souls

[Love4All]

You sure you mean all that?
“I give you peace, not as the world gives” said Jesus, but Nirvana is a proposition by a man (of the world) of what is peace, and therefore not true peace.

How do you know? Jesus is the True Light that, coming into the world, enlightens all men. Buddha claimed to be enlightened. The Church teaches us that we reject nothing at all that is true and holy in other religions. How do you know the Buddha’s Light and Christ are two different, rather than the selfsame, Light? Can there be more than one Light?

Peace as being Freedom from suffering? Is that what you see as the Christian dream?
Why would St. Paul then write “And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him.”? and “For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us”?
If Teresa said to put your cares on the cross, was she saying it was the way to be free of suffering? The Cross is the place of suffering. She was experiencing her suffering but joining it to Jesus’ suffering (as Catholics are wont to say, “Offer it up”) as a reality of your life in which you welcome the Lord to work for life in others.

Neither Paul nor Teresa suffer any more.

Gautama taught a system. This is not what Jesus did.

Catholicism is not a system? Why then is it systematic and functional? What could a religion be, if not a system?

They are fully unalike. Jesus himself was the life. The disciples were at peace just by being with him, not because they practiced methods of work to attain peace.

Nonetheless, “whosoever refuses to work, should not eat.”

They had no inward goal, only the goal of their legs walking to keep pace with him so they could feel his hand on their shoulder or feel their hand on his shoulder. Union with him as his friend, his brother, his subject, his people. Full attachment of “me and thee”.

John Martin

But not from ego, which is the point here. Do you see egoic attachment as a good thing? Do you not see it as the source of all our troubles? Consider that in the Garden, before the Fall, all was One. Adam and Eve never thought in terms of “I, me, mine,” until after the Fall. Ego brings with it the illusion of separateness, which causes to germinate, egoic personal desire. “Desire then gives birth to sin, which too has a child and the child is death.”

Do you pray? If you pray, do you pray the rosary? If you pray the rosary, you are taking advantage of a systematic means of meditation, making Right Effort in Right Meditation for the purpose of obtaining Right Thought, Right Mindfulness, and Right Action. Very similarly to a Buddhist. Personally, I hold that the Rosary is more efficacious than Buddhist meditation. I hold that it accomplishes all the Buddhists seek, and more.

If you don’t pray the Rosary, I recommend that you start.

My original point about the correlation between Buddhist concepts and the powers of the soul, i.e. intellect and will, was to point out that neither of these is the soul, and it is possible for us to get too attached to either our intellects or our wills. To be too attached to the intellect is to commit sins of intellectual pride, and to be too attached to the will is to commit sins of spiritual sloth, among others. From the Buddhist perspective, these two are two of the aggregates of grasping, to wit the consciousness and the volitional tendencies. My point was that neither of these things is what we are, and it is through our tendency to grasp and to cling to things that we make for ourselves unhappiness. It is possible to attend to the business of overcoming our sins, with trust in God and in peace, without it adding more suffering than that already is.

If a person suffers in the process of overcoming sin, from the fact that the sin brought pleasure and that pleasure is no longer being had, that is one thing, but if a person is suffering from the craving for sin, there is a means given, via prayer, to eradicate that, ultimately, and prior to completely eradicating it, at least to subdue it. It is called discipline. The discipline of self-control, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, is cultivated and increased in the soul via meditative prayer like the Rosary. I do hold the Rosary to be the most efficacious means, but there are Buddhists who do meditate similarly and do obtain some of the benefit. It would be needlessly parochial and factually absurd to insist otherwise. I am not claiming Indifferentism, I am simply pointing out similarity that you do not appear to be willing to acknowledge actually exists. The world isn’t black and white. There are many shades of color here, and Love is Infinitely Gentle.

 

[Love4All]

I believe as some others teach that there is a “group” soul. A guide or such. There is the spirtual archytypal man “Adam” The potter’s broken vessel.

CAT spirtual idea
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indiviual cat souls

for example.

Adam-Kadmon.

 

[billcu1]

Adam-Kadmon.

Something like that. They’re closer to their “group spirit” though. Kind of a universal instinct.

 

[Love4All]

Craving and clinging and concupiscence are not sin; craving and clinging are alternate terms for love and desire, which are “passions” or emotions of the appetite known as concupiscence. That appetite existed before and after the fall.
The “graced nature” cannot be regained by right effort or work. Grace is bestowed as a gift, full and complete, ready for use. There is no need to try to work back to a graced state (which would not work anyway).
But, being baptized, we have been given grace, with the Virtues, whereby we work. By this, I mean, when the appetite says “hungry” and apprehends visions of eating all sorts of things, then reason knows my body with its appetites is the servant of my soul, and I choose to feed it what I reason it needs, rather than the appetite’s suggestion. My body does not “know God” or want him. But my soul does, and with the virtues given (which are habits to be used at will), my soul chooses the activities the body will do, not do, enjoy, not enjoy. Some of my sensitive appetites will be disappointed, others grudgingly satisfied, others fully satisfied, but not because they got their way. Rather, they were provided for by choice, rather than by inclination.

As I see it, in spite of the claim of the letting go of self, or ego, Nirvana is a very selfish idea, self satisfaction in the face of saying one lets go of self.
Whereas Christianity is fully about self-beatification in the loving and keeping of the self with full union to the source of our being and all that he has created, and thus is fully unselfish.

This was rushed - I am at lunch time.

John Martin

The Holy Council of Trent taught, in opposition to the heresy of “salvation by Faith Alone,” that good works do both predispose the soul to receive grace, and increase the grace that is in the soul.

So I find a flaw in your statement that,

“The ‘graced nature’ cannot be regained by right effort or work. Grace is bestowed as a gift, full and complete, ready for use. There is no need to try to work back to a graced state (which would not work anyway).”

Recall that Saint Paul admonished us to “work out our own salvation, in fear and trembling.” So very far from saying “there is no need to try,” I would say that there is a requirement on us to work, to make every effort to attain to salvation. And since God is infinite, of course we could never reach Him on our own, without grace, so it must be work and effort under grace. But the work a Buddhist does to strive toward Nirvana, is seen by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. And Nirvana, ultimately, is Heaven.

“Right Effort” in the sense the Buddhists mean it is Catholic Doctrine as well — in Catholicism it is called Work. Prayer is Work, and no one at all can be saved, who does not pray.

 

[Love4All]

Something like that. They’re closer to their “group spirit” though. Kind of a universal instinct.

I think all this attachment to the persistence of an animal’s soul after death is human attachment. Both human attachment to the affection of our pets, and, human attachment to the idea of clinging to a permanent existence in a world where everything dies.

I maintain that no beast experiences any such attachment. If they were capable of understanding our concerns for their souls after death, they’d have a hearty laugh at us at our expense.