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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fishalt" data-source="post: 122642" data-attributes="member: 228">It depends.There are basically two main sects of Buddhism; Theravada, and Mahayana. Theravada is highly spiritual and supernatural. Mahayana is not. Traditional Buddhism (Theravada) definitely posits Gods, or at least conceptualizes them. In the diagram below, you will see the Demon Yama, Lord of Death (but also impermanence and change) presiding over the wheel of Samsara (Death and Rebirth). Buddhism posits reincarnation (at least traditionally) and also different types of heaven and Hell 'places' which are arrived at depending on one's karmic expression.  These are different from those concepts espoused in Christianity because they are not inescapable. It is possible to rise from hell to heaven or from heaven to Hell, or somewhere in between. The Theravadists believe these realms actually exist. The Mahayanists (especially the Japanese) believe these refer to mind states, and that they don't actually exist.In the centre of the wheel of samsara you can see a rooster, a pig, and a snake. These are referred to as the 'Three Poisons', and represent ignorance (the pig) desire (the rooster) and hatred (the snake). They are all biting one another's tails, which represents these energies all feeding into one another, cyclically. These energies, or emotional states, are what keep people trapped in the cycle of samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth over and over. For both sects of Buddhism, the crux of what they believe is that suffering arises from the human need to try to attach to, or preserve, the impermanence of existence. Because change is the only constant, becoming attached to the world, and the things in it, and yes even people, is simply going to result in suffering. And it's quite a convincing argument. Who here hasn't looked at a photograph of themselves as a young person, for example, and felt sadness or nostalgia and everything that goes with it, for what is and what has been? The way out, they say, is to achieve enlightenment. What is enlightenment? Well, it is more or less the ability to see the world as it truly is, the state of true objective reality--the endless rising and falling of things. A state of realization whereby one can see that all is truly impermanent, cyclical, even death itself being a transition, not a finality. If you look at the top of the diagram, the Buddha in the top right corner is pointing to the moon on the left, the idea being that there is a way to escape the dominion of Yama and the wheel of Samsara. He is pointing to what people refer to as "Nirvana", freedom from the wheel of death and rebirth, and from suffering.[ATTACH=full]6875[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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