Escape. Back up. Enlightenment.

According to Buddhism, dukkha—often translated as ’suffering’ in English—can be ended by an understanding of its root causes and continued practice of the dharma. Buddhists maintain that existence is largely dictated by karma, and most believe in rebirth, as dictated by karma. Buddhists believe that the dharma offers freedom from karma. The majority believe that those who are sufficiently practiced can determine their own rebirth, and a very few advanced beings can determine the rebirth of others. While Buddhists do believe that meditation is necessary at some stage, most do not believe they have reached a stage where meditation will be fruitful. Most Buddhists practice devotion to one or more Buddhas, and sometimes other beings. Buddhism offers a strong code of ethics, one that encourages generosity—particularly in the support of monks—and the Five Precepts: refraining from killing living beings, stealing, sexual immorality, lying, and taking intoxicants.

1. Moral Law of Karma - Every action (by way of body, speech and mind) will have karmic results. Wholesome and unwholesome actions will produce results and effects that correspond with the nature of that action. It is the right view about the moral process of the world.
2. The Three Characteristics – everything that arises will cease (impermanence). Mental and body phenomena are impermanent, source of suffering and not-self.
3. Suffering - Birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, distress and despair are suffering. Not able to obtain what one wants is also suffering. The arising of craving is the root cause of the arising of suffering and the cessation of craving is the root cause of the cessation of the suffering. The way leading to the cessation of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.

Buddhism has always been concerned with feelings, emotions, sensations, and cognition. The Buddha points both to cognitive and emotional causes of suffering. The emotional cause is desire and its negative opposite, aversion. The cognitive cause is ignorance of the way things truly occur, or of three marks of existence: that all things are unsatisfactory, impermanent, and without essential self.

The Noble Eightfold Path is, from this psychological viewpoint, an attempt to change patterns of thought and behavior. It is for this reason that the first element of the path is right understanding, which is how one’s mind views the world. Under the wisdom subdivision of the Noble Eightfold Path, this worldview is intimately connected with the second element, right thought, which concerns the patterns of thought and intention that controls one’s actions. 

Thus, by altering one’s distorted worldview, bringing out "tranquil perception" in the place of "perception polluted", one is able to ease suffering.

Research has shown that repeated action, learning, and memory can actually change the nervous system physically, altering both synaptic strength and connections. Such changes may be brought about by cultivated change in emotion and action; they will, in turn, change subsequent experience.

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