What are the key practices/beliefs of Buddhists?
Buddhists believe in reincarnation. The aim is to attain enlightenment and leave the wheel that is the cycle of birth and rebirth. Your current existence is based on your behaviour and attitudes in your last life. Craving and desire keep you on the wheel and prevent you attaining enlightenment. It is possible to escape the cycle by following the Four Noble Truths. These are as follows: • All existence is ‘dukkha’. This has been translated as suffering, anguish, pain or ‘unsatisfactoriness’. Our lives are a struggle and we do not find ultimate happiness or satisfaction in our experiences. • The cause of dukkha is craving – it is our tendency to grasp at things or push them away that causes suffering, not external things. • The cessation of craving brings the cessation of dukkha. We cannot change what happens to us, but we can change our responses to the world. • There is a path that leads to dukkha. Although it is our responsibility to change, there are methods we can use to help us wit
