Wanting to convert from Atheism to Buddhism?

At the very outset I would say that by practicing meditation , you will achieve :

<--- this, the blissful trance state(of 1st level)

it takes long time , but since it is the very core of you , it is your source of life which cannot be denied. So practice meditation , strive hard , one day your inner self will detach & appear like this , illuminated within. In the later stages you experience out of body experiences , omnipresence etc. when fully awakened.

Initially , many people get confused about Buddha's path. But actually it is very simple. It is the path to experience spirituality first hand . The path consists of morality + meditation.

a. Morality

practice of 5 principles : Non-killing, Sexual control, no lies, no stealing & no intoxicants.

b. Meditation

The most original form of Buddha's meditation available today is Vipassana :

http://www.dhamma.org/

Here you analyse your entire self , starting from breathing to putting attention on each & every part of body with non-indulgent (equanimous ) attitude . Slowly your entire being starts to awaken. And one day you achieve blissful trance state of detachment from outer body. Then you would understand that the outer body is only like a space suit (or like Oculus ) for worldly sensual experience.

From there your quest will take you to many other OBE experiences , Buddha has also mentioned about becoming omnipresent universal consciousness(5th state of trance) when you would experience all things & all beings within your own self . Buddha has mentioned 9 states of trance in total.

On achieving universal-super-consciousness (5th state of trance) you would achieve supernatural powers too.

Transcending this also you will further experience void (null) state which is a transition state only (7th state of trance).

Finally the 9th universal state of trance is achieved when again you become omnipresent but unaware of the material world , everywhere , eternal, unseen , blissful . This is the final state of Nirvana/ Moksha/ Eternal life/ kingdom of heaven.

You can read about all these trance states here (at end of sutta):

http://tipitaka.wikia.com/wiki/Ariyapariyesana_Sut...

I don't think Buddhism requires one to follow any god or gods. If you want a divine being and far-eastern religion appeals to you, it would probably be Hinduism you're after. Yeah, lots of gods. I'm not clear on the nature of the gods, but it appears to me that generally they're personifications of the attributes of their divine principle and not necessarily thought of as actual individuals. Any Hindu ought to feel free to correct me on that. I'm currently studying Hinduism to know what they believe, but I'm only approaching the edges of it.

From what I've read so far, it is surprisingly (to me) similar to Christianity. Who knew?

Many Buddhists are atheists, so if you remain atheist, its more like taking on a Philosophy, but really- the Buddha himself was not an atheist. The Buddha believed in Brahman and the devas. He taught awakening to Brahman, and that the devotion to the devas have no lasting value. He was pretty Monotheist in a Hindu sense

"Could someone give me a run-down about Buddhism"

Please read this answer and its sub-links, which will explain the Buddhism to you:

/question/index?qid=20140...

As a Buddhist:

1. We respect everything happened in this world, but we don’t have to agree with it.

2. Everything happened in this world, there are reasons and conditions behind it, if we want to make the world better, and we can try to improve the reasons and conditions.

3. We learn to practice Buddha’s teaching to benefit ourselves first, after we can keep a better life, a calm and peaceful life. We can help the others, who like to have this kind of life, to achieve to the same level of calm and peaceful life as we do.

4. The most important practice in Buddhism is the body and mind observation, once we are good at this tool, we will be able to continue practice and improve our life day by day. And this answer is related to this key point:

/question/index?qid=20140...

5. What you do in the present moment, dictates what happens in the future! We only concentrate in the present moment.

We don't practice and try to change something; we practice and let the nature of our practices to reach the non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion life.

We only observe, when we observe the process of worry, we will understand why the worry happened, so, we will know how not go the same path to reach this kind of 'worry'. Since we understand, we experience personally. Once someone is cut by a knife, will this person be careful with knife next time.

We use the non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion to practice. We respect everything in this world, which it is happened with some reasons and conditions behind it. So, when we observe something happened, we know it happened, and try not to mix greed, hatred, or dilution into it. If there is something that we have to resolve, we face the problem and solve the problem. Even if, there is greed, hatred, or delusion bonded into our mind, when we find out, we try not to continue it from that time on. And we respect that, the ability is not there yet. Gradually, we will be changed toward non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion life.

In our life time we experience various things, and if it's worth referencing in our future, they're stored in the brain; the more chances it's released from the brain the more profound it becomes.

The messages released from our brain, is just for our reference, it's for us to use, not for us to worry.

Whenever we're faced with the brain to release unhappy messages, to know that this message appeared, if it's something that we have to face, just face it and solve it, does not exclude nor resist it, over the time, the effect of these messages will become lighter.

Rejection, resistance, etc. will only deepened the strength of these messages in the brain, and become more affecting on our life.

These informational messages, are just for the purpose of helping us, put down the messages which don't have reference value. Knowing the messages released from the brain are for reference only is important. People should never be worried or suffered by the messages released from the brain. Realize this is a reference message that we either use it or just put it down. If we cannot fulfill this simple rule, then we are exactly used by the body and mind.

