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To: talk.religion.misc From: tyagi mordred nagasivaSubject: Tripping through the Religion Store Date: 49940615 Quoting: |vincel@microsoft.com (Vince LaPoint) and |>>other(s) |>>In which version of Buddhism are you referring to? As I have read in |>>Buddhist literature it takes MANY lifetimes to attain enlightenment. |>>(The Buddha being the "Enlightened One") This varies. Some Buddhists say 'one lifetime', others say many; some say it may take many, but it could be that you are presently ripe. |>As I know in Zen you could attain enlightment within one life time. Maybe |>that's one of the reasons Westeners accept Zen rather than any |>of the more esoteric/tantric schools. Esoteric/tantric? Hmm, more like the more EXOteric or degraded schools; tantra varies tremendously and you've not only got official Tantric (Tibetan) Buddhism but the Tantric 'Hindus' (heh) too. |>>: Also, no other religion can make the same claim: nobody has ever been |>>: killed in the name of Buddhism. I gather that this is mostly true, though there are exceptions I'm told. |>>I know some Vietnamese that would dispute your claim... |> |>Agree, the strange combination of martial arts and certain buddhist |>schools (Korean Zen, someone correct me if my background knowledge is |>wrong) is also a little bit strange. Not too strange. The fighting monks of the Shao-lin temples were of Bodhidharma's line, I'm told. Bodhidharma was the First Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism who ventured from India and China and took the Dharma ('the Word') away from the absorptive 'Hindus' and into a den of hungry Taoists and Confucians! |It is apparent that we are taking a trip through the Religion Store here. 'We', white man? :> | "On this shelf is our selection of eastern religions, I'm surprised you consider them 'religion', given your apparent preferences. Perhaps you use the term loosely. | have some of our best-selling western religions. My impression is that the western religions were largely enforced, rather than sold, through several political channels (kings, knights, saracens ;>). |I don't think so. Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and are not equals. You have not, here, specified what *would* make people 'equals', even if religious personalities/myths. |Jesus, |for instance, declared Himself to be 'the way, the truth, and the life' and |added that 'no one comes to the Father but by Me.' This is exclusiveness. Apparently you are ignorant regarding the authorship of the Yeshua mythos. If there was a Jesus of Nazareth, then it is very unlikely that we know the details of what he said. Even if we *do* know that Yeshua said this stuff, that doesn't mean that he was the authority on Christianity, which seems to have surpassed the simple beginnings of his gruesome killing at the hands of Romans. More likely, this statement is an esoteric teaching transmitted through the vehicle of the pseudo-historical tale of the Sacrificed King, and it can be interpreted in ways which do *not* require exclusivity, as has been remarked at other times in Usenet, I'm sure. An example, though you will likely consider it repulsive, is that the 'I' and 'Me' relate to the EGO, and the Lamb is here attesting to the fact that we must first develop a *self* before we can return to the Source. |Right or wrong, the religions exclude one another. It's inherent. Well, this is your assessent. I think you are being extreme, but I do respect your opinion. |Base your beliefs on fact. Do research. This is very excellent advice, yet it will only tell us whether various writers *think* that something happened or what scriptures mean, etc. |Did the flood happen? You see, not only is there a flood mythos extant in most cultures (even some which cannot be linked to historical deluges), but most of physics of the 'Great Flood' are simply bogus. If you are talking *only* about the geographical area that would affect the supposed characters in the tales of _The Bible_ and wish to know if a deluge occured in this region, I'm sure that you can bring forward someone to attest to it and even some pretty good evidence that such an historical event occurred. However, all this means is that historical events and mythological tales in some way correlate. There has been a weave of myth and history within very many cultures for countless centuries, but this never did validate the rest of the information in the texts. That you and others might *take* the myths for literal history is likely one of the reasons that historical events were so woven - they introduce a potent psychic link to an otherwise powerful esoteric teaching. This is why it is so important to the religious to believe in the 'factuality' of the life of the Buddha (Gautama), for example, or Krishna, or Rama. None of the potent ties increase the likelihood that these mythic persons had physical existence, and given the number of myths which preceded the fabrication of the scriptures that had similar form, it is actually quite UNlikely that such is the case. I'm not saying that 'believers' won't fight me on this issue or retain