Just for the record, I’m not the one who said that; it was Jesus, and it’s pretty clear, from the context, that that’s exactly what he was talking about.
Unfortunately for all of us, for the last few decades mainstream churches have been the ones shrinking, while authoritarian churches are growing by leaps and bounds. I won’t even pretend to understand why, but about 100 books have been written on the subject and they haven’t changed a thing.
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I have no problem with your quote, I read as I think you meant it.
I do have a general problem with a scripture commonly head to be all about peace and love that spends too much of its time distorting how bad Judaism is, especially when viewed through the lens of hindsight considering how many people have died because of it. Judaism says bad things about civilizations and local religions which no longer exist, only in 1961 did Roman Catholicism officially repudiate the collective guilt doctrine. It is the curse of a successor religion, a derivative work, that it must invalidate the predecessor while benefiting from its existing ancient wisdom cultural legitimacy.
Oh, so all belief systems are prone to tribalism?
Say it ain’t so!!!1!
/feigned surprise
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What if it’s for the lulz™?
…sort of. Shinto was utilised by the Japanese Imperial army to justify and validate their claims to the lands and people they were conquering.
Most modern Japanese actually believe aspects, and obey the traditions of both Buddhism and Shinto. This wikipedia section gives a pretty good explanation of the modern Japanese relationship to Shinto:
A survey conducted in the mid-1970s indicated that of those participants who claimed not to believe in religion, one-third had a Buddhist or Shinto altar in their home, and about one quarter carried an omamori (an amulet to gain protection by kami) on their person. Following the war, Shinto shrines tended to focus on helping ordinary people gain better fortunes for themselves through maintaining good relations with their ancestors and other kami. The number of Japanese citizens identifying their religious beliefs as Shinto has declined a great deal, yet the general practice of Shinto rituals has not decreased in proportion, and many practices have persisted as general cultural beliefs (such as ancestor worship), and community festivals (matsuri)—focusing more on religious practices. The explanation generally given for this anomaly is that, following the demise of State Shinto, modern Shinto has reverted to its more traditional position as a traditional religion which is culturally ingrained, rather than enforced. In any case, Shinto and its values continue to be a fundamental component of the Japanese cultural mindset.
Yeah, I’m a member of a Shinto shrine, have been to Japan, and studied Japanese Buddhism as a practitioner. Many of the people with whom I’ve studied have been either Japanese or Japanese trained. Shinto is a key part of Japanese culture but Buddhism has been as well since it was imported more than 1,000 years ago. There is a reason why there is a strong association, culturally, between Zen and the Samurai during the Shogunate era or with the various Pure Land sects and the peasants (leading to peasant armies and uprising as well. as well).
State Shinto was an aberration that came about as part of the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s rapid industrialization in the face of potential colonization. Out of various Asian nations with Western contact in the 19th century, only Thailand (Siam) and Japan managed to avoid colonization by a greater power. This is largely a result of both nations engaging in various Westernization initiatives, including the heavy establishment of State-focused religion. During the Meiji Restoration, holy sites that were traditionally both Buddhist and Shinto were forced to pick one and only one to be and Buddhists sects underwent a bit of (relatively mild) suppression. This all ended when the Second World War’s defeat brought the end of State Shinto and the emperor’s primary role as the leader of the State.
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People claim it was Jesus
There we go… Fixed, free of charge!
I find all of humanity’s delusions equally amusing. I just thought the way you portrayed it hid the fact that a lot of Japan’s militarism was justified by the fact that Shinto god allegedly clicked ‘like’.
Anyway… I love the idea that god, if such a thing even exists, is actually inside everything. Plus I can get behind any religion that brews bucketloads of sake on site!
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The Shinto idea of the kami is actually a bit hard to explain and I’m not sure I always understand it well, even. That said, you can think of them the same way as the ancient Greeks thought of their gods. There are kami of places or even of important people or items. Some of the kami have stories going back to the dawn of Japanese society.
My overall point is as much as Buddhism is a religion that preaches non-violence and people are always shocked when some place Buddhist has warfare justified by it in any sense, both Japan and China, just as two examples, have been very Buddhist for a long long time and still managed to have lots of warfare.
Hatred. Prejudice. Bigotry. Intolerance. Murder, terrorism, and calls for genocide, and the victims are upset about it.
Translation: Chickens coming home to roost. Muslims don’t like it when non-Muslims act like Muslims.
It can be much, much more stark than that. When Tibetans started flooding the border of Bhutan (as much flooding as possible when we’re talking about mostly impenetrable Himalayan passes), the Bhutanese made a significant number of them fulfill two jobs: Tibetan women had to spend their days making gravel (they were in the process of building the first road through the country, and gravel is not something you find on mountaintops) and the men were forced to work as butchers. You see, in the form of Buddhism that the Bhutanese got FROM THE TIBETANS, eating meat doesn’t give you bad karma, only killing it. They were forcing their philosophic ancestors to perform the dirty work so that their monks could eat karma-free meat and fish.
I first learned that fact while enjoying a meal in a monk’s home, cooked by his wife. It is apparently quite common for monks to have wives and families living pretty close to their monasteries so that they can see them on a regular basis.
Human nature is the weak link in all “-isms”.
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Exactly. Buddhists/Muslims/Christians etc. do not use violence because of the teachings, but because they lost connection with the teachings.
Also, religion, the institution, more often than not, does not represent the teachings; it is the organized way to exploit them.
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I see, do go on. Where did you study Comparative Religion, the University of Fox News?
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Wanda: Otto, what are you doing?
Otto: It’s a Buddhist meditation technique.
Focuses your aggression.
The monks used to do it before battle.
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I could see that potentially being the case in the longer work. His essay had a lot of sections that felt like “this is why Zen isn’t actually Buddhism”. (Hence the defensiveness I mentioned.)
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