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Wedding verses ala Buddhism?
Jeffrey
Veteran
Corinthians 13:4 is popular in all of the Xtian weddings I have been to..
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
I wonder if there are any Buddhist verses that wouldn't weird out non-Buddhists.
1
Comments
I don't have anything to add, but I am very interested in the responses! Great thread.
I've just had as trawl through A.to I. and I can't find anything other than what the Buddha decrees is Right behaviour for a wife, and Right behaviour for a husband, which may not always sit well with emancipated young, modern people...
I further found a text exhorting NOT getting married, and NOT having children... Ooops...
It's not that Buddhism doesn't rejoice in a bonded relationship; it's just that it's not a central tenet of Practice.
Marriage is an extremely significant event in a Theistic religion, because it's a construct originally designed to make people procreate and bring 'more sheep to the flock'.
Marriage and union is encouraged, and seen as a sacred sacrament before God. It's actually an ancient but outdated concept, and that's a truth that can be seen because the original wording about a woman 'belonging' to her husband and his family, and obeying him, has been completely excised from the text.
Marriage is religiously encouraged because the Church wanted to not only keep its flock together, but exercise some form of control over the habit of adultery, and gain a foothold into the conscience of its followers. It also became a lucrative business, as priests began to charge for their services...
Religious marriage is in decline.
More and more people are choosing to marry outside any religious establishment, and religious ceremonies are becoming rarer - and it follows that such texts are being aired less and less.
There are countless places in the UK which are now licensed to be locations where a marriage can take place; hotels, castles, historic monuments and even open-air locations.
Sorry.... You asked.
I answered, but in a rather lengthier way that even I thought I originally would.
For the record, I married in a registry Office, and the ceremony took less than 15 minutes.
And a lot of that time was because the Registrar spoke so softly, we had to keep asking her to repeat what she had just said...!
I just want to add... I'm interested because I've been engaged for quite a while and we still have no plans because we just aren't sure what to do! I think you all know by now that we moved very far from home, so our options are either suffer extreme distress to plan a wedding back home or to just elope. Elopement sounds great to me, actually, but I do want to have some sort of ceremony back home, just to sort of celebrate the occasion. All we really know about that is that we want to have a zombie themed wedding/celebration (Naturally. I bet the rest of you didn't know my fiancee is just as obsessed as I am). Neither of us want it to be Christian leaning, but I think it would be cool to have some Buddhist ideas. But sadly, I think Fed might be right about the whole thing... lol. Marriage just isn't a basic tenet of Buddhism.
Federica, this quote on Christian marriage might be illuminating. Just shows it's not as dry as one might think:
"How do they become one flesh? As if you should take the purest part of gold, and mingle it with other gold; so in truth here also the woman as it were receiving the richest part fused by pleasure, nourishes it and cherishes it, and withal contributing her own share, restores it back to a man. What then? When there is no child, the two will not be one? No, for their coming together has this effect, it diffuses and commingles the bodies of both. And as one who has cast ointment into the oil has made the whole one, so in truth it is here." -- St. John Chrysostom
I was working with a friend on a Buddhist type ceremony she wanted (they are already legally married and just wanted an event to have with friends at a later date) and we focused on the theme of "no mud no lotus" that is a common Buddhist calligraphy. It's not a neat little packaged quote, but we found it pretty easy to build around, at least for that particular couple.
We had a non-religious wedding. The only reading we had done was the Apache Wedding Prayer.
No offense. I just find them ridiculously long and boring, lol.
On the plus side, no one going to a Buddhist style wedding will be subject to a Catholic wedding mass
Yes, fine.
but quite clearly, the sacrament of marriage defines a marital state as one designed to bring forth offspring...
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and
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There are quite a few more...
The passage you quote has little bearing on the Church's opinion of marriage, and is certainly not standard Creed.
Federica, that's the Roman Catholic church. The passage I quoted is the standard view on marriage in the Orthodox Church, where children are expected, but never said to be the purpose of marriage. In the Orthodox Church, the purpose of marriage is said to be companionship on the spiritual journey. The Orthodox Church also has no position on birth control.
I just think one should be aware that not all Christians are fundamentalist, or Catholic, or Orthodox... there are a lot of different views.
But as to Buddhist weddings ceremonies... don't most temples have them?
Okay, in that case, that condition is relatively recent (I'm talking last 60 - 100 years or so).
And no, Buddhist temples have no connection or ceremony regarding marriage, at all.
Marriage is just another attachment. Why would Buddhism encourage that?
It recognises married couples exist, and that couples want to get married, and the Buddha spoke of how a man should behave as a husband, and how a woman should behave as a wife - but that is the full extent of the consideration...
Interesting piece about CTR and marriage ceremonies
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/10/trungpa-rinpoches-buddhist-weddings-linda-v-lewis/
@federica imagine if all of us stopped getting married or having kids to prevent attachment and clinging. Where would we go?
Just jokes! Please don't answer that question!
Ruben Ruben I've been thinkin'
What a fine world it would be
If the girls were all transported
Far across the northern sea
:-)
(old folk song)