the powerful link to 'historicity' which has throttled the modern mind, just that your emotional and biased exhortations to the contrary do not a science of history make. |Did the sun stop for three days? |Does the excavation of Jericho reflect the Biblical account? The first is rather meaningless. What could you mean by saying that 'the sun stops'? Eclipse? These are, of course, regularly occurring astronomical events, and I'll bet that the people who edited _The Bible_ and other scriptures knew something if not everything about this kind of phenomena, perhaps even being able to determine with some precision when it may have occurred. What I'm suggesting is that it is entirely possible that the story was manufactured with historical details to bolster the faith of the ignorant. Will you automatically place yourself within that group, or will you look at the possibilities with an open mind? |Did Jesus raise from the dead on the third day? There are several issues in regards to thaumaturgy that make it incredibly difficult to assess this question. Given the fact of an historical Yeshua (unproven), what sort of criteria shall we accept pertaining to the events surrounding his miracles and undeadness? I suggest that it is too easy to explain this as an esoteric teaching, again, presented in pseudo-historical form, and that we have too little evidence (the Shroud? hee hee) to move to assume that this is not the case. I'm sure you can point me to all sorts of fallacious Christian-mongering without hints of true science, but the fact remains that we cannot know the details of issues such as are raised in this question, and any pandering to biased theologians only muddies the issue. |These are facts that can be either proven or disproven. I suggest that they cannot be due to the lack of evidence. Some appear to think they have a first-hand account even when they do not, or perhaps they presume that there is some sort of physical remnant of the event. Even given a cave (there are likely lots of them) and a boulder, this only means that the authors of the myths did their homework. |Don't base your eternity on which doctrine most sounds appealing, |or which makes you feel best. Given the dearth of evidence for any sort of historical verification for the blatantly mythic scriptures in major religions, 'basing our eternity' (what a loaded phrase) on what sounds appealing or what makes us feel best may well be the most reasonable course. If we like it we'll more likely *practice* it. How it makes us feel is quite important, I think. If we feel more spiritual or more ecstatic or whatever we choose, then this is quite important. It all depends on what we want our religion to do for us. If we want it to shut down our minds and take away our doubts, then most religions have something to offer in the realm fundamental. |Look at the statement above |regarding the Westerners accepting Zen rather than some other schools. It's |pretty disgusting, if you think about it --- and especially with the stakes |so high. It seems you've chosen messianic Christianity (given your comments about Jesus above and the 'stakes' here). Bully for you. I understand that part of your practice may well include taking very radical positions without basis in thought or scientific evidence. I even acknowledge that the teachings you may espouse (albeit that you may take them literally) are very important esoteric principles. However, you seem to wish to foist off your theoretic in an underhanded manner by referring to 'eternity' and 'the stakes' when we may not agree with you as to their accuracy/relevance. Not only is this disrespectful, it indicates to me that you are a biased and unreliable source of information when it comes to religions as a global phenomenon. In essence, what you were talking about when you said that people had been 'tripping through the religion store' is also true about you, except that you've bought and paid for your product and are now marketing it as 'the best' or 'the only reasonable paradigm' from which to operate. Apparently you're condemning shopping around because you have stuck your mind and heart into a dogmatic hole and can't be bothered to respect the lives of others by virtue of accepting their choices in the matter without trying to steer their course. At least this is what I pick up from your writings, and I may well be mistaken. Tripping through the religion store can be a wonderful experience, if we let it be. However, like all adventures of this sort, nobody says that we are limited to one purchase or that we should not compare the various aspects (color, fit, origin, etc.) of the product in a fair manner when doing our shopping. My own preference is to enjoy the goods that others have found valuable and live outside the stores, keeping my own life simple and of sound resolution. In this way I begin to manufacture my *own* goods, rather than being at the whim of the mass-production merchants, such as you would seem to represent. Have a nice day. |Vince |vincel@microsoft.com tyagi tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com
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