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Old 04-15-2019, 10:04 AM
 
20,956 posts, read 8,571,701 times
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To specifically answer the question, all religions...including Buddhism...have been changed by the masses into something where violence is not only OK, but often celebrated.

The "real" Buddhism does exist as does the real Christianity....it is just that the vast majority of people don't follow it.

Japan and China are/were heavily influenced by Buddhism or its offshoots...and Japan built a militaristic culture direct from that.

One big difference I see between Buddhism and Christianity/Islam is that Buddhism seems to have much more real world forgiveness built in. Think about it - pretend that Islamists or Buddhists did to the USA what we did to Vietnam....would we be opening our arms to them one or two generations later?

Not IMHO.

 
Old 04-15-2019, 10:08 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietude54940498
Whatever Buddhism's appeal, the more austere notion of the karmic cycle could seem like... endless slavery or "someday" and thus less appealing to the masses of that time and place.
To say nothing of the amount of paid and powerful positions that hierarchies like Catholicism provides ... plenty of opportunities for advancement and control. Telling those ambitious hordes they have to sit alone and meditate would have been very poor marketing.

Watch kids play (especially boys). Watch them make up clubs. It is all answered in 8-10 year olds. Without someone telling others what to do, there is no fun.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 10:14 AM
 
28,563 posts, read 18,566,859 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Listener2307 View Post
It is my understanding the Emperor Constantine sought to put an end to Pagan/Christian battling by bastardizing the word "Pagan" and endorsing Christianity, the reason being that Christians were willing to die for their beliefs and Pagan were not. That trait made Christians unbeatable.
Christians weren't participating in the battles, however.

It is true that Christians had become quite a bit a vermin that the empire couldn't quite stamp out.

Notice that by making Christianity an official religion, Constantine automatically became the head of it (as the emperor was automatically pontifex maximus of all official empire religions. By not being baptized (until on his deathbed), Constantine was not obligated to reject the pagan religions of which he was already chief priest. Making Christianity an official religion of the empire was a political win-win strategy for him.

Constantine did what Kim Jong Un is doing right now--attempting to co-opt it.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 10:26 AM
 
28,563 posts, read 18,566,859 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri View Post
To specifically answer the question, all religions...including Buddhism...have been changed by the masses into something where violence is not only OK, but often celebrated.

The "real" Buddhism does exist as does the real Christianity....it is just that the vast majority of people don't follow it.

Japan and China are/were heavily influenced by Buddhism or its offshoots...and Japan built a militaristic culture direct from that.

One big difference I see between Buddhism and Christianity/Islam is that Buddhism seems to have much more real world forgiveness built in. Think about it - pretend that Islamists or Buddhists did to the USA what we did to Vietnam....would we be opening our arms to them one or two generations later?

Not IMHO.
Your last paragraph is in conflict with what you just said before it.

Remember that Christianity did not begin as the religion of empire, it began as a selective minority religion with a theology that supported existence as such. Unlike Islam, it was not created with a stated destiny to become dominant, but rather, "...the way is narrow and few find it" and "the world will hate you as it hated me."

Success was rather thrust upon Christianity. While I'm sure Christians of the day were relieved not to be persecuted any longer, having been given a stake in the empire as it was at that moment Christianity changed to support the needs of empire--which appears to be the point you made at the beginning of your post.

It's not clear to me that the same would not have happened to Buddhism (as expressed in the West) if Constantine had instead selected Buddhism as a new state religion. Christianity was invented to be endlessly forgiving--a characteristic it could not maintain when it became an imperial religion.

From that position, I don't think Imperial Buddhism would have been any more forgiving. It would have either failed to maintain a position as a religion of the empire, or it would have changed for the role.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 12:06 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
Your last paragraph is in conflict with what you just said before it.

Remember that Christianity did not begin as the religion of empire, it began as a selective minority religion with a theology that supported existence as such.

From that position, I don't think Imperial Buddhism would have been any more forgiving. It would have either failed to maintain a position as a religion of the empire, or it would have changed for the role.
On both point I agree.

I think, however, it is realistic to say that it wasn't long after the founding that Christianity was usurped by the Big Men. The equation was then reversed...completely and totally.

