Nature of Self, Death, and Ethics in Buddhism

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Table of Contents

Ultimate Reality in Buddhism
Buddhist Conception of the Self Nature
Buddhism concept of ethics
Conclusion
References

Ultimate Reality in Buddhism

Ultimate reality is a kind of knowledge that everyone has and it’s very passionate unchanging and very immanent. Those individuals who possess it become mysterious and transcendent in their talking and behaviors. Ultimate reality talks about the act of loving God, person, and impersonal Being. As many religions around the world commit to ultimate reality so do Buddhism, it sees ultimate reality as a unity tool even though it has so many revelations in various religions.

Buddhism contains very many revelations of ultimate reality. Even though all the major religions have different ways to portrays their understanding of ultimate reality, this contrast should not be taken as though every religion has got a different meaning, even though it is very important to consider all those aspects of absolutism for a clear separation and distinction to be made between Hinduism and other religion (Little, 1999).

First of all, in Buddhism, one main picture that comes out when one is talking about ultimate reality is the talk of personal God. The image of God or living Being is also common to other religions of the world and various sects or polytheisms in Buddhism. Secondly, there is the issue of impersonal transcendent Being who is the source of everything on the world including the earth’s surface. Among the Hindus, the impersonal Being is called Braham while the Chinese call Him Tao. The Mahayana Buddhist calls Him the Sikh who is someone without good attributes.

Thirdly ultimate reality is said to be realized when amenity with one another. The Hindu calls this Atman which means from within a person while Mahayana Buddhists call it Enlighten mind which stays in liberation and has no substance. Fourth there is the belief of solidarity of many religious beliefs and they say that the common solitary works with a single and the same purpose for instance the Shinto kami and the Taoist deities and the spirits of the Native Americans.

The six images establish the ultimate reality as a revelation of the founder. In Buddhism it is passive as Buddha in the eternal home; this is also called Dharmakaya in Hindu. Last but not least, the Buddhists sees ultimate reality as an eternal law or they call Hindu Dharma or Rita, these are laws that human beings are supposed to be following for peaceful coexistence.

Therefore Hinduism treats ultimate reality as a mystery, this means that it cannot be defined in any form or by any means. Therefore it put forward the concept of ultimate reality being beyond human understanding, concept and it is hidden. No words or intellect can be able to convey the nature of ultimate reality; it is, therefore, clear of any duality. As Narayanan (1999) put it, the nature of ultimate reality is emptiness which is a ladder that reaches into the infinite. It helps in enabling an individual to do away with the aspects of the world which make an individual get attached to it. The state of ultimate reality is pervasive and it builds the foundation of being and the source of energy in every atom and the life of every creature.

There are primary attributes of ultimate reality and this includes goodness, compassion, and love. These attributes make the impersonal Being who is God to be very gracious to human beings and a good example of this is the manifestation of God to the poor community or individuals. Reality is far much higher than human understanding, and it is above the human judgment of good and evil, and the cravings of human beings. Although God is invisible, He has allowed his presence to be felt by mankind for instance the contemplation in which God is sensed by the inner self.

Then there is the universal moral law which monitors the law of nature. In addition to this, there is the hand of God in the world’s creation; this is enough evidence about the reality of God’s existence.

God’s involvement with the world does not affect his absolute nature. His presence fills up the world but the world can and will never exhaust God in any way therefore ultimate reality is beyond the senses in the mind. It is beyond the mind in the intellect.

Buddhist Conception of the Self Nature

The ethical correlation in Buddhists is more dynamic and developmental. It brings out the self-nature of human beings as an ongoing process rather than an autonomous rational and individual as the westernize look at it. This dynamic and ongoing process of human nature is seen as a development in that it covers the potential for change that is aimed at a goal that can be able to transform, one with both the ethical dimensions and the social effects in a society. Buddhism is much more concerned with categorizing the nature of self on the basis of its purpose rather than in terms of its original course, this is because the latter leaves a question that is considered unanswerable. this type of question that comes out is not important to the dust at hand which is the realization of the individual potential for alignment and the elimination of their sufferings in the world.

One of the most Buddhists teaching about self-nature is the state of the nonsubstantial self which they refer to as anatta. This is the view of oneself, which lies at the very heart of the dharma. Personal identity has got the notion of enduring, immutable, and essential self is one of the themes of the diverse speculations characteristics in which Buddha was born. Even though some of the scholars of that time questioned this idea of substantial self of Buddha and tend to challenge it in their own way, but Buddha insisted on the nation of karmic continuity, one that is continuous not only in one lifetime but also in other life forms after an individual death. The Buddha went ahead to declare that the notion of ethical self-nature was very important to sustain any theory that is about continuity over time.

More questions and more questions aroused on how this notion of ethical self can be maintained, therefore there was a need for a substantial and immutable essence which is the Buddhist call batman so that all the ethical self-nature can be attached to. The argument was that if there was no Oatman, there could be nothing to hold together a series of life events of an individual and this means that there was nothing to be carried to the next life form, nothing to carry the karmic elements from one life to the next life form. This was very important because without it the honor of individual distinctiveness could fall as the necklace of pearls would scatter across the floor if one removed the floor, without the Aatman the future of an individual liberative outcome of the spiritual practice would not be safe at all (Marsha, 1992).

