Is Buddhism a religion?

[toltec]

speaking as someone who lives in a Buddhist country, I can only reply with an overwhealming yes.

The tiny numbers of westerners learning Buddhism as a philosophy at home often argue it isn't, because eastern Buddhism strays from the exact words of Buddha.

But the argument there is only one christian and he died on the cross comes into play. All the christian religions don't follow the word to the letter (they couldn't even, it's self contradicting) yet we have no troubling calling them christian. So the same must apply with Buddhism and the religious Buddhism that dominates in all Buddhist countries is just as ligitimately Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion because virtually all Buddhist on earth practices it as a religion, percieves it as a religion and the ruling authority and governments treat it as a religion, the fact they edited what buddha said with a green byro is neither here nor there.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

You won't have any free-willed thoughts running around in the back of your mind.

That sentence doesn't seem to be very well composed and is somewhat confusing. I suspect that what you really mean is that you only have thoughts that you have consciously composed with your free will, and that you have banished subconscious thoughts (to use a familiar Freudian term even though I'm a Jungian) which pop up autonomically and unbidden from the deeper parts of your brain which you inherited from your more primitive ancestral species.

We are the only animal with these huge forebrains. All other vertebrates are largely driven by the instincts in their midbrain and by their autonomous nervous system, with only a little supervision by conscious decision-making and (depending on the individual species) a more-or-less modest learning ability that doesn't come close to ours.

As I have noted in other discussions, only humans have such large and powerful forebrains that we can completely override instinctive behavior on a large scale, and instead perform behaviors that we have acquired through reasoning and learning. Sure, dogs and other fairly intelligent animals are capable of learning a few "tricks" of this type, such as letting a tasty hot dog sit on their nose until they're told it's okay to eat it. But a human can do that even when he's starving, even when no one is looking, because he knows that his neighbor is hungrier than he is; as well as learning an entire lifetime of other similar (if less drastic) "tricks" that we call "civilized behavior."

You can still feel sad and things like that, but only if you choose. Say goodbye to anger. I went a few years without getting angry, and completely forgot what it was like. I really had to relearn the emotion because I decided it was useful.

You're saying that you've cracked a barrier that has held our species back for twelve thousand years: the inability to suppress anger and all the other emotions that it underlies, such as revenge. This is surely the final obstacle to becoming truly civilized, because (in my observation and it didn't require a degree in psychology or any fancy instruments) anger is clearly the emotion that stimulates all of our atavistic behavior, including war--the behavior that always knocks civilization two steps back for every three steps we take forward.

Emotional control is the best way I can describe it. You also start to feel compassion for everything.

You're overriding instinctive behavior with reasoned and learned behavior. In other words, you are being quintessentially human, doing the one thing that we can do so much better than all other animals. Dogs and horses can master intricate processes full of decision-making, parrots and gorillas can learn language, crows and chimpanzees can make tools, but only humans can wrestle our instincts to the mat and behave like something better than what we were when we were born.

It sounds like the teachings of the Buddha may be the key to the next advance in civilization. Perhaps this will be part of the current Paradigm Shift. We call it the Information Age, the Electronic Revolution, and various other names referring to its driving technology. But it's really about communication--kicked off by the first commercial telegraph in 1833--a quantum increase in the speed and bandwidth of human communication. When we discuss it we focus on communication among people, but perhaps it's also about communication inside of us, with our various internal parts communicating with each other more powerfully and efficiently.

You attest to a much more effective communication ability between your forebrain and your midbrain than most of us have ever been able to manage.

Anger is the last stronghold of our animal brain. We can suppress our other emotions with varying degress of success, but all we wind up doing is driving them deeper, where they steep in the darkness until one day their festering negativity explodes into an orgy of uncivilized behavior: at best yelling at someone for a minor slight, at worst gathering our pack-mates and marching off to war over an issue whose importance is so ephemeral that future historians will have trouble explaining it to their readers. (What was "kom-yoo-nizum," Daddy?)

Animals are thought of as enlightened. Because they don't carry the weight of their ego around with them.

