How has religion helped us?

[suanni]

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

Christianity proclaims that it is only through their paradigm that one can reach heaven whereas the Sanatana Dharma proclaims that "paths are many, destinations are the same".

I like this, and its precisely how I feel about faith.

[Vajradhara]

Namaste Juan,

thank you for the reply.

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Thank you for your thoughtful reply!

I should have guessed I would probably bite off more than I could chew!

OK. I suppose Christianity deserves this stinging slap.

i do not mean this as a rebuke for it is a fairly common trait within monotheistic traditions.... some moreso than others, of course.

however... it can be a bit strange for beings not used to the Sanatana Dharma point of view. for a bit of a refresher, you may want to review this thread:

The Shared Myth

a snippet:

in the experience of India, on the other hand, although the holy mystery and power have been understood to be indeed transcendent, they are also, at the same time, immanent. it's not that the divine is everywhere: it is that the divine is everything. so that one does not require any outside reference, revelation, sacrament, or authorized community to return to it. one has but to recognized (re-cognize) what is within. deprived of this recognition, we are removed from our own reality by a cerebral shortsightedness which is called in Sanskrit "maya", "delusion".

I am not familiar with this you speak of. Nevertheless, is it ethically correct to hold the entire guilty for the unskilled actions of the few?

it is a bit beyond the scope of our conversation here.. so, we can leave that aside for now. however, i would tend to agree that it is not a skillful ethical action to view whole groups as guilty by association... however, i note that quite a bit of that is going on. i don't like it any more than you.

Very well, my ignorance is showing. I am glad you are gracious, and at least conversant with Christian ideology, more so than I am with Buddhism and Hinduism. Would I call it something like "this manifestation in this existance?" Or something like?

well... we could call it that... for conversational purposes and all

the teaching of annata, not-self, has tremendously broad ramifications about the nature of phenomena. thus, it is not just that there is no "self" in beings.. what we really mean to be saying is that, phenomena lack an inherent selfnature which permenantly exists from its own side. thus, depending on what sutta/sutra you are reading, various aspects of this teaching are emphasized. moreover, depending on the particular philosophical view that a being adopts various aspects of this teaching are emphasized.

that, in my view, is a discussion more properly held in the Buddhist section of the forum

Is this because this "Ground of Being" is not "sentient," in the sense of a "Big Beard in the Sky?"

well.. this is part of it, for sure. i suspect that it must seem quite mysterious in some sense... and perhaps a bit complicated. i assure you that this is simply how the teachings appear to me and i am rather overly verbose, it would seem.

if you are interested, you can read the Buddha Shakyamunis words here:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon...mn001-tb0.html

what we mean to say is that there is no ultimate ground of existence, in whatever manner it may be thought of. some beings think that Nirvana is the Buddhist "ground of being" however, this is not so, as the Buddha Shakyamuni explains in the refereneced sutta.

Now I am intrigued! Deities look to Shakyamuni? Yet Shakyamuni is not a deity?

indeed, this is the situation

here's a snippet of the sutta in which this is related a bit more explicitly than in other places:

"Subrahma and Paramatta Brahma,
together with sons of the Powerful One,
Sanankumara and Tissa:
They too have come to the forest meeting.
Great Brahma, who stands over
1,000 Brahma worlds,
who arose there spontaneously, effulgent:
Prestigious is he, with a terrifying body.
And ten brahma sovereigns,
each the lord of his own realm —
and in their midst has come
Harita Brahma surrounded by his retinue."

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon...mn001-tb0.html

Forgive my ignorance. If I was confused before, it is nothing like the confusion I now have.

hopefully, more knowledgeable posters than i can help explain some of our tradition

metta,

~v

[nomanshake]

Thanks for the reply suanni,

All the time when people balem religion I tell them it's not the religion but the human mind. God has given people the freedom of "mind" "thought" "speech and action", i mean almost the five senses. He's given freewill to think what he wants and judge his actions and good deeds or wrong deeds upon what he thinks with his mind. Rebellious attacks? when did Bible, Quran or others say "Kill innocent people, if you think it's right" nor did it say "Kill a person who is suffering from some disease etc etc". It's justn the human mind that interpret the Holy Books and go deep into the religious messages and change them in their own mind and commit what they feel like.
If human mind never had a free will, he could never have understood wrong and good. The main purpose to have come into this life is ofcourse to understand God.

As far as homosexuality goes, it's indeed a extreme matter. If there were no big punishments for this then who knows 50% of a nation could have been them, and there might not be any more children born and it poor effects on the younger generation. If you are born homosexual, you need to have control over your mind and hands and think that there are some poor, disabled, child orphans etc in this world too.

It's the people that do horrible acts in the name of religion, because they are mistaken. They want to act smart and I do hate them. I have always hated the religious scholars who make their own theories on religion, which most of the times bring criticism.

Not to forget, it's today that we humans are smart enough to understand humanity. Before 1000's of years, religion was more like a saver of humanity.
With so much of messengers, who are popular even today, I don't think so that it's just one story that they made!

[suanni]

Thanks for the reply nomanshake
Do you really want me to include the passages that incite man to hatred against his fellow man? Were there not enough in those links?
During the worst times of religious fervour that led to countless killings in the name of religion...I say in the name of religion, the vast majority has been political dressed up as religion... mankind on the whole was illiterate. The only people who could read and write were royalty (and you did as you were told or suffer the consequences) and the clerics. The clerics came to the people to spread the word of God and those who were literate were to be looked up to. I guess harking back to the days of the Druids. Only the select few knew the knowledge.
If a priest (likely under orders) told the masses that their failed harvest or the outbreak of a deadly flu through the village was the result of *insert 'sin'* and the only way to remove that sin was to slaughter those concerned, what do you think the mass of the village would do? They would seek out the sinners and slaughter them. They couldn't read the Bible, they had to rely on the priest to tell them it. Sure it was twisting, deliberately misinterpreting the text but where the masses were concerned it was the word of God.

Even today religious fervour can still be achieved by a charismatic speaker getting up and saying his/her piece and suggesting that the evils of the world are all down to *insert practise* and use religious text to back them up. This is how sects are started and sects can become very large, up to the point in a totally new area of that particular religion. We are literate, but we can still be fooled by a speaker....Bin Laden for starters...although his followers are falling.
Does this link help to explain?
http://www.religioustolerance.org/destruct.htm

I have thought of another good thing that religion has given us, literacy.

[nomanshake]

suanni thanks for the reply,

Well as far as this discussion is concerned, we wont get an end just like many other religious topics. Once again the conclusion has to be that human mind does wrong when it makes out wrong of the religious text.

I still don't see a straightforward religious text from most popular Holy Books that teaches wrong in the first hand.