Question

Humanities Question:

How do The Sunnah, Buddha’s First Sermon, and Innocent III’s On the Misery of the Human Condition convey their civilizations’ ideas about the nature of life and what makes individuals and/or societies, “good?”

Answer 1

The three religions namely Islam, Buddhism and Christianity offer a philosophy of worldly concerns both as a means to address its transcendental value and in organisation of the secular life of the people. To this end, all three of these religions have evolved distinct traditions, practices and an outlook about life which the followers can use to guide their decisions and actions.

The Sunnah is defined as the precedent of moral and social conduct based on the actions of the Islamic Prophet Muhammed. The Sunnah offer guidelines about social and legal customs and religious practices which the members can follow in order to ensure that their life is ruled by correct moral principles and actions. Thus, anyone can attain goodness by choose to follow the Sunnah.

A Similar view on moral choice in determining good conduct is provided in the doctrines of Buddhism. The sermon Buddha gave to the five monks was his first sermon, called the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. In it,  he taught the Four Noble Truths: the existence of suffering, the cause of suffering, that the cause suffering can end, and the path to the end of suffering. It is this thirst for attachment to material pleasures which produces re-existence and re-becoming, and thirst for self-annihilation. However, having come across the knowledge of suffering, an individual can extrude hums/herself out of suffering through a complete renounciation of worldly pleasures and greed and practice complete detachment in thought and action. In the First Sermon, the Buddha laid out individual-centric practices in te fo r of the Eight Fold Path which pertains to an individual’s secular life. These include: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

However, a more contrary view is presented by Pope Innocent III’s ‘On Misery of the Human Condition’. he takes a rather pessimistic view on human nature and describes human actions as unchangeable and consequential to suffering in the afterlife. He thus makes a distinction between what appears to be descriptive and the prescriptive nature of human civilizations. His doctrine of Christianity presents that Societies did not come about as a consequence of an explicit decision and action taken, yet it indicates what human beings have done, even if they didn’t know what they were doing as they did it. Thus, moral perfection of human beings can come about when one accepts the the idea of original sin and of the doctrine of salvation through grace alone.

thus these three religious views debate about the  possibility that the human condition might be changed and whether human beings would persistently act out their human nature regardless of circumstances. For all of them, the issue of choice and lack of choice in moral will frames the centre of human nature and society.