You seem to be using the word "ego" in a very colloquial sense, as a synonym for self-esteem or self-image, rather than the Jungian or Freudian sense of a specific layer of consciousness. But even granting that, I'd argue with you. Who hasn't seen a cat quickly recover from a caper gone bad by recomposing his regal bearing as if to say, "I meant to do that." Dogs, like all pack-social mammals, have an alpha instinct that varies from one individual to the next (and after 12,000 years of adapting to life among humans is considerably weaker than in wolves, the other subspecies of Canis lupus, who can't gather in groups of more than eight or ten before their social order breaks down into constant fighting over who's in charge), and routinely brandish their "egos" to each other in ritual if not actual combat: "What falls on the floor is mine; you guys wait until later when Poppa serves you dinner in a bowl."

And if you really want to see egos in action, do a Dian Fossey and try to integrate yourself into a tribe of gorillas. She accidentally slapped a female on the butt while seating herself comfortably on a rock, and started preparing for her death. But she had been a member of the tribe for so long, using her unique human abilities to help them prosper, that she had been awarded status. The gorilla, twice her size, yielded the seat to her.

 

[Aqueous Id]

RE: Post #32 The idea of Catholic idolatry stems from the belief in some that a Christian prays only to the godhead, not to Mary or to saints. So when they see a statue of Mary to whom Catholics pray--they are praying to a rock--a nonfunctioning help of some kind. They believe there is no supernatural help, guidence, power in Mary or any Saint, so that is why it is idolatry.

What do Catholics do in their prayer and meditation time?

Our local secular latin american community paper comes with a prayer to some saint each week and my catholic friends like to include saints' prayer cards in their letters, etc telling me to pray to this saint for this and that saint for that. How is that so far beyond any fundamentalist?

Satan is a fallen angel of the Judeo-Chr God. What is your definition of Satanism?

BB

The fact that a person is bowing and praying in front of a statue, or lighting candles and kneeling, or ringing bells, etc., whether Catholic of Buddhist, comes from ancient customs that are used to form a continuous thread between the modern world and the ancient world when all these miracles supposedly happened.

The prayer to Mary says "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sins, now and at the hour of our death." It's not an act of worshiping Mary, but an intercession. The idea is that the messenger (evangelios, angel) is an advocate for the suffering penitent, who is appealing for mercy from God. The angel, whether Mary or any other saint, has supposedly achieved perfection, since the Bible states that they either ascended into heaven, or resurrected from the dead, or worked miracles, or, in the case of Mary, she apparently is in heaven in Revelation, although that version of the story is more like a drug experience than the earlier texts. So the perfected soul, the angel, the saint, is "sitting at the right hand of the Father" from which one infers that there is a closeness, and that closeness is for a reason, to save souls. So it is only logical (to me) that they would ask the angels to intercede for them.

That's why it's so laughable that this is regarded as idolatry. Because the person who sees it that way seems to have no sense of reverence for the same principles they supposedly believe in (here I'm referring mostly to Fundamentalists, the worst of the lot).

Catholics have a set of standard prayers they memorize, but not as lip service. They are a way to get started, like a warmup exercise. They recite from the Bible. The Hail Mary repeats the words of the Annunciation, and the Our Father of course is the prayer Christ supposedly recited himself. There is also the Apostle's Creed, which is a recital of the agreement that was struck at the Nicene Council, when there was confusion in the world about what the most basic beliefs of a Christian are. So this summarizes those most basic beliefs. By reciting it, the meditant is going over each of these beliefs and expressing them as an act of faith.

I suppose in every religion that involves prayer or meditation, each individual is left with the challenge of reaching deeply into the cosmos, getting outside of his or her own mudane and selfish existence, and trying to achieve perfection. As in ancient times, it was believed that only the worthy can be in the chambers of the king, so there is some washing away of the self and its imperfections in order to feel that you are welcome in the presence of God. Christians (Catholics are Christians by the way) would tend to verbalize their prayer, whereas a Buddist tends to transcend speech.

For a Buddhist, the thing being regarded as pagan idolatry can get quite profound. The mandala, the object seen hanging on the wall behind the Dalai Lama is remarkable example of what I'm saying, because while it appears on the surface to have a connection to pagan representations, it is actually a diagram of their model of human consciousness (or soul or mind) with some avatars that represent the forces of evil (sin) perturbing the healthy person from the outside, and then various defense mechanisms within reach that can shut the evil out. There are two versions of this: one illustrating the avatars of Self copulating (the ecstacy of perfection and completeness) with every imaginable weapon to defeat evil in dozens of hands, and the other illustration which seems to be a diagram of a palace - the palace of the mind. It's quite interesting - to me, it's far more interesting than any of the modern day Fundamentalist BS that is lacking in anything with the depth and clarity of the "great" religions.

