muso wrote on Apr 26
th, 2011 at 7:34am:
ash wrote on Apr 25
th, 2011 at 3:20pm:
what about budhists? considering they believe in reincarnation....does it also follow that the sins/guilt/onus of their *"former self" follow them as well?
ps * for want of better terms.
For a start, Buddhists don't usually believe in reincarnation in the literal sense, and you can't really infer something about Buddhism from a consideration of Christianity either.
Actually, Buddists DO literally believe in reincarnation, and there are numerous mentions of reincarnation in the Bible too. John the Baptist, for example, talks of Jesus being the rebirth of the prophet Isiah.
I think you can consider Buddhism from a Christian perspective and vice-versa. Religions, essentially, stem from the same source: prophets or Enlightened ones realizing an aspect of the Source and passing the message onto the rest of us.
We then get confused and turn it into a list of rules and regulations. You see this time and time again in ashrams and spiritual communities, where people try to mimick the teacher in all sorts of ways without really understanding the essence of the teachings.
But this is understandable. Until we experience these other worlds for ourselves, we imagine a second-hand version of them. Christians, for example, do this by imagining heaven as a place you get to if you're good, or are "forgiven." Jacob's ladder, the walls of Jericho, manna from heaven, even baptism: all these are inner experiences, not literal ones; neumena, not phenomena.
Many Hindus believe that the Ganges washes away their sins, but the Ganges is a metaphor. Still, millions of Hindus go to Benares to die or be cremated.
Many Muslims believe that if they die in
jihad, they will go to paradise, but
jihad is a spiritual struggle. Still, many Muslims choose to die in war.
As the Light rightly says, Christians turned Jesus into a god, or God. Much debate in the establishment of the church focused on how Jesus could be God in a monotheistic religion. Hence, the trinity was thought up to solve the problem.
Politics, always politics.
As Jesus said: "if you believe the Kingdom is in the air, the birds will preceed you. If you belive the Kingdom is in the sea, the fish will preceed you. The Kingdom of heaven is within you, and outside of you" (in the Gospel of Thomas).