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The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

signoregalilei.com

71–80 of 189 posts

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#71

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

Side note as another Catholic:

Saints Josaphat and Barlaam never had an official decree of canonization. That process didn't exist (in its earliest form) until 1170 AD. Saints before that were generally just acclaimed by the Christians in the area and probably recognized by a local bishop.

The Vatican does keep a "Roman Martyrology" by which they try to keep a list of all known saints, but the saints that existed before the canonization process are known as "pre-congregation" saints and our certainty about them is generally less, well, certain.

In this case, these two names were removed from the Martyrology. That isn't to say that the Vatican has declared they are not saints, but is no longer actively making that claim.

There have been quite a few other pre-congregation names removed from the list when historical study has found little evidence of their existence or life story.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catholic church tries to be practical but inadvertently poisons Christianity. Christianity is way different from the Catholic church. Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.

That couldn't be further from the truth. The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time, and is still the original church. It has had its dark times for sure when people said exactly what you are saying now, BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.

Not all protestants were trying to change the church in a new way. The Lutheran reformation was an attempt to correct drift from papal decrees from the original christian doctrine so I wouldn't say the Catholic Church is the closest to the early church. I could see how something like the Latter Day Saint movement to be something way off the original track though.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#74
post #44

I love how the article is “isn’t that neat?” and never touches upon any self-awareness that perhaps many religions are nothing more than stories.

> many religions are nothing more than stories.

All religions are nothing more than stories. If science doesn't prove this, then all proclaimed religions are cults.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#75
post #49
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions One of the most studied issues in Catholic evangelism is the Chinese rites controversy which is also one of the historical reasons why religions are suppressed in China (aside from ideological policies ascribed to communism). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy (That and the Taiping rebellion which was estimate…

The CCP actually views the Taiping Rebellion positively, as an egalitarian movement which is a precursor to their own, albeit significantly flawed [1]. Upon looking this up, I was surprised to see they rarely even view it from a religious lens, maybe because the movement was so syncretic. Although, that could be due to the similarities between the Taiping Rebellion and Cultural Revolution’s aims. 1. https://bitterwin…

Starving tens of millions to death is also part of the CCP's traditional values.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#76

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

Catholic church tries to be practical but inadvertently poisons Christianity. Christianity is way different from the Catholic church. Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.

The idea that Christianity equates to "very very clean" scholarship regarding "original texts" would surprise most Christians in most periods. It's also not plain to me how this could even amount to a religion, considering all the practical, anthropological value adherents naturally expect one to provide.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#77
post #33
post #8

The Therapeutae sect is another good example of this phenomenon, although because it touches the root of several Abrahamic traditions so thoroughly, scholars and others are much less likely to declare an authoritative relation between between early Buddhism and the Therapeutae. However, anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with the history of early Buddhism, the Therapeutae, and the religious developments o…

Christian and Buddhist monastic traditions are so uncannily similar it's difficult to really think they developed without influence. That's my opinion. Even the Europeans who first set foot in Asia during the age of discovery thought they were being played tricks on, so I don't think it's that wild an idea

The problem isn't really the wildness of the idea (or its direct implications). The problem is that there is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import from the east.

Earlier today, I was listening to Evangelical Christian Radio while doing errands (my phone is broken and I live deep in Red America) and the pastor, Alistair Begg, was making the argument that the synoptic gospels are totally unique in what they are. The format is unprecedented. They're not biographies. They're not systematic theology. It's just a direct witness to Jesus Christ. And so on. Therefore, they're historically valid and true, etc.

But if you have read the Pali Canon or other collections of sutras and agamas, it's almost blindingly obvious that the structure of the pericopic episodes found in the synoptic gospels aren't really unique at all.

As a random example:

From Majjhima Nikaya 55 (trans. Thanissaro): I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha, in Jīvaka Komārabhacca’s mango grove. Then Jīvaka Komārabhacca went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “Lord, I have heard it said that ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action.’ Those who say, ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action’: Are they speaking in line with what the Blessed One has said, are they not slandering the Blessed One with what is unfactual, and are they speaking in line with the Dhamma so that no one whose thinking is in line with the Dhamma would have grounds for criticizing them?”

Compared to say, Mark 7 (trans. NIV):

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

And so on and so forth. The parallels don't end there, but I've probably gone on long enough of a rant. And this wouldn't even be the first time something like that happened in the Greek world. Pyrrho very likely did something very similar. Plus, the phenomena has modern equivalents as well. Look at how many mindfulness courses and therapy interventions in the West just file the serial numbers off of Buddhism (e.g. CBT, ACT).

So yeah. The pieces are all there, but literally be damned by others if you put them together.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#78

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

Its called syncretism. The Greeks and Romans have been doing it since the time of Alexander the Great.

The Greeks and Romans were doing it long before Alexander, as were all the cultures of the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East as far back as history allows. Egyptians were borrowing Levantine gods early in the Bronze Age, and ancient Akkadian adopted the Sumerian pantheon wholesale.

Turns out, culture isn't a singular thing you can just have. People everywhere all the time are picking up bits of things to do, things to say, things to believe in, and borders, no matter how fluid they are, only exist in the aggregate.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#79
post #71

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

Side note as another Catholic: Saints Josaphat and Barlaam never had an official decree of canonization. That process didn't exist (in its earliest form) until 1170 AD. Saints before that were generally just acclaimed by the Christians in the area and probably recognized by a local bishop. The Vatican does keep a "Roman Martyrology" by which they try to keep a list of all known saints, but the saints that existed bef…

Catholics surely put great effort into bureaucracy and organization.

"The devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of Truth,' said the devil.'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend.'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to let him organize it.'"

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#80

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

>the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia.

This is straight out of the Manichaeism playbook whose followers believed that a wide range of previous belief systems including Platonism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity each had a part of divine truth in them. This allowed them to absorb a diverse set of followers and contributed to them being one of the fasted spreading religions in Late Antiquity even giving Christianity a run for its money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

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