Life – a user's manual Part II - Boksidan

Belarus 100 93 5 2 108 5 282 15 90 26 4 803 69
Zambia 92 87 49 44 3 38 4 18 4 47 21 786 27
Zimbabwe 99 44 30 2 60 4 106 5 104 22 2 499 36
Austria 100 100 5 8 146 8 556 13 123 26 28 481 46
Perhaps differences are better explained by the fact that different countries have different religions To
understand how come there are different religions and how they differ from each other, a brief historical
survey of religions may be useful:
800-450 before the year zero in our way to count (BC) the Old Testament was written, the holy book for the
Jews and later the first part of the Christian Scriptures. This includes, inter alia, the Judaisms and the
Christianity´s main rules, which in the Christian version reads:
1. You shall have no other gods but God.
2. You shall not missuse God's name, for the Lord will not leave the guiltless who misuses his name.
3. Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy.
4. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is
giving you.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox or donkey,
or anything that belongs to him.
In 477 BC Buddha died. Buddha first sought salvation in the contemporary Indian religions (Brahmanism,
which later turned into Hinduism) usual way, i.e. through asceticism and penance. The story says that he in a
forest met some ascetics. He joined them and competed with them in penances. For six years, he did his
asceticism increasingly stringent and in the end he was so malnourished that he lost conscious. When he
regained it, he took the decision tet to abandon the ascetic way, and he stated: "There is no knowlwdge
coming from ascetism.” Thus he broke in a revolutionary way with the entire Indian tradition. Buddha's way
to wisdom is throgh walking the middle way, i.e. To avoid both asceticism and pleasures and keep the soul
free and independent. Also Buddhism, like Brahmanism, teaches that salvation consists in freedom from
transmigration. But Buddha´s path to it differs in several important respects from the Brahmanist way. He
had no concept of God, and was only interested in the question: "How can I achieve salvation from the
suffering that life means" Buddha saw the only way to overcome suffering was through totally out
quenching the thirst for life. To this aim suggested the Eightfold Path: right knowledge, right mindedness,
right speech, right action, right life, right effort, right vigilance, right meditation. Nirvana's peace and
freedom from rebirth will pay those who faithfully walk the way to the end.
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