A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
ieee23
Posts: 394
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 12:40 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by ieee23 »

befriend wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:40 pm I love Christianity. They do more charity work than Buddhist organizations. Christianity is a solid religion or at least what Jesus taught. I agree the new and old testaments are pretty diabolical. But saying our father prayers or the Jesus centering prayer and having Jesus as a role model or praying Hail Marys is an effective way of reducing negative emotions. Why would we let an atheist defend Buddhism someone who lacks faith. What despicable place to put your effort. Christians are renunciation believers heaven and hell believers afterlife believers charity believers self sacrificial forgiving and ethical in thought believers metta and mindfulness and the Quakers are pretty much single handedly responsible for eradicating slavery in Britain and have given equality to women.
They were also responsible for the Inquisition and worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Christians have also been murdering doctors and other staff at family planning clinics and women's health centers. As a child a bully much larger than I am hit me in the street because I wasn't Catholic. His mother didn't care.

I'll just say "No Thank You" to Christianity.
Whatever a bhikkhu frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of his mind. - MN 19
Garrib
Posts: 605
Joined: Mon May 30, 2016 8:35 pm

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by Garrib »

ieee23 wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:29 am
befriend wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:40 pm I love Christianity. They do more charity work than Buddhist organizations. Christianity is a solid religion or at least what Jesus taught. I agree the new and old testaments are pretty diabolical. But saying our father prayers or the Jesus centering prayer and having Jesus as a role model or praying Hail Marys is an effective way of reducing negative emotions. Why would we let an atheist defend Buddhism someone who lacks faith. What despicable place to put your effort. Christians are renunciation believers heaven and hell believers afterlife believers charity believers self sacrificial forgiving and ethical in thought believers metta and mindfulness and the Quakers are pretty much single handedly responsible for eradicating slavery in Britain and have given equality to women.
They were also responsible for the Inquisition and worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Christians have also been murdering doctors and other staff at family planning clinics and women's health centers. As a child a bully much larger than I am hit me in the street because I wasn't Catholic. His mother didn't care.

I'll just say "No Thank You" to Christianity.
Just because some Christians do certain things doesn't mean all do - are you ready to say that the Buddhists committing atrocities in Burma are representative of all Buddhists? I would hope not!
User avatar
retrofuturist
Posts: 27839
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:52 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Contact:

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
Garrib wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:47 am Just because some Christians do certain things doesn't mean all do - are you ready to say that the Buddhists committing atrocities in Burma are representative of all Buddhists? I would hope not!
Indeed. It was a totally ridiculous statement... I'm sure there were millions of Christians fighting against the Nazis too.

Metta,
Paul. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
befriend
Posts: 2283
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:39 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by befriend »

Their prayers work wonders in releasing stucked baggage. a Christian hurt you so Jesus' techniques don't work? I don't think that kid was loving his enemy as Christ taught I think the world is a better place having Christianity in it. It can give people comfort and peace and joy not based on the flesh. People identifying with their religions like Buddhism belongs to me I'm a Buddhist I'm the best everything else is worthless because I focus on their negative attributes all other religions are animal religions that's not coming from wisdom it's coming from hearsay Focus on their positive attributes which when taken to heart Jesus teachings are super simple and transformative. And if anyone were to God forbid try another religion they might see why it's been around for a couple thousand years.
Take care of mindfulness and mindfulness will take care of you.
Saengnapha
Posts: 1350
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:17 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by Saengnapha »

ieee23 wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:29 am
befriend wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:40 pm I love Christianity. They do more charity work than Buddhist organizations. Christianity is a solid religion or at least what Jesus taught. I agree the new and old testaments are pretty diabolical. But saying our father prayers or the Jesus centering prayer and having Jesus as a role model or praying Hail Marys is an effective way of reducing negative emotions. Why would we let an atheist defend Buddhism someone who lacks faith. What despicable place to put your effort. Christians are renunciation believers heaven and hell believers afterlife believers charity believers self sacrificial forgiving and ethical in thought believers metta and mindfulness and the Quakers are pretty much single handedly responsible for eradicating slavery in Britain and have given equality to women.
They were also responsible for the Inquisition and worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Christians have also been murdering doctors and other staff at family planning clinics and women's health centers. As a child a bully much larger than I am hit me in the street because I wasn't Catholic. His mother didn't care.

