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ibneahmad
Guest
I think believing in the ONE-Creator God does not hinder nirvana or salvation rather it will be helpful.
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Ahimsa
Guest
Yes, belief in a Creator deity will be helpful for some people, but not for all. In his past-lives, the Buddha most likely did believe in a Creator deity.
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ibneahmad
Guest
I think Buddha did not have a past life; he lived only once. Like Jesus lived only once.
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Ahimsa
Guest
That’s fine. You are free to believe what you wish to believe, in America.
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Sufjon
Guest
I am aware that this is what you believe, and as I have told you, you are welcome to it. Both the statement you made above and the creed you posted below are full of threats. I deleted the creed by the way, because it takes up a lot of space. Anyway, it is my opinion (and this is what I truly believe) that any truth from God can stand on it’s own without threats of punishment or promises of reward. Truths that hold threats and promises are the work of desperate people who have a pressing need to keep other people under their thumbs. No such truths and no such creeds are likely to hold any intrinsic truth. They smell to me more like the filthy rags you mentioned in your last post.
To you, they are sacred. To me they just sound desperate and evil, and further convince me that in regard to Jesus, the only thing I need to be saved from are some of His followers.
Anyway, God’s love is enough. If you need to be motivated by threats and promises, then you are not coming to God for any meaningful reason. You are doing nothing more than what a trained animal would do. That is not love. It is the work of other people taking advantage of your desires and fears. It has nothing to do with love, and love is how you get to God. So, you may keep the threats as sacred truths. I will never be able to see them as truths. I spent 20 years in your church listening to that stuff, and it’s fine for you, but to me it’s sad and actually a rather sickening perversion of something divine.
Your friend
Sufjon
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Ahimsa
Guest
Religions like Hinduism and Christianity are often quite different in many ways, but there is a part of them, a very deep part, wordless, nameless, “ineffable” even, that connects one with the other.
MLK Jr., on his visit to India in 1959, had a very interesting experience in Gandhi’s prayer room, which helped give him the inspiration to re-engage with the civil rights struggle in America.
MLK Jr., on his visit to India in 1959, had a very interesting experience in Gandhi’s prayer room, which helped give him the inspiration to re-engage with the civil rights struggle in America.
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Sufjon
Guest
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hn160
Guest
All Trinitiarn Christian adhere to the Athanasian Creed and it tell it like it is that there can be no co-mingling of non-Christian beliefs with Christian beliefs. We can be civil with each other in the secular world ( the kingdom of the left hand ) but when it comes to religious world ( the kingdom of the right hand ) the Christian view for Christians takes preference. PAX
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Sufjon
Guest
The things you are saying and professing are simply your view and your belief, and you are entitled to have it as I have said before. If you think it gives you approval to be uncivil, that doesn’t matter to me. You can say it civilly or uncivilly, although I really don’t see where you have been uncivil in any way. As for the threats and promises in your words and creeds, they have no meaning to me other than what I have stated. They prey on peoples hopes and fears. They were written with the understanding of the profound desperation of the ego, and it’s desire to preserve and perpetuate the sense of an individual self that might live on if it finds a way to please some deity separate from itself. The tragedy is that this illusion of a separate self, and the urgent panic to preserve itself is the very thing that keeps it from seeing God in the first place.
As for the promise of heaven and the threat of hell, they are things of your own making. They are inside you and all around you, and nothing - nothing is going to pave the way for you or save you from the work you have to do on your own. You won;t be saved by good works. You won’t be saved by blessings. You won’t be saved by sacraments or incantations. You won’t be saved by creeds or proclamations. You will only be saved by God’s love, and God’s love is something you have to know fully before you can know the kingdom of heaven. And to know God fully, you have to see Him in the flesh, and to see Him in the flesh, you have to know where to look - where to find Him. If you can’t say that you haven’t seen Christ in the flesh with your very own eyes, then you are still not ready, because you still haven’t seen.
Once you have seen Him, creeds, threats and promises mean nothing. You see them for what they are. Everyone who has eyes to see has seen Him, and yet few have known Him when they saw Him. So it has always been, and so it remains.
Your friend
Sufjon
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Xuan
Guest
Hi Sufjon,
You stated that beautifully. You know, when I see a Hindu ceremony or ritual, it looks completely foreign to me, but when I read your posts, they make me feel right at home. You’ve given me insights that I was totally unaware of.
I believe you really do see Christ in the flesh every day. I’ve been seeing Him more and more often too, now that I’ve been working at it.
Thank you for posting. Don’t stop.
Your friend,
Xuan.
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Sufjon
Guest
Thanks Xuan: Hindu ceremonies do look very odd from a western point of view, I know. I am so glad that you are seeing Christ. While all paths lead to God eventually, that is the most direct route of all. Only from seeing Him is the proper kind of love possible, because you stop saving it for this person or that, and you start to give it freely. When freely given, more and more is there in abundance to give.
