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Unlike the three Western monotheistic religions, Buddhism is not a religion of the book. Rather, Buddhism is based on the Buddha’s enlightened experience. More specifically, among other things, the Buddha was an early scientist. He said that if you reproduce his experiment by cultivating the Eightfold Path, your can replicate the same enlightenment result in yourself. There is no need for any beliefs, cosmology, dogma or creed. Indeed, all sentient beings are endowed by the luminous Buddha nature. The Buddha merely serves as a mirror for us to see our own enlightened nature. However, this means that we need to have the wisdom to see our true nature as it really is. This wisdom is described as the “right view” in the first step of the Eightfold Path. The problem is how can we see things as they really are when our attention is so scattered and our view is so obscured by poisons such as greed, hatred, delusion, pride and jealousy? The answer is through mindful awareness. Indeed, mindful awareness is something that we can learn even the first time we meditate. Eventually, we can reach a state of effortless awareness. This clear seeing allows our mindfulness to create some space between the stimulus and our response. Instead of knee-jerk, blind response, our mind has more time to choose a more skillful, intelligent response, thus, leading to more freedom and proactivity.
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