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Introduction
Since the time of Emperor Constantine, Christianity was in its raising and dominated the western world. At the highest popularity of Christian, the philosophical aspects of Christianity were needed in order to explain, defend, and justified its beliefs (Hergenhahn, 2005). Among those early Greek philosophers, Aristotle was the philosopher whom Christian tradition heavily relied on. However, the church did not accept some of Aristotle’s philosophies.
While Christianity just started to rely its philosophical aspect on Aristotle’s works, an Asian religion, Buddhism, has been practiced in the similar way to some early Greek philosophers such as Aristotle’s philosophy, for 543 years. Like Aristotle, Buddhism believes in middle way of life, logic and reason, and the sources of knowledge and persuasion.
Buddhism and its beliefs
Buddhism is a religion based on teaching of Buddha or Siddhartha Gautama. He was born as a prince of Sakyas clan, which was in Nepal near the foothill of the Himalayas. Buddha left the royal life to seek for the solution of human suffering, which are birth, sickness, aged, and death. In order to find to way out from human suffering, Buddha found the best solution of human suffering, which is the middle way (Religion tolerance, 2004).
Buddhism believes in reincarnation, which means the cycle of birth, living, death and rebirth. A person who can releases him/herself from attachment from desire and the self will attain Nirvana, a freedom from suffering. Buddha found the four noble truths from explored the human suffering. Those four noble truths are the existence of suffering, the causes of suffering, the end of the suffering, and the way to end the suffering. In order to end to suffering, one must follows the Eight-moral path. The Buddha’s Eight-moral path are the right understanding, the right thinking, the right speech, the right livelihood, the right effort, the right mindfulness,...