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Buddhists Really Are Happier
bjornte writes "For anyone that wonders what Richard Gere is up to, the BBC explains: 'Scientists say they have evidence to show that Buddhists really are happier and calmer than other people. Tests carried out in the United States reveal that areas of their brain associated with good mood and positive feelings are more active.' So, if you're suffering from the ongoing IT slump..."
There's not enough detail in the article to know whether this is a problem, but it looks like there's at least potential for a serious "correlation implies causation" error. Does Buddhism make people happy, or do people who are already happy become Buddhists?
I'm also not sure how "calm" got transformed into "happy" in the article. My personal definition of "happy" doesn't really have much to do with "hard to scare".
The study is interesting to some degree but drawing conclusion from it is unwarrented, until more data is collected from more sources.
No worship of gods and deities indeed, but worship of budda.
Not worship, but reverence. The Buddha is not considered a deity like Christ, or someone with a direct line to God like Mohammed, but rather a regular guy who thought real hard about What It's All About and came up with an interesting insight, for which his followers are grateful.
You're perverting the sense and definition of religion here.
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Religion is *supposed* to give you the tools to lead a calmer, less stresseful, happier life. If it doesn't, its not working as a religion.
Those who would stand to benefit from an un-calm, stressy society (WMH, Eli Lilli and Co.) seek to actively denigrate religions' potential for delivering calm, stressless people, and those who have bought the humanist party line from the last 20 years that "All Religion Is Bad, The pseudo-science of Psychology is the Only Way" support them in their effort to discount the positive effects which religion can have on a persons well-being.
All religion is not bad. Buddhists *do* lead happier lives than the anti-religion types... most of whom are pretty stressy people. I'm yet to meet a Buddhist (true buddhist, not dilletantes) who wasn't a happy, fun person to be around, generally.
Make your own determination of the value of religion in modern society if you will, but discount its worth and positive value at your own peril
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The salient point of the article is not that Buddhism per se is a "happier religion" (which you kind of pointed out) but that there seems to be scientific evidence for the idea that a regular program of a certain kind of meditative practice can have a positive effect on the brain.
;)
The activity, which meditation most certainly is, is not unlike parts of standard hypnotherapy or yoga. Concentrating on nothing or simply on breathing, putting the body into a state of complete relaxation, etc, are not unique ideas to Buddhism. In fact, the same positive effects may well flow from other more overtly religious activities like saying the Rosary.
But scientists haven't studied that as much I'm guessing-- perhaps because prominent Catholics aren't as interested in working with science as prominent Buddhists are. The Dalai Lama meets regularly with western scientists and pseudo-scientists to discuss similarities and differences between Buddhist thought and scientific theory. Further, Buddhism generally says that there is no infallible word of God, which may or may not be contradicted by scientific evidence, so Buddhists do not cling to their beliefs out of "faith", but generally welcome any opportunity for greater understanding.
And when it comes to Buddhist doctrine, reincarnation and/or non-rebirth are certainly more comforting "afterlife" theories than the prospect of eternal torment. Once you stop worrying that the slightest mistake on your part could result in infinite pain after death, you can relax a bit.
I do not have a signature
Just because there is a correlation between Buddhists and happiness does not mean that religion has any soothing abilities. It may very well be that those who are calmer, happier people would be the most likely to take up/continue to practice Buddhism. Especially in the United States, where Buddhism is not at all a majority religion.
In Buddhism, Karma is not seen as a physical or metaphysical force that forces you to pay back your evil deeds, but rather as a psychological principle.
I could go on for a while about this, but I'll try to keep it short.
Ideally, once an action has happened, it is gone. Our mind, however, likes to hold on to what was and will not let go. Since the past is already gone, it is not a good place for the mind to dwell. Your karma is the part of you that holds onto the past and measure the present in terms of the past. If you measure the present in terms of the past, then you see more of what was than what is. A buddhist strives to see things as they are in the present (this is what meditation teaches) No buddhist claims that they will ever be free of karma, of their attachment to the past, but if they could be, they would be "enlightened."
A quick example: Let's say that you spent the past two years building your own house by hand. On the night that you move into the house, it burns down. If you hold on to the past and your memories of what was, then you will suffer at the thought of loss and the "wasted" time you spent building the house. If you see things as they are, then you will be happy that you are alive and start planning for a new place to live and perhaps rebuilding the house.
"My religion is to live --and die-- without regret." -- Milarepa