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Buddhism

bogert

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25 Dec 2007
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Anyone here studying Buddhism? or your religion is Buddhism?

I've been studying Buddhism in Japan for a little while now (been here almost 1 year). First, I studied Nichiren-shu in Kyoto . Now I study Shingon-shu but am looking for a teacher.

(let me try that in Japanese since that's what we're here for.)
(let me try that in Japanese since that's what we're here for.)
誰か仏教を勉強していますか。それともあなたの宗教は仏教ですか。

私は少し日本に仏教を勉強しています。(日本にもう少しで一年住んでいます。)
初めて京都に日蓮宗を勉強しました。今真言宗を勉強しています。でも先生を探しています。

(If anyone can correct my Japanese that would be great.. my grammar is a mess)

Chris Bogert
栗栖
 
My religion of choice is Buddhism and I have been studying it for about a year and a half now, and I find it unlike any of the other religions out there, as it is more centred around peace and self contentment and bringing about a sense of joy to others.
 
Personally, I find Zen Buddhism very intriguing, but I have only nominally integrated its practice into my busy daily life (pondering koans, setting some time aside to clear my mind through meditation). I used to go to a Shingon temple as a child, and I still volunteer at church functions (as it doubles as my Karate dojo), but I don't actively go to services.

Sorry, I cannot write in Japanese on this computer, so Romaji de sumimasen...
誰か仏教を勉強していますか。それともあなたの宗教は 仏教ですか。
"Dareka (ga) bukkyou wo benkyou shiteimasu ka" already sounds like you're asking if people follow Buddhist teaching, so the second sentence is redundant.

私は少し日本に仏教を勉強しています。-> watashi ha Nihon de Bukkyou wo benkyou shiteimasu. (not "ni," do a search for the proper way to use these two particles)

日本にもう少 しで一年住んでいます。-> Mou sukoshi de ichinenkan Nihon ni sundeimasu.

初めて京都に日蓮宗を勉強しました。今真言宗を勉強し ています。でも先生を探しています。-> Saisho ni Kyouto de Nichiren-shu wo benkyou shiteimashita ga, ima Shingon-shu wo benkyou shiteimasu. Demo sensei ga inai no de sagashi (or "boushuu" if you're feeling haughty 😊) chuu desu.
 
If you want to learn the Shingon Buddhism, go to Koya-san.


It is the head temple of a Buddhist sect of the Shingon Buddhism here.

Thank you very much for that link, Hiroyuki Nagashima!

I have been there too, both places on Koya-san, and was showed around the main quarter as well when entering. Very nice people, actually.

There also is a newly built temple on Enoshima, its modern style may not be everybody's taste, but there I was invited to the main Goma, that I will never forget.

And I was shown a certain English book about them on request (and a quiet place plus drink at the window to the sea to read in it), which, to my surprise, I also found in an antique shop's window around the corner of my place in Berlin later on. Of course, I bought it immediately!!

Apart from that, on my first Japan-visit, the owner of a sweet minshuku in a little fisher town on Izu invited me to join him and his children on a holiday, and he showed me around their local Shingon-place, his friends, as he said, which also, I will never forget. It was followed by a round tour on the eastside of Izu, a great day, including an open-air hot bath and lots of fun with his children.

However, wherever I went, I had some shingons around in the following, also in Tokyo, which was obviously the closest intuitive connection I had to Buddhism in Japan. It always felt like family immediately. All these wonderful talks too, with immediate understandings, for example. . .unforgotten. I love those people!!
As if I know them for long already.

My limited Japanese unables me to go further into their scripts, but that was never a theme for any of them.
 
I am a lay believer of Nichiren Buddhism. There are more than 30 sub-sects Of Nichiren groups and I am a member of one of the major Nichiren Buddhist group in japan. I am from the Philippines.
 
I'm not Buddhist since I can't believe in rebirth, karma, or complete freedom from the poisons, but I think the Buddhists have some of the best techniques for becoming a lot freer of fear, worry, attachments, etc. and becoming a happier, kinder person.

