Buddhism is a faith that was founded by Siddhartha Gautama (“the Buddha”) more than 2,500 years ago in India. The basic doctrines of early Buddhism, which remain common to all Buddhism, include the 4 noble truths:
1. Existence is suffering (dukkha)
2. Suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment (trishna);
3. There is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana;
4. And there is a path to the cessation of suffering, the eightfold path of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
Scriptures
The Pali Canon is divided into three parts—each called pitaka or “basket”—and thus has come to be known as the Tripitaka.
Concept of God
There is no concept of God in Buddhism. Man is ultimately seen as the absolute authority on Buddhist teachings. While Buddha’s image is often worshiped by some of his followers around the globe, he never considered himself a god or even a revelation from a god. He never even intended to start a new religion, but originally hoped to be a force for reform within Hinduism.
Key Doctrines:
Karma – Good or bad karma dictates everything. Depending on the virtue or depravity of one’s actions in prior lives, such determines how one will be manifested in the next life.
Reincarnation – Rebirth to Buddha was a karmic rebirth, not an individual rebirth. Buddha did not believe that an individual was reborn, only that their good or evil deeds had to be atoned for by someone else.
The transmigration of the soul – The Mahayana sect embraces the concept of an individual soul, so rebirth is also seen as transmigration. In contrast, however, the Theravada school rejects the idea of the transmigration of the soul (i.e., self, person, or enduring mind) from a prior life.
Nirvana is the final state of nothingness for Buddhists. They do not hold to any type or heaven or believe in any type of eternity whatsoever.
All Buddhists believe if they follow the Eightfold Path, they can achieve liberation from the wheel of birth, death, and reincarnation. In Buddhism, there is the denial of the essential notion of the self. Buddhists believe that the self as we understand it does not exist and our ceasing to desire will be the cause of the end of all suffering.
Problem Question: Buddha gave the Laws, told us to think right thoughts, do right deeds and have right ambitions. But the question is how?
Bible’s answer to this problem question: Bible teaches that we as humans have the desire to do good, but we cannot carry it out because of our sinful human nature that in conflict with God. How much we try to do good, after a while we fail, and we land up doing what we do not want to do. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 16:25”
It is only through Christ in us, who through His power, transforms our mind. He takes our disadvantages and turns into our advantages; He takes our weakness and turns into our strength. He took our failures, sins, and curses to the cross (where He died for our sins), so that we are forgiven and made into a new creation and our past is forgotten.
“The person who in his own eyes thinks he has kept the law to the fullest and by his own strength is farthest from God. You see no one can truly come to God without a sense of spiritual poverty within himself. Only when a person recognizes that all his goodness and accomplishments amount to nothing before God will he then seek God. Only in this humility can a person accept the new birth Jesus gives. The new birth gives new hunger- hunger for righteousness. As the man is now born of God by the power of God, he begins a new life for the glory of God.” -Ravi Zacharias
Reasoning Generation 