that is not buddhism... that is tradisional rituals from traditional taoism....

it is more of ritual and culture rather than religion

you too can go to nirvana

I laughed so hard at your lack of understanding towards Buddhism and total courage to yell that all Buddhists go to hell in a public forum

In Buddhism, you live your life for today. You live and complete your work today and practice loving kindness to everybody and everything. Keeping yourself calm, happy and very importantly, mindful enables you to be able to see things in different perspectives and offer help and help yourselves in ways you've never thought of previously. It just opens up your mind. Those of us who have not come to a point of which our mind and understanding has improved, will continue to battle this thoughts of hell and heaven and religion. Those of us who have understood, just explain and let it go.

If one chooses to fight the Buddhist way, we'll just let go and move on with our lives. Eventually you'll see why we do that. Its not like collecting points to die in Buddhism. It's just living and helping those around us. Death is another phase altogether but we're not done with life. So we'll just focus on finishing life first.

I know it sounds so "WTF?" but I went from WTF to "Ooohh.....it actually works!"

of course that includes the freedom not to believe, or to accept. which you can see by the world today having more non-christians than christians.

but where the different choices we make leads us to is another matter altogether. if you choose to close or well, never open that door then i guess u wont know what's behind it.

isnt that an oxymoron, humans need religion but it's not a necessity?

hold your horses there, boy.
i never mentioned anything about telling buddhists to go to hell. i am not one to judge, i merely pointed out something that is very prevalent in the buddhist society that i have observed.

and your explanation of buddhism makes it sound so hippie. if that is so, why burn hell notes? as buddhists, you do not worry about death as u dont know what will happen to you after life, but yet there is this burning culture. a forummer said that it is a ritual culture or something to that effect. y preach one thing and do another? again, correct me if im wrong.

sometimes i wonder where u blue tags get your blue tags from. jumping to conclusions like that, not very nice practise of a bluetagger ya know


This post has been edited by b3ta: Dec 11 2009, 12:22 PM

most chinese practice a bastardized version of buddhism. and most is custom rituals rather than religious rituals.

and yes, buddhism is a very hippie/zen religion.

Oh? You don't know? Well, you see, I got the blue tags from the admins of the website. I don't know where Admins get their tags though, but I think Admins can give Admin tags. I hope that answers your question.

Practices of burning hell notes is Taoist. Read the earlier post by awakened angel. A lot of temples have adopted culture and thus the burning of paper. Take a visit to India's Nalanda, and you'll see there are no paper being burnt. Buddhism does sound like a rather hippie'ish teaching, but it also depends how you apply it. If you're a student, and apply living for the moment, it'll involve doing your homework asap and for me, maybe finishing my paper ASAP. If you're a housewife, it could mean doing your chores now, and when it's time to watch TV, watch TV. For a businessman, it could involve, getting the deal done today because today's the time to work and get it finished.

Also the level of Buddhism I'm showing you right now, is a beginner level. There's much more that even I haven't finished all.

I thought Zen came from Buddhism?

Zen is add on or(Expanded version) of buddhism by japs

bastardised eh, so customs or religion? ur religion says there is no such thing but u put into action the customs which supports such a theory. left or right?

i must say these red tagged gangstas have a very poor sense of judgment.

but i see alot of buddhists burning hell notes. are they buddhist and taoist at the same time? left or right? or both? what about joss sticks?
so then i take it that u agree with lin00b that most buddhists are practising a rather bastardised version of the original. is it also true then, only a very small minority is practising the philosophies established by buddha - who was himself searching for an answer?

i take it that if u are at a 'beginner's' level, u have a higher level to work towards. if you are living for the moment, why are you working for the future? or are you actually living for the future?

joss stick, paper offering, ching beng, etc is part of ancient chinese custom of remembering the ancestors.

these are not in buddhism which is by large a non-dogmatic religion. there is no set ritual for you to follow, only a set of philosophy. when buddhism spread to china, the chinese who convert still retain most of the original custom and taoist religion ritual, resulting in the ritualistic practice you see today in most chinese community.

you can say most chinese today practice a mix of buddhist and taoist belief, which is in some cases rather contradictory. buddhism for the religion, taoism for the rituals. a fusion religion.

and besides, all those chinese uncle and aunties are not in anyway religion expert, they just follow what their parents do who got it from their parents and so on and so on.....

living for the moment is the way to the future

but it doesnt mix. one says one thing another says another thing and they somehow believe or try to believe in both, which can get rather contradictory. yet no one is doing anything about it? or does no one give a damn?

living for the moment is living in the present. having foresight is the way to the future.

and do allow me to ask a rather personal question. do u practise these chinese customs?