I'll just say "No Thank You" to Christianity.
And, Buddhists are slaughtering and participating in 'ethnic cleansing' right now in Myanmar and Thailand. Do you think that Buddhists, in general, act in such a manner everywhere? Such beliefs and actions are not sanctioned in either religion. There are always the 'powers that be' that will act in the 'name' of their religion. This is what I'm suspicious of.
befriend
Posts: 2283
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:39 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by befriend »

Christianity is like the gradual path of Buddhism generosity morality and renunciation which leads to heaven or favorable human realm. Buddha said that not everyone is ready to be taught the highest teachings on Buddhism. That's where Christianity can come in for different personality types.
Take care of mindfulness and mindfulness will take care of you.
Saengnapha
Posts: 1350
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:17 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by Saengnapha »

If anyone is interested in both Christianity and Buddhism, the books of Bernadette Roberts is required reading. Here is a Christian practitioner detailing her journey to No-Self and beyond, and writing with a sharp dexterity unlike anything I've ever read before. 'What Is Self, is an important book in the Christian contemplative tradition that is worthy of anyone's time. The introduction is done by a Zen priest!
User avatar
aflatun
Posts: 814
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2016 2:40 pm
Location: Bay Area, CA

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by aflatun »

Saengnapha wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:15 am If anyone is interested in both Christianity and Buddhism, the books of Bernadette Roberts is required reading. Here is a Christian practitioner detailing her journey to No-Self and beyond, and writing with a sharp dexterity unlike anything I've ever read before. 'What Is Self, is an important book in the Christian contemplative tradition that is worthy of anyone's time. The introduction is done by a Zen priest!

:heart: Bernadette Roberts!
"People often get too quick to say 'there's no self. There's no self...no self...no self.' There is self, there is focal point, its not yours. That's what not self is."

Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli
Senses and the Thought-1, 42:53

"Those who create constructs about the Buddha,
Who is beyond construction and without exhaustion,
Are thereby damaged by their constructs;
They fail to see the Thus-Gone.

That which is the nature of the Thus-Gone
Is also the nature of this world.
There is no nature of the Thus-Gone.
There is no nature of the world."

Nagarjuna
MMK XXII.15-16
justindesilva
Posts: 2600
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2016 12:38 pm

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by justindesilva »

Saengnapha wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:07 am
ieee23 wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:29 am
befriend wrote: Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:40 pm I love Christianity. They do more charity work than Buddhist organizations. Christianity is a solid religion or at least what Jesus taught. I agree the new and old testaments are pretty diabolical. But saying our father prayers or the Jesus centering prayer and having Jesus as a role model or praying Hail Marys is an effective way of reducing negative emotions. Why would we let an atheist defend Buddhism someone who lacks faith. What despicable place to put your effort. Christians are renunciation believers heaven and hell believers afterlife believers charity believers self sacrificial forgiving and ethical in thought believers metta and mindfulness and the Quakers are pretty much single handedly responsible for eradicating slavery in Britain and have given equality to women.
They were also responsible for the Inquisition and worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Christians have also been murdering doctors and other staff at family planning clinics and women's health centers. As a child a bully much larger than I am hit me in the street because I wasn't Catholic. His mother didn't care.

I'll just say "No Thank You" to Christianity.
And, Buddhists are slaughtering and participating in 'ethnic cleansing' right now in Myanmar and Thailand. Do you think that Buddhists, in general, act in such a manner everywhere? Such beliefs and actions are not sanctioned in either religion. There are always the 'powers that be' that will act in the 'name' of their religion. This is what I'm suspicious of.
Could the last para " Buddhists are slaughtering........" be ammened as so called Buddhists in Myanmar are slaughtering........ .
Politicians who use Buddhism as a cover are the slaughteres. In Myanmar there are Buddhist priests who have attained Marg phala too. Therefore one should be careful when one writes.
chownah
Posts: 9336
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 2:19 pm

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by chownah »

