What the Buddha Taught by Ven Dr. W. Rahula

Before having the lesson of buddhas teaching in the university this semester, Buddhism has been a great mystery to me and i though it is only just similar religion comparing with the other religions such as Christianity or Catholicism. But after i took the first few lecture, this stereotyped interpretation in my head are changing slowly. The first idea that the lecturer talked about which i remember is that Buddhism is all about hardworking and own intelligence, once you have these two and tried to learn what the buddha d, then you can achieve enlightenment.

In the following paragraphs, I am going to summarise some of the main idea in the book “What the Buddha Taught”. In the book, it is actually a short summary of Buddhism history, from how it was created and all those teaching that the buddha has been teaching.

To start with, we can see that the buddha do not treat himself as a god or any forms of god but only an ordinary mortal. He was a great teacher and keep teaching people about Buddhism, with no beautiful cloths and money, he has been to many place until 80 years old. With no help from any violence and capital, but all the kings, royals, medium class or even the lower class do admire him.

Second, the buddha do his best to share the real meaning of Buddhism without quoting himself as the most important rely. He believe that he is only taking the responsibility to spread out Buddhism and to help innocence people. The great thing about the Buddha is that he know how to teach different kind of people with the suitable method, he believe everyone could be changed and able to changed into a good human being no matter how evil you are.

Thirdly, Buddhism is a open-minded religion, as it welcome their monks to accept but also to learn from other religions, this is because the Buddha believes that we must find something good in others and we can use them to improve ourselves. Moreover, He taught all his monks to develop a better thinking skills not to trust too much but to think and trust themselves.

Fourthly, Buddhism is able to develop a more completed personality, the Buddha emphasis that only a person with self-respect, confident and independent can be regarded as a good personality. He wish all his monks to go through barriers and obstacles on their own methods, so that is how they could get their own enlightenment. He strongly believe that everyone is their own master, and have the right to make decisions for their life, but not a puppet of god. The final destination of being enlightened is the result from what they did during the process . It is the payoff for you hard work and will but not a gift from god.

Finally, after reading these book, I found that there are still a lot knowledge that I do not understand and have never heard about. This book do give me a brief idea of what Buddhism really is and i hope for the coming lesson, i can