Reply To: Why Buddhism?

#51882
lagrade
Participant

Thanks a lot for your responses, Lal, Jittananto, Waisaka and Christian. 

@Jittananto:

“You know that as Christians we seek the eternal life promised by Jesus. Just accept Jesus as our savior and all our sins will be forgiven. If we refuse we will not have the right to eternal life, but to hell. When I saw that Lord Buddha said that even the pleasures of heaven and the sufferings of hell are not eternal it was a shock. I had also learned that we are our own saviours.”

I think that is a great perspective. We all know that this world is very unstable and uncountable beings in the Biosphere have gone through insane suffering (and still do) in the process of Evolution. Furthermore, the outer space is really violent too as nothing lasts forever in the entire universe. The idea of “eternal life” is really incompatible with these observations. I’m really impressed that Buddha spoke about this unstable nature of the world and encouraged people to put in the work to save themselves!

“This website uses advanced Dhamma terms. I share these sermons because they are excellent for beginners. Of course, you can jump straight to this website and learn.”

Thank you for your sharing those sermons! One of the reasons I asked that question was because the Dhamma presented in this website indeed seems very advanced. So I was worried if it might be a little too technical for many people.

@Waisaka:

“For me, the way to build our belief is first we have to think objectively (why we were born in different religions, families, statuses, social) and think neutrally, see the truth universally and then match it with the teachings.”

I think that is an excellent approach. One needs to have an open mind with a healthy amount of skepticism. There’s a lot we don’t know and a lot there is to learn.

@Christian:

“After realizing Buddhism is not a religion but more like Mathematics but about our existential dilemma and personal meditative experiences that Buddhism explained.”

I really like that analogy. To be fully honest, I really was not expected this religion (Tipitaka) to be so technical and full of logic. A religion is not supposed to make you think as hard as this seems to do.

“Dhamma is something you realize – imagine you are an adult who still believes Santa exists, once you realize it doesn’t you will see what is true and what is not, it’s pretty much the same with real Dhamma, non-Dhamma “Buddhism” lives in different preassumptions about “Santa” but because Santa does not exist they can not be true.”

Thank you! I have believed in Santa before and realized that initially, it is quite comforting to believe that there is some imaginary sugar daddy who guarantees salvation for you. But with deeper thought and examination of the world like Waisaka mentioned, I found myself really inconvenienced with that premise. I noticed that there are schools of Buddhism that rely on such ideas like “Pure Land Buddhism”, for example, which states that chanting some Buddha’s name will cause rebirth in the Pure Land and guarantee enlightenment. This sounded a lot like “Worshipping Jesus will guarantee eternal life in the Heaven” type of idea which I chose to discard.

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