Unification of world religions for world peace

[Francis king]

lol

[InLove]

Oh my. Old thread. Got to read back through it.

Tomorrow.

lol.

InPeace,
InLove

[Snoopy]

Hi,

Nowt wrong with "old" of course!

"The real enemy of any religion
Is not other religions
But materialism that feeds on
And cultivates the human instinct of selfishness
for the sake of material development.
Runaway materialism
Is what all religions should join hands against,
For it has been the most powerful force in turning
People away from spiritualism of all forms."

- Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

s.

[Vajradhara]

Namaste Dayaa,

thank you for the post.

Originally Posted by dayaa

i can't help wondering, and please excuse me if i'm way out of line here, i admit i only have a very basic knowledge of buddhism.....but it occurs to me that possibly God was not mentioned, not so much for lack of belief in him, but more to stress that it is attitudes and behaviour here and now that matter rather than labelling beliefs.

there are several salient reasons why certain discourses of the Buddha do not contain references to creator deities and why others do, not least of which is that Buddhist teachings are given based on the spiritual capacity of the hearer, which a Buddha knows completely. nevertheless, in a fairly famous Sutta within Buddhism, called the Root Sequence Sutta, the Buddha firmly and positively establishes that there is no underlying, root cause for phenomena which arise in the universe. there is no Ground of Being, to borrow from Paul Tillich nor a Creator God.

the Buddhist rejection of a Creator God is not a religious objection, per se, it is a philosophical objection as the idea of a single intelligent creator is grounded in a radically different ontological view than what is presented in the Buddha Dharma.

it is, of course, also true that for many beings pondering these questions, which are called the Unknowables in our tradition, have little to do with ones spiritual development or progress. that is not the case for all beings, then again, Buddhism isn't a one size fits all religion

maybe buddhism isn't denying the existence of God, rather leaving it up to the individual to find his own belief and avoiding the "labelling" and stressing the actions.

i suppose it would depend on how one defines a deity. in the Buddhist context, there are deities aplenty, heck, one of the Buddhas titles is "Teacher of men and gods". in one famous Sutta the Buddha describes the idea of a Creator God which the Brahmins believe exist, Maha Brahma, and refutes the existence of this deity.

actually, to get quite technical...

it's not that we say that a creator god dosen't exist.. its that we say that any god that thinks it is a creator god is deluded and, like all beings, will be reborn subject to its karma. moreover, no deity can mitigate another beings karma and, as such, there is no value in worshipping any deity.

generally in terms of unification of religions.....maybe that is something that will take shape at some later point in history. i tend to think it is difficult to jump straight from the situation we have now to unification. for the time being the best approach (in my opinion) is to aim for acceptance of pluralism.

why is the unification of religion something of interest? do you feel that all humans have the same spiritual capacity and need?

that is not a view that Buddha Dharma would share.

if we can at least try to view it as different paths to the same destination and respect each others views then open-minded discussions can take place and we can stop killing each other .

why does the destination have to be the same for us to respect each others views? could we not respect each others views without having the same destination?

i have a mixed cultural background from two opposing cultures and i can see good and bad in both. how nice it would be if the two could learn from each other instead of constantly criticizing each other or throwing bombs at each other. i think we need to take it one step at a time .

true... mutal respect for each other is quite good. i'm hoping that we don't have to all be the same for this respect to manifest.

metta,

~v