In short. I would say that anyone who denounces another culture or religion, without any knowledge of what's going on in the believers' heads, is a fool, not a child of God, as the saying goes. I of course am qualified to denounce Fundamentalism since I have been steeped in it. I would say that I know it well enough to despise it.

As to the name Satan and the idea of a devil, this is imported from Zoroastrianism, long before Christianity emerged as its own splinter group. SO a modern day Satan worshipper, who finds no connection to this, would be hard pressed toexplain how it is a religion. Of course, the Zoroastrians invented Satan as the personification of evil, so they didn't worship Satan. They did however have in their legends the story of a son of God who was incarnated to defeat Satans, and who had twelve followers (a reference to the Zodiac) which later were personifed as the Apostles in the Christian myth.

There really are some people who belong to Satanic cults, that apparently do blood sacrifices, and heinous things to children, etc. It's a crime ring, not a religion. The rest of the self-proclaimed Satan worshippers seem to me to be gullible adventurists who probably aren't too serious about their claims. I don't associate either style of Satanism with religion because it doesn't meet the classical definition of the word "religion".

 

[Aqueous Id]

Here is an example of the "palace" design of a mandala:

here is the one seen behind the Dalai lama:

I would challenge anyone who knocks Buddhism to begin to try to explain the story inside these illustrations. What - too complex? Aha! Gotcha!

 

[Yazata]

You guys in the West will think Buddhism is more of a way of life, philosophy and such. I bet a lot of this is because of the popularity of Zen.

That's an interesting point and I'd like to elaborate on it.

Yeah, it's partly that. Especially in the United States, where Zen became influential after the 1950's. But the history of Buddhism in the West is complicated.

In Britain (and Australia/NZ), Theravada received the majority of early scholarly attention, and that contributed to shaping Western attitudes towards Buddhism too. I'm thinking of the Pali Text Society and such things. Buddhism was interpreted more as a monastic discipline (the Vinaya) or as a philosophy/psychology (the Suttas and Abhidhamma), without much attention being paid to the popular lay devotional faith as it's so often seen in China and elsewhere. The elaborate pantheons of Buddhas and Boddhisattvas were largely ignored and the historical Buddha was perceived as a human teacher not unlike a Greek philosopher.

I think that's probably the most accurate way to look at it historically, but it does kind of shrug off a great deal of Buddhism's subsequent history. More importantly, looking at Buddhism that way kind of ignores what Buddhism actually is to millions of Buddhist adherents (particularly Mahayanists) in Asia.

Another factor is that the Westerners who investigated Buddhism were Christians (and Jews, atheists and agnostics influenced by the Christian context). Among English-speakers, the cultural influence was generally Protestant. That in turn influenced how Buddhism was perceived and understood. Scholars typically approached Buddhism in a historical and textual fashion, tending to privilege the earliest known manifestations (analogous to the early Christians) as the purest examples of the historical Buddha's teachings and of Buddhism's doctrinal essence, with later elaborations often kind of dismissed as degenerations or syncretisms. The whole scholarly apparatus and outlook that had grown up around Biblical textual, historical and higher criticism was directed towards the Pali Canon, the many early Buddhist Sanskrit texts, and their Chinese and Tibetan translations.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. Academically speaking, it's probably the best way to approach Buddhism in my opinion. Many Asians have adopted that kind of approach themselves. (It strongly influences Buddhist studies at the Japanese universities.) Asians can easily relate to it in part because it's not unlike the strongly textual approach that was already traditional in many Burmese Theravadan monasteries and obviously among the already highly scholastic Tibetans (especially the Gelug). The Western approach clearly complements their own. We see the Tibetans (often living in exile from Chinese-occupied Tibet) adopting Western scholarly methods wholesale these days, and adapting them to their own uses.

And there's still another factor at work, namely modern scientific naturalism. Buddhism kind of collided with the scientific worldview all at once when the Europeans arrived and it's still coming to terms with it today.

The West, and the emerging Western Buddhism that's evolving here in the United States and elsewhere, is kind of ground zero for that historical accomodation. There are Buddhist modernists all over Asia, obviously. But in Asia modernism exists in a traditional Buddhist context, while here in California, Buddhist modernism is Buddhism, among the convert-community at any rate.

