gary
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Posts: 38
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Post by gary on Aug 22, 2013 17:33:56 GMT 1
A Buddhist should understand that problems don't necessarily arise from religions per-se, but from people's (mis)perceptions and (mis)interpretations. Buddhism teaches us to be compassionate towards all beings because all beings experience suffering due to our illusions and our inability to see things as they really are, which only an enlightened being can do.
A Buddhist should know not to speak harshly (or worse yet, treat harshly) anyone of a different religion, or different religions as a whole. Instead, we should show compassion and a will to show a better way through setting an example, and train ourselves to have the wisdom to know how we can best help where problems and suffering arise.
Shaun you are correct when you say "There's good & bad in all races, religions & life forms for that matter." In the whole of existence in it's entirety, there can be no such thing as good without bad, there can be no such thing as right without wrong, just like you can't have hot without cold, light without dark, male without female, happiness without suffering, life without death. Despite what some might think about religions, good does not conquer bad - good and bad "inter-are." Good needs bad in order to be good, otherwise it isn't anything. They don't exist seperately and one cannot out-do the other. That's why wisdom and compassion are the keys to dealing with all the suffering that this causes.
Peace to you all.
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matt
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Post by matt on Aug 22, 2013 19:30:20 GMT 1
I agree whole heartedly with what Shaun and Gary said. It is so disheartening when people use this forum to criticize other religions. Like Shaun said, the last thing we need is someone adding fuel to the fire.Thanks for those pictures, Gary, they are really inspiring. Your last post has the right idea, Brian. Keep up that kind of effort and you will feel better about everything.
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brian
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Post by brian on Aug 23, 2013 4:05:14 GMT 1
Those are very inspiring photos that gary posted. All you hear on the world news is about the violence and fighting amongst the Christians and Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere. It was quite surprising and good to see that there are some who are truly peaceful.
gary wrote
A Buddhist should understand that problems don't necessarily arise from religions per-se, but from people's (mis)perceptions and (mis)interpretations
I don't mean to be difficult, but I have to ask in all fairness, would this include the religion of Satanism? Or perhaps any of the pagan religions of the past (and possibly present) that practice animal and/or human sacrifice? What about the KKK which is in a sense a religion? Are they mis-percieving or mis-interpreting their religion? Many people would say that their problems arise directly from their religious beliefs.
I don't mean to be a stick in the mud, but I believe that's a legitimate question. Moreover, what if a Christian fundamentalist truly believes that all non-believers should burn in hell, and has plenty of biblical scripture to back it up? Or a Muslim, such as Osama Bin Laden, quote the parts of the Koran that says all infidels should be erased from the earth? Is it really a "mis-interpretation" when these things are plainly written out in black and white in their holy books? If those violent parts weren't written in their scriptures, then they could not justify any of their intolerance and hatred. They couldn't go, "SEE, it's written right here in such and such verse! This is the Word of God"
So I don't understand when you say it is always a misperception of religion, when it's clearly interwoven into it's fabric. And to claim that religion isn't persuasive, is ineffectual and hardly a factor in any individual's beliefs or society's morals seems to be saying that religion really isn't all that important at all. You're saying that essentially religion is trivial and mostly irrelevant in people's actions regardless if it teaches good things or bad things. That may be true, but looking at world history explicitly shows otherwise.
So I'm NOT condemning Christians or Muslims as religious followers! 99% of them are beautiful human beings!! But I'm simply asking the question:
Why do many parts of the Bible and Koran both contain verses that endorse Us vs THEM mentality and extreme violence (such as commanding laws to stone to death an adulterous or cutting the hand off a thief) when they are supposed to be words of an All Loving God? That just baffles me.
If I could get just one legitimate answer to this (and NOT Apologetics!) then I think it would dissolve a lot of my confusion.
Thanks, Peace.
"Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence."
