21 posts tagged delusion
Hie jinja, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa prefecture on Flickr.
Hie jinja, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa prefecture on Flickr.
Prayers to the gods.
Hie jinja, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa prefecture on Flickr.
Stuffed toys left at Yasaka shrine in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa prefecture to comfort the “souls” of dead children. The world must be filled by now with the “souls” of all the dead people that Buddhists, Christians, Shintõists, Islamists etc believe are floating about all over the place!
If “souls” were real, why would they be comforted by material belongings? And aren’t they supposed to go to heaven or one of the heavenly realms, or be reborn as something else? Religion is such a stupid, intelligence numbing creation.
Religion has but one enemy - intelligence.
(via rationalitynotfantasy)
It’s unconditional love with conditions. It’s Stockholm syndrome. You eventually look past the fear of your captor and think that you’re in a loving relationship. It’s sickening.
“The Virgin Mary explaining the birds and bees to Jesus”
“For if he is not competent to stop an earthquake or save its victims, he is definitely not competent to create a world. And if he is powerful enough to do both, but created a dangerous world that inflicts violent and agonizing sufferings arbitrarily on sentient creatures, then he is vile. Either way, what are people thinking who believe in such a being, and who go to church to praise and worship it? How, in the face of events which human kindness and concern registers as tragic and in need of help – help which human beings proceed to give to their fellows: no angels appear from the sky to do it – can they believe such an incoherent fiction as the idea of a deity? This is a perennial puzzle.”
A couple of Christians have just told me I’m going to their imaginary place for bad people. Why? Because I don’t buy into the fantasy and I’m requesting people use secular charities to send aid to Japan!
Do they have interent there?
“Thou shalt be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.” - Isaiah 29
Natural disasters such as earthquakes, storms, fires, tsunamis etc. are caused by, and are a sign of, God’s wrath. This is the basic belief of all Christians and is a tenet of the bible.
And people wonder why I keep saying that religion is evil, sick, and delusional.
Natural disasters are caused by, wait for it……………….nature. There is no bogey man, no sky man causing these things to happen. I feel sorry for mindless twats who believe this ancient nonsense.
“Religion… cannot be content with its own marvelous claims and sublime assurance. It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one.”
(via sixtyforty)
“I don’t understand the logic in asking “god” to help in a disaster “god” supposedly had the governing hand in creating. It’s like asking a gunman to save the lives of all the people he just mowed down with his automatic machine gun.”
— Me (on praying for the current Japanese natural disaster.)
The amount of hatred directed towards me on Twitter by Christians only shows how hate filled, pathetic and deluded they truly are.
Religion is a poison of the mind. It impairs rational thought.
As a Buddhist I had trouble with the belief of rebirth/reincarnation. It was expected that I believe unquestioningly in rebirth/reincarnation, but I could see no way to reconcile such a belief with reality. It only serves to comfort those afraid of dying.
Buddhists hold views of the world and reality that are deeply at odds with science and Japanese monks especially are ignorant of scientific research.
It was mainly this one fixed and unquestionable belief of Buddhism that helped me realise that Buddhism was after all another religion based on dogma and belief with a very heavy dose of faith.
Stating that I don’t believe in rebirth/reincarnation was tantamount to saying I don’t believe in the teachings of the Buddha and that’s not acceptable here in Asia.
For Japanese monks, all that one had to know had already been discovered by the Buddha centuries ago and that was it. It was all laid out, the complete meaning of life and the complete reason for the cosmos - all written down in the sutras.
The fact is the idea of rebirth/reincarnation is actually pre-Buddhist and is first encountered in the early Upaniṣads (c.800 B.C.E.). The notion is widespread in Indian religions.
The most interesting and confusing thing in Japan is the insistence on there being a “soul” or a “life force” that leaves the body and is completely autonomous, being able to act on it’s own. Writings attributed to the Buddha make it quite clear that no such thing exists (atman - no self/God/soul). No self, no soul, nothing to carry over.
But, Japanese Buddhists insist that a soul exists. Not only does it exist but it can affect the lives of the living. One must always keep in mind the souls of past relatives and ensure that they are placated. Elaborate rituals ensure that the souls of the dead are happy and don’t come back to wreak havoc. Talismans and charms can be purchased at temples to keep away bad spirits and monks can exorcise people or places that are deemed to be haunted by trouble making souls.
