Buddhism is a set of teachings first influenced by Siddhartha Gautama, who is also known as Gautama Buddha or simply just Buddha. Buddha stands for Awakened One, and one of the principle beliefs for people who practice Buddhism is to find this awakening in life. Gautama first began his teachings in Northern India and has spread throughout all of Asia (Molloy 124). As far as religious afterlife is concerned, Buddhists do not believe in eternal damnation as other religions, but rather they believe in reincarnation which continues to take place until a person reaches Nirvana. According to Buddhist belief, Nirvana is the state where liberation and a freedom from suffering takes place and inner peace is achieved. It is the state that every Buddhist follower strives to achieve, and thus follows endless cycles of life and reincarnation to get there. Buddhists also believe in karma. With karma, they believe that a person's actions in their current lifetime will have an affect on how they are reborn and the lessons that they will have to learn in order to try to achieve Nirvana in their next lifetime. They believe that one has to understand their wrongdoings from one lifetime to the next, and if they cannot, rebirth will be necessary again and reincarnation will continue indefinitely. It is not necessarily an atonement that is necessary to overcome these past transgressions; it is just an understanding of the improper behaviors and an ability to overcome them with their next opportunity.
Buddhists do not believe in rigid practices as some other religions do, it is more of a liberated religion that puts the onus on the people practicing the faith to experience the doctrines and find them as truth on their own. Buddha ...