I find myself drawn to Tibetan and Theravadan Buddhism. I don't know enough about Zen Buddhist meditations to say whether I would prefer them over Tibetan or Theravadan meditations, because based on what I've read in neuroscience, cultivating a powerful concentration is the key to significantly changing any wirings in the brain, and that's what Shamatha meditations do. I'm enjoying reading Alan Wallaces The Attention Revolution a lot, and put together with the book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain feel that control over attention is essential to a happy life.
 
Hi Chi65,

I think Nichiren Buddhism is generally classified into 3 major groups which includes Nichiren shu(or Minobu school) with its sub-groups, Nichiren Shoshu(fuji school) and with its connected assocition of Hokkekyo groups; and Soka Gakkai International(SGI) lay group, with separation and doctrinal beliefs apart from Nichiren Shoshu, and its umbrella organizations of over 190 countries and territories around the world.

Minobu schools and Fuji schools have different doctrinal beliefs but i think the essence of buddhist practise remains the same basing the Lotus sutra--that all people have the capacity to attain Buddhahood or supreme enlightenment or happiness.
 
tracing the origins . . .

It seems that Buddhism originated as a corrupted form of biblical Old Testament worship (as were Druid ideas here in England, indeed our law is based on the 10 commandments). Of course, modern-day Buddhism doesn't bear much resemblance to the Old Testament worship of the bible, but here are it's origins . .

Where did the lost Israelites go? Did they migrate to India?
Did they invent Buddhism? Israel was taken captive "unto Halah, and Habor, and Harah (Aria, Ariana, Arachosia, Harat) and to the river Gozan (Gauzanitis or Cyrus River)" (1 Chronicle 5:26) "and in the cities of the Medes" (2 Ki. 17:6). These people were known as "the house of Isaac" (Amos 7:16) since Genesis 21:12 says, "in Isaac shall thy seed be called."

There is an Issyk Kul (Isaac's Lake) in eastern central Asia.
But since the Hebrew alphabet was originally written without vowel points, there was no "I" originally.

Strabo places these Sacae east of the Caspian. Beni-Israel can be found in Hindustan also and on the borders of Burmah and Siam. Sacae seized Bactriana and about a century after Alexander they established their rule from the Aral Lake to the mouth of the Indus. They then invaded central India and fell under the dominion of the Parthians and finally were absorbed into the kingdom of the Sassanidae, also Sacae. The religion of these Sakai, the Sakhs of Indian history, was Buddhism.

The rock inscriptions, left in India and Turkestan by the early founders of Buddhism, were Hebrew. The Hebrew root BUDDH means "ALONE" (used of Israel in Hosea 8:9). "BUDII" means "the SEPARATED people" and occurs as a tribal name both in ancient MEDIA and in connection with the SCUTHS in Europe.
Herodotus says that the BUDII were a tribe of MEDIA (Herod. 1:101). Herodotus also mentions another branch of the BUDII as a great and populous nation amongst the SCYTHIANS who had adopted SCYTHIAN customs (4:108).

These BUDII were probably two branches of Ephraimites because Hosea 11:5-6 says Ephraim "shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches (Heb."BADDHAI"), and devour them (the BADDHAI), because of their own counsels."

The Sacae and Budii moved east into northern India about 60 years after the Scythians had overrun Media and Mesopotamia -- about 625 B.C. They may have become Rajputs and Brahmins (from Abraham). The worship of cows was the sin of Israel (1 Ki. 12:28) and they brought it with them to India. The Brahmans have among themselves TEN distinct classes or rather nations... One hundred miles northeast of Benares, at Kapilivastu, on the banks of the river Rohini, the modern KOHAN, there lived about 500 B.C. a tribe called SAKYAS (Saxons)... Gautama (Lord Buddha) had many titles, one of which was SAKYASHINA.
He was also called 'the LION of the tribe of SAKYA, SAKYAMUNI, the SAKYA Sage, Sugata the Happy One, Sattha the Teacher.'" This Buddha is called MAGA (a Magian) by the Burmese and in Burmah, Arracan, Ceylon and Siam the sacred language of Buddhism is called the language of the MAGI.

