How were people like Buddha able to achieve perfect happiness without God?

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Ok I’ll take the bait 🙂
What full rosary, let alone a half rosary, has 108 beads?

The original rosary, presumably a purist Dominican, has 160 beads and a cross.
The traditional derived 5 rosary has 59…
Pope JPII has confused things further of course!

While I would like to see the mala/Asian crossover too I think its spurious in this case. 150 Psalms and 108 moon widths between earth and moon dont have a small common denominator I suggest.
I do note my partners Tai Chi form (Yang style) is a 108 step routine which is to be expected. Some temple ruins in Siem Reap which we recently visited had endless steps up…likely 108 but I lost count due to exhaustion!
 
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Please be respectful of other religions you have little understanding or experience of.
 
No worries, I genuinely thought I had misunderstood something, sorry if I came across as criticising.
 
CatholicHere_Hi said:
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Is true happiness an objective thing that isn’t based on what one thinks/feels they have? …
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Yes it is objective.

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Beatific Vision
The intuitive knowledge of God which produces heavenly beatitude. As defined by the Church, the souls of the just “see the divine essence by an intuitive vision and face to face, so that the divine essence is known immediately, showing itself plainly, clearly and openly, and not mediately through any creature” (Denzinger 1000-2). Moreover, the souls of the saints “clearly behold God, one and triune, as He is” (Denzinger 1304-6). It is called vision in the mind by analogy with bodily sight, which is the most comprehensive of human sense faculties; it is called beatific because it produces happiness in the will and the whole being. As a result of this immediate vision of God, the blessed share in the divine happiness, where the beatitude of the Trinity is (humanly speaking) the consequence of God’s perfect knowledge of his infinite goodness. The beatific vision is also enjoyed by the angels, and was possessed by Christ in his human nature even while he was in his mortal life on earth.

(Etym. Latin beatificus , beatific, blissful, imparting great happiness or blessedness; from beatus , happy.)
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CatholicHere_Hi said:
Yet there are religions like Buddhism where people say they have attained a transcendent permanent peace and happiness without God.
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No authentic Buddhist ever said such a thing. The people that make such claims, or any claim to the effect that Buddhism is a “godless religion”, are modern Buddhists (typically, but not exclusively, western converts with a bookish understanding of Buddhism) who have re-interpreted Buddhism in accordance with their own hyper-rational and humanist proclivities. No authentic native Buddhist denies God.

So, no, with regard to this matter the CCC does not teach falsehood.
 
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Roguish said:
No authentic Buddhist ever said such a thing.
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A very obvious example of the No true Scotsman logical fallacy.
The people that make such claims, or any claim to the effect that Buddhism is a “godless religion”, are modern Buddhists (typically, but not exclusively, western converts with a bookish understanding of Buddhism) who have re-interpreted Buddhism in accordance with their own hyper-rational and humanist proclivities. No authentic native Buddhist denies God.
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All Buddhists deny “God”, singular. Buddhism has gods, plural. At various points the Buddha preaches to the gods. Buddhist are free to worship, or to ignore, those gods. As you correctly point out, most eastern Buddhists follow their local gods. Most western Buddhists ignore them.

rossum
 
CatholicHere_Hi said:
Buddha never relied on God to achieve ‘Nirvana’. Those who reach this do so without a search of God. They actually claim they find out there is no Almighty God.
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I think it is to misunderstand God himself to say such things.

God Himself is Peace, Beauty, Truth, Love, Knowledge, Wisdom…

If Buddha attained peace and wisdom, it was because he was a human made in the Image of God, and he was “polishing” himself by letting that Image shine through his fallen human nature by living a holy ascetic life. He accomplished this by meditating and formulating ways to attain to peace and wisdom…

There is a LOT of truth and wisdom to be found in Buddhism, and the Catholic Church rejects none of it, so long as it doesn’t expressly contradict revealed Catholic Truth.

For example, the “Noble Eightfold Path” can be understood in a way which complements instead of contradicts Catholic doctrine.
  1. Right View: our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death. This can easily be understood in an orthodox Catholic manner.
  2. Right Resolve or Intention: the giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence. Essentially, in substance, this really doesn’t differ from Catholic mendicant monastic orders.
  3. Right Speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him. This is clearly simple Catholic truth.
  4. Right Conduct or Action: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual acts, no material desires. This again is substantially the same as Catholic Religious life.
  5. Right Livelihood: beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life. This is certainly compatible with Catholic truth.
  6. Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states. This includes indriya-samvara , “guarding the sense-doors,” restraint of the sense faculties. This is essentially equivalent to Catholic mindfulness.
  7. Right Mindfulness: “retention,” being mindful of the “dhammas” (“teachings,” “elements”) that are beneficial to the Buddhist path. In the vipassana movement, “sati” is interpreted as “bare attention”: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; this encourages the awareness of the impermanence of body, feeling and mind. This is likewise quite compatible with Catholicism.
  8. Right Meditative Consciousness “Samadhi:” practicing four stages of meditation, which includes “samadhi” proper in the second stage, and reinforces the development of the “bojjhagā,” culminating into “upekkha” equanimity and mindfulness… In the Theravada tradition and the Vipassana movement, this is interpreted as “ekaggata” - concentration or one-pointedness of the mind, and supplemented with “Vipassana,” meditation, which aims at insight.
This likewise could be understood in a Catholic manner.
 