Buddha
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gary
Senior Member
Posts: 38
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Post by gary on Aug 23, 2013 4:53:47 GMT 1
Why do many parts of the Bible and Koran both contain verses that endorse Us vs THEM mentality and extreme violence (such as commanding laws to stone to death an adulterous or cutting the hand off a thief) when they are supposed to be words of an All Loving God? That just baffles me. If I could get just one legitimate answer to this (and NOT Apologetics!) then I think it would dissolve a lot of my confusion. Thanks, Peace. "Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence." Buddha This is simply my own opinion and I do not in any way want to belittle or undermine the beliefs of anyone else. I believe all of us are unable to see the true nature of all things, therefore we are locked into a life of illusions. Those illusions take on as many forms as your imagination will allow. One of those illusions is a creator god, as the Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in. The Jews, Christians and Muslims have their Torah, Bible and Koran which, according to them, as far as I know, are the legitimate word of God. However I don't believe any God exists, I therefore don't believe any of these scriptures actually are the legitimate word of God. They are simply the words of (unenlightened) men, which have been manipulated and misinterpreted over the centuries to suit political and social agendas, or simply by accident. Now if the men who first wrote those verses were not enlightened, then the words they wrote can hardly be considered enlightened either, nor can their interpretation by millions down throughout the centuries. So although I believe the notion of a God to be an illusion, for billions it is their reality. That is why these various books, supposedly the word of an all powerful creator God, sometimes contain unhelpful advice - because they were not actually written by an all powerful creator God at all, they were written by simple men like me and you who were unable to realise the true nature of all things, so its hardly suprising that there advice is (at times) wide of the mark. Instead of getting angry at these other beings who are trapped in the wrangles of samsara and the suffering that brings, Buddhists are taught to cultivate compassion and a genuine motivation to help all beings on their paths to liberation. Along with compassion, we have to work on our wisdom so that we can understand that we are all at different places in our learning curve, and that different situations will require different solutions. Also, people are where they are because of their karma. We have to understand and respect that, and again compassion is a powerful tool to help us. You mentioned the US vs THEM mentality in your last post Brian. That's what we have to overcome, we have to realise we are all far from liberated and offer loving-kindness and compassion to all our fellow beings instead of fear, mistrust and resentment. As you said yourself a few posts previous, we have to work on ourselves first. At least that's what Buddhism teaches anyway, as far as I understand it. Peace to you |
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Post by samuel on Aug 23, 2013 13:26:49 GMT 1
Hi Guys, Sorry I have been away from the forum. The worst road accident in Malaysian history happened just a few days ago. 37 people perished in a bus which careened off a ravine on its way down from a hill resort. A lot of grief and news. We are only about 50kms away so you can imagine the anxiety and air of grief. An accident like that affect scores of people directly.
Thanks Gary for posting those pictures. Muslims and Christians share the same roots in so far as religion goes. It's like a river creating two other tributaries. And Brian, you are very wise and awakened rather quickly. Put your focus into peace and harmony because just at the edges lurk ugliness and contradictions.Seeing what's happening in Syria right now is heartbreaking and that's part of the Holy Land too.
But let's find solace in the Himalayas instead. The calm beauty, the fantastic mountains, freshness and so much peace. The world is our samsara and we are trudging very delicately to keep our sanity and hope alive because things can be so twisted.
Shaun, intolerance causes a lot of friction. The Christians in my country have just failed in quashing an appeal hearing to the right to use Allah in Malay language Christian literature and the government is fighting them. Strange thing is they both believe in only one God but the Muslims here forbid the use of Allah. And the whole world is laughing at us!!
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Post by samuel on Aug 26, 2013 17:28:06 GMT 1
I watched the massacres of the Rohinya Muslims by Burmese Buddhists on You Tube and besides being appalled I was heartbroken. It is truly a crying shame to see segments of humanity stoop so low and more so in this day and age. Totally vile!! There is no excuse, nor justification for genocide, carnage, plunder and arson. That is not what Buddhism is about. Worse still, there are militant monks prodding them on. That is sacrilege.
In this way, it brings to mind about the Holocaust, Cambodia, Serbernica and Rwanda where scores of people were killed in all sorts of unimaginable fashion. I thought we would have learned from all that but apparently not. Even in Cambodia, that was a Buddhist country too, where unspeakable acts of genocide just passed through and who other than the Communist Vietnamese came to put a halt to all those senseless murders.
I came across an old lady in Cambodia who had her limbs hacked off at her wrists and ankles by the Khmer Rouge. She was in her 40s then and had to go through a torturous life for the next 30 odd years. What about the scores that are still being maimed by landmines? And now those Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka are demonstrating against a UN team who’s there to look into the senseless killings just at the ebb and prior to the defeat of the Tamils. When aid was given for the 2004 tsunami, they were demonstrating too against having to share aid with those affected Tamils. Where is compassion and where is humanism? Does Buddhism teach us all this ugly behaviour or does it teach us to be more conscious beings.