The priests of the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Arians and Sacae were called MAGI (Asiatic Researches 11:76-80). When SAKYA died, those who especially honoured him were the SAKYAS of Kapilivastu, and they did so saying, "The Blessed One was the pride of our race" (of Saxons). The religion of these Sakai, the Sakhs of Indian history, proves to be Buddhism. The rock inscriptions, left in India and Turkestan by the early founders of Buddhism, prove to be Hebrew.

Amos 8:10-14 prophesies:-
"I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord:
And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east (India?), they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.
In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beer-sheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.


When Israelites became Buddhists, all these predictions were literally fulfilled. Buddhist festivals are full of mourning.
Their songs are lamentations. All devotees to Buddha adopt sackcloth as their clothing and they all make themselves bald.
Bald-headed devotees of Buddha are Sons of sackcloth and the ordination of the priests is to this day a refinement of austerity since, according to the Karma Wakya, or Book of Ritual, they are required to wear a robe of filthy rags, and subject themselves to every form of degradation.
Vows of celibacy by Buddha-worshippers in many parts of the East are well known. Indeed, in all countries professing Buddhism, priests are sworn to a life of celibacy and the number of Nuns is enormous.
This is why the young men and women "faint for thirst."
Dan is one of the three names of Buddha given in the inscriptions both at Girnar and Delhi.

Ezekiel was an Aaronic priest as well as a prophet, so his father would also have been a priest, with the duty to maintain knowledge and worship instructions among Israelites:-
The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi (Eze:1:3)

Ezekiel was 25 when carried away to Babylon. In Semitic languages, Z and D sounds are related, e.g. in Hebrew Zahab and Dahab both mean gold, so Buddha would be a natural alternative for Buzi, with followers named Budii.
Budh means wise / to know, wise men came from the East to find Jesus.

Buddhist records show it's founder married at least twice and gave it's disciples precepts as to the choice of wife. It was monotheistic, the wheel symbol was the same as that in Solomon's temple:-
the work of the wheels was like the work of a chariot wheel: their axletrees, and their naves, and their felloes, and their spokes, were all molten. (1Kings 7:33)
Sakya-Muni is said to be Buddhism's founder.
Many writers assert that the religion of India as given by Sakya (literally, Pale Earth) Muni, the Shinto religion of Japan, and the basic teachings of Confucius belong to the Israelites of the eastern migrations. The dynasties of the Arsacid and the Sassun of later Persia and the Parthia were Israelitish, as were the Saka, or Saca of the east, and who was later known as the Saxons (Persian for "Isaac's sons")
All these ties in with the origin of the Japanese people thread on this site, where I read:-
"the Ainu, being the indigenous class of japan shared a lot of characteristics that weren't "typical Asian." I also read in another book that some types of tools were excavated in northern Honshu that didn't appear to be Japanese at all, but Norse.
2 migrations happened in Japan. The first was by the Ainu, who arrived from Europe long before the Yayoi and Jomons".

The "Norse" (Normans & Vikings) were also Israelites.
I cannot link to a map of Israel migrations but you do do a search and see this.

"thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen.28:14)
 
What a piece of amazing gibberish Tallman. Christian apologist by any chance.
If you did your research correctly you'll find that Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in the world and pre-dates Judaism in its earliest Vedic texts.

The oldest dated Jewish texts do not even make it past 600/700 BC. Plus you are using scripture as evidence? Scripture is one of the least reliable pieces of historical evidence you can use. Not a YEC are you?

As for Israelites being the one people from which we are all descended, you will find DNA and genetics blast that weak argument out of the water. Even the first mention of Israel doesn't appear until the 18th Dynasty in Egypt of the Stele of Merneptah, as defeated people. But why let actual research get in the way of a myth. The Mormons ignore it when claiming that there were Israelites in North America.
 
