(An awkward encounter of) Indian philosophy and Buddhism

The original korean text: http://blog.naver.com/stevision/50025469127

 

I want to dispel people's misunderstandings by giving another opinion because some of them think they'd rather believe in Buddhism since the Christianity and the Buddhism are not different religions and since it is easier for them to live as a Buddhist. The reason why they thought so was that, now and then, some Buddhist priests on TV made vague remark that Christianity and Buddhism, or all religions, are the same. I maintain that the doctrine of salvation of Buddhism is utterly different from that of Christianity and that the former has a lot of contradictions.

 

If you are a Christian and get married and have a baby, the baby is God's gift and is a precious human being that was created in the image of God. The parents will bring up the child as their son or daughter. They will teach aright the son to believe in God, and let the son enter the heaven later. And all of the family will go to the haven and live there happily forever. Young (and ignorant) as he is, a boy can believe in Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, as his saviour, and be saved. How equal (and easy) the salvation of Christianity is! The doctrine of salvation that eases the burden of sins of human beings very simply.

 

Buddhism was influenced by Indian philosophy. I don't know much about Indian philosophy, but I know roughly that it says, "The self (Atman) that had been one with the god (Brahman) was like a god, but came to fall and be shut up in the matter, the flesh, and suffer >birth, aging, illness, death<." So it can be said that the point of the doctrine of salvation of Indian philosophy is this: man must get out of that flesh and be his true, original self. (They say that the Atman (the individual self) is the manifestation of the Brahman (the Absolute), and that the true salvation is to realize the self is the Brahman.) Of course, this kind of philosophy was the work of the pessimists who thought the human life to be agony.

 

Buddhism also regards man as a self that was originally on the upper level (on the level of gods) and fell and was clothed with the flesh, and now he is suffering the agony (in the endless cycle of birth-aging-illness-death). So Buddhism says of taking off the flesh through various stages of religious asceticism and practices, and of attaining to the upper level of being, that is nirvana, outside the flesh. I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I think they say so. To support these ideas, Buddhism teaches the doctrine of reincarnation. If a man who went down one step sins again, as a punishment he will be reborn as an animal which is lower than man. Now in order that he may attain to the uppermost level, he must endure the punishment decently and be reborn as a man, and (necessarily) live Buddhist monk’s life, and be delivered from worldly existence, and experience religious ecstasy.

 

I’m not sure if the description of Buddhism was right. But in other words, if you are not a Buddhist monk but merely a lay Buddhist now, you must die and be reborn as a man and be a Buddhist monk and live ascetic life to be freed from worldly existence, that you may be saved. How hard it is to live as a Buddhist monk! Only such kind of man can be saved – what an unfair religion it is! To tell the truth, it is so.

 

By the way, there is a critical contradiction in Buddhism. If a couple get married and bear a son, this is one of the three cases: first, a self that had been on the upper level and done such and such wrong things was demoted to a man, second, a dog or a pig that had done such and such good things was promoted to a man, third, some other man who had lived a good life but not been a Buddhist monk was reborn as a man to other parents. Their son whom they bore was not their son originally, but a godlike being or an animal or some other’s son. How sad! (Some Buddhists bow to their sons, thinking the sons are in fact venerable ones. How ridiculous!)

 

And the doctrine of salvation of Buddhism depends on human reproductive ability. (Because only Buddhist monk can be saved.) How many ants are there? How about the number of the locusts? How many living things are there except human beings? Even if these living things lived the best life(!), for them to be reborn as a man is far harder than for a man of 30 IQ to enter Harvard! Because human reproductive ability is not so good. If the present conditions remain the same, a self that is now an ant must wait at least 100 billion years to get a chance to be a man. What a tough pross of salvation! By the way, what is strange, in what state is the nirvana that so many selves (individual beings) should fall from there? Weren't all living beings including human beings originally in the state of nirvana, the state of salvation? What evil things did they do that they should fall from there to be lower beings, according to Buddhism? Let's think logically!

 

If all lives were originally in nirvana, it can be said that the nirvana itself does not provide you with a permanent place and that you can fall from there at any time. Innumerable individual beings on earth proves that! (What an instable salvation!)

 

Many of Buddhist priests like to use the character Gag(覺(각): realize, understand, know) to name their Buddhist name, for example ‘Hyongag(현각)’, ‘Bongag(본각)’. By this they seem to say that they are ones who know all and are gods. But you need to know first the various contradictions that Buddhism itself has.

 

The difference between the salvation of Christianity and that of Buddhism is such. Who can lie that Christianity and Buddhism are of the same religion?

 

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