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Have you all heard the good word of our Lord and Savior Shakyamuni Buddha?
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Sep 20, 2016 16:58
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At the Great Monkey Year Teachings the head of my Buddhist lineage talked about the meaning of taking Refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. He made a point that taking Refuge doesn't mean worship as such, and more importantly that it doesn't have to be an exclusive relationship. He stated unequivocally that if you want to practice and worship and make offerings to your local or family deities you should do that, so long as you recognize that they are also samsaric beings and cannot give you ultimate happiness or liberation. Generally it's recognized as being similar to taking a knee to an earthly lord or king - you do what you gotta do as long as you realize that they can only benefit you in this world. I don't see why the same can't be the case with Christianity. The OT largely discusses God as being the biggest and baddest god in the region, but it doesn't make claims at monotheism until much later. It's very clear that other cults and sects and religions also have powerful gods and their priests and sorcerers get results, it's just that the God of the Bible fucks their poo poo up by being more powerful. So I don't see why one can't be a follower of Jesus and accept Jesus as their savior and redeemer and then simultaneously go "but yo, Freyr, I could really use a good harvest." I mean, some monotheists still acknowledge the existence of powerful spirits, nothing says powerful spirits need to be Christian. That said, there are likely prohibitions here simply because God is supposed to take care of all that, which is why you need saints as intercessors - he's super busy taking care of everyone else, good to get an advocate.
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Sep 21, 2016 15:37
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Tias posted:I wholeheartedly agree. Being syncretic means finding out your personal truth, doctrinal impossibilities be damned. This was never a problem for us pagans, but I can imagine it must be an absolute shitshow if you start from dogmatic liturgigal christianity. When it goes the other way, at least for me, it goes "okay, so God exists and is dope, but when God works with humans a lot of times he uses such as the Metatron or the angels. . . if there are other intelligences that do specific things, then they are surely subservient to God as well. If they are also subservient to God then there can be no sin in asking their help with the thing which they specifically rule over." And then you end up basically with Hermeticism and Rennaissance ceremonial magic that plays a dangerous game of testing how far they can go without the Church having them killed for heresy. Right up until you get Rosicrucianism with the end of the Church's ability to straight up kill heretics. That's basically the trajectory I went as a child. I had some weird experiences that prompted me to write to my favorite priest growing up, who, at the time, was in Rome as a Judicial Vicar. The question and his answer in some edited form still exists on the website of the diocese at which he is now a Monseigneur. quote:Question: He confided to me personally about an experience he had in Rome where he was asked to investigate a potential possession. A mother was very concerned about her daughter moving things around the room by demonic influence. Upon investigation, he concluded that this was some case of psychokinesis, a preternatural ability, rather than one of demonic influence. Anyhow, all that is to just show that it is an easy lateral shift out of mainstream Catholicism and into the Western Esoteric Tradition if one has the right first steps - and in fact it's possible to stay in harmony with the Church if one does so carefully, using only Christian sources. If you look for example in the Kybalion or the various Hermetic texts you see a lot of discussion of planetary magic and so on, how the various intelligences rule the various planets and plants and so on, how they prefer certain substances, talismans, and signs, and so on - and how all of that is in accordance with God's divine creation and plan. That said, I would see that being much more difficult for someone coming from an Evangelical tradition. I think it comes down to the loss of the body of Reason from the Evangelical corpus. Once you go sola scriptura you lose a vast philosophical tradition that leaves you unable to consider or approach anything outside of your narrow framework. An Evangelical cannot approach it because they look at the Witch of Endor and go "see God hates magic" and they cannot even consider the story of St. Cyprian the Magician or so on. But yeah, once you move that direction and end up in the Western Esoteric Tradition sometimes you end up becoming a Buddhist instead, so you know, maybe it's dangerous to the faith after all. 
