What about the rest of us?

[fat wee robin]

It's nice to see Jesus has proven to be a good path for you. I was a Christian for 10 years and found greater peace with Amida Buddha. It's nice there is a variety of paths that can give people peace in this lifetime.

Buddhism is good for helping with everyday conciousness ,but it is Christ who in bringing humanity up from Hell (below ) who made it possible for us to talk together on this internet .
Yes most Christians don't understand ,that first of all we are 'saved ' as a collective, and at the end ,as individuals . Buddhism is useful ,and has certain truths ,as does Hinduism ,but particularly protestants are afraid to go further than a certain biblical
interpretation of time and so on .
But just to be clear Buddhism will not 'save you ' at the End .

 

[fat wee robin]

It MAY be the pit for you. That's always a possibility.

 

[ananda]

Just Nembutsu mainly.

Sometimes I meditate on a field of flowers for a little bit, helps with getting right with the universe and increasing my positive vibration, but mainly the Nembutsu.

I see. I'm glad it works for you!

 

[fat wee robin]

I'm not actually wanting for anything.

But thanks anyway.

Not UNTIL ,until what ? Until you waken up in the Dark , the eternal dark .

 

[Albion]

I am using Christian examples simply because I am on a Christian forum.

Right. But I wasn't questioning the use of an example; I was saying that that one doesn't explain much about Christianity since only a minority of Christians are Calvinists.

If you see God "reaching out his hand", fair enough. But really, it does not distinguish Christianity at all.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone could say that after surveying what the other great religious systems believe.

 

[Deadworm]

Those of us who are screw ups, thrown about by the waves of our passions, incorrigible, filled with bitterness and even hate; what is to come of us? We who may have an interest in spiritual things, aware of a transcending reality and goodness, but not only fail to reach it, but fail to even try. Are we doomed to whatever hell your various faiths have? Is God, Brahma, Allah, Amida going to save us anyway? Or is it the pit for us?

We of the Bad want to know.

Dear Bad to the Bone:

My "Swedenborg: The Greatest Mystic Ever" thread has freaked you out and now you start this thread, so you can whistle past the graveyard. Notice his unprecedented verifications that he has actually visited various hells and heavens, including the very logical chilling stages by which you will actually arrive a your hellish destination after first being allowed to touri the awesome beauty of Paradise! You like horror movies, right? Buwahaha! Do you think ES's revelations are incompatible with Scripture? If so, why? Keep in mind that Stanford University rated Swedenborg, Goethe, and John Stuart Mills as having the highest IQ in all of history!

If you're willing to play, I in turn will respond in 2 ways:
(1) Answer any questions you have about Swedenborg's psychic abilities;
(2) Start this shocking thread topic: "Graduation from Hells: The Biblical Case."
I have served as an unofficial mentor for a PhD dissertation on this subject. Wellhellhell?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

It's nice to see Jesus has proven to be a good path for you. I was a Christian for 10 years and found greater peace with Amida Buddha. It's nice there is a variety of paths that can give people peace in this lifetime.

This is 'awkward' at best, so ask for clarification if needed.
God has directed your steps in the most best way possible as you made choices,
and to protect you from much worse directions.
A lot of lives have been destroyed by legalism before and since Jesus.
So many instead of being helped were hurt or worse, and their families, by false teachers.
(yes, in christendom too).

Also, your life is fully known and understood by the Father in heaven,
He Who Created all things and He knew you and every hair on your head today
even before the world was created, He knew you(He knew all of us, what we would be).

But just to be clear Buddhism will not 'save you ' at the End .

Perhaps Romans (the book of Romans in the NT) explains this best,
simply and fully within God's Plan.

 

[dlamberth]

But just to be clear Buddhism will not 'save you ' at the End .

I only want to point out that for many lovers of God, it's not at all about getting "saved". The thought is that we are to make God ones' reality in our lives. The rest is up to God's grace.

 

[Fizzywig]

"The precarious sea of language", is that correct?

I think you have used it a few times, not too sure though.

"Yes, we have no bananas" was my indicating there was a misunderstanding somewhere,

The old song from the twenties about a Greek grocer.

I think what you are trying to say in your own polite Robbanlike way is that I have been incoherent, demonstrably wrong and even belligerent.

 

[Fizzywig]

Not UNTIL ,until what ? Until you waken up in the Dark , the eternal dark .

No worries, I'm with NPower

 

[Fizzywig]

I do not believe one's own kamma can be modified by others (e.g. savior figures).

We agreed that in Buddhism it is a case of "understanding" and not of "belief" as such.

Pure Land Buddhism is firmly in the "non-dual" camp of Buddhism.

"All Sins committed
in the three worlds
will fade and disappear
together with myself" (Ikkyu)

There is much on-going scholarship into the origins of the Mahayana and this even involves the discovery of long lost manuscripts and texts in China and elsewhere. Much that is found in current Pure Land teachings are being traced back, even as far as the hazy beginnings of Theravada and its Scriptures.

Fortunately, such has not led to the heresy hunts, Inquisitions and such-like of our Christian friends (dig dig......... )

 

[Fizzywig]

Right. But I wasn't questioning the use of an example; I was saying that that one doesn't explain much about Christianity since only a minority of Christians are Calvinists.

