Benchmark Essay Example

her she was going to have a son and her son was going to be the chosen one.

There are a lot of debates between Catholics and Protestants about whether or not Mary was a Holy being who knew she was going to give birth to the Son of God, but it could have gone either way.

The Bible states that she Was shocked and almost lost her soon-to-be husband, Joseph because of it The Lord eventually gave Joseph a dream explaining everything, so He followed God and stuck with Mary. Jesus eventually grew up to be the great Messiah that taught and healed every. Veer He went.

In the end, Jesus knew He had to die for the sins of mankind and sacrificed Himself so that everyone's sins could be forgiven through His own blood. This is all from The Holy Bible.

Buddhism is a religion not based exactly on a higher power, but on the lessons brought first to the people of Asia by an "enlightened" man by the name of Shattered Augusta, ho lived about 2500 years ago in an area that is now called Nepal in this present day and age. According to Barbara O'Brien(2014), a Buddhism expert, "He came to be called "the Buddha," which means "awakened one," after he experienced a profound realization of the nature of life, death and existence. " (Barbara O'Brien, 2014, Retrieved from http://Buddhism.

About. Com/odd/ basicbuddhistteachings/a/basics. Tm) For the rest of his days, Shattered, now officially called "the Buddha", spread his knowledge to any and every person he came across. He did not want to teach people what he realized hen he became enlightened,

but the process to become enlightened on their own. Interestingly enough, he did not believe his realization was one meant for the entire world, but the path up to his enlightenment is what truly mattered.

"He taught that awakening comes through one's own direct experience, not through beliefs and dogmas. " (Retrieved from the previously stated Buddhist research website).

Barbara O'Brien in her article What Is Buddhism? An Introduction to Buddhism Buddhism for Beginners, makes another eye-opening statement: "Buddhism is so different from other religions that some people question whether it is a religion at all. For example, the central focus of most religions is God, or gods. But Buddhism is non-theistic.

The Buddha taught that believing in gods was not useful for those seeking to realize enlightenment. Most religions are defined by their beliefs. But in Buddhism, merely believing in doctrines is beside the point.

The Buddha said that we should not accept doctrines just because we read them in scripture or are taught them by priests.

Instead of teaching doctrines to be memorized and believed, the Buddha taught how we can realize truth for ourselves. The focus of Buddhism is on practice rather than belief. The major thing one needs to understand about the way of Buddhist practice is something called the Eightfold Path. Even though there is a focus on the freedom of investigation about what people think Buddhism is, the religion should not just be so malleable as to let people think they can make their religion anything they desire.

People sometimes say they're Buddhist, but only believe in a few things and never act in the Buddhist way. Buddhism, like

any other religion, has a foundation, from which many other things are added on to it. The foundation for Buddhism consists of four truths. Buddhists call these the "Four Noble Truths".

The Truths are, as stated in the journal article What Is Buddhism? An Introduction to Buddhism Buddhism for Beginners: "The truth of suffering (ducked), The truth of the cause of suffering (someday), The truth of the end of suffering (mirrored), and The truth of the path that frees us from suffering (magma). Beneath these seemingly insignificant truths is supposedly an immeasurable amount of knowledge on the nature of existence, one's self, life, and death, not to mention suffering. "The point is not to just "believe in" the teachings, but to explore them, understand them, and test them against one's own experience. It is the process of exploring, understanding, testing and realizing that is Buddhism. " (O'Brien, 2014) At around 2,000 years ago, this great religion of Buddhism was divided.

This separation created two major schools Of study with the names Tetrahedral and Mahayana. F-or hundreds of years, the Buddhist school of Tetrahedral has been passing on its teachings mainly to the countries of Thailand, Manner, Sir Lankan, and Laos. The other Buddhist school, Mahayana has been the main way of learning Buddhism in many countries, consisting of Tibet, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. In recent years, Mahayana also has gained many lowers in India.

Mahayana is further divided into many sub-schools, such as Pure Land and Zen.

While Buddhism and Christianity have their amazing and interesting features, let one not forget about Hinduism. In a website consisting of religious facts, Hinduism is

basically considered the world's oldest organized religion. The religion itself "consists of thousands of different religious groups that have evolved in India since 1 500 BCC. "(Retrieved from the website Religion Facts at http://www.

Religionists. Com/Hinduism/) Hinduism, being as large as it is, is spread out throughout the world, mainly incinerated in India, Nepal, and Sir Lankan.

This fact concludes that there's going to be a wide variety of religious traditions practiced in different areas, and that there are many different forms of this religion. This is where Hinduism shares a similarity with Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism has mainly Tetrahedral and Mahayana, while Christianity has mainly Catholics and Protestants.

Freedom of belief and practice are some of the features that stick with Hinduism no matter where it is practiced, even though every religion has its radicals. Of all the forms of Hinduism, most are homogeneities religions.

Hominess is a very accepting belief, meaning that Hindus worship their God passionately, but they also believe in the existence of other gods as well, or that the other gods are different forms of their God. Homogeneities and polytheistic religions seem to be more tolerant in the religious perspective than a lot of other religions. As a result, India has traditionally been one of the most religiously tolerant in the world.

From an article written by B. A. Robinson in 201 2 from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance it states that "in 1998 a Hindu nationalistic political party, the Barbarity Kanata

Party (BGP), controlled the government of India. The linkage of religion, the national government, and nationalism led to a "degeneration of the separation of church and state

in India and a decrease in the level of religious tolerance in that country. An escalation of anti-Christian violence was one manifestation of this linkage.

With the subsequent change in government, the level of violence has diminished, and India is once more a country of relative religious tolerance and peace. " Hinduism has been growing and continues to grow as the third largest organized religion in the entire world.