this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Not Buddhism right? Can’t you be a Buddhist and also be a member of any other religion too?
Buddhism believes in reincarnation, which contradicts many other religions. Christianity believes in purgatory, heaven, and hell, but Buddhism has many times more and no hell lasts forever (although the worst "sins" will put you in a very specific hell for at least a billion years)
I have heard this but I simple don't get how they can maintain this position when all of their early writings disagree.
The Buddha wasn't shy about discussing at length his other incarnations and how he had escaped the wheel of becoming. Granted Samsura is probably not his but it is based on stuff he supposedly said. I don't get how they can even accept their polytheism without rebirth because there wouldn't be a path to get to gods.
Yes except the wording in the Pali Canon is "upon dissolution of the body" which is pretty clear that rebirth is not purely psychological or within the human lifetime. It is after death. Also doesn't explain the Buddha discussing his previous lives.
Sorry but I have heard this secular apologetics before. The contradiction between Anatta and Rebirth can not be resolved.
Right you can do this. Every religion pretty much does. Our founder said a bunch of stuff. We only take the parts that we want.
I am not faulting people for doing this, my point is you can't claim that what is discarded isn't part of what was there. Yes, you can be a secular Buddhist but that won't change at all that the practice of Buddhism for 25 centuries included and still includes literal gods. And I question if you can even call it Buddhism if it doesn't have rebirth.
Shrug. It's a bit weird to me. Like latecomers gatekeeping. They been doing their thing for 25 centuries and a bunch of westerners show up and tell them what Buddhism is really really about. With the justification that since the record keeping was bad it can be whatever we say it is. Meanwhile the culture tradition being borrowed from is clear and in disagreement with what Secular Buddhist claims it says.
Mara is not a metaphor to anyone before the year 1950 or so. Mara was a literal god. Same can be said about all their core concepts.
If you can't be someone better tell all those tens of millions of followers in South East Asia who are syncretist with ancestor worship, multiple Hindu gods, and local animism.