Mind Cultivation

Mind Cultivation
by -

The topic for tonight is entitled: “Mental Cultivation in Buddhist Spirituality.” I suppose the reason why this topic was chosen is because in Buddhism the starting point of our spiritual quest starts with our mind. So in Buddhism, being a non-theistic religion, which is to say that it is neither theistic nor atheistic, we do not start with a belief in God or some other kind of supernatural or super-normal power, but we start with our own mind. In terms of Buddhist spirituality, if we do not discuss the mind, if we do not pay attention to our mind then we cannot really speak about Buddhist spirituality at all. The reason for this is because in Buddhism, as a Buddhist, what we try to do is to emulate and to follow the example of Gautama Buddha, the Bhagavan Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived in India roughly 2500 years ago. So therefore we try to realise what Buddha himself had realised, which was the state of enlightenment.