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Thing
Guest
So you will suffer in nirvana because you know your loved ones are in hell.
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rossum
Guest
Ask me after I am enlightened.
All the hells and all the heavens are temporary. Nirvana is not temporary. The amount of time you are separated from those you love is vanishingly small compared to the time you will be with them.
rossum
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Techno2000
Guest
How do you know Buddhism is true since you say there is no ultimate truth ?Ask me after I am enlightened.
All the hells and all the heavens are temporary. Nirvana is not temporary. The amount of time you are separated from those you love is vanishingly small compared to the time you will be with them.
rossum
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Thing
Guest
So you will suffer in nirvana while you wait for your friends, and while you wait for your enemies too as you love them also; for that matter you must love everyone and must suffer in nirvana while you wait for everyone who has or who will ever live to reach nirvana. Nirvana sounds like here, for you at least.Ask me after I am enlightened.
All the hells and all the heavens are temporary. Nirvana is not temporary. The amount of time you are separated from those you love is vanishingly small compared to the time you will be with them.
rossum
Perhaps there is no nirvana until everyone is dead and finished with heavens and hells. Then everyone will enter nirvana together?
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rossum
Guest
How do you know that Christianity is true since you have no source of absolute truth?
Buddhism claims that if I follow its precepts I will get certain effects. So far it has delivered everything that it has promised for the distance I have progressed along its path. Since it has worked so far I am prepared to follow it further. Once it stops working I will look for something else.
rossum
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rossum
Guest
Yes. When we enter nirvana we may well still have some unexhausted karma left to be worked out. Once we enter nirvana we will generate no new karma so eventually all our accumulated karma will run out. The important thing is that no new karma is generated - it is that which keeps us coming back.
A very Buddhist statement, nirvana is here. The Buddha attained nirvana at age 35, he died aged 80. For 45 years he lived in this world while also living in nirvana. Enlightenment is nirvana in this current lifetime.Samsara does not have the slightest distinction from Nirvana.
Nirvana does not have the slightest distinction from Samsara.
Whatever is the end of Nirvana, that is the end of Samsara.
There is not even a very subtle slight distinction between the two.
- Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika 25:19-20
When the Buddha stubbed his toe he still suffered because he had some unexhausted karma left to run. Even in nirvana you can stub your toe; it is just that your attitude to the stubbed toe is different.
rossum
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Thing
Guest
Yes… well now I’m confused. Your objection to Christianitys’ heaven is that it is for you eternal suffering and/or a removal of sadness at seeing your friends and enemies in hell. Both are your objections.
In this nirvana of yours you suffer when you see your friends and enemies in hell, then perhaps when your ‘karma’ runs out of gas you are enlightened and you are not sad any more for your friends and enemies in hell.
I see your view of nirvana and Christianitys’ heaven are the exact same in these respects.
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
It’s funny, but in the end there is often much similarity between the major faiths
I say funny - what I really mean is - interesting. And perhaps, both encouraging and re-assuring
I say funny - what I really mean is - interesting. And perhaps, both encouraging and re-assuring
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rossum
Guest
The Buddhist hells are all temporary. Eventually all those in hell will enter nirvana. The separation is only temporary. With a permanent Christian hell then the separation is permanent. That is the difference, temporary suffering against permanent suffering.
rossum
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StAnastasia
Guest
Of course those in heaven will not be sad at knowing that anyone they knew was in hell, because they will have the beatific vision and fully know God’s mercy and His justice which rightly consigned to hell those who deserved it .
Abu, shall I assume you have no children? I cannot imagine any human parents not being even a tiny bit sad knowing that their dearly loved babies are consigned to roast in the eternal flames of hellish torment because somehow they “deserve it.”
StAnastasia
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Abu
Guest
That is precisely the petard on which many dissenters are hoist. The function of the** intellect** is to explore Reality and make our home in it.
Imagination is the power to make mental pictures of the material universe through our senses --very valuable – but subordinate and limited to matter. It can storm the will (such as the conflict with chastity) but its power over the intellect can be ruinous.
It acts as a censor over what the intellect will accept, but it also hinders the intellect by offering mental pictures from the world which substitute something else for the dogma and doctrine of Christ’s Church.
As an omnipotent God is all merciful and all just, “imagining” that any of His creatures could know better than their Creator, better than His teaching through His Church, epitomises the rampant error of dissent. We can rest assured that Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for those who love him (1Cor 2: 9), and that His love will cleanse in purgatory those who are destined for heaven.
Hell is neither illusion nor contradiction of love because taught by Christ Our Lord who showed His love for men as no one else has ever shown it – the free will of man makes the choice which is respected by God as love of self and hatred of God.
“Men go by sympathies not by argument.” (John Henry Newman,* Apologia pro vita sua*, 1968, pt 5).
