I. HUMAN RIGHTS & RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

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Practical endeavour towards achieving liberation consists in treading the eight-fold path of right views; right resolve; right speech; right conduct; right livelihood; right effort; right awareness; and right meditation. All of these injunctions are to be pursued simultaneously. To fail to do this is not to commit sins of omission, but merely to fail to act in accordance with enlightened self-interest. Adherents are also abjured to observe ten prohibitions; to renounce the ten bonds which tie men to the ego; and to renounce the immoral acts proscribed. But the emphasis is on practising loving-kindness rather than merely maintaining the canons of morality. The whole point of religious practice is to overcome suffering by overcoming the delusion of ego, and thus to thwart the cycle of rebirths and of transmigration.

Like other ancient religions, Buddhism has been the recipient of extraneous residues from the folk religions of the regions in which it has taken root, and thus among one of numerous alien "deposits" to be found both in its formal body of ancient teaching and in the actual practice of contemporary Buddhists in Theravada lands is acceptance of the idea of the existence of gods. These beings are not regarded as required objects of worship, fulfil no special role, and are altogether peripheral to the central themes of Buddhist soteriology, persisting merely as residues or accretions from other religious traditions which practical Buddhism tolerates and accommodates. >>>>>