Religion of peace

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sentinel
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by sentinel »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:00 pm ...
:woohoo:
You always gain by giving
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Kusala
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Kusala »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 4:05 pm
sentinel wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 3:44 pm
Caodemarte wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 3:24 pm

However, I lived in a 60% Muslim country for two years for work. Fine place and I made friendships with people of all beliefs.
If you think so , fines .
I don't have to migrate to Muslims country , I live here with majority Muslims . I don't want to migrate to any country either . I am not well equipped to handle another distressing situation .
Sure buddhism is a peaceful religion .
Peace in the sense the teachings lies in eradicating hatred . Do you think Buddhism spreading the teachings by killing and conquering other country ?
In the past Buddhist hierarchies sided with murderous conquerors, yes. In the present I would mention the genocide of the Tamil in Sri Lanka, or the genocide of the Rohingya in Burma as examples.
Again, here's a link to Rick Heizman articles... https://www.scribd.com/user/202722025/R ... an/uploads
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
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Grigoris
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Grigoris »

If there is one thing that discussions like this show, it is that people will engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics to whitewash phenomena that they are attached to and smear phenomena that they feel aversion towards.
ye dhammā hetuppabhavā tesaṁ hetuṁ tathāgato āha,
tesaṃca yo nirodho - evaṁvādī mahāsamaṇo.

Of those phenomena which arise from causes:
Those causes have been taught by the Tathāgata,
And their cessation too - thus proclaims the Great Ascetic.
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Dan74
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Dan74 »

Summary:

Islam - bad.
Buddhism - good.
_/|\_
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Ceisiwr »

Dan74 wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 7:59 pm Summary:

Islam - bad.
Buddhism - good.
I mean yeah, although Islam isn’t completely awful. It does have some nice bits.
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Modus.Ponens »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 4:48 pm
Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 4:11 pmWhich was done so despite the Dhamma. Atrocities have been committed because of Islam.
And how much difference do you believe that this makes to the victims?
Their numbers matter. And causality links matter, such as between buddhist doctrine and peace, and islamic doctrine and "holy" war.
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Modus.Ponens »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:33 pm If there is one thing that discussions like this show, it is that people will engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics to whitewash phenomena that they are attached to and smear phenomena that they feel aversion towards.
The article you posted earlier about Nalanda is advanced mental gymnastics, trying to find excuses for the inexcusable.

"This is problematic for many reasons, not the least being that the story of Nalanda is not true. For example, not only did local Buddhist rulers make deals with the new Muslim overlords and thus stay in power, but Nalanda itself carried on as a functioning institution of Buddhist education for another century."

How kind of them!

"In fact, contrary to the standard idea promoted by the story that Nalanda’s destruction signaled the death of Buddhism, the historical evidence makes clear that the dharma survived in India until at least the 17th century. In other words, Buddhists and Muslims lived together on the Asian subcontinent for almost a thousand years."

... in total peace and harmony?

The issue is quite simple. Islamic doctrine calls for war. Buddhist doctrine calls for peace. Interpretative acrobatics cannot change this reality. We can try to deal with reality as constructively and peacefully as possible. But this requires a truthful diagnosis of the situation because that's the only way problems can be solved effectively.
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
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Grigoris
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Grigoris »

Modus.Ponens wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:17 pmThe issue is quite simple. Islamic doctrine calls for war. Buddhist doctrine calls for peace. Interpretative acrobatics cannot change this reality. We can try to deal with reality as constructively and peacefully as possible. But this requires a truthful diagnosis of the situation because that's the only way problems can be solved effectively.
There is only one problem with this apparently realistic analysis: It is idealistic.

The problem is not what Islam and Buddhism call for, but what Muslims and Buddhists do.

Given that both Muslims and Buddhists are afflicted sentient beings...

Christianity (for example) also calls for peace, but Christians have been involved in horrific genocidal slaughters.
ye dhammā hetuppabhavā tesaṁ hetuṁ tathāgato āha,
tesaṃca yo nirodho - evaṁvādī mahāsamaṇo.

Of those phenomena which arise from causes:
Those causes have been taught by the Tathāgata,
And their cessation too - thus proclaims the Great Ascetic.
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Grigoris
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Grigoris »

Modus.Ponens wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:10 pmTheir numbers matter.
Not to the victims themselves.
ye dhammā hetuppabhavā tesaṁ hetuṁ tathāgato āha,
tesaṃca yo nirodho - evaṁvādī mahāsamaṇo.