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Sep 21, 2016 16:17
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Cythereal posted:I can't condemn anyone for seeking the truth in a way that brings them peace. I have no doubt that if I'd been raised in a home that followed a religion other than Christianity or no religion at all that I'd probably be very partial to that belief system as well. Jesus himself said to work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, and don't worry so much about what other people believe - and especially don't presume to know whether someone is damned or saved (hi, Calvinists!). That's the thing for me too. If your religion leads to your feeling at peace, happy, contented, and acting as a moral person, then that is the best possible religion for you and you should do it as much or as little as you need. If your religion leads to your feeling disturbed, upset, saddened, suffering, or acting as an immoral person, then maybe consider something else. There are loads of options! Then people get afraid, because they have been taught that they might be punished for lack of faith or disloyalty to their god or religion, and to them I always refer them to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: quote:“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” To me, if God is a jealous God such that he can't brook an unhappy person looking for happiness, or finding it somewhere else, then God is exceedingly disappointing, flawed for lack of compassion and unworthy of my worship. It comes down to that whole "is Gandhi in heaven?" thing, and well, if he's not, then he shouldn't want to be.
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Sep 21, 2016 16:25
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Mo Tzu posted:(which can only occur through an experience of Shinjin, which is the simultaneous realization that one should fall into hell, and recognizing that through Amida you are reborn in the pure land). Man pure land really is the most Catholic of Buddhisms. I thought it was Tibetan Buddhism because we're all about bells and music and fabulous robes* but this kind of "welp I'm definitely poo poo but maybe if I feel guilty enough someone will be merciful" perspective is Catholic as gently caress. * 
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Sep 21, 2016 16:40
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Excellent hats, and therefore always relevant to this thread. What about ICONS/?   (I will stop now, I realized tho that I haven't posted any of this stuff in the appropriate thread yet so I'll update that later today)
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Sep 21, 2016 16:54
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:If my beliefs can make me happy or make me moral, but not both, which matters more? Trick question, the path to true and enduring happiness comes through being moral, whereas being immoral can only give transient pleasure that is ultimately unfulfilling and only creates more misery.
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Sep 21, 2016 18:45
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Mo Tzu posted:The best part about being Buddhist and trying to do Buddhist studies means never having to read another loving essay about how eunuchs transcend gender and are equivalent to trans women Eunuchs are so gender binary, Buddhism's all about ubhatovyanjañakas and paṇḍakas. Gotta get quaternary with our genders.
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Sep 28, 2016 21:24
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Pellisworth posted:Yes but are your three kidneys distinct persons with the same substance and essence? Seems more likely you're poly-renal rather than possessing an excretory trinity. What if each kidney flows into the next? What if two of the kidneys flow into the third kidney!?
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Sep 28, 2016 21:26
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Pellisworth posted:temple cat on ur keyboard? To cover a bit of background, the Vinaya, or code of conduct for monastics, wasn't divinely inspired or created by decree or anything. Originally there were just a few rules, but over time as the sangha, or monastic community, grew and developed they kept running into things popping up that would make them have to add new rules in response. For example, there are rules against eating dinner, or eating any food that wasn't begged for, or so on, but when monks were getting sick and then not getting better due to malnourishment and being unable to beg, the rules had to be adapted. So these are two genders that are prohibited from taking ordination. Ubhatovyanjañakas are intersexed or hermaphrodited individuals, who are prohibited from being ordained because they were tempting and distracting to the monks. Paṇḍakas were kind of a social class of transvestic gay prostitutes, and couldn't become ordained because one that did was caught banging some cowboys and it caused a big social stigma. Neither are particularly relevant today, unless I guess you're properly hermaphroditic. As paṇḍakas are specifically a class of people from that time period it would be inappropriate to apply it generally to gay people. Later, Buddha extended ordination to certain types of paṇḍakas also, so it was kind of dialed back after the initial reaction. Human institutions, amirite? Inevitable discussion about gender and sexuality politics in modern Buddhism should probably head over to our thread which is mostly dead and needs reborn - I have like a billion pictures from India to put in it but so far have been wildly unsuccessful at actually doing so. Paramemetic fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 21:35
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Catholic thought literally predates atheism so I don't think the Catholic apologetic thrust has ever really had to concern itself with that. Catholic philosophical apologetics really aren't in the same vein as evangelical Christian "God exists and we'll prove it to you" or "evolution is a lie" style apologetics. Catholicism and Orthodoxy enjoy a privileged position of predating all of that and besides that also don't usually try to hold untenable scientific positions simply because institutionally they don't benefit at all from that. Evangelicals need to grow the flock by definition but for the liturgical churches status quo no problem.
