Live data from Hacker News

The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

signoregalilei.com

171–180 of 189 posts

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#171
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not true that Christian practices are mostly pagan in origin. You do not need to look far to find the origin of the vast majority of what you would have seen in a medieval church service. You can see the common origin if you compare and contrast an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service with an Orthodox Christian liturgy. The first half of the Divine Liturgy and the synagogue service are virtually the same even in t…

Judiasm is monotheistic, Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic, you have The Father (1), The Son (Jesus is also God, or A God, 2), and The Holy Ghost (3). There was a big, big brouhaha about this, the Nicene Creed is a core part of protestant religions to help remind everyone that they're technically a monotheist religion and somehow Jesus is a Flavor of God and not separate despite mos…

> Writing Jesus into the canon 2000 years later as a seperate but equal entity was bound to be fraught with continuity issues.

If you pay any attention to Christian history, you would know that this goes back to the very founding instead.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's more cultural colonization than syncretism. For example, America was culturally colonized by forcibly converting its inhabitants to Catholicism. Their temples were destroyed, the stones used to build churches, and while celebrations were still observed, the deities were replaced with Catholic ones. Even the folklore was rewritten with Catholic characters. It wasn't syncretism, it was systematic eradication. Sync…

The missing term and concept is Inculturation

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

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#173
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep highlighting very minor and accidental similarities, like the OP, or some surface-level similarities between the two texts you cite. Yet they seem to ignore essential and basic differences, not only about the Divine Nature but also about very basic questions like whether change is real or illusory, or whether a person exists from moment to moment. I just listed a bunch of them in my previous post. I don't…

Thanks for illustrating my point. You didn't actually point to anything substantial; you kind of hand-waved at what you presumed "eastern religions" posit, but there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies that do in fact have very different attitudes towards the divine and basic metaphysics. The very first sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya--the Brahmajāla Sutta--has a section where the Buddha directly e…

You seem to be responding to something I didn't say. I have no doubt that "there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies", or that the Buddha is reported as engaging with them.

In your previous post, you claimed something different:

>>> [T]here 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.

This is a different claim entirely.

Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'. One way we know this is by looking at its differences with eastern ideas. What would first-century Christianity make of the denial of diachronic identity (the self is an illusion), or the denial of the idea that God is personal? You accuse me of 'hand waving'. I'm not sure where I do this. Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?

Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?

There's quite a bit of mind-reading (in the CBT sense of the word) in your post that I don't really want to respond to because it doesn't advance the argument.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep highlighting very minor and accidental similarities, like the OP, or some surface-level similarities between the two texts you cite. Yet they seem to ignore essential and basic differences, not only about the Divine Nature but also about very basic questions like whether change is real or illusory, or whether a person exists from moment to moment. I just listed a bunch of them in my previous post. I don't…

I specifically stick to monasticism because Christianity is the odd one out of all the abrahamic religions in advocating for monasticism, and monasticism started in Egypt which had significant enough presence of Buddhists. As far as I am aware, Christianity is the only non Indian religion to advocate for monasticism or asceticism. It's really only Jainism and Buddhism that advocate for it other than Christianity (Hin…

Thanks. Very briefly, I haven't commented on Buddhism or the Buddha's teaching at all (except to agree with the other guy's claim that the Buddha engaged with many philosophies), and have been very careful to avoid doing so. My beef is specifically with the claim that Christianity is syncretic, and with the unsaid implication in the OP that all religions basically teach the same thing.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand this story. What lesson/joke am I seeing here?

Organizing information could be considered its own form of (self-inflicted) torment.

Ohhh, that’s why Google gave up its “dont be evil” stance!

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#176
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is true up to a point. But you find chasmic differences as well. Polygamy is an obvious example, or lying to non-brethren (absolutely forbidden by Christianity, permitted I believe by other religions), or the caste system (unthinkable in Islam or Christianity, a base part of reality in Hinduism), etc. You find a very different attitude to wealth in many varieties of Protestantism compared to the Catholic…

> or the caste system (unthinkable in Islam or Christianity, a base part of reality in Hinduism), etc. The historical prominence of the slave trade in both the Christian and Islamic worlds should make it quite clear that it was hardly "unthinkable" but instead very rationalizable. Rigid systems of social power hierarchy and oppression based on ancestry, perceived race, and occupation (which is a lot of what the worst…

Right, but that proves nothing. The fact that human beings who profess religion R engage in behaviour B does not imply that B results from said profession of R. But I think you'd struggle to argue that the caste system doesn't result from Hinduism.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#177
post #63

"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 is notoriously top-down and hierarchical It has a hierarchy, but it has multiple hierarchies. It is not all that top down. Bishop's ave a lot of autonomy, and most decisions are made at the diocesan level. Dioceses have their own property and funds held by their own trustees. On top of that religious orders have their own hierarchy (and property and funds etc.). Then there are the rites such as the…

