Faiths, beliefs and religions

Buddhism in Westminster

The Buddha's teaching distinguishes itself by its reasoned view of reality. Mental process is discrete from materiality but intensely bound up with it as a prime conditioning factor.

All that we are
Is the result of what we have thought;
We are founded on our past thoughts,
We are made of those thoughts.
Our thoughts are the matrix
From which we spring.
(Dhammapada 1)

The quality of originating thoughts determine the quality of their mental and bodily resultants (kharma). Life is a series of fleeting processes, insubstantial and unsatisfactory in themselves. When confusion is dismissed the processes of life are seen clearly (nirvana). This position is reached by recognising and then penetrating Four Noble Truths: the recognition of unsatisfactoriness of mental and material states, and how they arise from affinity and attraction to past states; and penetration of how one can unwind the process within oneself, and the Eightfold Path practised for this purpose.