Yes. These song lyrics (I will follow you wherever you may go) are true to all kinds of eyebrow-raiser things.
This post was edited by Beans/SilentGeneration at June 22, 2018 10:26 PM MDT
Catholicism and Buddhism are not mutually incompatible.
Buddhism does not necessarily believe in a deity. It is complex. The Buddha taught that whether a god or gods exist is irrelevant to his teachings, which concern solely the path to achieving happiness within this lifetime. A person can be of any faith or religion and also be a Buddhist.
After the Buddha's death, slowly different sects formed and changed form, often adapting and mutating the faiths of their adoptive countries.
In Vipassana or Theravadin Buddhism, the one sect that adhered to the Buddha's original teachings without augmentation, there is thought to be a universal mind, which is as close as possible to a conception of disembodied consciousness and mental connection, but not like any Western concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and good god. However, Theravadin Buddhism also refuses to deny any god or faith and say that it is valuable for practitioners to maintain whatever faith they have.
In Mahayana Buddhism, the word "deity" as used by Westerners to describe Tara, Avalokiteshvara and multiple others. This word is wrong. They are not deities and have never been taught as such. The correct word is "idam." An idam is a personification of an abstract idea. Tara, for instance, represents the principle of unconditional loving compassion or "meta." She is visualised as a young woman, bare-breasted because milk is kindness and generosity, holding a flask of the water of life, with her other hand in the mudra (gesture) of blessing. She has a serene and loving smile. The meditater is required to spend hours visualising her until she appears real and solid in the imagination, and in the process cultivates the feelings of meta towards all others.
In many Buddhist countries, uneducated Buddhists can be seen donating flowers and fruit, lighting incense and candles, and bowing and praying before images of Buddha, Boddhisattvas (famous teachers who deferred enlightenment of the sake of teaching), and idams. They are not praying or worshipping in the same sense as Catholics do before a statue of Christ or Mary. They do not imagine that there is a real entity that can hear them, nor are they entreating for favours. Rather, they are paying homage to a principle which they wish to cultivate in themselves through contemplation.
Therefore, Buddhist sects and teachers have no objection to students who are Catholics.
However, Catholic priests tend to know little of Buddhism and perhaps most might object to Catholics who wish to simultaneously practise Buddhist meditation. Ironically, Saint Ignatius developed a form of breathing meditation which is identical to the beginners' training stage of Vipassana (Insight or Wisdom) meditation. And Ignatius's method is now taught to all monks in the Jesuit sect of Catholicism.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at June 22, 2018 10:16 PM MDT
Hope I didn't bore you. Comparative religions and beliefs were one of my main interests for many years. In those days I was an active spiritual seeker.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at June 26, 2018 10:24 AM MDT
Highly improbable, especially since you yourself are neither Jewish nor Muslim.
However, you could, if you worked at it hard enough, create a fake news thread purporting to show that such a religion exists. Some people might even believe it.
Ho, ho! Thank you for that wonderful tit-bit! :) My husband, Ari Ehrlich, is Ashkenazi. His family was originally from Poland. His parents met just after the war, after having lost their families in the Holocaust. They moved to Israel when he was two. When Ari was 11, his father died. His mother moved with Ari and his sister to Australia.
On a recent visit to Israel, Ari marched with Jews and Muslims in a protest in Tel Aviv. It was a protest against the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians, against the treatment of Arabs in Israel as second-class citizens, and a demonstration that Muslims and Jews can walk in harmony and friendship together. It did not get reported on the news.
There are many ways to build friendships between peoples. One is sharing the joys of culture. Many Muslims might appreciate the stories of the Baal Shem Tov. Many Jews might discover rapture in the poetry of Hafiz or Rumi. There is so much that could be shared which would help each realise that they are not so very different, and their faiths and ways are in fact highly compatible.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at June 26, 2018 10:25 AM MDT
Q "Do you think I could start a new religious sect "Jews for Muhammad"?" ====================================================
There's of course nothing new about people changing religions or setting up new ones. Jews embracing Islam is not new either. It started from the time of Mohammed and continues to this day. The two religions are similar in many respects. The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses are all mentioned with great respect in the Qur'an. A big transition for Jews embracing Islam would be to recognise Jesus as the Messiah and Mohammed as the final prophet.
However, setting up a new religious sect "Jews for Muhammad" would go against basic Islamic principles.
Islam is against the veneration of Mohammed. It is very emphatic that he was just a human being appointed by God like Moses was. Although like Jesus he was the light and the way to God, he was not the only one in human history. In Islam salvation doesn't only belong to the followers of the Qur'an and the teachings of Mohammed but belongs to whoever followed any of the prophets sent by God to all peoples wherever and whenever they lived before the time of Mohammed. It is not Mohammed who is important but the message he brought and left behind. Islam is against personality cults and racial elitism or exclusiveness. So not only would "Jews for Muhammad" be an anathema but even "Jews for Islam" wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of Islam.
This post was edited by CLURT at June 24, 2018 5:29 PM MDT
Thank you. I wish this kind of education and raising of public awareness about Islam was far more prevalent. We all need to understand one another much better. I see understanding, empathy, and kindness as the necessary balm for building peace and compatibility in multicultural societies and between countries around the world.
You have identified quite accurately I think what the world is desperately in need of, peace, cooperation and coexistence as equals. These are goals we ordinary conscientious people must all work towards and achieve pretty soon before the hate mongers and the divisive and the supremacists among us drive us to more wars and more unnecessary deaths, crippling life changing injuries, starvation, destruction of livelihoods and property...... Apparently, just 3% [yes three] of America's spending in armaments [the death and destruction industry] could eliminate starvation from our world. I mean, we're in the 21st century and there's still starvation and we're still killing one another in wars. Are we really any more enlightened than prehistoric man?
carbonproduct 