Your friend
Sufjon
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Michael19682
Guest
You see Him whether you know this or not. He is omnipresent. You are saved whether you know it or not. His sacrifice is infinite as God Himself. How can there be any improper love, save for that of loving iniquity?Thanks Xuan: Hindu ceremonies do look very odd from a western point of view, I know. I am so glad that you are seeing Christ. While all paths lead to God eventually, that is the most direct route of all. Only from seeing Him is the proper kind of love possible, because you stop saving it for this person or that, and you start to give it freely. When freely given, more and more is there in abundance to give.
Your friend
Sufjon
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Sufjon
Guest
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Your friend
Sufjon
Yes.
Yes
While no love if wasted or wrong, most of the time it is reserved for those close to us, our friends, our families, people we like or agree with, ect. All of that if good, but it is full of attachment. The best love is not attached and not directed at anyone in particular or withheld from anyone in particular.
Your friend
Sufjon
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Michael19682
Guest
Love is God’s essential nature. God is Love. I would correct what you say ever so slightly: the ‘Greatest’ love is not … ‘Best’ implies to me that God can be separated into levels or parts; because, if his nature is love, and if we share in his nature, then our love is also his very presence in us, fully and totally. It is our disobedience to his command to share that love with our neighbor that delimits our love variously according to who’s who or what’s what amongst a series of objects with whom we relate daily.
Additionally, non attachment might not hold in Christianity. I really think a jealous God must certainly be attached to his people. Our God is so great that he can be attached and have infinite love for all simultaneously, fully and without bias. Simply put, our God is “greater than even that.”
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wisdomseeker
Guest
All that you said here only proves that you don’t worship our God.
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CompSciGuy
Guest
What does the Church have to say about the Buddhist practice of meditation? I was introduced to it once, it is mainly controlling breathing, concentration exercises, etc. It is supposed to allow one to get control over one’s mind, emotions, etc. if I understand it correctly. It seems to be more physiological and psychological than anything else.
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Contarini
Guest
And what if the Catholic Church also rejects humility?
Your interpretation insulates your particular community from the words of Jesus. Not a very good interpretation surely.
Why shield ourselves from the cleansing fire?
I haven’t even played the anti-Semitism card, devastating as I think that one is for your kind of interpretation.
How do you know why Jesus spoke the way he did?
I don’t “know” with certainty. But you yourself said above that Jesus was clearly speaking to the Jewish leaders. That’s clear.
I should have said more precisely, "Jesus’ language can be adequately accounted for by the fact that He was dealing with. . . . "
In other words, your application of the parable to the heathen seems gratuitous, especially given that such an approach can be shown historically to cause Christians to take precisely the same kinds of attitudes that Jesus is condemning in this parable.
Judgment always begins with the household of God. It’s true that, as 1 Peter 4:17 points out, the judgment coming on those who imperfectly follow the Gospel implies a much worse judgment on those who reject it entirely. But it’s also clear from these words of Jesus and from much else in Scripture that God’s covenant people are capable of rejecting the Gospel and thus of receiving that worse condemnation. And it’s also clear that there are those outside the covenant community who are pleasing to God (Cornelius, for instance).
That’s one way of putting it, if you are focused on authority. Another way of putting it is the way I did–that Jesus only speaks of Hell when addressing those who pride themselves on their covenant relationship with God.
Indeed. But that affects your interpretation at least as much as mine. We agree that the story is most immediately referring to the Jewish leaders.
You think that the broader application falls on all who are outside the “right” authority structures.
I think it falls on all those who claim authority as if it belonged to them rather than to God. (Not picking on Catholics here. When the leaders of my denomination claim that the Holy Spirit is leading them to introduce the values of the sexual revolution into Christianity, they’re doing precisely this, and on far less grounds than Catholics have for your arrogant claims. It’s a temptation to which we are all prone. Those who have a genuine claim to a special covenant relationship with God–Jews and Christians, and specifically Catholics within the latter group–may be naturally more subject to it than others, but that doesn’t stop others from falling into it as well!)
Indeed.
How is your interpretation humble?
This is a bizarre and outrageous interpretation. Catholics have plenty of wealth and power in America. I’ve lived in a town in New Jersey in which the main job of the local police on a Sunday morning was directing traffic in and out of the Catholic church’s parking lot.
Don’t you see how counter-productive it is for us all to stake out claims as victims? Why not, instead, look at how Jesus may be speaking a word of judgment to us.
This passage is certainly devastating for the Episcopal Church–look at Bishop +Jefferts-Schori’s appalling statements about Episcopalians being better educated and more environmentally responsible than Catholics and Mormons in having fewer children.
Jesus is the victim son, as should be obvious. Insofar as the Catholic Church is the body of Jesus, yes, the Catholic Church is the victim son. Insofar as the Catholic Church acts like the Jewish leaders in the parable, a different moral applies.
As you say, Jesus’ parables are paradoxical. Nothing stops Catholics from being all the characters in the parable at once (except for the landlord).
