T
Tariki
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Previously when I've looked into Buddhism, I got the impression that it is a self-help religion. That a person is indeed expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But I guess that's not the case will all branches of it, eh?
The focus of my path revolves around what you touched on above. Those moments of truth and clarity, that apparently all seekers experience. I believe they come from God, or at least under His direction. A moment of grace if you will, where wisdom from beyond ourselves is shown to us.
Taking things further, I see the Gifts of the Spirit as various manifestations of this clarity. We as frail human beings are able to have a measure of control over it, and administer it to others under the direction of God.
Jesus talked often about the Kingdom of Heaven, not as a reward for the dead but as a reality of this life now. I see the Kingdom as many individuals, all capable of shedding light on the dark situations of life, while all existing in harmony under the authority of the Father. By working with Them, under direction from Him, our path is illuminated before us!
Tobias, I think if we remain firmly within the parameters of our own thought world, assumptions - even our "religious" teachings and doctrines and world view - will always cause us to have a false impression of any other faith. It seems to me that each Faith presents its own "problems" (to be solved) and then as a consequence only its own answers are adequate.
When we just look quickly at a faith other than our own we can really do nothing BUT see any particular "way" - or "stance" - within it as being set within our OWN parameters. Hence the oft made claim (certainly in Protestant literature and sermonisng) that while Christianity is God reaching down to Man, all the other faiths are Man seeking to reach up to God. (Quite how the "godless" Buddhists manage such is open to question.... )
Myself, I have found that the sheer diversity of each Faith shows that there is often far greater divergence WITHIN each than between each. And that there is often a deep correspondence between certain expressions within each, like the Christian - basically monastic - apophatic tradition and certain ways of Buddhist meditation. This is drawn out by the Zen scholar D.T.Suzuki in his little book "Mysticism; Christian and Buddhist" which delves into the sermons of Meister Eckhart, and also the journals of the Pure Land "saint" (myokonin) Saichi.
As I mentioned briefly to Jane, unless the "anatta" (not-self) teaching of Buddhism is taken into account - however superficially - then suffering (dukkha) will never be understood (within the Buddhist context), and yes, then a lot of Buddhism seen through Christian eyes will appear as an attempt at "self help", as seeking to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. Yet the Buddhist Canonical texst (Theravada) ask us to understand suffering, not "believe" in it. It often seems to me that it is this distinction that makes all the difference......
The love that inspired Oya-sama to go through
All the sufferings and all the hardships -
I thought I was simply to listen to the story,
But that was a grievous mistake, I find.
Anyway, again some words of Merton are apt, at least to me, and often quoted before, yet worth another airing. His words to Suzuki.....
I want to speak for this Western world.................which has in past centuries broken in upon you and brought you our own confusion, our own alienation, our own decrepitude, our lack of culture, our lack of faith...........If I wept until the end of the world, I could not signify enough of what this tragedy means. If only we had thought of coming to you to learn something..............If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact?......
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