no scholar
Gao bo han - I have to wonder how a man who can say this:
Quote:
You will forgive me if I bring a certain tenacity to this arguement. Organized religion for me was a highly toxic experience and I enjoy this opportunity to confront what appears to me to be widespread, organized, legitimated, blatant lunacy.
Can say this:
Quote:
Buddhism I think is a scientific point of view...
The atheist Sam Harris, in his scathing attack on religious faith in his book, "The End of Faith," spends the last chapter...can anyone guess? After he lambasts Christianity and Islam...? The last chapter of his book is essentially a plug for Buddhism, which he considers to be a very rational religion and whose meditation techniques he has practiced for many years.
As I said before, I have never studied Buddhism. What little I do know comes from books about Chinese culture and history. But a quick search online reveals several aspects of Buddhism that are obviously dogma, no more or less irrational than anything you'd find in the Abrahamic religions. So what's the story here? A genuine belief that Buddhism is scientific or at least highly rational (rational enough to plug for in your vitriolic tome against theism)? A prejudice against Christianity and love for all things non-Christian? Inquiring minds want to know!
Bob - That was me. You were correct in pointing out earlier that I am no scholar. My understanding of Buddhism for example comes almost entirely from what I would call "Buddhist psychology" as described by the Dalai Lama in "The Art of Happiness" and "Ethics for the New Millenium" in which he describes Buddhism as the science of the mind. It is the mind watching itself "very" closely and admitting with complete honesty the situation in which it finds itself. Driven by desire and the tendency to compare it becomes aggressive, competitive, jealous, sometimes hostile. This works in complete opposition to the deeper need to connect with people on the basis of love, respect and compassion. If you look at your own psychology you will discover this to be true, or not. Buddhism doesn't dictate anything but simply encourages people to think clearly and be emotionally honest with themselves.
The theological aspects of Buddhism, whatever they are, don't interest me much and to be perfectly frank I don't think they interest the Dalai Lama much either. He is a figure head and so cannot express himself honestly on the issue but he will go so far as to say that if all the pomp and pagentry surrounding the "religion" disappered tomorrow it would not make a bit of difference.
I think that an element of insanity runs through the entire human experience and most of that insanity comes from the anxiety created by our understanding of time and the absolute reality of ethics. If we look forward we see the inevitability of suffering and death, we see that we have choices that might affect when death will occur and how much suffering we will do in the meantime but have no way of knowing with any certainty what the outcome of our choices will be. We know also that the things we do will affect other people and given our innate compassion for them we naturally feel guilty for the wrongs we commit. That is the soul of man and I doubt that it has changed at all over the last two thousand years. The prophets catered to man's anxieties with stories of forgiveness and everlasting life. They either made up these stories or they honestly believed them because they had experienced a temporary split from reality. It doesn't suprise me at all that such sensitive people would write such beautiful texts. Look at me, I'm nuts, but I wrote
Quote:
You will forgive me if I bring a certain tenacity to this arguement. Organized religion for me was a highly toxic experience and I enjoy this opportunity to confront what appears to me to be widespread, organized, legitimated, blatant lunacy.
Can say this:
Quote:
Buddhism I think is a scientific point of view...
The atheist Sam Harris, in his scathing attack on religious faith in his book, "The End of Faith," spends the last chapter...can anyone guess? After he lambasts Christianity and Islam...? The last chapter of his book is essentially a plug for Buddhism, which he considers to be a very rational religion and whose meditation techniques he has practiced for many years.
As I said before, I have never studied Buddhism. What little I do know comes from books about Chinese culture and history. But a quick search online reveals several aspects of Buddhism that are obviously dogma, no more or less irrational than anything you'd find in the Abrahamic religions. So what's the story here? A genuine belief that Buddhism is scientific or at least highly rational (rational enough to plug for in your vitriolic tome against theism)? A prejudice against Christianity and love for all things non-Christian? Inquiring minds want to know!
Bob - That was me. You were correct in pointing out earlier that I am no scholar. My understanding of Buddhism for example comes almost entirely from what I would call "Buddhist psychology" as described by the Dalai Lama in "The Art of Happiness" and "Ethics for the New Millenium" in which he describes Buddhism as the science of the mind. It is the mind watching itself "very" closely and admitting with complete honesty the situation in which it finds itself. Driven by desire and the tendency to compare it becomes aggressive, competitive, jealous, sometimes hostile. This works in complete opposition to the deeper need to connect with people on the basis of love, respect and compassion. If you look at your own psychology you will discover this to be true, or not. Buddhism doesn't dictate anything but simply encourages people to think clearly and be emotionally honest with themselves.
The theological aspects of Buddhism, whatever they are, don't interest me much and to be perfectly frank I don't think they interest the Dalai Lama much either. He is a figure head and so cannot express himself honestly on the issue but he will go so far as to say that if all the pomp and pagentry surrounding the "religion" disappered tomorrow it would not make a bit of difference.
I think that an element of insanity runs through the entire human experience and most of that insanity comes from the anxiety created by our understanding of time and the absolute reality of ethics. If we look forward we see the inevitability of suffering and death, we see that we have choices that might affect when death will occur and how much suffering we will do in the meantime but have no way of knowing with any certainty what the outcome of our choices will be. We know also that the things we do will affect other people and given our innate compassion for them we naturally feel guilty for the wrongs we commit. That is the soul of man and I doubt that it has changed at all over the last two thousand years. The prophets catered to man's anxieties with stories of forgiveness and everlasting life. They either made up these stories or they honestly believed them because they had experienced a temporary split from reality. It doesn't suprise me at all that such sensitive people would write such beautiful texts. Look at me, I'm nuts, but I wrote
posted by david at 5:21 AM
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