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Oct 4, 2016 01:47
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HEY GAL posted:if you count atheist greeks and hindus, incorrect  I originally had typed out "modern scientific atheism" but didn't and now I'm undone.
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Oct 4, 2016 14:24
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The Phlegmatist posted:Question for the Catholics: iana judicial vicar, but I'll take a swing. By my reading, Baptism in a non-emergency situation would be considered valid but illicit, as baptism is technically the role of the parish priest. The baptized would be Christian but not Catholic. CCC posted:V. Who can Baptize? But my understanding is that a lay performed baptism that follows the Trinitarian formula would be considered valid in any case but not canonical. The Catholic Church would see no difference between a baptism performed by, say, a evangelical reverend, and a lay Catholic performing a baptism, except inasmuch as the Catholic performing the baptism would be doing so illicitly if it is not an emergency (this would effect the baptist but not the baptized). The evangelical baptism is considered valid, but not licit or canonical, because it baptizes one but does not grant the same standing with the Catholic Church and so they would later need it legitimized to proceed with other sacraments (hence RCIA etc.). When a Catholic does so in an emergency, it's understood to be canonical, as in the Church recognizes it as a Catholic baptism.
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Oct 12, 2016 01:21
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HEY GAL posted:is that not the entire point of the sudden enlightenment school Eh, different things are at play here. There's definitely stuff I struggle with in Buddhist scripture but when we struggle with texts it's not because the texts aren't clear or because there's a message there somewhere that we don't know what it is; rather, it's because we're deluded and ignorant that we don't get it. The koan system is about having the student wrestle with a story until they demonstrate a realization. Realization doesn't come from the stories, the stories are tests. The famous question of the sound of one hand clapping has answers that show where the student is. Basically I'm uncertain it's a fair comparison. That said, I'm also not sure that the approach to Christian scripture is being made correctly by zidan. I mean, "I'm not going to believe humility is a good thing just because some guy said so" isn't really a reasonable approach. If we're talking about nearness to God in prayer, then the whole discussion is moot for an atheist. But that said, rejecting it entirely isn't great. The idea that Jesus is presenting, that motivation and intent defines action more than ostentation and publicity, is certainly a valid and important one. As encouragement for the common people outside the priestly class this is really fantastic advice. Even as a Buddhist I can take comfort in that idea because the idea that my prayers are heard despite that I'm not a high lama all in robes and such is an important support of my practice. If you're genuinely curious about why humility is good tho I would say that it's because it diminishes ego grasping and clinging and encourages the development of altruistic motivation to benefit others before ourselves. Because true happiness comes from giving happiness, developing humility is an important first step. If we are very arrogant this is also a barrier to learning as our approach to new information is very different from as perspective of humility rather than one of authority. So basically humility is super important and just because the Christian scriptures merely point out that fact rather than engage in the discussion of why doesn't make it less important, nor does it invalidate Jesus's saying it.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:41
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Also contempt for self is dumb because contempt is dumb. Stop having contempt and start being content, is something I might say if I was selling Buddhism on a late night advertisement, and since it's nearly 2AM, that's what you get. But seriously Shantideva spends like a whole chapter talking about how human bodies are the grossest things and only produce filth and death, how all humans are just animated cadavers already rotting, and how seeking any kind of sensory pleasure is the dumbest thing possible and even he stops short of self contempt.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:47
