friend, i believe that what you are saying contradicts what the bible says. human beings are actually sinful. Romans 6:23- for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
friend, i believe that what you are saying contradicts what the bible says. human beings are actually sinful. Romans 6:23- for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
as far as hugs go, no 2x4 needed, but surely you've felt loneliness (you're pigeon holing "bad", lots of things are polar to "good"). no moldy cheese needed, but i bet you've had uncooked broccoli (if you're a masochist that enjoys broccoli, replace it with anything that grosses you out, head cheese maybe) . no need to starve, but you can't deny that a meal is flavored by a good hunger. you seem to be saying that your past experiences are isolated from your idea of what is good. since there is no knowledge without experience, i completely disagree and i still dont think you've shown me a good that is known without a badOriginally Posted by Redzeppelin
bolding mine...and its basically saying:
a does not equal b, but a equals b.
But what tells us that killing the fish is bad.
... I'll answer that
religion
nice....
*claps*
Personally I don't hold the Dalai Lama to be the embodiment of the best of what Buddhism teaches. I'm not studied greatly about him, but I have studied other Buddhist lamas, some things they teach, and it's very good. I disagree with the impersonalist nature of Buddhism, but they are still doing good things: teaching ahimsa, practicing virtue, etc. The main gist of mysticism from all religions is that there are states of being which cannot be described by words, which are beyond words. Actually we ourselves do not fit into dualistic categories, such as a body that is separate from the currents of life.
Christians teach to see Christ's face in all people. There is a book called Siddartha by Herman Hesse in which he describes the enlightenment of an individual. Not the Buddha but symbolically the same as the Buddha, even though the Buddha was another individual in that book. Anyhow, one part of it, and I am not doing it justice by truncating it and putting it into less able words than Hesse's, but one point of it is that he saw all faces in one. I think if we strive to see Christ in everyone's face, and in everyone's heart, we will always become better able to understand the divine Christ.
The idea of the divine seems impossible and people become emotional when the subject of religion or God comes up, and being emotional they stop thinking. In general our minds, if they are not well developed in knowledge or wisdom; in other words, if they are focused on material or external objects always and if they never seek peace or enlightenment; then they will be agitated or unhappy when things change. If our minds are attached or clinging to external objects, then whenever those objects change, we'll experience agitation in our minds. The mind gets jerked around.
Now what about meditation and action? The only real criticism of meditation is that it is not action. But that is a very shallow one. We can't be in action 100% of the time, we should not be. But we don't have to only resort to intoxications or stimulation to try to divert our attention. We should check ourselves and become more acquainted with our mind. It's a progress and a path, and we all need it in some form or another. It's the only way we can have healthy bodies and wise minds. What is the goal? In Chinese Daoism the word Taiping means Great Peace. That occurs when all is acting harmoniously, indiviudals, the state; Heaven and Earth. So that's the goal. We can't really ever get there without self-reflection.
Last edited by NikolaiI; 02-19-2009 at 10:46 PM.
What religion is against killing fish? I'd very much like to hear some details on this.
YES!
but you do see that good and bad dont exist until you classify them as such...
for example:
the evil muslim folk nuked the babylon twin towers in sodom and then saint bush won the elections by holy fraud, amen. then good amerika went to bad middle east and nuked waste desert petrol heaven into the land of milk, honey and starving orphans! see how good and evil are nitid?
its pretty simple, really.
another example:
good elegant white folk met the lazy evil black savages in africa and brought them back to civilization to educate them and as a punishment they gave us rap music!
the justice of god is unmistakeable!
Last edited by weltanschauung; 02-19-2009 at 10:48 PM.
So you exist, right? Is there, then, an opposite of you out there to make you a reality?
Veganism
Cheers, mate!
Buddhism and Hinduism both prohibit the killing of any animal, including fish.
Is this mean someone who embrace Buddhism/Hinduism, yet having meat as one of his/her diet, can be considered somewhat a non-practicing Buddhist/Hindu?
In my opinion, with all due respect, yes, yes, and yes, but perhaps not with such examples of intensity. So-called 'good' and 'evil' do not, however, always have to attribute to Hedonism. I suppose I believe in more of a continuum, a dimensional rather than categorical approach; in other words, something can feel better than good, or worse than bad - I could not say that stepping on a rusty nail has the same intense 'badness' than the death of a loved one, nor does the taste of well-made tiramisu have the same 'goodness' as reading a good novel.
A lot of human thinking, I believe, functions by comparisons. What judges if you slept well last night bases itself on previous experiences - you slept better than you did while the neighbors threw a loud party, but not as well as you did in infancy.
In my opinion, the same goes between 'good' and 'evil.' For Believers, nothing beats the ultimate goodness of God, and nothing has more evil than Satan - polar opposites. Would we consider fire and brimstone unpleasurable if we could imagine heaven? It would probably feel relatively uncomfortable, but even if I burned amid fire and brimstone, getting burned on my bare feet and legs would probably not feel as bad as my face getting burned - a simple comparison of bad and worse even where all believers dread, hell.
I should have guessed the Hinduism -- I have a couple of Hindu friends. I didn't know that Buddhists had the same feelings.
So are they against swatting mosquitoes too? I know very little of the Eastern religions.
What I know is this. Buddhists, when they take their meals, sit down to eat, and they meditate and say a prayer before taking their meal. Then they visualize their food as taking medicine - just like they are always assaying to practice healing thoughts, words, and actions, they are also meditating that their food is medicine. Now I am taking this picture from a monastery I visited. I'm not an authority to say whether someone who would eat fish would or could be considered practicing or not. Actually there is a precedent for it. There was a great yogi, Tilopa, who lived in extreme conditions and actually for a number of years he subsisted only on fish from the river by which he lived. However the general rule is to not eat meals where animals, even fish, even poultry, were killed to make it.
In this monastery the Buddhists also only ate food which was offered. This was part of making it medicine, although I am not greatly knolwedged about that aspect of it. In Vedic religion, brahmanas offer all their food to Visnu before eating it, and they eat the remains of the food. After suitable food has been offered, it becomes prasadam, or the Lord's mercy. Prasadam is very similar to Buddhist's food, when Buddhists eat what has been offered to the Medicine Buddha, and when they visualize it as medicine. Prasadam is also medicine, and these brahmanas do not eat anything not offered to Visnu. In fact in Bhagavad-Gita Krishna says anything which is not offered to Him is considered to be sinful. The reason for this is since everything is given by the Lord, it should all be offered back. Also, everything belongs to the Lord, and to say that it doesn't is considered theft, thus sinful. In Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says that if one offers with devotion a leaf, flower, fruit or water it will be accepted, so we understand by this that these things are suitable to offer. Krishna doesn't say, slaughter an animal and then offer it.
In fact, in the Bible in Christianity animal sacrifice is also condemned. I've read the verses but I do not remember exactly what they are. You'd have to ask a scholarly Christian to find out.
yes, of course. but in case we ever meet, the universe will collapse, duh.So you exist, right? Is there, then, an opposite of you out there to make you a reality?
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