Hindu Buddhist Christian

While Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity are three distinct organized religions, they share many more similarities than is most times thought. However, with respect to the concept of heaven, Hindus and Christians have quite different expectations. In the Hindu religion we are reborn from a previous life until we "realize our oneness with Brahman" (Comparison 1). This cycle of death and rebirth is called samsara. The goal of spirituality in Hinduism is to achieve deliverance from samsara by realizing oneness with Brahman. In the Buddhist religion, we are reborn from a previous life until we reach a condition known as Nirvana, "the extinction of all desire and release from suffering" (Comparison 1). This cycle of rebirth and death is also known as samsara. By achieving Nirvana as the Hindus achieve oneness with Brahman, deliverance is achieved from the samsara cycle. In Christian religion, living a life of service to God and others and faith in God enables Christians to achieve atonement and salvation. For those who do, they will enter into the glory of Heaven after bodily life ceases.

We can see that religious consciousness differs from ordinary consciousness in many ways. Typically ordinary consciousness preoccupies itself with earthly concerns of the flesh. However, the desires we often are conscious of are actually what causes suffering and rebirth cycles in the Buddhist and Hindu relig

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ure and his human or animal desires-food, shelter, protection from external threat. Once religions became more organized and used as a method of coercion, they became more involved with personal details of a man's existence, basically retarding peaceful harmony (think of all the religious factions and separatism in the US alone) and growth because of a sterile conservatism-not aligned with nature-that left little adventure or pleasure within religion for man's natural instincts. Question Three While there are many different faiths of Hinduism, all of them recognize the important for four aspects common to them all. They all believe in the caste system and give the Brahmans primacy as leaders. They have deep reverence for the cow because they believe it is the symbol of the divine. Hindus further believe in the law of Karma and the ability of the soul to transmigrate. Last, they rejected the gods of the Vedas and constructed new gods in their place. The three gods were Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva-all three of whom symbolize one aspect of the three stages of life and the universe in which Hindus believe: creation, preservation and destruction respectively. To the Hindu each person is living in the here-and-now a life which is

Category: Philosophy - H