If you do the same google search for "why are men so " You get stupid selfish mean and lazy. If you do the search for women it says "stupid, emotional, complicated and crazy" If you do the google search for "why are children so" You get mean, annoying, angry and bad. some other searches... White people = racist, mean, beautiful, and tall blacks = violent, loud, racist, lazy. Asians = smart, ugly,thin, and short Indians = Rich, rude, cheap, smart back to the politics & religion though. I did a search for atheists and this is what came up. Stupid, angry, awesome, intolerant. Awesome? Wtf? That many people did searches for "why are atheists so awesome? You know damn well the ONLY people that did a search for that were atheists. No non-atheist EVER did a search for that!
but buddhists are happy. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Buddhists who meditate may be able to train their brains to feel genuine happiness and control aggressive instincts, research has shown. According to Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy at Duke University in North Carolina, Buddhists appear to be able to stimulate the left prefrontal lobe - an area just behind the forehead - which may be why they can generate positive emotions and a feeling of well being. Writing in today's New Scientist, Professor Flanagan cites early findings of a study by Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, who used scanners to analyse the active regions of a Buddhist's brain. Professor Flanagan said the findings are "tantalising" because the left prefrontal lobes of Buddhist practitioners appear to "light up" consistently, rather than just during acts of meditation. "This is significant, because persistent activity in the left prefrontal lobes indicates positive emotions and good mood," he writes. "The first Buddhist practitioner studied by Davidson showed more left prefrontal lobe activity than anyone he had ever studied before. "Buddhists are not born happy. It is not reasonable to suppose that Tibetan Buddhists are born with a 'happiness gene'. The most reasonable hypothesis is there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek," he writes. Another study of Buddhists by scientists at the University of California has also found that meditation might tame the amygdala, the part of the brain involved with fear and anger. Professor Flanagan writes: "Antidepressants are currently the favoured method for alleviating negative emotions, but no antidepressant makes a person happy. On the other hand, Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, which were developed 2,500 years before Prozac, can lead to profound happiness."
As far as they have been portrayed, Buddhists are minimalists. They don't own much of anything, as they have a philosophy about the impermanence of (this) life, so the whole concept of "owning" is viewed as an illusion to them. They do believe in life-after death though, otherwise why the whole re-incarnation thing with the Dali Lama? You'd have to be somewhere to get re-incarnated into this life. I'm not even sure if they are a "religious" group. If so, I don't think they ever started a war in the name of their religion.
Budhists are happy because they don't take anything literally. For them existence itself is a metaphor, hence they're not obsessed with power like all those other religions.
Thailand 94.6% buddhist. All those girls working as prostitutes at Nana plaza and other places where they are exploited...Buddhist. Are they happy? All those corrupt policemen that ask for bribes ....Buddhist. All those redshirts that were in the news this year that tore up the city....Buddhists. All the military people that fought with the redshirts...Buddhist. The fact that there seems to be a military coup every couple of years in Thailand suggests that buddhists are never happy for very long. Of course, maybe you all think buddhists are happy because you only imagine those monks that live in monestarys as the only real buddhists. The fact is...buddhists are people and they are just as happy and unhappy as everyone else in the world. Here are a bunch of buddhists fighting each other. The only reason you guy think buddhists are peaceful is because whenever they do something violent, the media never says "Buddhists did this today" <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rIR6XqQWz_M?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rIR6XqQWz_M?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>
Most people get their religious affiliations as hand-me-downs, or just because of where they are born. They don't actually practice them, just wear the label. The ones that actually practice their faith are very few. For instance, I don't think there are any major religions that advocate hating or persecuting other people. There are plenty of people who would say they are religious, but would do exactly that. I would guess those people would generally be unhappy.
Lions are born happy. Lions sleep 20 hours a day. Grizzly bears are born happy. Grizzly bears sleep 6 months in a year and eat 6 months in a year. Crocodiles are born happy. Large Crocodiles can survive without food for 1 year. Pythons are born happy. Large pythons can survive without food for 6 or 12 months.