Would there be Buddhist terrorists next and are we going to have a totalitarian Buddhist regime governing a country? I wonder !!
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Post by Rudy on Aug 27, 2013 20:09:13 GMT 1
As mentioned, do not mix up people with the faith they say they are.
From my point of view, a genuine Buddhist should be just about unable to do these things. However, anyone can say they are Buddhist, including the ignorants, crazies and criminals...
That is not what Buddhism is about. Worse still, there are militant monks prodding them on. That is sacrilege.
I totally agree, but what can I do?
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matt
Senior Member
Posts: 425
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Post by matt on Aug 27, 2013 23:58:47 GMT 1
As mentioned, do not mix up people with the faith they say they are. From my point of view, a genuine Buddhist should be just about unable to do these things. However, anyone can say they are Buddhist, including the ignorants, crazies and criminals... That is not what Buddhism is about. Worse still, there are militant monks prodding them on. That is sacrilege. I totally agree, but what can I do? Right, I think what Rudy is hinting at, and I believe, is that you really seem to be abdicating your own responsibility in this post, Samuel. Many Buddhists practice for a better world. We believe as Lama Zopa said, that the all the issues in the world are caused by untamed mind. One way we know this is whenever we see issues in the world, we see angry people pointing their fingers at others, and forgetting, at least for the moment, when I point my finger at someone, 3 other fingers are pointing back at me. Buddhist practice begins with a decision to accept responsiblity for our own spiritual and emotional welfare. I honestly can't see how you are doing this by listing examples of how other people who were raised in a Buddhist culture are misbehaving. And I really can not for the life of me understand how you relate the Khmer Rouge, much less genocide in Rwanda or Serbinica to Buddhism, and how these are indications that there will be a Buddhist tyranny. Nor does it matter to me if a tyrant calls himself Buddhist or not, I can not change his mind. A tyrant is not going to change their behavior to make me happy, nor is anyone else. We have to learn how to use our lives and our undeveloped potentials to make others happy, and that is a long, long road to travel. No time to waste complaining, too much work to do, on our selves. When our focus is there, at least we are not so much the cause of the problems. From what you have told us, you are very new to Buddhism. You have long felt an affinity with the Buddha's teachings, but so far you have not developed much of a practice. You also suspect you may be a special person, with a lot of potential, true, I am sure, but we have to remember this is true of everyone. It is okay to sense you have a lot of potential. Many, many beginners feel this way, but it can be unhealthy to think that other sense it about us. There is a tendency for people to think, because I can sense I have a lot of potential, then if I complain about how Buddhists behave, they will change. Of course they will not. That is just the ego having its way with us. I believe, that if you want the world to be a better place, you should practice and train your own mind. I believe this works. That is just my opinion. You should not take my word for it, investigate Buddhism and see if it will help you be more effective. Right now, I just see a person who can talk himself into a very negative state of mind, about what others are doing wrong. If that helped anyone, we would all be world saving saints.  |
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brian
Senior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by brian on Aug 28, 2013 4:54:31 GMT 1
Samuel wrote
I watched the massacres of the Rohinya Muslims by Burmese Buddhists on You Tube and besides being appalled I was heartbroken.
I understand your frustration but remember that we are all inter-connected. Not everything is black and white. From a wider POV, I think karma is coming into play. We don't know all the details and reasons behind these Buddhists wanting these Muslims out of their country. Whereas it is easy to blame these Buddhists for their violent behavior (which of course is wrong and contrary to the dharma), but I believe there are deeper scars from the past that may give some clarity as to why they are acting this way. I'm not condoning their behavior but I think they have been pushed and pressured into this extreme behavior due to Islamic crimes. I know for example that a Buddhist woman was brutally raped and murdered by 3 Muslim men, which led to a Buddhist protest in a Muslim community. So although the most spiritual thing to do is turn the other cheek, perhaps after many years of abuse, these Buddhists just had enough of Islamic bullying and imposition in their own homeland.
Basically I don't think these Buddhists are attacking Muslims purely out of intolerance and racism. There is a reason behind it which should be dealt with in a more peaceful manner, but maybe they tried every other avenue and are left with this as their final resort. It's not like these Buddhists are attacking Christians and Hindus and every other religious group. They are solely and specifically up against only these Rohinya Muslims. There has to be a logical reason for that, although it doesn't necessarily justify the violence.
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