If Buddha Were Alive Today, How Would He Answer The Question: How Should One Live?

If Buddha Were Alive Today, How Would He Answer The Question: "How Should One

Live"?


     What is right? Who is to say what is right? How do we know what we are

doing is right? These are all questions that allude to how should one live?

Different people have different opinions on this area. Buddha's theory is one

way to answer the question.


     Buddha has four noble truths. These four noble truths are suffering, the

origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the way of practice leading

to the cessation of suffering. If you go through all four of these truths, you

will live a "right" life.


     Suffering, according to Buddha, is anything that doesn't cause pleasure.

Anytime you do not get what you want, it is suffering. Being born is suffering.

In Buddha's theory, isn't practically everthing we do then suffering? Buddha

defines suffering with the five aggregates of grasping. They are the aggreagates

of grasping that is form, feeling, perception, mental formaitons, and

consciousness. I don't agree with Buddha in any of this. I don't think suffering

is caused by any of this. This is all life. I don't think that we are suffering

all of this time. My definition of suffering would be anything that causes any

pain, not anything that doesn't cause pleasure. There is a huge difference

between the two. With Buddha, you are either suffering or in pleasure. I think

that there is a middle ground. There are many times when people are not

suffering and also not feeling pleasure.


     The origin of suffering, according to Buddha, is craving. Craving comes

from anything that is agreeable and pleasurable. Sights, sounds, mental pictures,

etc. are all agreeable and pleasurable therefore they all cause craving.

Whenever we think of any of this, cravings arise. This is where suffering comes

from. This is true to a point. Craving is what causes suffering. Craving comes

from pleasurable things. That means that pleasurable things cause suffering.

People want what they don't have. These we think are pleasurable things. We

suffer from not getting what we want. When a baby wants a cookie and doesn't get

it, he is suffering. It was not getting the cookie that caused the suffering. It

was the craving for the cookie that caused his suffering. Buddha was right on

the money when he said that craving is what caues suffering.


     What is the stopping of suffering? If we want to stop suffering, we have

got to start at the beginning. To stop suffering, we have to stop craving. We

have to totally get away from it. Simple as that. It's true. If we want to stop

suffering, we have to stop ourselves from craving. This is the third noble truth.

May sound easy to do, but in the fourth noble truth, we learn it is not as easy

as we think.


       The fourth noble truth may sound as simple as a commercial. Stop all your

suffering in just eight easy steps!! As we journey through these eight "easy"

steps, we find them to not be as simple as we think. the first is Right View.

Right View is knowing that we suffer and what suffering is. It is knowing that

we can stop suffering. Step one is always the easiest. The second is Right

Thought. Right Thought is the though
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