Religion Final Essay

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Religion

This impressive story has been told a great number of times. Today, it can be found everywhere - from scientific monographs to tourist brochures. In fact, due to the wide spread of this episode, it became the embodiment and symbol of the entire 1300-year history of relations between Buddhists and Muslims. As a consequence, whenever the theme of Buddhism and Islam is mentioned, the conversation always turns about the Muslim obliteration of a Dharma [a concept in Indian philosophy that means the totality of established norms and rules that must be followed to maintain cosmic order; moreover, the Buddhists themselves call their religion Dharma – Islammosfera.

There are many likely clarifications, fluctuating from Buddhist predictions about the weakening of Dharma and ending with the difficulties of modern science. Nevertheless, it is most productive to start by the power of history. As prominent above, the story of the destruction of Nalanda seems to us rather unambiguous: there are good guys and bad ones. The story of Nalande completely avoids the multifaceted shadows of gray that most often stain the dirty fabric of human history. Buddhist historians, trying to understand the causes of the decline of drachma in India, deliberately created such an unequivocal history. Instead of exploring the complex economic, ecological, political, and spiritual history of India, or even the official problems of Buddhism, it was much informal to blame the Muslims.

Buddhists created a precedent that later became the driving force behind the history of South Asia. For example, the British used the same Buddhist statements about “Muslim barbarism and their poor governance” to defend the outline of their allegedly more caring and balanced procedure of colonial rule. In their opinion, the chastening nuisance of colonial rule was not the consequence of India’s fault as such, however rather the responsibility of morally young, effeminate and voluptuous Mughals.

Buddhism is the oldest of the world's religions, which originated in the sixth century BC in India. She has over 800 million followers. It is based on the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautam, who lived in joy and ignorance until he met an old man, a person suffering from leprosy, and then a funeral procession. So he learned everything that used to be hidden from him: old age, illness and death - in short, everything that awaits each person. At 29, he left the family, became a recluse, and began to look for the meaning of life. At the age of 35, he became the Buddha - the enlightened one, who created his own teaching about life. There is a significant different between the cultures of both the religions.

According to Buddhism, life is suffering, and its cause is passion and desire. To get rid of suffering, you need to renounce desires and passions and try to reach the state of nirvana - a state of complete peace. After death, any creature is reborn, in the form of a completely different creature. What exactly - depends on your behavior in this and past lives.