this all fear ends.

All schools of Buddhism teach dependent origination, which points out that the individual is not a separate and isolated entity. This can be directly found using a process of meditation which is the focusing of one's awareness on an object of concentration (samma samadhi). All the different forms of Buddhism have different ways to realize that the individual is part of a false set of truth-clouding constructs, obscuring 'what is'. The truth of 'what is', is beyond language and must therefore be experienced directly.

"Thus, the fundamental reason that the precise identification of these two kinds of clinging to an identity – personal and phenomenal – is considered so important is again soteriological. Through first uncovering our clinging and then working on it, we become able to finally let go of this sole cause for all our afflictions and suffering."