Rajib's Blog

"One thing I teach: suffering and the end of suffering.
It is just ill and the ceasing of ill that I proclaim."

-- The Buddha

Those were the words spoken by the Lord Buddha himself. I am inspired from the above quotation by Buddha, he said I teach the suffering and the end of suffering, well not to go to the vast meaning of suffering; I am inspired in the practical aspect of it. I believe in finding the problems before finding the solution, so as Buddha said, I teach suffering i.e. without knowing the suffering how will we know how to cure it, same in my case I prefer to find the problem before finding the solution.

Since the beginning of Buddhism about 2500 years ago, Buddha the founder of Buddhism have faced several troubles, hinders and obstacles from the kings and rulers from that era. After winning their faith he was finally rewarded the opportunity to travel across the globe to teach his founding. The first high profile follower of Buddha's teachings was King Asoka; the cruel king lost his interest in the world of hate and lust, so he joined Buddha to find eternal peace. Apart from that, other followers of Buddha were also in search of peace that Buddha has found within himself. He taught his followers the way to find peace within them. The data of how many people were able to find peace from the lessons from Buddha is still mysterious. Some people say, all the followers of Buddha were able to find the eternal peace and those who didn't find peace in this life were reborn again to reach to their destination. The Buddhism describes about reincarnation of the soul, and the human's destination will be fulfilled anyhow either in this birth or next births. It is exactly the same case as of Dalai Lama - The Tibetan Leader, he reincarnates again and again and ruled the nation until when he was kicked out of Tibet by China. Still he have place in every Tibetan's heart as the holy King.

There has been lots of speculations about the rise of Buddhism, how Buddhism was popular is still mysterious, I have read few articles related to Buddhism and the followers. Everything in this world has good and bad side, it depends on the personal thoughts how people will take it, either positively or negatively. The popularity of Buddhism was not as easy as we have imagined, and the followers of Buddha didn't increase by just hearing his teaching. I don't blame Buddha for the clever intentions to inspire the kings and rulers, as he also had his own kingdom before being Buddha he did not discriminate any of his followers but the path his followers followed to popularize Buddha was somewhat interesting to read. Buddha said to his followers "I am God, but you don't have to worship me, God is not to be worshiped, if you want to worship someone then worship yourselves cause you all are destined to be God someday, every human born in this planet is destined to be God and I will show you the path to be god". The words from Buddha were used as marketing terms to popularize Buddhism. Buddha's followers inspired big Empires and Rulers to follow Buddha, as those greedy kings wanted to be God to rule the world they followed Buddhism. They didn't know the process of being god, all they wanted is to be god to rule the world and they heard that Buddhism teaches us to be god someday, so they started following the Buddha's teachings.

Since the rulers started to follow the Buddha's teaching, they forced the people of their kingdom to follow the same. History still reveals that lots of people who denied following the Buddhism were burned alive, nailed till death and hung by the tree. Not in a positive way but the followers of Buddhism was increased by thousands within short period of time. Though the starting step may sound weird but still the followers or Buddhism are in millions these days. Those emperors started building Temples and monuments of Buddha, and Buddha was not happy about it as his teaching clearly says don't worship him, follow his teaching to find the path to be god. The main credit to make Buddha popular goes to his followers; they made their teacher popular by hook or by crook. Thus the lesson from Buddha was not followed by his close followers, they we just destined to make Buddha popular. His actual teaching was peace and peace lessons but his close followers breached those peaces in order to make their teacher popular.

Since the starting of Buddhism people were not able to follow the proper teaching of Buddha, till now I guess there might only be few followers who practice the actual teaching of Buddha. Buddha taught the world to find peace within ourselves and the proper followers of Buddha's teachings should at least have some inspirational peace thoughts within themselves. We can take an example of Dalai Lama, who wants to fight back to take his kingdom, the recent fights and protest in Thailand by the Buddhist monks, etc. these incident shows how much the Buddhists lacks the peace in themselves. They were supposed to teach the Buddha's teachings and distribute knowledge of peace to the world but the situation is different here. Some followers of Buddhism want to be in Member of Parliament like in Nepal, some follower want to get his kingdom back to rule his people, some followers wants to kill other people to take revenge on killings of their monk friend. Buddhism these days sounds mysterious to understand, and I still doubt do they follow the actual teaching or just want to have some faith in something for the namesake.