Friends,
Having read Topics #1 to #12, we hope that you have now gained an excellent understanding of core Buddhism and the direct path to nirvana. And that you also see how Buddhism is joyful, secular, scientific, inclusive, and liberating.
We hope that even those of you already familiar with Buddhism before diving into the Buddhism for All series have unearthed many very important gems. While some may think of the Four Noble Truths as the “basic stuff” to quickly go over, we tried to present it in the same spirit that the Buddha had presented it in the early Buddhist texts: as one of the most important, most profound and most transcendent teachings. Soryu and I cast a huge net over the entire breadth of the massive early Buddhist canon, combined with Soryu’s familiarity with multiple schools of Buddhism, to craft this presentation. We hope it was helpful to all of you.
Next, we will examine how early Buddhism views miracles and gods. This may be very surprising to you, but it turns out that early Buddhism doesn’t care about miracles or gods. Miracles are meh, and gods are regarded merely as inspiring friends. We also answer the question of whether Buddhism is a religion or not.
The surprising relationship between Buddhism, gods, and miracles starts today in Topic #13. As usual, you will see three posts per week.
Meng, for the Buddhism.net team