So some observers think that they see a whole new kind of modernist Buddhism evolving in the West, one that might end up being as different from traditional Buddhisms as Theravada and Mahayana are from each other. We see the cosmic Buddhas and Boddhisattvas being treated as mythical figures, we see hitherto sacrosanct ideas like reincarnation being downplayed or even denied, and miracles and the supernatural are often scrubbed out of the new version of the tradition entirely. The tradition is being psychologized, with meditation being re-emphasized in dramatic fashion, to an extent that many Asians (non-monastics at least) wouldn't recognize.

There are cultural/social changes as well. Very significantly, monasticism is being dramatically deemphasized. Few Westerners ordain, yet they nevertheless aspire to learning teachings and engaging in practices that only monks attempt in Asia. That's still an experiment in progress and it isn't clear where it will end up. Japan might be kind of a model, with its strong lay Buddhisms and married Buddhist priesthoods distinct from monastics. We also are seeing women taking a much more prominent role in American Buddhism than has been traditional in much of Asia.

 

[S.A.M.]

speaking as someone who lives in a Buddhist country, I can only reply with an overwhealming yes.

The tiny numbers of westerners learning Buddhism as a philosophy at home often argue it isn't, because eastern Buddhism strays from the exact words of Buddha.

But the argument there is only one christian and he died on the cross comes into play. All the christian religions don't follow the word to the letter (they couldn't even, it's self contradicting) yet we have no troubling calling them christian. So the same must apply with Buddhism and the religious Buddhism that dominates in all Buddhist countries is just as ligitimately Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion because virtually all Buddhist on earth practices it as a religion, percieves it as a religion and the ruling authority and governments treat it as a religion, the fact they edited what buddha said with a green byro is neither here nor there.

I agree with this

 

[Stoniphi]

I also...to a point. In my life, Buddhism fills the place that a religion would, however.....

I believe in no gods and accept no masters. No ghost within the machine, no spirits, no angels, no devils, no supernatural, no afterlife, no reincarnation (yet).

I also agree that ritual prayer is quite similar to meditation, the difference being that meditation stimulates the right temporal region of one's brain and prayer stimulates the left temporal region. Also, that myalenation of the cerebral cortex has not been shown to occur with prayer while it has with meditation.

 

[spidergoat]

That was a pretty strange experience you had there, Stoniphi.

 

[Stoniphi]

Very empowering as well, Spidey.

I am glad that I went there (both of those) as they led to other interesting experiences.

Much of the emotional set that I evidence is based on those 2 experiences though - they were indeed life - altering.

 

[Pineal]

I don't think she cares what anyone calls her. She's not doing this to belong to a group or to identify with one. She never says "I'm a Buddhist." She just says that she's studying the teachings of the Buddha.

Then I am not sure why she would get riled up if Buddhism is considered a religion. It has nothing to do with her. I have studied the teachings of Jesus, but I am not Christian and it would not rile me up however Christianity or Jesus is categorized

She has studied Jungian psychology so she can clearly identify metaphors and archetypes when she sees them.

You mean when a head Lama dies and the others later go out in teams and do deep interviews with children to determine if they are the reincarnation of the dead Lama, they are just doing a metaphorical ritual? I don't think she is correct here.

She sees the cultural value in these things, and it does not require them to be literally true.

That's fine, but she is differing on this issue with the leaders of the religion she has taken practices from. Which is also fine, but again, I can't see why she would get riled up about how Tibetan Buddhism would be categorized.

It is considered dangerous for non-initiated to engage in the various practices including meditatio

n.

Hogwash.

Well, it is not hogwash that many leaders in Buddhism and in Tibetan Buddhism think this is the case. But perhaps you mean they are wrong.

More metaphors, more archetypes.She doesn't care whether she is "part of that tradition."

Again, then, I am confused about why she would get riled up.

She has just found some useful ideas that have helped her achieve a greater level of peace.

Great.

My wife is not a group-oriented person, I can assure you of that.As I said, that question is of utterly no importance to her. Well wait, I suppose it is. She would strongly object to anyone regarding her as a member of any religion.I never said she was. Somebody asked which tradition she followed and I said "Tibetan." Not the same thing at all.That's just about the same thing I said. So why are you arguing?

