Buddhism as a Religion

For people who accept the Buddhist view of the world, treating it as a religion is the logical next step. If you believe that your future comfort is completely dependent on building up a sufficient stock of karma, then it’s going to have a big influence in your life. In fact, it would control every aspect of it – just as any other religion could.

Liberation and Enlightenment

It is possible to escape from samsara, or the endless cycle of uncontrolled rebirth. This is called ‘liberation’ because an individual achieving it has been freed from the sufferings we experience. They achieve this by ‘paying off’ all their negative karma, building up an infinite store of positive karma, and knowing how reality really is, rather than seeing what we see and assuming it’s reality. It was this experience of reality the way it really is that Buddha saw when he achieved enlightenment. Technically there is a difference between ‘liberation’ and ‘enlightenment’, but it doesn’t really matter for us lesser mortals at this stage – we have enough to think about without these technicalities.

So what actually is reality? Our world as we see it is determined by our self-focus. Being able to remove yourself from the usual self-focused approach so much that we don’t grasp at a ‘self’ at all, allows us to see everything free from prejudices, opinions and perceptions, the way things really are.

‘At one’ with the Universe

You may have heard of the phrase ‘at one with everything’. Normally we are ‘at one’ with ourself, i.e. there’s us as an individual, then there’s the rest of the universe, and we’re separate. I’m me and the world is the world. I might be in the world, but I’m still only a part of it, separate from everything else, with everything having its own identity and existence.

Being at one with everything removes this feeling so that we don’t see ourselves as merely part of the world, as if we were a visitor to it.

Instead, we experience ourselves as intricately tied up with everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that will happen. We aren’t separate from everything, we are intimately joined to it and everything in all the realms – both physical realms like ourselves, and non-physical realms such as an individual’s hell. We experience everything and everyone the way they really are, i.e. as bundles of karma evolving however their karma takes them, without discrimination or prejudice towards them.

This knowledge – true wisdom – allows us to control completely what happens to us, so we don’t get thrown into uncontrollable rebirths or be governed by delusions. Free from samsara (the uncontrolled cycles of rebirth), in other words.

Confused? Don’t worry, it takes lifetimes of following Buddhist practises before this belief and state is achieved. In the meantime, focus on building up positive karma through virtuous actions, identifying delusions when they arise with the aim of reducing and ultimately removing them, and you’ll have come a long way in achieving happiness in this life.