actical consequence of realizing the underlying
oneness of all things. Hinduism, for example, urges
spiritual aspirants to long for the full realization of
their oneness with Eternal Being. Buddhism and Taoism
never said we were separate in the first place (Fowler
Affinity between all strands of Buddhism and some definite approach to meditation can be identified in features of Buddhist teaching that, like the concept of meditation itself, cut across all sects. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are that 1) life is unavoidably filled with suffering/sorrow; 2) suffering comes from passion/desire/longing; 3) it ends only if longing ends; 4) the end to sorrow is accomplished only by the carefully disciplined and moral, in particular those who concentrate and meditate either as or like Buddhist monks (Creel 307).
Embedded in the fourfold truths are various levels of complex thought, but what is essential to understand is that Buddhism is first and always transcendent of the physical and phenomenally real. Until that reality is transcended, the being (not strictly the soul, as in Western tradition) will revisit (i.e., be reincarnated in) human forms until craving is fully expunged and one achieves nirvana, or the conjoining of right moral conduct, an absence of craving/longing, and the bodhi (enlightenment) that derives from the other two. One who is enlightened is a bodhisattva, and the enlightenment is that reality itself is emptiness. Nirvana, arrived at via meditation, is unity with that emptiness (Creel passim).
Enlightenment and nirvana constitute a version of salvation as that is commonly understood in the West; however, it would be a mistake to make an exact correlation. That there is a conceptual relationship between Eastern and Western soteriology seems a more apt description. Griffiths formulates the Buddhist soteriological vision as "attainment of cessation," which is identified with "cessation of sensatio...