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Was told that eastern philosophy was sacreligious?
I'm fairly new to Buddhism. It's been a year since I've learned some of the basic concepts and haven't been too devoted until now. I was born and raised Christian. Didn't go to church, but my Mom was an extreme devout Christian. The only factor I ever really cared about with Christianity was the hard truth that one will either go to Heaven or Hell. As I started breaking away (after about 5 years of being practically agnostic) and exploring Buddhism I found great comfort in the whole idea of rebirth and not following a judgmental Lord who will damn you to Hell for eternity if refusal to believe.
It wasn't until recently that my Uncle (licensed Minister) began telling me obsessively about "The Revelations" & the "End times" that we're in in which God will come down to Earth. We were on the topic of The Occult and Satan worshippers and how they will burn in the "lake of fire." THAT, I could easily understand, possibly, but then he started talking about other religions that are doomed to hell. He began speaking of "Hindu, Muslims, and Buddhists" and how when it comes time, they will all burn in hell as well. This frustrated me because I thought most religions (non extremist religions) sort of followed the old saying "to each his own." I asked him the reason, and he stated that "God created this Earth and these Hindus and Buddhists triedtIo dismiss that and invent their own religion, and that's Satan inside of all of them tricking them."
The worst part is that these ideas were shoved down my throat since I started walking. Basically, I'm an Ex Christian who still fears burning in Hell LOL. It's almost like it's something I can't shake, has anybody else had this problem, or have dealt with people like this ?
It wasn't until recently that my Uncle (licensed Minister) began telling me obsessively about "The Revelations" & the "End times" that we're in in which God will come down to Earth. We were on the topic of The Occult and Satan worshippers and how they will burn in the "lake of fire." THAT, I could easily understand, possibly, but then he started talking about other religions that are doomed to hell. He began speaking of "Hindu, Muslims, and Buddhists" and how when it comes time, they will all burn in hell as well. This frustrated me because I thought most religions (non extremist religions) sort of followed the old saying "to each his own." I asked him the reason, and he stated that "God created this Earth and these Hindus and Buddhists triedtIo dismiss that and invent their own religion, and that's Satan inside of all of them tricking them."
The worst part is that these ideas were shoved down my throat since I started walking. Basically, I'm an Ex Christian who still fears burning in Hell LOL. It's almost like it's something I can't shake, has anybody else had this problem, or have dealt with people like this ?
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fear. all belief structures stem from the fear of the unknown.
so you have to learn to engage with that fear and become totally imtimate with it.
you do this by sitting with it in meditation. you meet that fear everyday and it becomes a friend.
then with a sharp awareness you see through such fear. you see that it is merely grasping to grasp.
so you deal with your fear, then you can understand another's fear. they are all trying their best to figure their shit out. whether by grasping at a belief structure out of fear, aversion, and ignorance. we are all trying our best.
to see how our minds works is to see how the other works. then we can open ourselves to others and help them. either by speaking simple truths if they are receptive or by doing small acts of kindness...like being a beacon of peace.
*He questioned God's authority. - You did it. I did it. Most people do it.
*He tricked a woman into eating a fruit. - If this woman never would have eaten this fruit, we would as ignorant as animals. We now have the knowledge the likes of which only gods used to have. We have logic, reason, morality, and "free will." If she would have never eaten this apple, you would never have been born (the reason being, Adam and Eve did not and could not reproduce until after they ate the fruit. Thus, Lucifer gave rise to the human race.) Plus, God KNEW Satan was going to do this, plus it is all part of His plan.
*He "tempts" you to do bad things. - Well, that isn't entirely true. All Satan did and ever does is give you the choice to choose between right and wrong. That is all he does.
*He messed with Job. - Yeah, with God's explicit permission.
*He "tortures" people in Hell - Wrong again. Satan is not really the king of Hell. God is the king of Hell. God created Hell for the purpose of punishing Satan and his demons and all the sinners. Satan is being as tortured as much as anyone else. He is much less a king than a victim. He is burning with Ghandi, Thomas Jefferson, the Buddha, Einstein, and the rest of the gang
--
So, as we can see, Satan isn't a bad guy. He is just like you or me. Now that we have that understanding - does Hell really make sense. Would a JUST, LOVING, MERCIFUL God send you to Hell for not believing in Him? lol No. Hell was simply a concept created by the church to scare people into Christianity.
