Please include something from the passage I have included and use it as one source. The text book it comes from is:
“The Rise of Buddhism.” The Humanistic Tradition, by Gloria K. Fiero, 7th ed., vol. 1, McGraw Hill, 2015, pp. 192–196.
The Message of the Buddha which is his earliest sermons, the Buddha set in motion the Wheel of the Law (dhanna). His message was simple. The path to
enlightenment begins with the Four Noble Truths: I. pain is universal 2. desire causes pain 3. ceasing to desire relieves pain 4. right conduct leads to
release from pain. Right conduct takes the Middle Way, or Eightfold Path: right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort,
right mindfulness, and right concentration. The Eightfold Path leads to insight and knowledge, and, ultimately, to nirvana. The Buddhist’s goal is not, as with
Christianity, the promise of personal immortality, but rather, escape from the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. For the Buddhist, “salvation” lies in
the extinction of the Self. The Buddha was an eloquent teacher whose concerns, like those of Jesus, were ethical and egalitarian. Just as Jesus criticized
Judaism’s emphasis on ritual, so Siddhartha attacked the existing forms of Hindu worship, including animal sacrifice and the authority of the Vedas. In accord
with Hinduism, he encouraged the annihilation of worldly desires and the renunciation of material wealth. But in contrast to the caste•oriented Hinduism of
his time, the Buddha held that enlightenment could be achieved by all Denote. regardless of caste. Renouncing reliance on the extinction of the Self. The
Buddha was an eloquent teacher whose concerns, like those of Jesus. were ethical and egalitarian. Just as Jesus criticized Judaism’s emphasis on ritual, so
Siddhartha attacked the existing forms of Hindu worship, including animal sacrifice and the authority of the Vedas. In accord with Hinduism, he encouraged
the annihilation of worldly desires. and the renunciation of material wealth. But in contrast to the caste-oriented Hinduism of his time, the Buddha held that
enlightenment could be achieved by all people, regardless of caste. Renouncing reliance on the popular gods of the Vedas (see chapter 3), the Buddha
urged his followers to work out their own salvation. Ultimately, Jesus and Siddhartha were reformers of older world faiths: Judaism and Hinduism. Soon after
his enlightenment, Siddhartha assembled a group of disciples, five of whom founded the first Buddhist monastic order. In the years after his death, his life
came to be surrounded by miraculous tales, which, along with his sermons, were pre-served and recorded by his followers. For instance, legend has it that
Siddhartha was born miraculously from the right side of his mother, Queen Maya; and at that very moment, the tree she touched in the royal garden burst
into bloom. The Buddha himself wrote nothing, but his disciples memorized his teachings and set them down during the first century B.C.E. in three main
books, the Punkas or “Baskets of the Law.” These works, written in Pali and Sanskrit, were divided into instructional chapters known as sutras (Sanskrit for
“thread”). The most famous of the works in the Buddhist canon is the sermon that the Buddha preached to his disciples at the Deer Park in Benares (modern
Varanasi in northeast India). The Sermon at Benares, part of which is reproduced here, urges the abandonment of behavioral extremes and the pursuit of
the Eightfold Path of right conduct. In its emphasis on modesty, moderation, and compassion, and on the renun-ciation of worldly pleasures, it has much in
common with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Comparable also to Jesus’ teachings (see Matthew 5:11, for instance) is the Buddha’s regard for loving kindness
that “commends the return of good for evil”—a concept central to the Sermon on Abuse
READING 8.4a
From the Buddha’s Sermon at Benares (recorded Ca 100 9 E “There are two extremes, 0 bhikkhus,1 which the man who has given up the world ought not to
follow—the habitual practice, on the one hand, of self-indulgence which is unworthy, vain, and fit only for the worldly-minded—and the habitual practice,
on the other hand, of self-mortification, which is painful, useless, and unprofitable. “Neither abstinence from fish or flesh, nor go shaving the head, nor
wearing T2ttessi