Of those phenomena which arise from causes:
Those causes have been taught by the Tathāgata,
And their cessation too - thus proclaims the Great Ascetic.
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Kusala
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Kusala »

Dan74 wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 7:59 pm Summary:

Islam - bad.
Buddhism - good.
https://www.scribd.com/document/3813236 ... f-Mohammad
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
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Sherab
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Sherab »

Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:06 pm
Dan74 wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 7:59 pm Summary:

Islam - bad.
Buddhism - good.
I mean yeah, although Islam isn’t completely awful. It does have some nice bits.
The nice bits can be argued away within the teachings of the Qur'an itself. That is how ISIS and its ilk can commit atrocities and still hold that their actions are holy and sanctioned by Allah.

That is why the views espoused in the Qur'an are critical, especially when the Qur'an protects itself by claiming itself as the word of Allah and no one is allowed to make changes to it. This means that as long as the Qur'an exists, the problem of Islamic terrorism will never go away. This is the crucial difference between Islam and Buddhism.

For Buddhists to commit atrocities, they have to graft ideas from outside the Dhamma to justify them. There is no need for that with Muslims.

Therefore, it is important that there is freedom to criticize ideas. Yet, we are now seeing how this freedom is being undermined in the west when criticism of ideas get confused with criticism of people who hold the ideas. Criticism of Islam is taken as criticism of Muslims and the labels of Islamophobe and racist are then used to shut down the criticisms. One side then gets embolden while the other side gets frustrated. It is a no brainer then to expect increasing militancy on both sides.
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mikenz66
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by mikenz66 »

Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 8:57 pm Quit the hysterics. We are discussing if Islam is a religion of peace or not. To do so isn’t to spread hate by myself nor by DW. Criticising a religion isn’t being hateful. To think so stinks of either the lefty liberal penchant for authoritarianism or the theocratic one.
:rofl:


Frankly, I'm no expert about the internal doctrines of Islam, but I do know some Islamic people, and people from Islamic countries, who, on the whole, don't see any more hateful than my Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, or non-religious friends. Much of this discussion sounds like that god-awful ( :tongue: ) book that Dawkins wrote a few years ago - which did good job of demonstrating that he had little idea about the doctrines of any religion, Christian, Islam, Hindu, or Buddhist...

There's a weird selective thing going on here, with quotations about what happened some time ago (which involved slavery and all kinds of wars between and within peoples of particular religions - including centuries of wars between Burmese and Thai kingdoms), and claims that if someone is Muslim and not war-like they are not a proper Muslim, and they should be sent back a few centuries to be rehabilitated.

Last Century we had the madness of WWI, which, as I understand it, was mostly between Christian nations (though my countrymen did participate in a failed invasion of Turkey) then WWII, started by Germany and Japan (plenty of atrocities there...), with a few other European states thrown in for good measure. Actually none of those wars seem particularly religiously-motivated, but they certainly can't be blamed on Islam!

Let's look at where Muslims actually live:
. Thhe countries with over 100M Muslims are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria.
It might be useful to focus on how things are progressing in those places, rather than just the Middle East and North Africa.

There are many challenges in the clash between various religions and cultures and "progress". Europe and ethnic-European colonies established relatively secular structures over the past 200 years or so. This also happened in Turkey in the early 20th C, and in many of the countries mentioned in the last paragraph. Certainly, there are tensions, but in many cases they appear to be ethnic rather than religious.

Many of the argument here assumes that Muslim-dominated countries are not moving (or are not capable of moving) towards secularization and discarding things that were only overcome in the "West" relatively recently. That seems overly pessimistic. I'd urge people to get out of their echo chambers and talk to some real people. That seems to work in small ways: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programm ... extremists

:heart:
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Modus.Ponens »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 9:49 pm
Modus.Ponens wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:10 pmTheir numbers matter.
Not to the victims themselves.
I disagree, even if they're dead. Also, the number of injured people, raped women and girls, and subjugated people in general matters.
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by Modus.Ponens »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 9:47 pm
Modus.Ponens wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:17 pmThe issue is quite simple. Islamic doctrine calls for war. Buddhist doctrine calls for peace. Interpretative acrobatics cannot change this reality. We can try to deal with reality as constructively and peacefully as possible. But this requires a truthful diagnosis of the situation because that's the only way problems can be solved effectively.
There is only one problem with this apparently realistic analysis: It is idealistic.

The problem is not what Islam and Buddhism call for, but what Muslims and Buddhists do.

Given that both Muslims and Buddhists are afflicted sentient beings...

Christianity (for example) also calls for peace, but Christians have been involved in horrific genocidal slaughters.
Human beings are imperfect, which also means they are imperfect followers of their respective religions. But they are influenced by the teachings of their religions. Islamic doctrine calls for "holy" war. Buddhist doctrine calls for peace. There's just no way to escape this fact. And the more devout people of each of these two religions are, the more different their behaviour will be.
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
sentinel
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Re: Religion of peace

Post by sentinel »

Buddhism message : no killing
Islam instigate killing :
"Kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and capture them, and blockade them, and watch for them at every lookout..." (Quran 9:5).
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