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Thing
Guest
Well, thats what the buddhists say but what reality actually turns out to be is something else again. For many people in this life suffering is constant, there is no release and little relief. Simply thinking that life should not be like that or that life *is *not like that won’t change the reality that life is like that for some. Thinking that there is something wrong with an eternal hell because you don’t believe it ought to be like that will make no difference whatsoever to the reality of an eternal hell. If everybody got to decide what reality ought to be then it would be different for every individual. If one thinks a lifetime of suffering is not right but yet it happens and you cannot change that, then so too is an eternal hell not desirable but none the less a reality and is not changed nor diminished by our wishfull thinking.
By the way, St Anastasia, the poster here, thinks earth might survive for another 3 or 4 billion years. For those in nirvana that means 3 or 4 billion years of humanity and 3 or 4 billion years of suffering in nirvana at least, while they wait for everyone to finally enter nirvana and for the suffering to stop. Its a long time to suffer by anyones standards.
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wanstronian
Guest
I think that the very fact you are unable to see the massive flaws in your own logic and the circular nature of your argument, speaks volumes; added to the fact you are continuing to misrepresent what I say, even after I have set you straight, leads me to believe that you are not interested in rational discussion, only in rejecting anything that an atheist says. So let’s not bother continuing.
Have a happy delusion.
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tonyrey
Guest
How could you love your children if they ignored, rejected, and detested you? To reject hell is to underestimate the power of free will and the reality of evil.Abu, shall I assume you have no children? I cannot imagine any human parents not being even a tiny bit sad knowing that their dearly loved babies are consigned to roast in the eternal flames of hellish torment because somehow they “deserve it.”
StAnastasia
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rossum
Guest
Well, that’s what the Christians say but what if reality actually turns out to be is something else again?
You really do need to learn more about Buddhism before talking about it. The first of the Four Noble Truths says that life is suffering. If you are alive then suffering is unavoidable. Birth is suffering. Old age is suffering. Disease is suffering. Death is suffering. You are attempting to criticise Buddhism by saying the same thing that the Buddha said - life is suffering.
If heaven and hell are both eternal, as described by Christianity, then there has to be eternal suffering in heaven due to eternal separation from those in hell. If nirvana is eternal but the heavens and hells are temporary, as described by Buddhism, then the suffering in nirvana is temporary. We will find out in due course which is correct.
What makes you think that life is confined to planet earth? There are thousand of millions of other worlds in the Buddhist scriptures.The Licchavi Vimalakirti addressed that incarnated Bodhisattva: “Noble son, go in the direction of the zenith and when you have crossed as many Buddha-fields as there are grains of sand in forty-two Ganges rivers, you will reach a world called Sarvagandhasugandha, where you will find the Tathagata Sugandhakuta taking his meal. …”
- Vimalakirtinirdesa sutra, Chapter Ten
In this context “Buddha-field” means a star system and its associated planets. Counting grains of sand in the river Ganges stands for very large numbers. The ancient Indians had a better conception of the size, structure and timescale of the universe than the ancient Near East.
rossum
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Thing
Guest
All you have said, I think, is that you cannot know where we came from; but you know for certain it was not from God.
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buffalo
Guest
Really now - I certainly pray that I have taught my children good foundations and that they will turn towards God and enjoy eternity, but I will not make the choice to spend eternity in hell because they do. You are way off base.Abu, shall I assume you have no children? I cannot imagine any human parents not being even a tiny bit sad knowing that their dearly loved babies are consigned to roast in the eternal flames of hellish torment because somehow they “deserve it.”
StAnastasia
You have a really poor understanding of the beatific vision. Our earthly trial determines our capacity to experience God.
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Thing
Guest
I have already posted the Christian truth that in heaven all tears will be wiped away and there will be no more suffering. You may accept this or not, but that is the Christian revealed truth.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Thing, I said earth will be around for another five billion years, but I did not say human would last that long. As the sun burns off its hydrogen, the gravity constraining its size will decrease, and the sun will begin to swell. Its luminosity will increase with this swelling, and the increased solar wind will begin to strip away Earth’s atmosphere. Ward and Brownlee argue that we are halfway through the half-billion-year span of large-scale life. After 500 million years Earth will have an impoverished atmosphere; in the years following that even the oceans will be boiled off and lost to space, leaving the Earth a lifeless orb.
StAnastasia
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StAnastasia
Guest
Buffalo, you don’t understand; you may have whatever heaven or hell you like. I’m merely pointing out that there will not be perfect happiness in heaven as long as there is at least one mother who longs for her child suffering eternal torment in hell.
If you wish perfect happiness in heaven, either (1) all will eventually be saved, or (2) not everyone will have a complete memory of their earthly life and connections, or (3) God will have a way of transmuting maternal affection into happiness at the suffering of a mother’s eternally damned child.
StAnastasia
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