Don't worry about old books and fear-mongering Ministers. Use logic and reason and everything will be okay. After all, Satan is the one who gave you logic and reason.
Hey, also... If your uncle ever wants to debate me, hit me up. I'm a licensed minister too.
The post about Satan, awesome, blew me away, thanks!
Unfortunately, the fear of eternal damnation is enough to make people want to believe, and then spread the fear of tyranny willingly themselves.. It's a sad existence IMO, but common enough.
Fortunately you have a choice and your eyes are already half open. It may not be the easiest path but I think your heart will want something truer.
Best wishes,
Abu
If you notice the condemnation in your uncle, you can clearly feel how that resonates with fear, which comes from ignorance. It is simply not wisdom or correct... and is evidenced by the lack of warmth he himself has for people who do not share his view. For instance, how could one enter heaven if there were others in hell? How could heaven exist along side hell? Could a loving heart be in heaven if there were others burning? I know that no matter how devote a person I was, heaven would not be paradise at all as long as something like hell existed. For a compassionate person, heaven and hell can not exist along side each other.
If your uncle said that Buddhists were actually aliens, would you be afraid that perhaps you were from another planet? So if he says you're bound for hell, can you see that it has to do with his perceptions and ignorance... rather than that maybe he's right? You have ample evidence that it is incorrect.
It reminds me of children with low self-esteem because their peers tell them things that are not true about themselves. "You're a loser" for instance. It simply doesn't fit, and yet can still invoke a powerful emotional response. His views on hell don't make sense, don't fit you, and yet they still feel powerful.
If you practice meditation, this fear>judgement effect in a human mind becomes much more clear, and how folks have projected those fears as they personify god is very obvious and lacks any quality that can disrupt a peaceful view.
But this doesn't get you off the hook for wondering about the afterlife. From my standpoint all we can do is deal with life our best now and cross our afterlife bridges later.
At the same time I have experienced kindness in the world, so if life goes on that force is alive in the universe and that is what I think of as my ally.
Our only enemy is ignorance, our only weapon wisdom.
Historically, I believe your uncle has his thinking cap on backwards. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc. did not try to remake Christianity to suit their own hell-bound purposes. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and even Judaism precede Christianity -- sometimes by thousands of years. Christianity is, so to speak, the new kid on the block. Frankly, I think this historical fact may worry Christianity ... what if all the old farts had taken the time to find out something Christianity is too young and too inexperienced to acknowledge? What if they're right and we're wrong? To suppress this question, sometimes Christianity feels it must speak more loudly, asserting an authority it has not yet honestly experienced. But I'm just guessing here.
For your own purposes, just take your time. Buddhism is not a threat-based occupation. Buddhism makes observations (The Four Noble Truths) and suggestions (The Eightfold Path). You won't go to heaven if you agree and you won't go to hell if you don't. The hard part about Buddhism is the fact that you have to find out for yourself what's what. This imperative (finding out for yourself) sounds very attractive at first, especially for anyone who has relied on the words and laws of others in the past. It sounds liberating ... find out for yourself. But the fact is that most people don't want to find out for themselves. They rely on the agreement of others. Finding out for yourself means precisely that ... and it can be pretty spooky. This is where courage and patience are necessary. Jesus did not walk into the desert in order to take part in a church social with cookies and milk. He went alone. It was hot. It was hard. And what he discovered cannot be relayed in words or by books. It is only available to those who likewise walk into the desert. Your life, your choice.
In Buddhism, one suggestion is meditation -- a literal sit-down-shut-up-erect-the-spine-sit-still-and-focus-the-mind practice. It is with such a practice that each of us is required to bring courage and patience and doubt to bear. Meditation, believe it or not, is a very sure tool in the effort to "find out for yourself." There is no need to compare your own efforts with anyone else's. The only thing that is required is your effort.
Best wishes in your efforts.
The Idea of a Independent creator god is refuted by Buddhas teachings on Dependent orgination so there is no need to worry if you listen to and contemplate Dharma and the good qualities of Buddha and other teachers whom have followed his example, past fears will not trouble you for you will see them for the B.S they are.
You should know there are certain capacities of being whom are not very intelligent or wise and that sometimes the package of their religion comes in an extreme form in order to attempt to benefit them to their understanding however it seems many of them in doing such throw the cause of future happiness out the window by not using a bit of common sense.
