These days people turn away from a religion and become unbelievers, it is because on the one hand these people do not really understand the essence of religion. On the other hand, religious followers have made the religion lose its essence. Since we have lost our leaders and today their teaching still remain under the name of them or their teaching, and  people nowadays are facing in both healing and killing in the name of religion. Most people turn to religion for the sake of healing, helping, rather to inspire acts of peacemaking.

Talking about religions is like talking about food that we eat to fulfill our hunger or like talking about a boat that we need to cross from one side to another of the river. For instance, suppose we do not have a feeling of hunger or need to cross the river, therefore the food and the boat here become lacking of its integral  essence. Basically, the food or the boat does not need us but we are the human beings need them. The same as religions does not need us but we do need religions to guide us. If you think you are somewhat beyond religions what is the need of religions.

Buddhist Themes

We live in a world filled with human desires -- whether these be the desires of affluent people for more goods, of poor people for basic goods, of terrorists who kill themselves and others for the sake of a supposed greater good, or the desires of those who oppose terrorism.

What desires should we follow, and which should we reject? To put this quaintly but directly, could we learn to turn down the heat, and live not in the hot house of desire, but in houses of moderate temperature?

Buddhism, with its philosophy of awareness and non-attachment, enables people to view their experience in a manner which is universal in scope, yet involves no religious or philosophical credos. The attitude is simple, yet the effect is profound.

Quotating from the Introduction: "Through simple mindfulness of where one's mind and body "is" at any given time, one become aware that holding on to one's conceptions and fixed attitudes causes suffering. Thus, we overcome attachment and desire by simply becoming mindful of it, and then releasing it, in a non-judgmental way. Mindfulness of the rise and fall of desire, and the movement of one's own judging mind in meditation and in activity, is then, central to the Buddhist attitude about human experience."

A person's mindfulness of strong emotions, and an ability to watch their rise and fall, and not to act on them, assumes universal significance. It is really part of one's character building, which, in turn, ought to be part of nation building. Since nations are composed of citizens (a word that has mostly been replaced the the word, "consumer"), one's willingness to practice mindfulness on their own strong emotions and not to necessarily act on them, provides nothing less than a universal civilizing influence in the world.