Re Study Notes Buddhism Essay

Submitted By myfanwy5498
Words: 929
Pages: 4

Aboriginal rituals
To this day, rituals play an important part in Aboriginal life. Small rituals, are still practised in some remote parts of Australia, such as in Arnhem Land and Central Australia, in order to ensure a supply of plant and animal foods. These take the form of chanting, singing, dancing or ritual action to invoke the Ancestral Beings to ensure a good supply of food or rain.
The most important rituals are connected with the beginning of boys and girls into adulthood. Such rituals sometimes last for weeks, with nightly singing and dancing, storytelling, and the display of body decoration and ceremonial objects. During these rituals, the songs and stories connected to each of the Ancestral Beings are told and retold, some being “open” for women and children to see and hear, others being restricted or “secret-sacred”, only for the initiates to learn.
The five pillars of Islam
The Five Pillars of Islam represent the duties of a Muslim. Like the Ten Commandments (for Christians) they provide a spiritual foundation for the Islamic nation. The five pillars of Islam are the basis on which all Muslim teachings of "do and not to do" are based. By definition, without pillars, a building could not be constructed strong, straight forward, and high. The five pillars can be looked as a table. The first pillar "testimony" is the top of the table that means witness that no god except one and only one God and that prophet Muhammad is His prophet and messenger. The table four legs are the other four pillars. The table, as designed with four legs, will not stand with one of these four legs broken or missed.
Christianity
Christians believe in justification by faith - that through their belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and in his death and resurrection, they can have a right relationship with God whose forgiveness was made once and for all through the death of Jesus Christ. Ethical teachings – The Ten Commandments and The Beatitudes. The sacred text of Christianity is the Holy Bible. The Christian Bible has two parts: the Old Testament which is essentially the Hebrew scriptures of Jesus' time; and the New Testament which contains writings about Jesus Christ and about the early church.
Buddhism
Siddhartha left the palace, shaved his head, donned ragged clothes and walked out to seek renowned teachers and scholars so that he would learn of the “real world” outside. He learnt to meditate but was still not satisfied with his life. He became a wandering Holy man searching for enlightenment.
Siddhartha attained enlightenment when he sat and meditated under a sacred Fig, known as the Bodhi tree. The tree is named the Bodhi tree because in Sanskrit Bodhi means enlightenment or awakening.
Siddhartha starved and deprived himself in an unsuccessful attempt to attain enlightenment. When close to death due to starvation, a young milk-maid saved him by giving him a bowl of buttered- broth. It is said that on the full moon day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar he had seated himself under the Bodhi Tree in the meditation posture and vowed not to rise from meditation until he had attained perfect enlightenment. This deep meditation concentrated on the Dharmakaya, the ultimate nature of all phenomena. He preached that enlightenment could be attained by an Eightfold pathway that centred on The 4 Noble Truths. By mental discipline he passed through the eight levels of meditation (Dhyana). He then reached the depths of his true existence. This was where he achieved the accomplishment he had been seeking. He recalled all his past lives and integrated his conscious and unconscious mind. He realised that his own true nature as being no different from the true nature of