A Clanging Cymbal

Strange that one…

Most, especially the major religious sects, believe ‘only’ theirs is the right way and all others are fakes and must be resisted with argument, and at the extremes, destroyed.

This is not necessary and will not lead to happiness in your faith. If you have found yours, be thankful and let it show with your happiness, peace and respect of others. This is the best way to attract others to your way. They will ‘want some of what you got’ as Tracy Chapman would say.

PS: Our Nation is not lost. Our times, compared to those living during Biblical times, is like the difference between heaven and hell here on earth. Cheer up and enjoy what you have, not necessarily what you plan to get later.

But what do you say to people crippled with logic and deprived of evidence who wonder the same thing about Christianity, and the others?

Should too much intellectual energy be given to debating the immortal battle-of-beliefs? I envy all that have found theirs and show it by their love-light.

The answer to this, of course, is God himself. It is the outworking of God’s love for humanity that allows people who accept that love to be changed by it. God’s love enables us to seek God’s best for ourselves and others, and to draw nearer to God himself. In effect, the ultimate source of Charity is God, and its ultimate goal is to reconcile ourselves with God and to help others to do the same.

“In Buddism, what is the ultimate source and goal of Buddist compassion?”

The answer to this one would be the Self, if Buddhism acknowledged that the concept of “self”. The stated goal of Buddhist compassion is to eliminate confusion and engender clarity of perception, in order that the Buddhist might progress on the path to enlightenment. Such compassion, then, is born of the Buddhist’s will and self-effort.

And that is why I contend that Charity is not interchangable with compassion. While the external effects might be similar, the source and motivation of each is markedly different: for Buddhist compassion it is self-effort to the end of personal enlightenment, while for Christian Charity it is God working in the hearts of believers to the end of drawing those believers to him.

I will agree that Buddhism engenders many positive qualities: discipline, compassion, the denial of hedonistic tendencies, and even-temperedness, among others, Further, it pursues those qualities probably about as well as any human-invented religion could hope to do. However, it also assuages humanity’s inherent fear of death with the false promise of nigh-infinite chances to get things right, entices its practitioners to practice its virtues for fundamentally selfish reasons, and can only offer the cold promise of “enlightenment” in the place of deep, abiding love. It can offer no objective evidence for its claims (as Christianity can, through documentary, historical, and archaological evidence), but relies strictly on the personal experiences of its practitioners to support its claims. As I see it, compared to a host of other man-made systems, Buddhism isn’t bad. However, when it is compared with Christianity, Christ’s way emerges as the better of the two.

The ‘gooder’ you are, the stronger your karma and with luck, you’ll progress thru multiple lifetimes until you reach nirvana. However, you could also be demoted to a lower life form for simply the bad luck/karma of being guilty of some intangible offense.

Hence, the Buddhist is vegan and doesn’t kill even the smallest gnat, because for all you know, your brother in a past life could have been reincarnated as that gnat buzzing around your ear and trying to laying some good karma on you.

As I’ve told her again & again, that notion doesn’t make any sense. As gentle as the Dalai Lama is, the fact that he lives and breathes means that thousands of lifeforms die daily at his hand, either directly or indirectly. Taken to its logical conclusion, and knowing what we know now about the mirad of microscopic creatures, we would all constantly devolve into a single cell ameoba, and then nothingness. This is simply a critical flaw that Buddha could not have known about when he established his religion.

Although dear old Grandmother knew the Bible inside out, she was a lifelong Buddhist, because she simply can’t accept that God’s grace is simply there for the taking/believing. Barring a deathbed conversion, she died convinced that she’s one step closer to nirvana.