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Bel_Canto posted:I think a lot of people here "contempt for self" and immediately think of full-time denunciation of your own sins and your own wickedness. It's true that there are a number of very holy people who were famous for this, but it's also a practice that's only suitable for people in very advanced stages of monastic life or another spiritual discipline, to counteract the increasing danger of spiritual pride, which is among the worst of sins. Oh, that is legit. For us, recognition that we hosed up somehow is implicit because we're reborn in samsara. We must have done something right and something wrong to have a human life. But there's no point to have any kind of self loathing. First we cultivate humility, then we purify our negative actions through regretting the negative actions we've done, relying on the Buddhadharma, actually applying the antidote which is the practice, and then vowing not to repeat the same negative actions. But yeah at no point should this become the destructive emotion of aversion or hatred. Still, the knowledge that we are "sinners," that we have committed impure actions in this life and past lives, is understood as a basic premise - if we were completely free of negative karma we wouldn't have been reborn in the first place. Edit: by way of preventing spiritual pride, monks are actually taught to always look at a gathering of monks and think "I am the worst monk here." All Buddhists in my lineage are taught to view everyone else as a Buddha and to regard others as our superiors. Paramemetic fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Oct 21, 2016 |
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Oct 21, 2016 13:45
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pidan posted:OK, I'll believe you that axiomatic faith in texts and founder figures is important to some Buddhists. I just haven't personally met any. To be totally honest the vast majority of boots on the ground Buddhists in northern India in my experience believe that the texts are all true because if Buddha said it, it must be true. Although Buddha himself taught to try out everything he taught to ensure it is true ("test the lama like a merchant tests gold") in actual practice cultural lay practitioners tend not to do this. Because of the emphasis on education monastics tend to be able to reason towards why a given teaching is important but they don't start from a position of skepticism. The problem of monks believing everything they've read the Buddha said was actually addressed by the head of my lineage recently when he called for the need to establish actual scriptural authority whenever citing the Buddha's teachings.
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Oct 21, 2016 13:51
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pidan posted:If you want to discuss the role of texts in Buddhism more, maybe we should take this to the Buddhism thread. I was comparing the practitioners of Buddhism that I've talked to to the practicing Christians I know; maybe the difference isn't really due to the nature of the religions but some other factor. Fair, for example all of the Buddhist sutras literally start with "when Buddha was staying at [place] he taught to [people]...." So the establishment of historicity is clear. And beyond that a huge number of the vinaya teachings are responses to monks doing this or that, so their reasoning is clear. That, and the tradition of debate and discourse, certainly help. It also helps that we're not limited to the exact book but also to commentaries by other accomplished ones. quote:Even in modern Christianity, you can make a solid philosophical case for a personal God and a trinity and a God who lives as a human being in history. But then they just say "and that's Jesus", and that seems like a huge jump to me. Well the historical leap is not a leap to them at the time of writing, because they weren't several thousand years removed. Though the Gospels weren't written by direct apostles they were written by guys who knew the apostles, probably, or at least were written in a timely enough fashion such that they could identify the guy. I mean, I would say probably the historical accuracy of which middle Eastern dude 2000 years ago was the Messiah is much less important than the lessons being taught but that's probably a minority opinion, though I'd say that historicity is less important than one's personal relation with God right now, and I imagine that's agreeable. The Bible isn't meant as a series of teaching discourses however. There certainly are good things in there - both versions of the Beatitudes, etc., but it's not really intended to be a book of teachings as the moral rights and wrongs are pretty straightforward. The goal is also notably less sophisticated and simpler than "try to attain liberation, idiot, here's how" that we get in Buddhism. So there's significantly less need for discourse. Do unto others... Is basically sufficient and summarizes the correct actions pretty well. No need to talk about the skandhas and establish a person as naturally without self or so on. So the need for a discourse tradition is much less, and yet still it exists outside the Bible itself - Augustine, Aquinas, the Catechism, and so on are all discourses and philosophy that establish the church doctrines. While "hey it's not in the Bible, checkmate idiot" works well for solo scriptura guys like that baptist seminarian from last thread, it really doesn't apply to liturgical Christians who like scriptural primacy and yet definitely accept and use the texts of scholars as authoritative on discourse. So basically I guess what I'm saying is that the Bible not carrying the discourse tradition of liturgical Christianity is less of a problem of the Bible and more of a problem of solo scriptura. And it only just occurred to me that this isn't a liturgical only thread anymore and so that last paragraph is less pertinent, but I hope it's helpful to explain why you're getting some of the answers you are in here.
