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| Re: Did The Buddha believe in God? |
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Group: alt.philosophy · Group Profile
Author: chazwinchazwin Date: Jun 26, 2008 04:46
On 26 Jun, 07:50, "Sean" bro.org> wrote:> But Imm .... Buddhism and Hinduism are basically the very same thing, just
> presented in different ways, and suggesting different approaches to the same
> end. In essense that is, of course there are any number of texts that would
> contradict what I just said, but still, I'm right here.
That is complete and utter crapola!!!
Its like saying Nordic myth and Judaism are basically the same thing.
Buddhism is a rejection and development away from Hinduism (which is,
btw, a bucket terminology for a miriad of religions coined by those
who visited India from the outside). Buddhism has a core belief and
system, Hinduism is a collection bound by co-incidence and chance.
>
> As is Zoroastrism, Sikhism, Islam, Taoism, and Christianty ...... all tarred
> with the same brush, and equally confusing and the true meanings lost in the
> midst of time and semantics and individuals beliefs and socialisation. :-)
You might as well also conflate Christianity and Satan worship as
being basically the same thing, because there are more similarities
between those two than between Buddhism and Hinduism.
> "Immortalist" yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:cde611af-df44-4842-950e-15dcb1662a85@j1g2000prb.googlegroups.com...
> The kind of world the Buddha was born into was magical. Everything
> seemed to be alive. The trees, mountains, lakes, and sky were living
> and breathing with a variety of gods in charge. If you needed rain you
> asked one god, if you needed it to stop raining you asked another. The
> priests of India did all the religious work, and got paid for it.
>
> In India at the time of the Buddha you became a priest if you were
> born into the right family, and not because of the school you went to,
> or the grades you got.
>
> There were other kinds of religious people as well.
>
> Mendicants were men who left their family, friends, and jobs to find
> the answers to life. They did not live in homes or apartments, but
> lived under trees and in caves, and would practice meditation all day
> long. They wanted to really be uncomfortable, so they could understand
> what suffering was all about.
>
> Many kinds of meditation were practiced by these mendicants. In
> Tranquility Meditation for instance, you think about just one thing,
> like looking at a candle or saying a word over and over. When the mind
> becomes focused in oneness, you experience a great peacefulness.
>
> Even if the mendicants were sitting in the rain on a cold day, they
> were still content. They found in their meditation practice the
> essence of happiness.
>
> Renunciation is when you give up all the things that make your life
> pleasant. Sometimes the people with money and power in India would buy
> a lot of stuff to make themselves happy and their lives more
> comfortable, thinking that happiness and comfort depended on what they
> owned.
>
> When the mendicants could see their own suffering clearly, after many
> years of renunciation, they understood that happiness was not
> dependent on the things they owned, but the kind of life they lived.
>
> Even all the gods in India could not end the suffering of one human
> being.
>
> At the age of 29, the Buddha stopped praying to the gods to end his
> suffering and the suffering of others. He left his family and friends,
> went to the edge of the forest, took off all his clothes and jewelry,
> covered his naked body with rags of cloth, cut off his hair and
> started to meditate.
>
> He became a mendicant, and It took him six years of hard work and much
> suffering, but in the end he was able to stop his suffering forever
> (Nirvana) and help others stop their suffering as well.
>
> Did the Buddha believe in God, the One God of the desert, the God of
> the Christians, Jews and Muslims?
>
> Well... No... He didn't... Monotheism (only one God) was a foreign
> concept to the Buddha, his world was filled with many gods. The
> creator god Brahma being the most important one.
>
> At the time of the Buddha, the only people practicing the religion of
> the One God of the desert, were the Jews. Remember, it was still 500
> years before Christ came into the world.
>
> The Buddha never left India. The Buddha walked from village to
> village... In his entire lifetime he never went any further than 200
> miles from his birthplace.
>
> The Buddha never met a Jew... And because of this, he never said
> anything about the One God of the desert.
>
> There is also nothing in the teachings of the Buddha that suggest how
> to find God or worship the god's of India, although the Buddha himself
> was a theist (believed in gods), his teachings are non-theistic....
>
> http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma3/budgod.html
>
> Hinduism is a diverse system of thought with beliefs spanning
> monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, monism and atheism. It
> is sometimes referred to as henotheistic (devotion to a single god
> while accepting the existence of others), but any such term is an
> oversimplification of the complexities and variations of belief.
>
> Most Hindus believe that the spirit or soul--the true "self" of every
> person, called the âtman--is eternal. According to the monistic/
> pantheistic theologies of Hinduism (such as Advaita Vedanta school),
> this Atman is ultimately indistinct from Brahman, the supreme spirit.
> Brahman is described as "The One Without a Second;" hence these
> schools are called "non-dualist." The goal of life according to the
> Advaita school is to realize that one's âtman is identical to Brahman,
> the supreme soul. The Upanishads state that whoever becomes fully
> aware of the âtman as the innermost core of one's own self, realizes
> their identity with Brahman and thereby reaches Moksha (liberation or
> freedom).
>
> Other dualistic schools (see Dvaita and Bhakti) understand Brahman as
> a Supreme Being who possesses personality and worship Him or Her thus,
> as Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva or Shakti depending on the sect. The âtman is
> dependent on God while Moksha depends on love towards God and on God's
> grace.] When God is viewed as the supreme personal being (rather than
> as the infinite principle) God is called Ishvara ("The Lord"),
> Bhagavan ("The Auspicious One"), or Parameshwara ("The Supreme Lord").
> However, interpretations of Ishvara vary--ranging from non-belief such
> as followers of Mimamsakas, in Ishvara to identifying Brahman and
> Ishvara as one as in Advaita. There are also schools like the Samkhya
> which have atheistic leanings.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism#Concept_of_God
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