All buddhists are so called buddhists. The buddha wasn't a so called buddhist and he never called any of his followers 'so called buddhists' or even just 'buddhists'. The buddha didn't teach buddhism and so anyone who follows buddhism should be called a 'so called buddhist'.
chownah
Saengnapha
Posts: 1350
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:17 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by Saengnapha »

justindesilva wrote: Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:17 pm
Saengnapha wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:07 am
ieee23 wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:29 am

They were also responsible for the Inquisition and worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Christians have also been murdering doctors and other staff at family planning clinics and women's health centers. As a child a bully much larger than I am hit me in the street because I wasn't Catholic. His mother didn't care.

I'll just say "No Thank You" to Christianity.
And, Buddhists are slaughtering and participating in 'ethnic cleansing' right now in Myanmar and Thailand. Do you think that Buddhists, in general, act in such a manner everywhere? Such beliefs and actions are not sanctioned in either religion. There are always the 'powers that be' that will act in the 'name' of their religion. This is what I'm suspicious of.
Could the last para " Buddhists are slaughtering........" be ammened as so called Buddhists in Myanmar are slaughtering........ .
Politicians who use Buddhism as a cover are the slaughteres. In Myanmar there are Buddhist priests who have attained Marg phala too. Therefore one should be careful when one writes.
Too late for me to edit my post, but sure, a lot of it is like what you wrote, I'm sure. I think the people who read this board have the intelligence to figure out what's happening. Keep in mind the politicians are also so called Buddhists. But, chownah is right about the whole labeling thing.
User avatar
L.N.
Posts: 504
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2016 6:01 pm

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by L.N. »

ieee23 wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:29 amThey were also responsible for the Inquisition and worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Christians have also been murdering doctors and other staff at family planning clinics and women's health centers. As a child a bully much larger than I am hit me in the street because I wasn't Catholic. His mother didn't care.

I'll just say "No Thank You" to Christianity.
So much good discussion in this thread, and then a post such as the above to again disparage other faiths. I am glad to see that in general there appears to be an increasing tolerance for other faiths in discussions such as these. Perhaps the climate is more conducive to views such as the following, which appear to have been unwelcome here not long ago.
Jason wrote: Fri Aug 22, 2014 1:52 am I hate to admit it (both because of the critical things I've said about Christianity in the past as well as because of the criticism I'll potentially receive by some Buddhists presently), but I've recently find myself comparing aspects of Christianity and Buddhism and finding them less antagonistic than I once did, greatly expanding my understanding and appreciation of the former, particularly the more contemplative and mystical aspects relating to living a spiritual life.

In The Seven Storey Mountain, for example, Thomas Merton writes about seeing his father in the hospital near the end of his life and the suffering he experienced, a suffering characteristic of people 'without faith' in the presence of war, disease, pain, starvation, suffering, plague, bombardment, and death” (91), which immediately reminded of the first noble truth: “Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering — in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging objects” (SN 56.11).

Later on, when describing his month-long attempt to devote himself to St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, he recollects that he was mildly appalled by St. Ignatius' notion of indifference to all created things in themselves: “Wherefore it is necessary that we make ourselves indifferent to all created things, in so far as it is permitted to our free will…in such a way that, as far as we are concerned, we should not desire health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than ignominy, a long life rather than a short life, and so on, desiring and choosing only these things which more efficaciously lead us to the end for which we were created” (294). Which is strikingly similar to the Buddha's teachings on the middle way between sensual indulgence and self-mortification and dispassion towards the conditioned.

