Buddhism originated in India and is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, who lived between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. The Buddha taught that life is suffering due to craving and ignorance, and that one can be liberated from suffering by eliminating craving and ignorance through understanding dependent origination and attaining nirvana. In Buddhism, karma refers to intentional actions that have moral consequences, and rebirth is understood as the continuation of a dynamic, ever-changing process determined by karma rather than the transmigration of a soul.

1. BUDDHISM
By Eleni Georgiou

2. BUDDHISM
●Buddhism is a religion indigenous to the Indian subcontinent that encompasses
a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices largely based on teachings attributed
to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha, meaning "the
awakened one".
●The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent
sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by
Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help
sentient beings end their suffering through the elimination of ignorance by way
of understanding and the seeing of dependent origination and the elimination of
craving, and thus the attainment of the cessation of all suffering, known as the
sublime state of nirvāna.

3. BUDDHIST CONCEPTS
LIFE AND THE WORLD
Main article: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)
Samsara is the cycle of birth and death. Sentient beings crave pleasure and are
averse to pain from birth to death. In being controlled by these attitudes, they
perpetuate the cycle of their conditioned existence and suffering (saṃsāra), and
by that means produce the causes and conditions of the next rebirth after death.
Each rebirth repeats this process in an involuntary cycle, which Buddhists strive
to end by eradicating these causes and conditions by the application of the
methods laid out by the Buddha and subsequent Buddhists.

4. KARMA IN BUDDHISM
● In Buddhism, Karma is the force that drives saṃsāra (the cycle
of suffering and rebirth for each being). Good, skillful deeds
and bad, unskillful actions produce "seeds" in the mind that
come to fruition either in this life or in a subsequent rebirth.
● In Buddhism, karma specifically refers to those actions of
body, speech or mind that spring from mental intent, and bring
about a consequence or result.

5. REBIRTH
● Rebirth refers to a process whereby beings go through a succession of
lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, each running
from conception to death. Buddhism rejects the concepts of a permanent
self or an unchanging, eternal soul, as it is called in Hinduism and
Christianity.
● According to Buddhism there ultimately is no such thing as a self
independent from the rest of the universe. Rebirth in subsequent
existences must be understood as the continuation of a dynamic, ever-
changing process of "dependent arising" determined by the laws of cause
and effect (karma) rather than that of one being, transmigrating or
incarnating from one existence to the next.

6. THE CIRCLE OF LIFE
Traditional Tibetan
Buddhist Thangka
depicting the Wheel of
Life with its six realms.

7. BUDDHIST QUOTES
●I describe myself as a simple Buddhist monk. No more, no less.
Dalai Lama
●I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to
admire and enjoy it; that's my religion.
Alice Walker
● A Buddhist or a good atheist is as acceptable to God as a good Catholic.
Pat Buckley