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To: Conservative til I die
I am thick skinned, but not in this way. I can't help it, it's very cold here.

I think the problem is with the word "compatible." I'm not saying that a Buddhist can be a Catholic, or Muslim, or a Jew--or vice versa.

But a practitioner of Zen can be a Catholic--if he still follows the rules. Although, I haven't heard of too many of these, or Zen-Jews, or Zen-Muslims. Zen, unlike Buddhism, does not want you to do away with desire, but actually is there to help you focus (or, better said, to alleviate all the nonsense around you and concentrate on the heart of the matter). But there is a bit of the Tao that goes along with Zen--but not the belief in the Tao.

All I'm trying to say is that in the spirit of Jesus and Buddha's preaching, there are similarities between the two that shouldn't be cast aside.

These are vastly different religions from vastly different worlds, and that's fine, but that doesn't mean that people should necessarily write off other religious teaching as "heretical."

The way I look at it, if you believe in Kristos as God almighty, then isn't it strangely fitting that someone else, a good distance of time and space away, faintly echoes some of your God's ideas about peace and love and human dignity? Even if he did tell us to renounce our desires--which I don't particularly believe in.
149 posted on 01/23/2006 10:51:24 AM PST by Lochlainnach (Rifle man's stalkin the sick and lame; preacher man seeks the same, who gets there 1st is uncertain)
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To: Lochlainnach


164 posted on 01/24/2006 5:52:07 AM PST by Bainbridge
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To: Lochlainnach

In post 147 you said"...and this is why Zen gets confused as a religion..." Then here you say, " These are vastly different religions". ( Perhaps you will tell me that you mean Buddhism not Zen, endlessly extending the vagaries surrounding all the Eastern beliefs which are as mutable as the earlier claims about "all" being illusion.)
I think you are trying to reconcile too many things that are mutually contradictory. Christianity is founded on the belief that there is One Way, One Truth. That by definition means that there are wrong "religious" teachings and that they must be rejected as false.


165 posted on 01/24/2006 5:56:53 AM PST by Bainbridge
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