Even one of the more controversial teachings of the Buddha, that of anatta or not-self, has it's parallels in Christianity. Merton speaks of the inescapable anguish arising from of the “shame at the inescapable stigma of our sins” as long as there's any self-love left in us, that, “Only when all pride, all self-love has been consumed in our souls by the love of God, are we delivered from the things which is the subject of those torments” (323). And in the book In the Spirit of Happiness by the monks of New Skete, while discussing the real meaning of asceticism and some of the more 'negative' sounding passages in the New Testament like Mark 8:34-35 and John 12:24-25, they mention that:
  • "Dying to self" is spiritual shorthand for rooting out all manner of exaggerated self-interest, characteristics of ourselves that constrict us in narcissism and blind self-centeredness. This is the self within us that, while all too real, is what nonetheless must due, the "false self," which must gives way to the new life we are called to attain. The false self embodies the very characteristics we loathe in our better moments. Were we to look at ourselves honestly, we would see how petty, thoughtless, and loveless we can be at any given moment. We might have an occasional, fleeting insight that we will never attain any real happiness unless we come to terms with what really counts in life. One doesn't have to search far to find pathetic examples of individuals who struck it rich by the standards of "the world," yet whose personal lives were utterly miserable. (86)
Both of which I think are apt descriptions of the proper use of the teachings on not-self, albeit in Christian terminology—an approach that's quite similar to the way Thanissaro Bhikkhu approaches the teachings on not-self in his short book Selves & Not-selves.

I'd say that what 'dies' during awakening in the Buddhist context is a self built on, or influenced by, ignorance and the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion; and what's left is a mind that's liberated, unbound, freed from grasping and self-centeredness, and expressive of love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Nibbana, then, isn't a kind of annihilation or state of nothingness as I think many mistakenly believe it to be based upon the numerous 'negative' references as to what it's not; it's the experience of the fullness of life free from the suffering that arise from clinging.

Where God fits into this, I can't say for certain; but it's interesting that nibbana, the final goal of the path to liberation, and which is ineffable and beyond concepts and language, is described as in terms like the deathless, the unborn, the unbecome, the unmade, the unfabricated. And the Dhamma that the Buddha teaches should be our island, our refuge, and which his teachings point towards, is none other than the laws of nature, the reality of things are they truly are, truth. If that's not an apt definition of God, I don't know what is.

I suppose that in Christianity, I see these ideas presented from a more revelatory point of view, arising out of a peculiar Semitic culture (and later, Greco-Roman), replete with its own religious traditions and worldviews in which they're framed. And in Buddhism, I see these ideas presented from a more philosophical and/or empirical point of view, arising out a peculiar Indic culture, replete with its own religious traditions and worldview in which they're framed.
Sire patitthitā Buddhā
Dhammo ca tava locane
Sangho patitthitō tuiham
uresabba gunākaro


愿众佛坐在我的头顶, 佛法在我的眼中, 僧伽,功德的根源, 端坐在我的肩上。
Saengnapha
Posts: 1350
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:17 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by Saengnapha »

L.N. wrote: Sat Nov 04, 2017 4:17 pm Where God fits into this, I can't say for certain; but it's interesting that nibbana, the final goal of the path to liberation, and which is ineffable and beyond concepts and language, is described as in terms like the deathless, the unborn, the unbecome, the unmade, the unfabricated. And the Dhamma that the Buddha teaches should be our island, our refuge, and which his teachings point towards, is none other than the laws of nature, the reality of things are they truly are, truth. If that's not an apt definition of God, I don't know what is.

I suppose that in Christianity, I see these ideas presented from a more revelatory point of view, arising out of a peculiar Semitic culture (and later, Greco-Roman), replete with its own religious traditions and worldviews in which they're framed. And in Buddhism, I see these ideas presented from a more philosophical and/or empirical point of view, arising out a peculiar Indic culture, replete with its own religious traditions and worldview in which they're framed.
[/quote]

If you are really interested in this subject, 'What Is Self?' by Bernadette Roberts is the clearest exposition of the Christian contemplative approach with some basic comparative analysis to Buddhism & Vedantic beliefs. The introduction is done by a Zen priest. This is really an extraordinary account of Roberts' realization and her 'path' to it. I would think Buddhists could easily approach this.
User avatar
cappuccino
Posts: 12840
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2016 1:45 am
Contact:

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by cappuccino »

Others teach differently than Buddha…

I would (therefore) hope Buddha is your only teacher.
Saengnapha
Posts: 1350
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:17 am

Re: A. L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief"

Post by Saengnapha »

cappuccino wrote: Sun Nov 05, 2017 2:52 am Others teach differently than Buddha…

I would (therefore) hope Buddha is your only teacher.
Why would you hope that? Why limit yourself.
Post Reply