I practice the body and mind observation meditation for the past four years. The practice could described as the following, for you to understand it:

Take the moments now for example, your eye look at the screen of your computer, you could use your eye contact as your object of meditation, you could use your feeling as your object of meditation, or you could use your mind flow as your object of mediation. While you were typing to ask this question too, you could use, the tangible feel of your finger touched to the keyboard, eye contact to the screen, feeling or your mind flow while you were writing your question as your object of meditation. For eating, talking, listening, etc., will be the same. That means, a we can meditate all day long and realize how the mind, feeling, body reacted to the daily events. While the emotional state happened, we will observe it too, after long time we will gain true knowledge and finally gain some wisdom to know how to deal with the daily events.

So, smile, relax, release and just try to be calm and peaceful all the time, observing will let us gain more knowledge and eventually gain some wisdom.

I think it's important to know that Buddhism isn't a philosophy you stick on your life and find delight in. Many people say "I'm Buddhist" but they do totally "un-Buddhist" things, such as indulging in sex, even watching movies can be considered "un-Buddhist".

The four noble truths illustrate the point of the teaching well: there is suffering, an origin, a cessation, and the way leading to the realization of this cessation. So the point of practicing Buddhism is to eliminate the suffering in your life — and this takes serious effort, and is difficult at first (partly because you don't even know what the right way to practice is).

Understanding the practice fully requires you to actually practice. I remember at first I was really obsessed with studying because I wanted to know what the practice was before trying it out. But this didn't really do anything, it just put a bunch of concepts in my head (which are useful to an extent). I could only understand the practice by starting it, and I could only start it if I had faith that it led to the end of suffering — this is the importance of faith in Buddhism, the Buddha himself actually taught about how faith is one of the supports for enlightenment. If you don't have faith in the path, you're likely just going to drop it and continue living heedlessly — and so you'll be stuck in suffering.

Ultimately, in order to be free from suffering, you need to let go of everything. This simply means not attaching to anything, and this requires that you cease your desire for sensuality, becoming, and non-becoming. It doesn't mean we just sit still like a rock our whole life — we're not getting rid of the "desire" to move. We're getting rid of the desire that is caused by a delusion, namely the unawareness of the conditioned nature of things, the unawareness of the unsatisfactory nature of conditioned things, and the emptiness of things. If we understand these things, we'll no longer have this desire to find happiness in the senses, happiness in being this or that, or even happiness in not-existing.

The uprooting of these desires goes deep. For example, holding onto opinions or ideals is rooted in this desire for becoming — note the sense of self developed around opinions, and note the tendency to hold onto these opinions as truth and see opposing opinions as false, bad, etc. In Buddhism, right view is not a matter of opinions but a matter of seeing. You *view* things as they are, you don't simply believe things to be impermanent and so forth. If you actually see things in this way, then there will be no reason to hold onto anything.

But please keep in mind, we're not trying to immediately just let go of things. The practice is gradual. It takes time.

I recommend you start the practice by being mindful of your body, and your mind's tendency to seek happiness in conditioned things. Also, be mindful of your opinions and how they effect your actions, and contemplate the qualities of these actions.

You can find a lot of help in the suttas on accesstoinsight.org. Remember: it's gradual, so you won't understand everything at first. If you're serious about practicing Buddhism, then you mustn't let your faith diminish just because you don't understand everything. Also keep in mind that the practice will likely bring about some major changes in your life, changes people don't like (when they think about them), such as the abandonment of sensuality. As for sensuality, the Buddha made it clear that sensuality doesn't lead to a bland or boring life — after all, blandness and boredom are both tied to sensuality. The Buddha taught that the abandonment of sensuality leads to the first meditative state of jhana — and this is definitely not unpleasant.

You do realize most Buddhists are atheists, right? Atheism is not a religion and neither is theism; they are just positions on belief (or lack of) of a deity.

Now why did I have to explain that to another atheist?

I will address this here as I am aware it is a common error :

"People usually associate the term "atheism" with not being affiliated with any religion, not as much with non-theistic religions."

Irreligion is different from atheism. While most atheists are not in a religion, many are and it is an error to claim otherwise. Religions can be atheistic or theistic and are thus subsets of one or the other. Atheism is only defined as lack of belief in deities; it says nothing about whether or not the person is in a religion or not. Same goes for theism.

Budhism back in its day was true spirituality and a way to become a spirituality enlightened being but since the mass removal of spiritual knowledge it has been corrupted and will ruin you spiritually if anything.

note Satan means truth in Sanskrit one of the earths most oldest spiritual languages. True spirituality is of Satan.

check out the monk yuttadhammo on youtube. he's probably answered most of the questions you have. you can even ask him questions..

Please don't turn your back on God like the Buddha, Jesus died for your sins because he loves you:

https://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome-p...