/christ/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>6409

I had an older relative who found herself in a similar situation. Basically, the idea here is that you're not trying to find a balance but to "take what you can". What that means is that Jesus Christ is your master, and He's the one you serve primarily; you can't "serve" Buddha at all, if you understand my meaning.

You can practice some Buddhist rites insofar as your mind is always on God, and that means the Western perception of God, and you don't do anything that would be doctrinal unsound in the teachings of Christ. If you belong to any kind of organized religion, you ought to check with your pastor or priest or Bishop in order to make sure you're not getting into weird, incorrect stuff.

TL;DR You can't be both. You can be a Christian who has a small taste of the Buddhist tea though.

You can agree with Buddhist ideals, but not the spirituality.

I agree with Buddhism its verifiable and real and so useful.

>>6409

>how can I be both Buddhist and christian?

You can only serve one master. Syncretism is evil and Buddhsim and Christianity incompatible.

> I think Jesus was a Buddha basically

So you do not think that Jesus was God made flesh and your saviour. You should turn from this wrong way of thinking and become a Christian.

>>6413

Being useful is one thing, being the truth another. Most lies are useful, that's why they are told. The only real option is the truth though.

Jesus was most likely a Buddha. But. I don't buy the idea that he had a Buddhist teacher. If he did his vocabulary would be very different and so would his manner of teaching.

Jesus was self taught like Shakyamuni but since he lived emersed in hebrew mythology and monotheism he resorted to using their vocabulary to teach his message and understand his experience…with a few alterations of course, which upset to orthodox scholarship of his time

I think good and virtuous Christians will end up in the heaven realms, and they will congregate with other Christians and believe from their perspective they are with Jesus in Christian heaven.

>>6428

>>6428

>Jesus was most likely a Buddha.

No evidence, damn it, not even no evidence but a complete lack of argumentation. This is a baseless claim and nothing indicates that it'd be true, beside you liking the idea.

> he lived emersed in hebrew mythology and monotheism he resorted to using their vocabulary to teach his message and understand his experience…

Jesus' teaching is not like Buddhism at all. Next he revealed himself as God and Messiah. Which does not fit the buddhist pseudo religion again.

>>6437

"Forgiving god" sounds like an odd thing. But still, I'd like to hear more about your father's beliefs.

>>6437

> Through his Buddhist beliefs, he actually became able to forgive god,

God has never wronged your father even once, on the contrary he has given to him infinitely and still wants to give more because he is good.

>>6430

>>6430

>he revealed himself as God

>Which does not fit the buddhist pseudo religion again.

there are devotional buddhas who ask for "faith" and promise "heaven" for their followers. i.e Amida Buddha.

Amida Buddha made a buddha-field, a realm of pure bliss for anyone who has faith in him and repeats his mantra with sincerity. Buddhists who devote themselves to him get born in the "pure land" and from there reach Nirvana very fast.

>>6448

Although I should note orthodox buddhism considers "Pure Land" teachings not totally kosher. But either way, these heterodox schools exist, like heretics in Christianity (protestants)

>>6409

I have a feeling you'll like Pentecostalism, OP, have you read up on the Asian Pentecostals like the True Jesus Church?

>>6447

But that's exactly what he realized about God through his Buddhist faith

>>6442

He turned from God and blamed him for some horrible things that happened in his childhood. He led a very angry life for many many years.

Eventually he found himself, after taking some life coaching courses which already started him on the path to solving his anger issues, looking into Buddhist philosophy, and eventually converting to Buddhism as a religion.

Part of his beliefs is non judgement. This included, even his judgements of God that he had made long ago. I am not sure on the exacts, but I know his beliefs helped him let go of his judgements and his anger, and simply see everything that was in his life, good or bad, were simply opportunities for him to learn and grow, challenges to overcome, not the spiteful acts he once thought of them as and blamed God for.

In discovering his Buddhist beliefs, he was able to come to terms with, and better understand his Christian beliefs, and infact understand the Bible in different ways than he was able to before.