Tallman,
Your post reeks of intolerance. Fortunately, Buddhists are not allowed to be so intolerant.
 
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If you did your research correctly you'll find that Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in the world and pre-dates Judaism in its earliest Vedic texts. The oldest dated Jewish texts do not even make it past 600/700 BC.
It is misleading to judge the age of religion by the supposed ages of its texts.
I would date "Judaism" to the giving of the Law on Sinai, c1490 BC

Plus you are using scripture as evidence? Scripture is one of the least reliable pieces of historical evidence you can use.
Not according to archaeologists and historians, I have spoken to.

Not a YEC are you?
Why do you ask?

As for Israelites being the one people from which we are all descended,
I didn't say that, only that they have spread into many nations.


you will find DNA and genetics blast that weak argument out of the water.
Will I?
Why do you make these statements without giving evidence as I did?

Even the first mention of Israel doesn't appear until the 18th Dynasty in Egypt of the Stele of Merneptah, as defeated people. But why let actual research get in the way of a myth. The Mormons ignore it when claiming that there were Israelites in North America.
Really?
David Rohl did a good job of showing how dynasties were double-counted by other so-called experts.
They've found the grain silos of I'm Hoteth" (Joseph).
 
It is misleading to judge the age of a religion by the supposed ages of it's texts.
I would date "Judaism" to the giving of the Law on Sinai, c1490 BC
On what evidence, the Bible? There was no exodus from Egypt and a great sky daddy did not reveal any commandments to Moses. There is even the question whether the man ever existed.
A list of dates for the foundings of world religions.
Religion - Wikipedia
Oh look Judaism 1300 BC about the same time as Jainism

Not according to archaeologists and historians I have spoken to.
Why do you ask?
And pray, which historians and archaeologists are they, that they only use biblical evidence? Any historian will use more than one source.
I ask because you sound like one. Your view is of one who thinks we are all descended from Noah and the ark. If I assumed wrong then tell me.

I didn't say that, only that they have spread into many nations.
Without any actual evidence except that from scripture. Now provide some from out of scripture I might take your rather wild ideas more seriously.

Why do you make these statements without giving evidence as I did?
Really?
What evidence? Scripture and words that might be related because they sound the same. Wow, Japanese must be related to European languages because the use mamae for name and we use the name.
Okay Evidence
The Genetics of man from his early ancestors in Africa
Professor Stephen Oppenheimer Books
120 000 years ago humans progress into the Levant but die out. The next wave goes no where near there and spread into India first. The Supervolcano then cuts them off from the rest 70 000 years ago. The Levant is then re-occupied from India. Genetically the area where the Israelites are from are Indian by origin.
The world covered by Halopgropus
http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf

David Rohl did a good job of showing how dynasties were double-counted by other so-called experts.
They've found the grain silos of I'm Hoteth" (Joseph).
David Rohl, you mean the guy who is ignored by the majority of Egyptian Historians? The one who uses the bible as his main source of reliable history? It seems that people like Kenneth Kitchen have problems with omissions that Mr Rohl has in his alternative timeline. I found this rather interesting review whilst searching round


Google is your friend.
 
The following quote is exactly what I wanted to say, but someone else beat me.

"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

Albert Einstein
 
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The following quote is exactly what I wanted to say, but someone else beat me.
"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."
Albert Einstein

I feel the same way.. :)


Nam Myoho Renge Kyo...
 
My religion of choice is Buddhism and I have been studying it for about a year and a half now, and I find it unlike any of the other religions out there, as it is more centred around peace and self contentment and bringing about a sense of joy to others.

What u have actually describe is the Mahayana Buddhist tradition- specifically the role of the cultivation of Bodhisattva who practise selflessly not only for self-contenment but also devoting their lives to eliminate sufferings and bring joy to others(universal enlightenment).

Nam Myoho Renge kyo...

Gassho
 
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