Posted on 04/21/2010 7:43:38 PM PDT by West Texas Chuck
OK, a lot of y'all will freak on this, but I am not a Christian. Not that I have any problem at all with His teachings, but I decided a long time ago I didn't want Jesus to die on that cross to expunge my sins. I'll take the hit to my own Karma. Laugh if you want, but this is what I believe: Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism.
I was raised Southern Baptist. My grandfather was a deacon in the church in Shawnee, Oklahoma. I remember unlocking the church with him before the sun came up, and going to Sunday School. Ortho Orville Oliver would probably spin in his grave to hear this but at his funeral I decided his religion was not what made sense to me. I think I was 12 at the time. I was a hippie for years, and then I was pretty much Godless for a long time, like those are different things. Then I met a girl who is what they call a "fortune baby" meaning she was born into this philosophy. Her old 75+ year old Japanese momma made her what she is, and she made me what I am, in a quasi-religious sense. It's a Japanese thing. I've been fascinated with Japanese culture since my first karate class, and before. Ni Gojuryu karate really started me down this path, several decades ago.
I don't worship Buddha, Soka Gakkai International is not about that in any way, we just believe in personal responsibility for the Karma we create for ourselves. There is no such thing as good Karma, all Karma is pretty much bad (sin?). It is a debt you create and carry. I believe in reincarnation and a lot of things that will probably make your skin crawl if you are Christian.
I have no problem with Christians. I'll stand and fight and die with you because you believe in a righteous God. Please don't hate me because I am a Buddhist.
Hate me because I am good looking ;)
There is a God, a supreme creator who engineered all this. All this could not have happened due to evolution or spontaneous reactions.
God wants us to love our neighbor/brother/sister as ourselves. We are to reach out to those in need. We are to feed the hungry etc.
Beyond that, you pays your money and you takes your chances. I've read the menu, and I'm going with Jesus Christ.
Every knee will bow & every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
“There is a God, a supreme creator who engineered all this. All this could not have happened due to evolution or spontaneous reactions.”
Oh, you are so right-on there. Anybody who thinks evolution alone brought us to be is an idiot.
I mean it like this: take a Home Depot or Lowe’s and drop it a bazillion times from a mile in the air, it will never land as a liveable home. There is an intelligence to our design.
Man, my fingers are getting tired.
So if you don't hate me , would you mind if one of my kind married your sister ?
Yes, you do.
Cordially,
I am glad that you did not get the “hate” you thought you would from Christians.
A little sarcasm, perhaps, but we FReepers are a funny Bunch!
It is what keeps things lively around here.
I really hope you do find the Truth.
I went through all the same things you did, along with some very dangerous and ugly spiritual stuff.
May The Father Creator speak to your seeking heart in a personal way, unadulterated by “religious propaganda”, so that you will have a clear, and unprejudiced view of His Will for your life. Sometimes our vision is so clouded by Folklore and cultural artifacts, that we find it difficult to find the golden nugget of truth at the center of things.
It is possible that your churchy upbringing MIGHT have had something to do with that. Just sayin’. Not casting any aspersions on any denominations or anything. Seriously.
The perfect ending, the pancake on the head bit.
Love it!
: )
(ps-thanks for your military service.)
As a Christian, I have no problem with your faith as there are many things about Buddhism I admire. We are fortunate to live in a country where we have freedom of religion, and the freedom to not have any at all.
“It’s not often we get a chance to chant Daimoku here at FR.”
Man, you got that right. If figured I might get kicked outta here for posting this.
Spiritual faith is the foundation of humanity. You might be some indigenous American laying flowers by a rock that fell on your father, or you might be an African laying a wreath at the place where your mother was eaten by a lion, or you might be a Baptist cleaning off the grave of your brother who was killed by a drunk driver. We all have to realize there is a greater power and there is a greater purpose to life. In some way it all makes sense.
I’ll refer you to what little I understand about the Bible. There is a time and a reason for everything, a reason that we may not understand, but it is guided by our Higher Purpose.
Oh carp, I showed my days in AA there ;)
Thank you!
It’s been fun, must go to bed before I embarrass myself again.
Goodnight FRiend!
I had a Zen Buddhist friend many years back, and came up with some entertaining koan (thought problems) for him. These involve questions with no clear answer that can be determined rationally, but more intuitively. And the value is not in finding the answer, but in the process to figure it out.
It just so happened at the time that a still little known branch of computer science was devised. Artificial Intelligence had sort of hit a brick wall in its development, so some of its top brains came up with a troubleshooting concept called Artificial Stupidity. AS was a way to figure out the ways programming could go wrong.
Interestingly, AS is not easy, as designing a working system is much easier, and far more rational, then figuring out the many ways to foul the system up. But in figuring out how to mess things up, you learn much that would have been missed had everything worked.
And this is where we invented the idea of a “counter-koan”, which is a nonsense question, that is answered with an ignorant ease befitting its lack of value as a thought problem.
We quickly thought of an example, by Bill Cosby, who as a college student majored in Physical Education, but had to take a course in philosophy.
His professor asked the philosophical question: “Why is there air?”
To which his response was, “How else would we blow up volleyballs?”
While on the surface this just seems silly, in truth it is profound. Because his process, and his answer, is not the same as that of a philosopher. Nor is it the process, or the answer, that perhaps a Buddhist would use. But it is still a valid answer in the path of a Physical Education student.
This is the value of the counter-koan. Though a koan has a “right” answer, the value is not in the answer, but the process. Yet if the process used is just the Buddhist process, many other, different processes are not examined.
And this adds a third dimension to a koan, one that most people miss.
You really think Buddists have a monopoly on that?
We agree on a lot of things. We do have a higher purpose. Who defines that Higher Purpose for you?
There are plenty of non-Christian Freepers, I consider myself on of them. A few atheists as well even. There is no religious litmus test here. If you are for smaller government, personal responsibility, and pro capitalism, you fit right in.
Leave a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a stick of butter on the table overnight and see if there is a cake in the morning.
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