religious avalanche?

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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genkaku
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religious avalanche?

Post by genkaku »

With hard times gaining a foothold around the world, do you think we are in for an eruption of religious and quasi-religious activity? I sort of think so: As Mark Twain observed, "Religion is the best business in the world."
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Prasadachitta
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by Prasadachitta »

:spy: :jawdrop:

:popcorn:
Maybe it wont be all bad.
"Beautifully taught is the Lord's Dhamma, immediately apparent, timeless, of the nature of a personal invitation, progressive, to be attained by the wise, each for himself." Anguttara Nikaya V.332
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Jechbi
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by Jechbi »

Well, people have to do something with their time and their anxiety, I guess.
Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,
But never soddens what is open;
Uncover, then, what is concealed,
Lest it be soddened by the rain.
laura
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by laura »

genkaku wrote:With hard times gaining a foothold around the world, do you think we are in for an eruption of religious and quasi-religious activity? I sort of think so: As Mark Twain observed, "Religion is the best business in the world."
Are you suggesting that the masses need opiates right now? You may just be right. At least some of it will be good medicine... I hope!
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Ngawang Drolma.
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by Ngawang Drolma. »

I read something somewhere that religion has really been on the rise in the US in recent years.

Sorry to be so vague with this comment :toilet:
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genkaku
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by genkaku »

Drolma wrote:I read something somewhere that religion has really been on the rise in the US in recent years.

Sorry to be so vague with this comment :toilet:
I agree with you Drolma ... for equally vague reasons.

But I wonder to what extent that rise -- in the recent years of great affluence -- is based on having too MUCH stuff, rather than too little ... and then realizing that stuff doesn't really make you all that happy. I believe I have read studies that after the basic needs were attained, the rest simply did not increase the happiness level.
mudra
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by mudra »

genkaku wrote: But I wonder to what extent that rise -- in the recent years of great affluence -- is based on having too MUCH stuff, rather than too little ... and then realizing that stuff doesn't really make you all that happy. I believe I have read studies that after the basic needs were attained, the rest simply did not increase the happiness level.
Most of the time, once basic needs are covered, the rest probably are the cause for stress!

Like when you park your porsche outside a cafe and someone walks by and keys the paint job (fortunately this has never happened to me because, um.... I don't frequent cafes?).
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Cittasanto
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by Cittasanto »

genkaku wrote:With hard times gaining a foothold around the world, do you think we are in for an eruption of religious and quasi-religious activity? I sort of think so: As Mark Twain observed, "Religion is the best business in the world."

off topic to a degree but remembered this video on youtube I posted on my blog yesterday, which has some relevance to the OP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybAUM7Ko ... annel_page" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
nathan
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by nathan »

mudra wrote:
genkaku wrote: But I wonder to what extent that rise -- in the recent years of great affluence -- is based on having too MUCH stuff, rather than too little ... and then realizing that stuff doesn't really make you all that happy. I believe I have read studies that after the basic needs were attained, the rest simply did not increase the happiness level.
Most of the time, once basic needs are covered, the rest probably are the cause for stress!

Like when you park your porsche outside a cafe and someone walks by and keys the paint job (fortunately this has never happened to me because, um.... I don't frequent cafes?).
As a former Porsche practitioner my observation is that the Porsche community is adequately equipped to meet any such challenges to it's sacraments and relics. I only widely noted even my comparatively hinayana porsche vehicles being taken up ignorantly as objects of worship by both Porsche and non-Porsche disciples as opposed to serving as a cause for generating ill will. :smile:
But whoever walking, standing, sitting, or lying down overcomes thought, delighting in the stilling of thought: he's capable, a monk like this, of touching superlative self-awakening. § 110. {Iti 4.11; Iti 115}
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Ben
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Re: religious avalanche?

Post by Ben »

A very good friend and co-meditator, sent me this poem yesterday.

(from Hafiz: 'Cast All Your Votes for Dancing")

'Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.'
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

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