I believe that the whole heaven/hell paradigm is awful. I think reading the above quote for the first time started me down the path of wondering why I believed in that kind of system at all.
I am not very versed in Christianity but I read once on an old forum that there was a meeting where they 'the Establishment of the time I guess' decided which scriptures were legitimate/to keep and which not to. The meditative/contemplative aspects that were once part of Christianity were thrown out so to speak, leaving it as an easily corruptible? system and context for control of the masses.
As I said I am not very well versed on this, but it just reminded me that if this is true, it is a pity. I do know there are some Christian sects whom still pray and practice silence/contemplation/meditation etc but I am not sure if this is just a minority now.
By the way, I believe one of the strongest i.e. in this context loudest/most "certain" argument by many 'well intentioned' Christians regarding meditation is that you could get possessed. It is easy to see how easy it is to control and influence people through fear - the world over has this tactic but as to bringing genuine peace and goodwill, I doubt it is of much use.
Think really the only christians who still practice some form of meditation are the coptics.
Merci,
Abu
PS I had to look up Coptics as I was not familiar with the name or their practices/tradition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
And I like how Brian put it :P
It’s weird, it’s ugly and it is harmful.
But in a sense Buddhism is just like it.
Enlightenment is for those few who go against the current, while the masses will fill samsara for many kalpas to come.
Religions tell the tale of how exceptional we are - the few lucky ones who Realize the Truth.
Just imagine a religion telling us to just relax because we’re fine. And the highest achievement in this religion is when we come to realize that we’re completely ordinary.
I don’t think it would draw many followers.
I don’t think it would draw many followers."
Martin Luther King suggested approximately, "What's wrong with the world is not what scares people. What really scares them is that everything is all right."
If this is true -- and I think it is -- is it any wonder that someone would prefer choirs of angels or shrieks of agony?
Learn the history.
Learn the history of Christianity.
It is a tale of both inspiration and corruption side by side.
An excellent scholarly and also very personally written history is:
Constantine's Sword by James Carroll
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/constantines-sword-james-carroll/1100462068?ean=9780618219087&itm=1&usri=constantine27s%2bsword
It's the long sad story of how Jesus of Nazareth
was repackaged as a Roman god according to Roman law, and the instrument of his torture and death was repackaged as the brand new Roman imperial military logo....
designed to restore fear and order in a crumbling empire built on intolerable slavery on the brink of successful slave revolution...
...all designed by a murderous Roman general who killed all his own in-laws, then his own wife and son, in pursuit of consolidating his own exclusive power.
It is a very long 2000+ year history. Supposedly they made a movie based on the book, but I've not seen the movie:
You and your uncle are both a part of the very long history of Christianity.
Learn your history. Learn where you've come from.
That history will give you the broadest perspective from which to sort things out for yourself, pursue your own development according to your own needs, reason, and beliefs, and deal with judgmental relatives with confidence.
As for rebirth? I remembered my former life as a child and I spoke about it to my Christian pastor sufficiently articulately at age 7 such that he ran away down a hallway in fear saying "no no no, we don't believe such things!" with his hands over his ears like a frightened child...
Frightened by a 7 year old...who had once been an old woman who died in a war and who remembered.
The adults forbade me from speaking about it because it frightened them.
I grew up and found the remains of my former life standing halfway across the globe in a language I don't understand, and just as I had left them when I died. Many people regard rebirth as a metaphor. From my own experience, it's no metaphor. I lived and died there and the buildings still exist in the real world and it's a figment of nobody's imagination.
Rebirth was a tenet of Judaism when Jesus of Nazareth was recognized as a Jewish rabbi by his followers. Unfortunately the concept of rebirth... of a master ever having to do unto others as he would have done unto him because he could be reborn a slave in turn himself... would have undermined the slavery on which the Roman Empire was based, and so it was not tolerated.
@Floating_Abu I've just been reading about those apocryphal Gospels, and other material that was cut out of the Bible. The Gospel of Thomas says that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary. So that one had to go. The Gospel of Philip says that Jesus travelled East with his mother and Mary Magdalene after the crucifixion. So that one had to go, too. One gets the impression of a New Testament that gradually had to be cut down over time, as official Church doctrine evolved, because this or that contradictory statement would be found in one Gospel after another. In the end, they were left with a grand total of 4, instead of 15, or whatever the original total is. Reincarnation was in the Bible until one of the great councils decided that it got in the way of the doctrine of eternal damnation. That got cut out either in the 9th century or the 13th, sources differ.