I’ve watched an exorcism first hand, and it is no different than one sees on TV being performed by Christians. A person is “possessed,” monk is called, monk carries out prescribed centuries old ritual and chants magic words, “possessed person” screams and carries on (supposedly the “spirit” is resisting being cast out), and then spirit leaves, is shut up in a sutra box and the monk gets paid.
Paid.
Lots of money.
Think lots of new clothes, electronics, cameras, perhaps a new car.
It was explained to me at one Zen temple that driven by good and bad karma committed over countless lifetimes souls are constantly reborn as Gods, humans, animals, ghosts, and demons of the hell realms. They may live for a time in one of the heavenly realms or, worse, be subjected to pain (souls feel pain, right?) in one of the hell realms. Until they are able to break the cycle and reach nirvana by putting the Buddha’s teachings into pure practice and cleanse themselves.
In the Zen temple I trained at last, It was explained that the mind has no physical properties. It cannot be seen, heard, touched etc. But the mind is there. The mind is immaterial and cannot be produced by something material such as the brain. The mind isn’t in the brain, it comes from a previous continuum of mind, a consciousness that transcends and passes on from one life to another.
I had grave doubts. I have no problem believing that the brain is indeed capable of producing thoughts and perceptions.
It was explained that only an advanced meditator could come to realise this. An advanced meditator comes to “see” reality, that the mind - the consciousness - carries over from one life to another. Rebirth is “proven” by advanced meditation into all things (!)
Well, I have been meditating for over 20 years in several traditions and I was yet to “see” anything that revealed to me that we are reborn. That there is an immaterial “force” that travels from one body to another. I voiced my doubts and was told that I should simply trust those who were “more accomplished.”
More accomplished?
Or deeply deluded?
Brainwashed perhaps?
I know I wanted to believe, but………..
Trust. Faith. The suspension of rational thinking.
So “proof” of rebirth is the sutras of the Buddha stating that it is so. Just as the Bible is “proof” of a God. Rebirth depends a shit load on faith and the words of those who are “more accomplished.” To me this is no different from Christians claiming that God exists because the priests and followers claim to “talk” to him.
Quite simply, rebirth/reincarnation is a metaphysical speculation.
Fixed spiritual beliefs and concepts bring comfort. They are seductive. They bring false security. We trade our possibility of experiencing reality directly for a familiar, accepted, and unquestioned filter that is projected onto reality. These masterful creations of the mind - heavens, hells, spirits, rebirth, demons, goblins, angels etc. - are attachments, they cloud and colour our own experience. They become accepted representations of truth, of reality.
Buddhism is a religion. It is a fixed system of religious beliefs centred around the worship of Buddha or the founders of the various sects. The Buddha Dharma is upheld as a fixed doctrine of truth - unquestionable and eternal.
Buddhism is a system of faith with a core doctrine of belief which may not be questioned ie: a religion.
Buddhism is a fixed belief system that contains thousands of gods borrowed from Brahmanism, Persian and Greek religion. Some elements are from the beliefs of the Egyptians.
In Japan, in Shingon Buddhism and some schools of Tendai - Dainichi Nyorai is the Universal god. Buddha and the Bodhisattvas are worshipped here in Japan and they are prayed to in the hope that they will answer the call of the devout. That’s a religion, those are gods.
God: “a being believed to have omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.” - Oxford English Dictionary.
This definition sums up the Buddha as he is viewed by almost every school of Buddhism in Japan and China. The Buddha resides in the Pure Land (heaven) and listens to the prayers of the faithful.
As an example, let’s look at the Moju Koshiki written by the prominent monk Eison in 1246. “Mañjuśrī should be prayed to fervently. He will answer the prayers of the faithful and eliminate the twelve myriads of wrongdoings. Mañjuśrī will ensure that a person is always born in the land of the Buddha (heaven) and will be protected by the power of Mañjuśrī. Mañjuśrī only appears to those of pure heart and pure intention.”
Mañjuśrī is therefore a god. So much for the western concept of there being no gods in Buddhism, eh?
Monks in Japan, Tibet, China and Korea (Buddhist teachers), in fact all of Asia, encourage students to adopt an attitude that is no different from blind faith and fixed belief. You MUST believe in the teachings of the Buddha, you MUST believe in reincarnation/rebirth. To question the teachings is to disobey the monks.
