..续本文上一页d have noble ideals which teach the people to strive and attain. Thus Christianity teaches people to obey the will of, and learn from, God. Although Christians believe that they can never attain the status of God and Jesus Christ, they must adopt the teachings of universal love and self-sacrifice as Jesus of Nazareth exemplified. They say the dust makes the human body, whereas God endows the soul to the human. Because the humans commit sin, so they degenerate. This has sullied the originally pure and clean soul. Therefore, they teach people to firstly purify their dirty souls, before admitting them into their ideal objective — the Heaven.
The Chinese Confucians also say: "The scholarly should strive to be virtuous; the virtuous, saintly; the saintly, celestial." The scholarly people are the class of intellectuals well versed in various branches of higher knowledge. Their ideal is to attempt to rank themselves among the virtuous ones they see. Furthermore, the virtuous should attempt to rank themselves with the saintly ones. But even the saints are not all-knowing, so they too should attempt to be "heavenly". Thus, the orthodox Confucian spirit is a constantly striving towards virtue and saintliness.
The Taoists, too, have a set of ideals for themselves. That is: "Heaven models itself on Tao (the Way of Nature); Tao models itself on nature." "Tao models itself on nature" means that we should follow the natural law of the universe without artificiality. We should act in accordance with the purest nature and the flow of non-intervention. This is their progressive outlook on life. The world will be in a chaotic state if the activities of the world, the inpidual activities and inter-personal relationship do not act with the flow of the natural law. The situation will worsen if we try to solve it using ways that contradicts the natural law. Then suffering will set in.
From the above observations, we find that the Confucianists follow the virtuous acts of the sage and the saint. From there they uplift themselves to the heavenly state. Taoists, on the other hand, advocate acting with the flow of the natural laws of the universe. In short, both of them have some means of guiding us to the ideal progressive path of life.
Most people think that it is good enough for them to be good persons. They do not approve of setting goals of uplifting themselves. The mentality of "muddling along" cannot help them to improve themselves and make any progress in their lives. If this is the mentality of the nation or the people, then there is a crisis of degeneration. Most high religions set a long-term promising goal. When we see the goal far in front of us, we will long for it and admire it, and before we accomplish it, we will constantly improve and uplift ourselves. Then these are the real benefits that are yielded when we take up and practise a religion.
How do we uplift ourselves when practising Buddha-dharma
First of all we must start with understanding the concepts of the Five-vehicles (The Five-yanas). The Five-vehicles refer to the human, the heavenly (celestial), the Sravakas (the hearer of Buddha-dharma), the Pratyeka-buddhas (a self-enlightener, enlightened through reasoning the riddle of life, apply to both Buddhists and non-Buddhists), and the Bodhisattvas (or the Buddha). The human and the heavenly vehicles are the foundation of Buddhism but they are not the heart of Buddhism. This is because to behave well as a human is our obligation. It is common that the blessed-rewards of our wholesome acts may enable us to be reborn in the heavenly realms.
Although the life in the heavenly realms is happier than our mundane world, the heavens are still within the three realms (Triloka, namely, the sensuous desire realm, the form realm, and the f…
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