I quoted from the NT, the words that we are chosen before the foundation of the world. I accept that it is all about interpretation, and yes, I chose the interpretation given by Calvin. How would you interpret them?

But as I see it you are consistently ignoring the point I am making, that in many ways "free will" is a red herring as far as "salvation" is concerned. That we make choices, that we experience ourselves as making them is not in dispute.

This is about the CAUSAL BASIS Of "salvation".

Here is Thomas Merton......

The reification of faith. Real meaning of the phrase we are saved by faith = we are saved by Christ, whom we encounter in faith. But constant disputation about faith has made Christians become obsessed with faith almost as an object, at least as an experience, a "thing" and in concentrating upon it they lose sight of Christ. Whereas faith without the encounter with Christ and without His presence is less than nothing. It is the deadest of dead works, an act elicited in a moral and existential void. To seek to believe that one believes, and arbitrarily to decree that one believes, and then to conclude that this gymnastic has been blessed by Christ - this is pathological Christianity. And a Christianity of works. One has this mental gymnastic in which to trust. One is safe, one possesses the psychic key to salvation......

I do appreciate that such words do not prove anything at all. But it would seem to me, if one recognises the Word of God as that which lights ALL who come into the world, as that through Whom ALL things are made (as said in St John's Gospel) then the "presence of Christ" spreads far wider than mere allegiance to, and acknowledgement of the Biblical word, and "accepting" it.

The message of Grace can be found in all faiths, at all times, in all places.......for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. And such is a gift, pure and simple....

The "encounter with Christ" is beyond creeds and formulas.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone could say that after surveying what the other great religious systems believe.

I find your words astonishing. What is the OT but the hand of God reaching out to the Jewish people? What is the Koran but another sign of God's hand reaching out? And here are the words of Guru Nanak of the Sikh Faith...."By God's grace alone is God to be grasped. All else is false, all else is vanity." And here the words of a Hindu......."They who have known God have known also this one certainty; that it was God's grace that led them to it, and framed them in readiness for it, and prepared their heart and mind for it; and it was God alone who lifted them to that embrace." (Swami Abhayananda)

Surely you must see the "hand of God" reaching to such human beings? As I see it, "other great religious systems" are maybe more inclined to emphasise the experience of the Divine rather than "belief" in God as such.

It is truly sad that many seem desperate to protect the uniqueness of their own creed and formulas. Fundamentally they are turning the strong hand of God that can and does reach all, that can speak in infinite tongues (mixing the metaphor a bit......) to infinite people, into a rather limp arm.

 

[Fizzywig]

A lot of lives have been destroyed by legalism before and since Jesus.

Legalism comes in many shapes and forms. Often very difficult to detect, even in ourselves.

 

[Fizzywig]

But as I see it you are consistently ignoring the point I am making, that in many ways "free will" is a red herring as far as "salvation" is concerned. That we make choices, that we experience ourselves as making them is not in dispute.

This is about the CAUSAL BASIS of "salvation".

Just to expand on this for anyone interested, this before I head off..........I have a list of "good deeds" as long as my arm to perform........

Often, to justify hell or whatever, we have the "God did not want robots" argument. No, I would say "he" did not. The implication is then drawn that, given we must be given choice, unless we can choose "hell" our free will is made null and void. Personally I find such an argument incoherent and demonstrably wrong........As I see it we are here not to excercise choice in any such eternally decisive manner, but to receive/learn to be free. We would seem to be born without such freedom.

Here is Merton on "The gift of freedom"

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

(from New Seeds of Contemplation)

(Just a short word on my quoting others. For me, I am actually reassured when I hear the self same thing said by human beings of different cultures and religions. How does it reassure me? That I am hearing the voice of experience, or personal insight, and not just hearing a slogan drawn from a book. In the words above of Merton, I think of much the same point being made by the Theravada Elder Nyanaonika Thera concerning the path to freedom. Anyway, I did say a short word...)

So as I see it we are here to learn to be free, and such is a gift. It is to be realised, not "earned" or "attained" or even chosen (or not)

About the foreknowledge of God of our choices, which are deemed "free". Can even God know in advance the choice of a radically, totally free being? Surely such a freedom would involve a choice ex-nihilo? As Sartre said, if there is a God we cannot be free, as we would not have chosen our own essence. But I leave that to the philosophers among us. Something to ponder in between feeding the cat and avoiding the next household chore.

As I see it, to learn to be free opens up our world to all. Atheists, ignostics, whoever. My own Faith is that Reality-as-is is pure freedom, and can be equated with what we can call "love", "compassion". That is my faith, one that I find I need to function. I do not seek to convince anyone of it. But to throw off the chains of our particular conditioning is surely a worthy aim?

So this holy life.......does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the attainment of virtue for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or knowledge and vision for its benefit. But it is this unshakeable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end. (Lines from the Majjhima Nikaya, from the Theravada texts of Buddhism)

Anyway, good deeds await my doing..........