He, and myself as well, believe that all faiths, are really just trying to get to answer the same questions, "why are we here", "how were we created", "what were we created for", or simply "why"

He is VERY well versed in the Bible, something I am unfortunately not. One of his favorite things to do is find the parallels between different faiths, those common knowledges written thousands of years ago, by different cultures who almost certainly could not have interacted, who come to the same conclusion.

He has been talking a lot about a line he found in the Bible recently, which just strikes him (and myself) as odd but also very interesting.

I believe the verse is "Once there were giants who walked among men, and angels who slept with women"

I am not sure what verse it is

>>6469

Sons of God* Not "Angels" in that verse, and he believes it was Genesis 3,2 or somewhereabouts

>>6437

>you cannot serve two masters

That reminds me, I was talking about Buddhism to some kids and they said you mean the fake God? And I told them Buddha isn't a fake God to the Buddhists. What's with Christians brainwashing kids to think Buddha is a God, let alone a fake one? It's a cycle of ignorance.

Actually he's a decent teacher and a Christian can easily incorporate Buddhist ideas in your life. My protestant pastor said "Not all of the answers are in the bible, the book is a finite number of pages. I've looked for hours sometimes and just could not find them, but if you find the answer in another book and it is good, it's fine as it must have come from God." He used that to justify preaching a moving story about a play where someone forgave a Nazi, to illustrate Christian ideals. Sounds like a Catholic appeal to interpretation actually.

Anyway, I like Buddah's parable of the oxcart to describe upayas, and justify white lies to reach a better good. It does illustrate that hypothetically, it might be better to tell a lie if the ends justified the means, which is behavior traditional Christianity refuses to accept for humans. (Except when people try to justify why God allows evil: it's always because it's part of his divine plan that will end in good. Perhaps WW2 and Hitler's Holocaust was necessary so that Israel would be reborn, etc etc.)

Of course, I think Buddha's oxcart parable is flawed since a child probably would understand death, and instinctively sense the danger in your tone of voice when you screamed, "the house is burning! Come out now or you're gonna die son!" The idea that kids would continue playing while their father freaked out and the smoke entered their room is silly unless you have retarded kids.

The goal of Buddhism is to cease to exist, the goal of Christianity is eternal life. They are utterly incompatible.

>>6822

This. But I've thought that without Christ or Logos in your life, it would be the rational goal anyway…

>>6822

This guy gets it. Buddhism seeks to remove the meaning from everything, to realise the 'truth' that everything is one and that there is no distinction between this and that, between you and others, between right and wrong.

Contrast Christianity, with its clear distinction between good and evil, with its belief that only through Christ are we saved. How could anyone think these two systems are compatible?

But OP probably doesn't really get to the heart of Buddhism and stops short of the monism at its heart. He only chooses the meditation and the vague sense of 'enlightenment', that has less value than prayer and is less profound than knowledge of God himself through the scriptures.

>>7331

Because they take certain things out of it

For example, the Bible puts alot of emphasis on man being God's children and domain over all the animals, where the Buddhists say that man and animal are one and the same and through the karmic cycle, live the same lives. You might think this is yet another example of how incompatible each doctrine is, but by treating other life with the same respect as you do your brothers, is that honestly so far away from being Christlike? The only difference I see is that God has given permission to eat animals for food.

Another is by removing all desires, you grow closer to removing yourself from the karmic cycle. Desires, sinful temptation, reap what you sow, does it really sound like it drastically deviates? It's like the other anon said, Christianity is about accepting Christ as your savior and repenting your sins, but I don't see how taking the lifestyle of Buddhists into your own life is any different than reading or hearing advice for any other thing. So long as it doesn't conflict or go against the Lord's word, it's simply a different perspective.

>>6822

Let me correct you

The goal of Buddhism is to stop suffering, and to do that one must cease to exist. The goal of Christianity is to stop suffering, and to do that one must enter heaven.

>>7454

This

Plus, really, Buddhism you don't have to believe everything and can still find value in its teachings, same goes for Christianity. I myself don't believe in reincarnation, nor the cycle of Samsara the way its taught, it does not mean there are many valuable lessons in the Buddhas teachings for me.

To say that would be akin to saying that Jesus's teachings are worthless in my perspective because I do not believe in heaven or hell, which is also untrue.