The kind of liberation that Buddha had to realize was one that could transform an individual completely and could only be stopped if the individual clings to any view of self that is not an essence to change and hence it is not a subject to transformation. The way an individual manifests him or herself needs enhanced conditioning of the karmic.

Constitutes of personal identity according to Buddha vary in many different ways. Buddha asserts that the self-nature of an individual is made up of dynamic interrelated causal processes. The procedures were categorically looked at in their various physiological and psychological polarity, later on, there was a five procedure analysis of the psychological form known as Ruupa, definitive outlook known as jnana, then the Vedanta which is the feelings, cognition (sa.mjnaa) and the karmic formation which they call sa.mskaara. Buddha’s reformative value of the outlook analysis ddoes not rely on the outcome of the description but the process of analysis itself, its impacts on an individual’s possibility to stick to its identity. In Buddhism before an individual reaches his goal of alignment, the range of possibilities that are available are very much limited at that particular time and this is what Buddha’s conception of liberation is all about. Buddhism states that alignment is not just about freedom from suffering but it is the freedom to act in a creative and compassionate manner which is not limited by the difficulties of prior delusion in the form of self-referential conception and condition response of human activity.

The same way the rejection of the aatman threatened to undermine the self-nature of human beings; this dynamic conception of self-nature allows n opportunity for changing to another form once the patterns have been established, therefore this leaves the ability for alignment which is seen as part of the karmic conditioning of all the beings. In addition, some of the positive conditions are the possibility of the volitional choice itself (cetanaa) a karmic formation that comes out in all human beings once the self-consciousness is effectively developed to sustain a certain degree of the self-nature of the individual.

Buddhism concept of ethics

Every human relation exists in the ideology and how he or she perceives someone else. It sums up the human nature of closeness in a dynamic relationship that is created by individuals who are involved. Therefore ethics is the unchanging process in which human beings relate and perpetuate their association in a continuous way (Lilyen, 1997). Therefore the general principles of dos and don’ts are not actually ethics but they are suggestions of what kind of behaviors is approved and which ones are not approved in any society and that’s why every society or community has got their own approved or disapproved codes of behaviors. But the dynamic process of human beings is very much different from these approved or disapproved codes of behaviors; this is so since it gets from the very deep of being individual in the nature of things.

There are questions that arise concerning how the a virtue will rise out of all these, it is difficult to figure out how but delving deep into situations it can be agreed that what keeps the human beings together is the dynamic of mutuality, it provides the constant closeness of any relationship, therefore it is true that to be a human being involves sensing a dynamic bond between yourself and other human beings association that exists at all time but which is ignored by most individuals who are in any relation(Lilyen, 1997). A term like respect or kindness attracts a relational state and the consequent realization of their presence. For instance, kindness is bestowed on one another in a relationship but it is unconcerned regarding any response which one will get as a result. Therefore this means that all the virtues which are practiced by the human beings should be beyond the human contrivance, they should be pure and simple.

From all these it is very clear that the teachings of ethics and foundation of Buddhism is very unique, it requires any individual to see things correctly by the way of meditation which allows the individuals to experience and see things the way they are in a borderless existence (Barnhart, 1996).

Therefore for ethics to strive, perception must be open natural for any individual. This openness is a two way thing, both parties must be tied and respond to it and if it is not there it will be impossible to bring the wider dimensions in the perceptions field. In a strong way, without openness there is no mutuality, which is the source of dynamic self nature, therefore this means that without mutuality will be loosing on the self dynamic nature, if the parties do not have openness, dynamic orientation, mutuality and interplay among the parties, there will be no meaningful relationship at all means and therefore the possibility of ethical considerations are null and void. The unique relationship among the individuals is the basis of various moral virtues such as closeness, concern, integrity, respect, truthfulness and responsibility (Green, 2000).

There are two distinct kinds of relationship. First there is the soft relationship which means that people are not strictly treated by the laid down law and order. It does not depend on the codification or rules of a country but based on the common nature of being a human. The second type of relationship is hard relationship where by people are supposed to be controlled by law and order. This kind of relationship is controlled by the codified laws and there is punishment for any crime.

Conclusion

Buddhist ethics sum up the following points first is the situation in which two individuals are available and are aware of each others presence (Schilbrack, 2002). Secondly, the awareness also includes an inner dynamics sense of an individual within nature; the inner dynamic will indicate that there is shared participation in the whole process. Mutual involvement reveals participation and invites active openness by all the concerned parties, openness.

References

Little, D. (1999). Thinking about human rights: A review on relativism, religion and others. Religious ethics Journal, 27(1) 15.

Schilbrack, K. (2002). Contemporary teaching of Hindu religious ethics. Religious ethics Journal, 30 (2) 29.

Narayanan, V. (1999). Environmental Perspectives of the Hindu Traditions. Academic Journal of USA sciences and Arts, 3 (2), 17.

Green, R. (2000). Bioethics and religious dimensions. MD: University Publishing.

Barnhart, M. (1996). Buddhist Values. Buddhist Ethics 4: 12.

Marsha, V. (1992). The Buddhist way of life and traditions. McMillan publishers.

Lilyen S. (1997). Teachings on Buddhist’s ethics and religious practices. Buddhist journal, 2 (4) 16.

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