> Historically this was the result of the fact the church predates modern communications. It was not possible for a Pope to direct things the way a CEO of a modern corporation does

These traditions settled over a very long time. I don't think a few months to send a letter would be a real barrier to deciding what's acceptable doctrine.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#178
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not true that Christian practices are mostly pagan in origin. You do not need to look far to find the origin of the vast majority of what you would have seen in a medieval church service. You can see the common origin if you compare and contrast an Orthodox Jewish synagogue service with an Orthodox Christian liturgy. The first half of the Divine Liturgy and the synagogue service are virtually the same even in t…

Judiasm is monotheistic, Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic, you have The Father (1), The Son (Jesus is also God, or A God, 2), and The Holy Ghost (3). There was a big, big brouhaha about this, the Nicene Creed is a core part of protestant religions to help remind everyone that they're technically a monotheist religion and somehow Jesus is a Flavor of God and not separate despite mos…

The other reply offered a perfectly good set of corrections but I want to add my own clarifications.

One point I wanted to make in my original comment was that monotheism vs polytheism is not a helpful object category when talking about 2000 year old religions as their adherents understood it. This analytic category is a fairly recent invention. You can make this distinction if you want, but it will be of precious little use for actually understanding the people of the past.

It’s also not helpful to back-project contemporary understandings of Judaism back into the religious context of the 1st century. The idea that the messiah would be in some sense divine, or even that he would be YHWH Himself, is not purely an invention of the Christians, but was present in Jewish groups prior to Jesus. I would argue this has not even been entirely purged from all strands of modern Orthodox Judaism. This doesn’t even get into stuff like the Zohar/Jewish mysticism where you have 12+ special flavors of God.

All of these groups would have insisted that there’s one true God, but they would also have insisted that he had more than one hypostasis.” Romans at the time also believed that a single God could have different hypostases.* Nevertheless despite this agreement they accused the Christians not of being monotheists but of being atheists because the Christians alone refused to pay respect to any of the hypostases of any of the recognized gods.

The idea that Jesus is depicted as having some kind of separate agenda from His Father is also a very bizarre reading of the New Testament. Jesus’ relationship with The Father seems to be much more complex than that since he says The Son can do nothing Himself and that He only does what the Father is doing, that He and the Father are one, etc.

There nonetheless seems to be some kind of distinction between Them, hence the two thousand years of theological debate. If you want some sources on this type of thought prior to and parallel to Christianity, you can read the book Two Powers in Heaven.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#179
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on. Except for it's never done. No Hindu believes Allah or Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu. It can't be. Vishnu literally means the "All-Pervading One". Allah is explicitly not Omnipresent. Jesus is Omnipresent but does not have infinite forms. So neither fit the bill. Even Buddha, who we Hindus associate as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not the same Bu…

I'm not knowledgeable enough about Hinduism to argue the first point but that's too reductive of a view of Christianity and Islam. There's a rich history of panentheism in both. Ibn Arabi, probably the most famous Sufi scholar was known for defending it ( "[God] sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man" ), Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics held similar views etc. Of cou…

Sufis were meant to propagate that Islam is syncretic to get people to convert wherever they went. Once Islam got a critical mass of converts (15-20%), Islamic invaders would have the necessary internal support to invade and destabilize the Kingdom.

This is literally how Islam got to places in Asia and spread. It was through Sufis who acted as initial points of contact.

> A lot of these traditions are much more flexible than whatever is the dogma or institutional version of the time suggests.

This is only so when it comes to missionaries in each religion. Be it Evangelists saying Vishnu is Avatar of Christ (we literally have Christ idols shaped like Vishnu with multiple arms and sitting on a lotus in a Church in India), Sufis singing Krishna is same as Allah or heck even ISKCON claiming Christ is an Avatar of Krishna /Vishnu. That does not make "traditions flexible". It's just a cheap tactic to increase followers/harvest souls. These converts are typically fluid in their own convictions and can easily be swayed one way or the other based on reasons unconnected to the Religion/Dogma/Philosophy itself. Reasons could range from political, monetary to finding fame/popularity within a new sect/group/cult/ideology.

Very few are seekers of Truth.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#180
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on. Except for it's never done. No Hindu believes Allah or Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu. It can't be. Vishnu literally means the "All-Pervading One". Allah is explicitly not Omnipresent. Jesus is Omnipresent but does not have infinite forms. So neither fit the bill. Even Buddha, who we Hindus associate as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not the same Bu…

I distinctly remember an Indian man on a bus in Kerala striking up a conversation with me (random white obvious tourist) in which he proclaimed both that he considered Jesus his Lord and Saviour and that he considered him to be an avatar of Vishnu. Not an explanation I'd asked him for, but certainly made a change from the standard bus conversation about where I was from and was I married yet and what salary... I'm su…

> but this sort of syncretism definitely has been attempted and found its converts

That's exactly the point of why he even attempted to have this conversation with you. It was to convert you to Hinduism.

I explain it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49620794

Post reply on HN