I explained exactly why I was using her 'case' as an example in an earlier post. For some reason your wife, as presented by you, got riled up when Buddhism was referred to as a religion and as justification her own beliefs and interpretations were presented. To me this situation is common enough in the west to make it part of the discussion on whether Buddhism is a religion.

To me she has taken a portion of Tibetan Buddhism that works for her, but still identifies somehow with what I would call the religion, and hence gets angry when it is referred to as a religion.

Now you are saying that 'really' these are all mere symbols and Jungian archetypes to support the position that Tibetan Buddhism is does not really have supernaturalist elements. I think that fits very poorly with their behavior, which seems to strongly indicate they take reincarnation very seriously.

You say 'I referred to her as Tibetan' in reponse to which tradition. You had already referred to her as a Buddhist. I think it is fair to question in general, what it means when westerners identify themselves as Buddhists and then define Tibetan Buddhism as NOT a religion and that 'really' the reincarnation beliefs are symbolic and not literal.

As I said, I am not trying to put your wife in a box or keep her out of one she might want to be in, but the issues raised here, I think, affect the way Westerners view a religion they take only pieces of and in their own ways.

I see nothing wrong with that practice, though some Asian masters do. I think the defining, however is problematic.

We appear to worship statues of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, but it's only their memories and their accomplishments that we truly worship.

To me this is an extremely weak anthropological argument. We also appear to worship Jesus, some of us, and lo...we do, some of us.

 

[BlueBaby]

***There is no copyright or warning not to reprint in this book***

This book was bought in a monastery in Chieng Mai,Thailand: Buddha-Nigama, by a relative of mine about 2000.

Handbook for Mankind by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. Originally presented as a series of lectures delivered to the would be judges, May 1956. And published in condensed form under the title BAHNENO. [this title is written upside down and backward]

Publisher: Dhammasap 35-270 Jarunsanitwong 62 Bangplad Bangkok 10700

The author Buddhadasa Bhikkhu a slave of the Buddha went forth as a Bhikkhu in 1926 at the age of 20.

[Taken from the Forward:]
The number of books on Buddhist topics produced by monks in Thailand is quite considerable, but for anyone lacking the knowledge of the Thai language this great volume of literature is unfortunately inaccessible. In order to remedy this situation some of the most important works in Thai are now being translated into English.

The VenerableBuddhadasa is well known for the readiness with which he gives nonliteral interpretation to the Buddhist text. Giving more weight to meditative experience and every day observation than to philology. He finds meaning in many otherwise obscure points of doctrine. He does not hesitate to reject as naïve a word for word interpretation that has no bearing on real life.

Particularly valuable in this present work are the authors thoughts on samsara, kharma and rebirth, subjects completely misunderstood by most western students of Buddhism. Buddha-Nigama

[Taken from Chapter One: “Looking at Buddhism”]
Later as man’s knowledge and understanding developed, this fear of the forces of nature changed into a fear of phenomena more difficult to apprehend. Religions bases on deference to objects of fear such as natural phenomena, spirits, and celestial beings can be looked down upon as unreasonable and ridiculous. And then man’s fear became still more refined into a fear of suffering, suffering of the sort that cannot be alleviated by any material means. He came to fear the suffering inherent in birth, aging, pain, and death, the disappointment and hopelessness which arise out of desire, anger, and stupidity which no amount of power or wealth can relieve. Long ago in India, a country well provided with thinkers and investigators, intelligent people dispensed all paying of amage to supernatural beings. They started seeking instead the means of conquering birth, aging, pain, and death. The means of eliminating greed, hatred, and delusion. Out of this search arose Buddhism, a higher religion based on insight, a means of conquering birth, aging, pain, and death, a method for destroying the mental defilement. Buddhism has its origin in fear of this last kind, Just as do all religions based on intelligence. The Buddah discovered how to conquer absolutely what man fears. He discovered a practical method now called Buddhism for eliminating suffering.

“Buddhism” means “the teaching of the enlightened one”. A Buddha is an enlightened individual, one who knows the truth about all things. One who knows just what is what. Knows things just as they are and so is capable of behaving appropriately with respect to all things. Buddhism is a religion based on intelligence, science, and knowledge whose purpose is the destruction of suffering and the source of suffering.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I still see alot of supernatural in this commentary, but I am looking forward to receiving the book from my relative to dig deeper.

