Amanda Pridmore
Period 6
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Q: How is Buddha’s teachings and his life portrayed as an axial story? The portrayence of Buddha’s life and his teachings were of an axial age story, because he was more concerned with inner peace than desire, he was interested in discovering the meaning of life, and he was concentrated on reaching enlightenment. This was all to his concern, because he wanted to reach nirvana (the end of suffering). In the Buddhist Morality handout, it described how suffering is caused by desire. To end suffering, desire must be put to an end. Although desire seemed to be a difficult thing to end, was is obligatory to have in order to reach nirvana- total annihilation of oneself, escaping the cycle of reincarnation. In this circumstance, nirvana was reachable by following the eightfold path. After this has been done, you will have received your end of suffering; In other words, your soul would have stopped its reincarnation cycle and met inner peace. In Gotama’s Discovery, Siddhartha was determined to reach enlightenment. For the entirety of his life, he was shielded from all reality by his father. One day Siddhartha and his charioteer set off to the city, so that he could explore new things. Siddhartha encountered the three sightings that are a majority of Buddhism: old age, illness, death, and the middle path. He soon discoverd the “Four Noble Truths” which give him the realization of the Middle Path. Siddhartha, with his newly gained knowledge of