Edwin
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Contarini
Guest
The Vatican document Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life expresses some concerns about Christians taking on Eastern meditation practices. That’s the only official statement on the subject that I know of. It obviously stops short of outright condemnation and is clearly not an infallible teaching. Certainly many Catholics do engage in Buddhist meditation. As far as I know, no one has been disciplined for engaging in such practices. But obviously Catholics should take the cautions of the document linked above into account (as do I, as an Anglican who is grateful for and conscious of my real though imperfect relationship with the See of Peter).
Edwin
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Bookcat
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Contarini
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Thanks. That’s a more specific document and answers the question better than does the one to which I linked, which is a general discussion of New Age spirituality.
I think that the key issue raised by the document to which you linked (most explicitly addressed in sect. 12) is the role of apophatic spirituality and its relationship to Christian revelation. As the document points out, this is not a new issue. However, by setting up two “false” methods of prayer, Gnosticism and Messalianism, and treating them as clear-cut alternatives to orthodox Christian prayer, the document avoids engaging with the extent to which apophatic and experiential elements have played important roles in historic Christian spirituality. In the first regard, I note no mention of pseudo-Dionysius, a body of texts that have played a huge role in both Eastern and Western Christianity, significantly influencing not just the mystics but also theologians like Thomas Aquinas who are not typically thought of as apophatic mystics. (Section 19 probably refers to pseudo-Dionysius and those influenced by the Dionysian corpus, but it isn’t explicit.)
Clearly the right approach is not to abandon the concrete particulars of revelation in favor of a “formless” God. (As he so often does, Ratzinger sounds a bit like Luther in his suspicion of apophatic meditation, though of course he’s far more moderate.) But I think it’s possible to say that the whole reality of God is revealed to us in Jesus while also saying that all intellectual concepts, even those concepts which are formed in our minds by the wholly self-giving revelation of God, are inadequate to the reality that is revealed, and that a thorough-going apophatic tradition like Buddhism has much to teach us in this regard both with regard to content and to method.
In section 15 the claim that what is valid in other religions is “fulfilled in the reality of Christianity beyond all measure” needs to be read carefully and in context. It’s clear from the following section that Ratzinger is not saying that we can simply dismiss the possibility of learning something about prayer from other religions. The “reality of Christianity” would appear to be an eschatological, mystical reality and not equivalent to the sum total of Christian belief and practice as historically manifested up to the present moment. However, I can imagine conservative readers taking this passage out of context to argue that Christianity in the latter sense already possesses everything that is good in other religions.
In section 16, I particularly like his emphasis on the need for a spiritual director. I would point out that this is also something you find in the Eastern traditions. One big problem with “New Age” spirituality is the idea that you just launch out Alone into the Alone and pick up whatever methods you personally find helpful. Clearly any serious engagement with non-Christian spirituality needs to be done in a disciplined and supervised way and while fully engaging with the communal life of the Church.
I also really like the emphasis on asceticism and purification. Again, this is something that you find in the Eastern religions themselves, but something that is often ignored by those who want to dabble in eclectic spirituality while calling themselves Christians.
In sect. 19, once again, I think that Ratzinger’s Western Augustinianism leads him to neglect some other elements in historic Christianity. Indeed we should not reject created things. But simply rejecting “selfishness” doesn’t get at what the great apophatic mystics of the Christian tradition are saying about the inadequacy of “creatures.” This is where I think Buddhism, precisely because it’s so alien to the Christian tradition, can possibly be a helpful corrective. Often, especially in Western Christianity, self-mortification and the attempt to stamp down one’s selfishness and pride can itself become a form of what Buddhists would call “attachment.” One can form a false concept of the ego based precisely in one’s consciousness of oneself as a sinner. The endless focus on one’s own sins that you find in Calvinism, in my own Holiness tradition, and in some forms of Western Catholicism, can become a kind of perverse egotism. And I think that Buddhism, precisely because it’s coming from a completely different starting point, may be able to address and name the problem better than any form of historic Christianity. Note that I say may be–I’m just calling for an investigation of the possibility.
Historically, Christianity says “you are a sinner.” Buddhism says “you do not exist, at least not in the way you think you do.” I don’t think that the latter is saying the same thing as the former, but I also don’t think the two statements are incompatible, and the latter may have medicine for some of the ways in which we misinterpret the former.
If our very conception of ourselves is flawed, and not just our “selfish” attachment to our own particular good (closely related as the two obviously are), then possibly the dichotomy Ratzinger draws between personal union with God and absorption into God isn’t a valid one in the first place. Perhaps what we call “personal union,” imagining selves as we currently think of them united with a God who is a person (or three persons) in more or less the way we think of persons, is indeed a highly imperfect way of thinking about our ultimate destination. But that doesn’t mean that thinking of ourselves as drops of water merging into a great ocean is a wholly adequate image either, or even a more adequate image. Perhaps the ultimate purpose of the divine therapy we are all undergoing is to reshape our very selfhood into something we would not presently recognize as a “self,” and not just to purify our selfhood of moral flaws.
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