 

[wynn]

I explained exactly why I was using her 'case' as an example in an earlier post. For some reason your wife, as presented by you, got riled up when Buddhism was referred to as a religion and as justification her own beliefs and interpretations were presented. To me this situation is common enough in the west to make it part of the discussion on whether Buddhism is a religion.

The other relevant question here is
Can a person who has not been born into a religion, become religious in said religion?

Are modern Western Buddhists religious?

Buddhism is a religion, allright, but are the people who claim to practice Buddhism, religious?

 

[BlueBaby]

BTW, In the book I quoted from in Post #51 and written by a Thai Buddhist monk, Buddhism is frequently referred to as a religion in just the first 13 pages of over 200.
BB

 

[wynn]

You say 'I referred to her as Tibetan' in reponse to which tradition. You had already referred to her as a Buddhist. I think it is fair to question in general, what it means when westerners identify themselves as Buddhists and then define Tibetan Buddhism as NOT a religion and that 'really' the reincarnation beliefs are symbolic and not literal.

As I said, I am not trying to put your wife in a box or keep her out of one she might want to be in, but the issues raised here, I think, affect the way Westerners view a religion they take only pieces of and in their own ways.

Western individualism probably plays quite a role in religious self-identification, to the point that it overrides facts about the religion in question.

I've known Western Buddhists who claimed to be Buddhists or to follow a Buddhist path - and the deciding factor in this seemed to be that they claimed to be Buddhists or to follow a Buddhist path.
That they picked and chose some things and rejected others was of little or no concern to them as far as calling themselves Buddhists or considering themselves as following a Buddhist path went.

 

[Pineal]

Western individualism probably plays quite a role in religious self-identification, to the point that it overrides facts about the religion in question.

I've known Western Buddhists who claimed to be Buddhists or to follow a Buddhist path - and the deciding factor in this seemed to be that they claimed to be Buddhists or to follow a Buddhist path.
That they picked and chose some things and rejected others was of little or no concern to them as far as calling themselves Buddhists or considering themselves as following a Buddhist path went.

Which I think is fine, actually, as I said above. But to draw conclusions about the religion from what one has picked and chosen and how one interprets texts - in ways the leaders and adherents do - is, I think, really problematic.

And again, I think the example of Yoga is a good one. Are western people who take Yoga classes, Hindus? Most are not. And most would not care how Hinduism was categorized. They would not identify with the religion.

 

[Pineal]

The other relevant question here is
Can a person who has not been born into a religion, become religious in said religion?

Are modern Western Buddhists religious?

Buddhism is a religion, allright, but are the people who claim to practice Buddhism, religious?

Well, to use the example above of a Westerner being a part of Tibetan Buddhism. Yes, I would think so. And Tibetan Buddhist Lamas seem to think so, with some provisos. But such people would probably tend to accept ideas around reincarnation, etc., given that the people they are studying under, whose tradition they are being a part of, are saying this is the case. There are a number of other religious aspects to Tibetan Buddhism, but this is certainly a core one.

In any case not being a Tibetan Buddhist I can't say for sure, but I do feel I can resist claims by people who only choose certain facets of the religion to contest its category.

 

[BlueBaby]

The fact that a person is bowing and praying in front of a statue, or lighting candles and kneeling, or ringing bells, etc., whether Catholic of Buddhist, comes from ancient customs that are used to form a continuous thread between the modern world and the ancient world when all these miracles supposedly happened.

The prayer to Mary says "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sins, now and at the hour of our death." It's not an act of worshiping Mary, but an intercession. The idea is that the messenger (evangelios, angel) is an advocate for the suffering penitent, who is appealing for mercy from God. The angel, whether Mary or any other saint, has supposedly achieved perfection, since the Bible states that they either ascended into heaven, or resurrected from the dead, or worked miracles, or, in the case of Mary, she apparently is in heaven in Revelation, although that version of the story is more like a drug experience than the earlier texts. So the perfected soul, the angel, the saint, is "sitting at the right hand of the Father" from which one infers that there is a closeness, and that closeness is for a reason, to save souls. So it is only logical (to me) that they would ask the angels to intercede for them.

That's why it's so laughable that this is regarded as idolatry. Because the person who sees it that way seems to have no sense of reverence for the same principles they supposedly believe in (here I'm referring mostly to Fundamentalists, the worst of the lot).