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rossum said:
All Buddhists deny “God”, singular. Buddhism has gods, plural. At various points the Buddha preaches to the gods. Buddhist are free to worship, or to ignore, those gods. As you correctly point out, most eastern Buddhists follow their local gods. Most western Buddhists ignore them
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I would contend that point.

In my studies, I’ve gotten the impression that Buddhism is similar to Hinduism with regard to the question of deity. Individual Buddhists can be anywhere between agnostic, atheist, pantheist, deist, theist, polytheist, henotheist, monotheist, etc.
 
rossum said:
The people that make such claims, or any claim to the effect that Buddhism is a “godless religion”, are modern Buddhists (typically, but not exclusively, western converts with a bookish understanding of Buddhism) who have re-interpreted Buddhism in accordance with their own hyper-rational and humanist proclivities. No authentic native Buddhist denies God.
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All Buddhists deny “God”, singular. Buddhism has gods, plural. At various points the Buddha preaches to the gods. Buddhist are free to worship, or to ignore, those gods. As you correctly point out, most eastern Buddhists follow their local gods. Most western Buddhists ignore them.

rossum
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Nicely put.
Though I see no intrinsic reason why Buddhists “doctrinally” must deny a single god if polytheism was compatible. It seems the reason for denial is simply lack of significant historical precedent in Hindu experience perhaps.
It took time for monotheism to arise amongst the Hebrews as a compatible evolution from polytheism afterall.
 
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CatholicHere_Hi said:
Can someone explain to me this:

Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. - CCC 27

Yet there are religions like Buddhism where people say they have attained a transcendent permanent peace and happiness without God. They claim the search to end suffering and achieve eternal bliss is over. Buddha never relied on God to achieve ‘Nirvana’. Those who reach this do so without a search of God. They actually claim they find out there is no Almighty God.

Does the CCC teach a falsehood here?
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Going back to the OP for a moment, it is worth remembering that the Buddha was at one time a (sort of) Christian saint. Unfortunately he was demoted when a lot of semi-legendary saints were removed from the calendar of saints a few years ago:
The story is a Christianized version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show. This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle Persian Budasif ( Budsaif=Bodhisattva ).

From Catholic Encyclopedia: Barlaam and Josaphat
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If the Buddha was (and still is in the Eastern Orthodox Church) a Christian saint, then the question of how he achieved perfect happiness becomes less urgent.

rossum
 
The Church is right and the Buddhists are just kidding themselves. Can anyone be truly happy here on earth with the constant struggle? No, I don’t think so. True happiness will come when we leave this earth and experience firsthand the “Beautific Vision” of God in Heaven.
 
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Odilon said:
The Church is right and the Buddhists are just kidding themselves. Ca
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Perhaps you mean the author of this post is kidding himself if he believes Buddhists actually teach the subject of this thread. But we know what he meant anyways.
 
Odilon said:
Can anyone be truly happy here on earth with the constant struggle?
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Nirvana is not something that only happens after death. The Buddha achieved nirvana at age 35 when he reached enlightenment under the tree. He died age 80. For 45 years he was living in the world and at the same time in nirvana.

Nirvana is not what you probably think it is.

rossum
 
I stand by my statement. Sure I have happy and contented times in my life, but everyday is a continuing struggle. The requirements of my job to provide for my family, the aches and pains of the body growing old, they all exist in the here and now. Just what Nirvana did this Buddha find? Was he able to escape the bonds of this life completely or just intermittently though meditation? Did he experience the beautific vision that the Scriptures tell us only can be seen in Heaven after this life? I am skeptical of this man and his claims.
 
No. I believe the Buddhists are kidding themselves. Some in fact are not so enlightened as the recent scandals of homosexual orgies and other evil deeds coming from the Orient concerning some Buhddist priests have so vividly shown.
 
Excuse me if I ask you simply supply standard Buddhist texts or respected Buddhist commentary that perfect happiness can be had in this life.
My forgotten past studies into this point I believe concluded that this was a disputed point amongst different Buddhist schools.
It reflects poorly on truth seeking Catholics to criticise other religions that we dont make the effort to understand properly in the first place. We dont think well of Protestants who deride us for worshipping Mary do we?

Lets learn a lesson here and not keep repeating the same non Christian lack of charity.
 
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What lack of charity? I simply do not believe in the Buddhist way that says perfect happiness can be found in this life and I will be truthful in my response concerning this issue. I really could care less what these people believe and it is Jesus Christ and His sacrifice that offers us salvation, not Buddha and his supposed “enlightenment”.
 
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