And I’ve learned how the Talmud and the Bible repeat the theme of compassion, as in the passage in Leviticus that admonishes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
he's also tacitly endorsing, with his silence some really really nasty stuff. It's because there's all that love stuff in these texts that they can convince people to do the stoning, killing and other nasty bits in the bible.
But I suppose I'm being naive.
I'm all for religious tolerance and live and let live; don't get me wrong. But there are differences in religions, and they have different moral and ethical imperatives and objectives. If we can't be frank about the differences, then are we being sincere when we say we're tolerant? I don't think so.
3 comments:
Good point, not naive at all I think. I do think though of certain Zen, and now more recently Sri Lankan, folks who came to Buddhism through presumably peaceful means and wound up endorsing war and violence. I also recall H.H. the Dalai Lama at one point being pressed on whether the other religious could really be right about God if he was right about Emptiness and he said in the end he thinks they are not right - but then played it off as a not-so-important difference :)
Perhaps the wisest thing to do is say that there is a time to dispute differences and there is a time to come together in our similarities? Wisdom is knowing which is which...
Please extract that stick from your rear. It is an op-ed. He dinged your atheist Gods as potential fundamentalist, is that what has your underwear in a bunch?
Buddhist philospher:
Wisdom is knowing which is which...
Yeah. Right now I'd say the time is to come together with similarities, but not because religions or a lack of them share common ideals, but rather because there's a heck of a lot of important things that need attention from all of us.
Anonymous:
I think my concerns were noted in what I wrote. Ever read Leviticus?
Post a Comment