Catholics have a set of standard prayers they memorize, but not as lip service. They are a way to get started, like a warmup exercise. They recite from the Bible. The Hail Mary repeats the words of the Annunciation, and the Our Father of course is the prayer Christ supposedly recited himself. There is also the Apostle's Creed, which is a recital of the agreement that was struck at the Nicene Council, when there was confusion in the world about what the most basic beliefs of a Christian are. So this summarizes those most basic beliefs. By reciting it, the meditant is going over each of these beliefs and expressing them as an act of faith.

I suppose in every religion that involves prayer or meditation, each individual is left with the challenge of reaching deeply into the cosmos, getting outside of his or her own mudane and selfish existence, and trying to achieve perfection. As in ancient times, it was believed that only the worthy can be in the chambers of the king, so there is some washing away of the self and its imperfections in order to feel that you are welcome in the presence of God. Christians (Catholics are Christians by the way) would tend to verbalize their prayer, whereas a Buddist tends to transcend speech.

For a Buddhist, the thing being regarded as pagan idolatry can get quite profound. The mandala, the object seen hanging on the wall behind the Dalai Lama is remarkable example of what I'm saying, because while it appears on the surface to have a connection to pagan representations, it is actually a diagram of their model of human consciousness (or soul or mind) with some avatars that represent the forces of evil (sin) perturbing the healthy person from the outside, and then various defense mechanisms within reach that can shut the evil out. There are two versions of this: one illustrating the avatars of Self copulating (the ecstacy of perfection and completeness) with every imaginable weapon to defeat evil in dozens of hands, and the other illustration which seems to be a diagram of a palace - the palace of the mind. It's quite interesting - to me, it's far more interesting than any of the modern day Fundamentalist BS that is lacking in anything with the depth and clarity of the "great" religions.

In short. I would say that anyone who denounces another culture or religion, without any knowledge of what's going on in the believers' heads, is a fool, not a child of God, as the saying goes. I of course am qualified to denounce Fundamentalism since I have been steeped in it. I would say that I know it well enough to despise it.

As to the name Satan and the idea of a devil, this is imported from Zoroastrianism, long before Christianity emerged as its own splinter group. SO a modern day Satan worshipper, who finds no connection to this, would be hard pressed toexplain how it is a religion. Of course, the Zoroastrians invented Satan as the personification of evil, so they didn't worship Satan. They did however have in their legends the story of a son of God who was incarnated to defeat Satans, and who had twelve followers (a reference to the Zodiac) which later were personifed as the Apostles in the Christian myth.

There really are some people who belong to Satanic cults, that apparently do blood sacrifices, and heinous things to children, etc. It's a crime ring, not a religion. The rest of the self-proclaimed Satan worshippers seem to me to be gullible adventurists who probably aren't too serious about their claims. I don't associate either style of Satanism with religion because it doesn't meet the classical definition of the word "religion".

I bolded the statements above, BlueBaby

I kindly disagree, child sacrifice and mutilation was (and is?) definitely a part of religions over the history of man.

The Church of Satan considers satan a deity and their church a religion. "Anton Szandor LaVey never expected to be the founder of a new religion, but he saw a need for something publicly opposing the stagnation of Christianity, and knew that if he didn’t do it, someone else, probably less qualified, would."

BB

 

[arauca]

I also...to a point. In my life, Buddhism fills the place that a religion would, however.....

I believe in no gods and accept no masters. No ghost within the machine, no spirits, no angels, no devils, no supernatural, no afterlife, no reincarnation (yet).

I also agree that ritual prayer is quite similar to meditation, the difference being that meditation stimulates the right temporal region of one's brain and prayer stimulates the left temporal region. Also, that myalenation of the cerebral cortex has not been shown to occur with prayer while it has with meditation.

When you meditate to who you talk to? do you go through some routine ?

 

[arauca]

This is now a home for one issue that came up in my Zen koan thread.

So...

Is Buddhism a religion?
Must a religion be theistic? (note: some of Buddhism is clearly theistic, some is ambiguous, some is non-theistic)
Please include a definition of religion that you work with and connect this to your position.

Question : can a Christian or Muslim be a follower of Buddha and continue practicing its faith ?

 

[BlueBaby]

Question : can a Christian or Muslim be a follower of Buddha and continue practicing its faith ?

I've heard celebrity say you can, but having been a religious practioner of a certain faith, I know I couldn't unless I customized Buddhism to suit me and my faith.
BB