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Oct 21, 2016 14:53
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Lutha Mahtin posted:I don't really have a focused, central thesis to all this, and while a lot of this will probably come across as super critical and blunt, I really am just trying to give you some knowledge about the things that you're asking for. And I guess my conclusion thus far is that you are asking really broad questions that require using a lot of Christian theory and tradition in order to talk about accurately, yet it seems like you either (a) aren't familiar with some of it, and/or (b) misunderstand some of it, because it seems like you're blindly sameing aspects of two very large, diverse, and old religions, and then when you get a weird result from doing this, you act confused and skeptical about the one religion you aren't as familiar with. So my advice would be to study Christianity more, and stop trying to think that you can compare it with Buddhism in the same way that you can compare two carries in a MOBA or something. Ecumenicism is hard enough within Christendom, even more so with different religious traditions, and even more so across the bridge of monotheism to . . . whatever Buddhism is, since we can't even decide on that ourselves. I think pidan has a pretty good academic understanding of Buddhism and he's taking the fight abroad, which I cannot really attack too much since I myself did that with the evangelical thread not long ago - although I did try to do it from within the framework of Christian apologetics. And, incidentally, the best thing to come out of that was not only my introduction to this thread but also some really great responses from the liturgical crowd that I found really enjoyable and well informed and quite reasonable. (Incidentally, still waiting on my mother to produce some of her PhD papers for me haha) But to this point, I think it relates also to a general lack of knowledge of the breadth of field of Christian source documents. If you're going purely sola scriptura without allowing for either the oral tradition that follows from that, or the commentaries, or the sermons, and especially if you're ignoring the history of the early church fathers and the establishment of the currently (generally) accepted doctrine over the course of nearly 2000 years, then you're hobbling yourself when you're approaching Christianity. I would not, for example, look only to the Bible if I'm trying to learn about the Trinity. I'd look at the huge body of theological work that has surrounded that topic (and then I'd realize it was all straw and become a mystic, which I did lmao). The Bible is simply not the only or best document for Christian theology, rather it's the source from which Christianity arises. It would be as if to take only The Pairs from the Dhammapada, and then go "but how do we arrive at the concept of emptiness and the selflessness of self and others? How do we know Buddha had bodhicitta and was a bodhisattva?" So basically I think that not only is the issue that he's sameing different religions with different traditions and ways of functioning and so on, but he's doing so while missing out on a huge body of information that is really, really important. You simply can't get to the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian origins of how the transubstantiation of Eucharist works versus the concept of consubstantiation when you're just looking at the Bible. If you try to go sola scriptura you're gonna have a bad time with the meat and potatoes of Christian theology. That said I think it's super important to try not to get too caught up in the details - it's not hard to get lost in the scholarship and forget about cultivating that mystic experience which is what I'm all about.
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Oct 22, 2016 00:01
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Okay first of all thank you all for the copypastas on the last page, the Chronicles of Riddick and Navy SEAL copypastas are some of my favorite Internet bits of all time, and the tulpa one is okay except I find that whole thing obnoxious because it's a Tibetan word and  But anyhow: Hesychasts: Orthodox yogis?
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Nov 8, 2016 17:30
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Pellisworth posted:It's sort of like asking if Mormons are Christian. Both Mormons and JWs have beliefs that are far outside of little-o orthodox Christianity but they consider themselves Christians and it's not our place to judge Mormons, at the very least, believe in the divinity of Jesus, even if their understanding of Godhead is not exactly in line with the trinitarian formula. Mormons hang up on the "one in being with the Father" bit as they see them as two distinct beings (and the Holy Spirit as yet a third), but they at least acknowledge that Jesus can be accurately referred to as "God." Their whole "deep doctrine" however isn't weird as such, it's just not familiar to liturgical Christianity as it likes to resolve a lot of things through common sense folksy answers. Like, rather than wrestling with the nature of God they just went "well, if Jesus is the son of God, and we're all children of God, and God is our Father in Heaven, there must be a Mother in heaven too! Seems legit, problem solved, stupid degenerate Christians."
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May 2, 2017 15:54
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Bel_Canto posted:WSJ is some quality content and is super nice in DMs too. A++ would continue to follow. Having missed the name in the Twitter quote I will just say I thought for a moment you'd lost your mind
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Jul 8, 2017 12:17
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