The very few Christians who actually practiced it were - and still are today - often persecuted by other "Christians" for doing so.

It's a distinct advantage of Christianity to have so many sects...and therefore plenty of clubs for all of those who seek power and/or want a piece of the action. Need I mention Mormons?

The MLKs of the World as well as the William Lloyd Garrisons, Quakers and even the Methodists were rejected by many Christians due to their actual practice of human kindness and of equality.

It's also true Islam sprung from a harshness that made it very different from most popular religions. Buddhism took root in a fruitful and relatively peaceful area and time.

Back to the Romans - or even extending to the Greeks. The lack of overbearing religion is probably at the heart of their success. Instead of building Pyramids to a King or Pharaoh, they built aqueducts and roads and baths and works of infrastructure. They set up a large system of a welfare state within which many citizens could actually experience pleasure. Those with great abilities were cultivated and benefited the whole.

When one looks at the material and philosophical gifts of these two cultures....it's truly amazing how little has been added to them in two centuries! I'm not sure Plato and Aristotle and the rest will ever be proven wrong.

Neither will Buddha or Jesus, of course.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 06:59 PM
 
Location: Denver, CO
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cebuan View Post
If the Sassanids weren't so tolerant if Roman Christianity, it is believed likely that Zoroastrianism, from Persia, would have dominated the Roman lands of those times.
I doubt it. Zoroastrianism was never successfully exported to any non-Indo-European nations. There's nothing in its creed that is incompatible with it becoming a universalist creed but for whatever reason it became a 'chosen people' religion like Judaism by the time of the Sassanids. The Mithraism that thrived in Rome actually had very little to do with Zoroastrianism.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 07:37 PM
 
Location: Washington state
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I'm not sure anything would have changed. Buddhists today are doing ethnic cleansing when it comes to the Rohingya Muslims who live in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine. Myanmar is considered to be in a humanitarian crisis because of it.

Any religion can, and usually does, go rogue no matter how much they say they're all about peace.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 07:49 PM
 
4,197 posts, read 1,583,167 times
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it was my understanding that Buddhism is NOT a religion but a philosophy and it is quite consistent to be a Christian and also Buddhist
 
Old 04-15-2019, 08:22 PM
 
Location: Shreveport, LA
1,609 posts, read 1,586,837 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by elvis44102 View Post
it was my understanding that Buddhism is NOT a religion but a philosophy and it is quite consistent to be a Christian and also Buddhist
Regardless, despite my general dislike of religion in general, I’ve always been partial to buddhism in particular. The Buddha has the warm cuddly Jesus-like nature minus a lot of the extra belief requirements like a personal deity, and the holy books (sutras) in general in buddhism are less about what to believe and more about what to do, and there is less LGBT hate in most sutras. Now, Buddhism has plenty of bad moments in its history, but it seems noticeably cleaner than the other major world religions and what the religion/philosophy requires to accept is more compatible with a scientific and reasonable worldview. I’m talking about Theravada and Zen here.

Christianity has good points too, but its tendency to produce creationists and its requirement to believe in a personal god are part of the deal breaker. I also know the bible well enough to see the verses that excuse bigotry against certain people (granted, there are also verses that promote love, but this just creates muddy water when cross-referenced with the hateful verses).

I really don’t follow any particular religion, but if I had to pick one it would either be a minimalist variant of buddhism or maybe some minimalist form of Taoism.
———

Do you think the scientific revolution would have happened quicker in a buddhist Europe? I know the medieval church was aggressive trying to battle “heresies” and Isaac Newton devoted a lot of precious time to eschatology.
 
Old 04-15-2019, 08:27 PM
 
Location: Cebu, Philippines
5,869 posts, read 4,161,891 times
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When distilled down to its nulceus, all religions were pretty much the same' Circumstances of society, economics, defense, then dictated the trappings that gave each religion its local color. For example, when slavery became economically useful, any religion would have bent to embrace it. and winked at its scriptural contradictions. The powers that must be just assembled useful and selective dogma around the basic theology, and a culture's visible religion became what it was.
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