 

[StanJ]

Those of us who are screw ups, thrown about by the waves of our passions, incorrigible, filled with bitterness and even hate; what is to come of us? We who may have an interest in spiritual things, aware of a transcending reality and goodness, but not only fail to reach it, but fail to even try. Are we doomed to whatever hell your various faiths have? Is God, Brahma, Allah, Amida going to save us anyway? Or is it the pit for us?
We of the Bad want to know.

After 8655 posts, I sincerely doubt the OP is sincere in it's request.

 

[Fizzywig]

After 8655 posts, I sincerely doubt the OP is sincere in it's request.

 

[fat wee robin]

This is 'awkward' at best, so ask for clarification if needed.
God has directed your steps in the most best way possible as you made choices,
and to protect you from much worse directions.
A lot of lives have been destroyed by legalism before and since Jesus.
So many instead of being helped were hurt or worse, and their families, by false teachers.
(yes, in christendom too).

Also, your life is fully known and understood by the Father in heaven,
He Who Created all things and He knew you and every hair on your head today
even before the world was created, He knew you(He knew all of us, what we would be).

Perhaps Romans (the book of Romans in the NT) explains this best,
simply and fully within God's Plan.

I agree that much of the christian religions, and religous have caused more harm than good,particularly in the last two hundred years ,when what God had planned for us in terms of higher knowledge ,was denied or highjacked .
For some they are too afraid to search ,and for others like in the RCC it is about power being maintained among an elite . Now instead of higher knowledge ,the majority have become boring and lacking .

 

[fat wee robin]

Just to expand on this for anyone interested, this before I head off..........I have a list of "good deeds" as long as my arm to perform........

Often, to justify hell or whatever, we have the "God did not want robots" argument. No, I would say "he" did not. The implication is then drawn that, given we must be given choice, unless we can choose "hell" our free will is made null and void. Personally I find such an argument incoherent and demonstrably wrong........As I see it we are here not to excercise choice in any such eternally decisive manner, but to receive/learn to be free. We would seem to be born without such freedom.

Here is Merton on "The gift of freedom"

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

(from New Seeds of Contemplation)

(Just a short word on my quoting others. For me, I am actually reassured when I hear the self same thing said by human beings of different cultures and religions. How does it reassure me? That I am hearing the voice of experience, or personal insight, and not just hearing a slogan drawn from a book. In the words above of Merton, I think of much the same point being made by the Theravada Elder Nyanaonika Thera concerning the path to freedom. Anyway, I did say a short word...)

So as I see it we are here to learn to be free, and such is a gift. It is to be realised, not "earned" or "attained" or even chosen (or not)

About the foreknowledge of God of our choices, which are deemed "free". Can even God know in advance the choice of a radically, totally free being? Surely such a freedom would involve a choice ex-nihilo? As Sartre said, if there is a God we cannot be free, as we would not have chosen our own essence. But I leave that to the philosophers among us. Something to ponder in between feeding the cat and avoiding the next household chore.

As I see it, to learn to be free opens up our world to all. Atheists, ignostics, whoever. My own Faith is that Reality-as-is is pure freedom, and can be equated with what we can call "love", "compassion". That is my faith, one that I find I need to function. I do not seek to convince anyone of it. But to throw off the chains of our particular conditioning is surely a worthy aim?

So this holy life.......does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the attainment of virtue for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or knowledge and vision for its benefit. But it is this unshakeable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end. (Lines from the Majjhima Nikaya, from the Theravada texts of Buddhism)

Anyway, good deeds await my doing..........

It's a shame that you never really knew Christ and His plan for us ,but then so few if any do .I see hope for you, and one day you will be a Christian ,and a real one .

 

[Tree of Life]

Those of us who are screw ups, thrown about by the waves of our passions, incorrigible, filled with bitterness and even hate; what is to come of us? We who may have an interest in spiritual things, aware of a transcending reality and goodness, but not only fail to reach it, but fail to even try. Are we doomed to whatever hell your various faiths have? Is God, Brahma, Allah, Amida going to save us anyway? Or is it the pit for us?

We of the Bad want to know.

The Christian gospel is that God saves sinners such as you've described.

All people are sinners. Sinners, as you say, not only fail to do good but also do not want to do good. Salvation is when God intervenes, reaches into our lives, changes our hearts and minds to trust him and to want to serve him, pardons us from all sin, leads us through our lives to become more like Jesus and less like sinners every day, and eventually removes all sin in the New Heavens and New Earth.

So you may not yet be saved. God may not yet have intervened in your life in a saving way. But there is still time and you can always ask him to do this. He does not reject anyone who comes to him.

 

[gord44]

This is 'awkward' at best, so ask for clarification if needed.
God has directed your steps in the most best way possible as you made choices,
and to protect you from much worse directions.
A lot of lives have been destroyed by legalism before and since Jesus.
So many instead of being helped were hurt or worse, and their families, by false teachers.
(yes, in christendom too).

Also, your life is fully known and understood by the Father in heaven,
He Who Created all things and He knew you and every hair on your head today
even before the world was created, He knew you(He knew all of us, what we would be).

Perhaps Romans (the book of Romans in the NT) explains this best,
simply and fully within God's Plan.

Hello friend. A good post! Appreciate the time you took!