I've also heard rumors that it's possible now to buy a version of the Bible that has all the apocryphal Gospels in it that have been translated.
Keep in mind, Buddhism relies heavily on a persons own experience.
For example, sometimes people understand "converting" as of before believing one thing, and afterwards not believing it anymore.
What i suggest is however, do not deny your experience, simply because it now belongs to another religion. You say you still fear hell, so what does hell mean to you? What do you feel when you hear about hell? What do you imagine? What stories come up in you about it? See your emotions and thoughts are real in some sense, regardless on the philosophy you choose to accompany them; either telling yourself that there is a hell or isn't.
Maybe i can be more clear by taking something that might be related to the idea of hell for me - physical pain. In Buddhism, we do not aim to enjoy pain, we do not aim to cease believing in pain (since we just hurt longer since we will not try out medicine that has the potential to relieve it for example), we do not aim for others to stop talking about their experience of pain, or how real or how real it isn't or so on. The reason being, that is irrelevant. You know what pain is, i know what pain is. We probably experience pain much differently though. Your uncle knows what hell is, you know what hell is - that is, what it means to you. Therefore, there is no need to deny its existence, or force it into some kind of absolute existence or whatever. When you know what hell is to you, you will know what you have to do about it. Or don't have to do anything about, doesn't matter.
So, how does one handle pain, suffering in Buddhism? By understanding you can slowly let it be. Instead of hell + suffering there will be only hell; should it arise. So what is hell to you? What is it, that you do not want? Do not just reason it out, since we can tell ourselves all kinds of ridiculous things. One way to overcome this is listening to your body, and what comes up when you think about it.
After you understand what hell means to you, you might see that it is completely reasonable not to ignore it, to have feelings of fear arise with it; it is hard for me to go any further here, since what you will have to do depends greatly on what your understanding of hell develops to be. The more you look into what it means, the easier you might understand why people fear it, since you will see what aspect of it you fear, or are trying to avoid, yourself.
Fearing hell and converting to a religion that does "not involve" hell has the same effect; you not being in it (in hell). Buddhism will not let you run away from it, like Christianity may suggest you do, and a quick glimpse at Buddhism might seem (since it may not use the word in the same context).
If you will not be perfectly clear to yourself about your experience of what hell means to you, the only thing that will happen is, it will return. And it will return whenever you will try to avoid it, regardless of your means to do it. Hell, what it will mean to you - should you decide to keep at Buddhism, will be an experience, like any other. The only way not to be pushed around by hell and its associated ideas (Christianity, Christian people, etc etc) is to be in hell, see hell, experience hell, be pushed into hell; whatever is that you fear. This i do not mean physically, all aspects of hell can be experienced on the meditation cushion =P ^^ The same goes for Satan or any similar beings, of course.
In brief:
1. What is hell to you?
2. What can you do about it?
3. What do you want to do about it?
4. What are you willing to do about it?
This is also why most people will be heavily preaching away about meditation here, meditation there, meditation, meditation etc etc. Thing is, i can talk to you about how i understood hell all i want but unless you examine it in yourself its useless. It like me trying to explain to you why a certain color is yellow. The best bet is for me to suggest a situation where your attention will have to be on that color, for example, looking at a banana^^ But the only way you will know is to see for yourself. I can go on all day long about it (as various documentaries about what Christianity and hell and Christ and God); saying what they are or aren't or were lied about or why the idea must be wrong, or why is it right this way but wrong the other way; but without direct experience it is all an argument whether yellowness is rightly described in biology and physics books and who wrote wrong and right about it^^
/Victor
In Buddhism, there is no external Being who "sends you to hell." Rather, your own actions lead you to continue in the cycle of life, experiencing varying rounds of delusion or understanding. If we're extremely deluded, that is likened to experiencing hell. The less deluded you are, the less likely you are to experience life as negative.
As far as Buddhism being sacrilegious, @alwaysprosperous, it may be comforting in a strange way to note that Christian sects often teach that other Christian sects will not go to Heaven. For example, Seventh-Day Adventists teach that only Seventh-Day Adventists will go to Heaven (we don't believe in the existence of hell--just never waking up again).
So with that in mind, you can see that there isn't anything necessarily inherent to Buddhism that is a Heavenly deal-breaker, given that so many Christians grandly disqualify other Christians from seats at the Big Concert.