This post has been edited by b3ta: Dec 11 2009, 08:55 PM

more or less the "no one gives a damn" reason, most chinese are not that deep religion wise, they are more worried about hte material world than the spiritual one.

you can follow the buddhist life philosophy and yet still burn stuff. i dont see the incompatibility there. i mean buddha didnt say "dont burn stuff".

i dont live in the past, but i appreciate/remember the past while living in the present. and living in the present does not mean not caring about the future. you can think/care/plan for the future, but your focus must be in the present. you cant keep saying "i'll enter harvard in 5 years" without focusing on studying hard now.

yeah i practise these chinese custom. you can do lots of silly things buy saying its "custom"

The door has always been open, I never close the door to anything, even blatantly outrageous conspiracy theories. Just because I have seen both sides and chose not to believe, does not mean I did not open the door in the first place. On the contrary, I find many believers never gave a chance to rationalism.

Where did I mention humans needing religion? Don't recall. Only remember saying "do not" need. I did say if it works for you, then good for you. That does not imply need. Believers will still be alive without the existence of religion, since many non-believers are very happy and healthy indeed.

Take it this way.

If you live for today, and settle all the important things for today, and plan for the future. When the future comes, you execute the plan well, it succeeds. If you live for tomorrow, and throw away the important things of today (parents, family, friends, companionship) in the end, you achieve your goals, but lose what you should've appreciated.

Buddhism's a teaching, that when you ask a question, you'll get more questions. The Buddha himself answers questions, with questions.
When you've gone through the whole circle and finally see the light, you'll ask yourself (or at least I did), "Why the hell didn't I just accept it instead of taking 2 long years to figure it out?"

Makes you humbled and feel a lil stupid sometimes

my bad. read wrongly.

ah, but where is your stand on the matter. yes buddha didnt say 'dont burn stuff', but the essence of buddhism itself proclaims the non-existence of hell (nor God). however, in your culture, youre burning stuff for people in hell (18 stages of em)..therefore, are you for, or against the teachings of buddhism?


the solution is not going to come with questions and more questions. in the end, with such idealogies, what is left is one and one alone. but if you have, or have claimed to see the light. then good on ya. doesnt make you a better blue tagger, but good on ya

sauce?

AFAIK it's the chinese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

"X" wrong knowledge.

there is room for hell (aka afterlife) and god (godS even) in buddhism. buddhism is not an atheist religion. its just that buddhism tend to focus on your spirituality rather than some paranormal superpower being. it dont really care about gods and/or demons as its objective is for people to achieve enlightenment.

the burning and the 18 layers etc are afaik taoist though. and since buddhism has room for these supernatural stuff so they cohabitate quite well.

The concept of Zen is from Shaolin leh. He is not talking about the word origin?

---

Added on December 13, 2009, 10:01 pmno, it isnt.


The story of zen goes:

Monk A(to Monk B): Hey what are you doing these days?

Monk B: I eat, shower and sleep.


It's not doing it "ASAP", it's doing it and being 100% aware of each and every inch of your actions. Even a tiny bit of paying attention to the irrelevant = fail. Like the scenario above, eat when you eat, shower when you shower, and sleep when you sleep.


It's a very hard and almost impossible training if you live in the modern day world.

This post has been edited by LittleGhost: Dec 13 2009, 10:02 PM

I'll summarize it for you buddy.

Commitment. Commit to the task at hand.

imo, the need for religion is:
1. as a spiritual support for us, help destressed too =)
2. as a guidance in life.. althought the origin of religion are just myth

i personally don't belive in religion because
1. i believe in science
2. i believe in myself and sadly to say money - which can do anything

but one without religion like me, personally, suffer from insomia, so imo, everyone should have a religion.. practise the positives, not the negatives

Mindfulness

Commitment is a different word altogether.