Are all religions a different path to same destination?

Thanks for being open for discussion.

Oh well, then… :pensive:

Sorry @Vstakan if I didn’t come across as being open for discussion, I didn’t know how to answer such a direct question and it seemed fairly confrontational, although I understand that this might be an artifact of the medium we are using.

In my little corner of the Christian world 100% understand this view and I first heard it a few decades ago. I doubt that an understanding of scripture in terms of meditation experience is very wide spread in Christianity because the vast majority of Christians don’t meditate. I believe the same is true in Buddhism? Much of the teachings we get are from the Desert Fathers although I’m not sure if this particular view originated with them.

Could you recommend any books? Coming from the Orthodox Christian background, equating Zion with jhana or any other meditative states sounds very weird to my ear, and it doesn’t really sounds like hesychasm at all, so it would be great to have a better idea what you are talking about.

The thing is the meditation is not nearly as central in Christianity as it is in Buddhism. There are Christian contemplative practices but the ones that I am aware of are of a much later origin than the entire New Testament and don’t really try to come up with any scriptural meditative instructions. Maybe there are texts of that sort in the Bible, but I don’t know any even though I read quite a lot about Chrtistianity. I am also not aware of any attempts to interpret Isaiah as a contemplative practitioner, which is why I asked you for sources. I mean, I am entirely at a loss.

No sorry. I’ll ask around at our next meeting and see if I can come up with anything for you. There are others there who have a better handle of where these things come from much more than I.

Okay, thanks.

I hadn’t heard of hesychasm before (thanks for the hint), but it seems like a very rigorous contemplative practice, grounded in extreme asceticism. The focus seems to be on extreme piousness, especially the part about Theoria and the repetitive prayer of Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner. There does seem to be parallels with the meditative experiences in Vedic traditions. But, jhana is not the end itself and to equate kamma and Nibbana with Creationist dogma is a very big leap…

The selections from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers in the Wikipedia page is very good. I think this is to be expected - ascetics and sages who live in rigid solitude have a tendency to produce wise, pithy sayings. :slight_smile: The Upanishads, Zen poems, sayings by mountain hermits like Hanshan Deqing etc. have a wealth of wisdom buried in them. But, I think the question of suffering will still remain unanswered even if we identified lots of common strands in these traditions. And isn’t that pretty much the main question that we seek an explanation for ? Why do beings come to be, suffer in varying forms and degrees and then die… ? When this question takes centre-stage, notions about a Creator God seem like a betrayal, when we look at the state of the world.

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Quakers do something called “silent worship”, which is a sort of formless meditation.

A type of formless meditation is advocated in “the cloud of unknowing.”

Buddhist writer Richard Hayes has written about it on his blog: https://dayamati.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/the-cloud-of-forgetting/

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Bhante Dhammanando explains why Buddhism is different to other religions.

I have been off travelling, but I am back and fully prepared to speculate. I don’t know about the practice of the jains. As @media points out - understanding the terminology is essential. But I can’t imagine that Buddha would not have understood - as they both come out of the same time and culture. On the other hand, there is an article by Jack Kornfield where he says that Mahasi Sayadaw and Ajahn Chah disagreed with each other over what awakening was as well as the nature of the path. It would be nice to see more on this - what they disagreed about. But if the story is true then here you have two people both considered Arahants that don’t agree with each other.

I do not consider Ajahn Chah as an Arahant even thoug I have great respect for him.

I have been studying Ruysbroeck’s book Adornment and am starting to get a sense of how he uses terminology which may provide an example of this. He divides the practice into three parts [page numbers in source in square brackets]:

Active Life [40]: this is the phase that one can actually do for themselves and effectively consists of a practice of virtue. It is what one can do through their own intention and actions.

There is a period that one encounters in between these two where one wants to go inward but is prevented from doing so by arising of ‘sensible images’.

Next comes the Inward Movement [61]. One does not actually do anything but rather at some point when the Active Life is developed sufficiently, Christ comes to bring you the rest of the way. Sounds very different from Buddhism but it refers to a growing sense of stillness, silence, and rapturous joy (so strong he says it may feel almost unbearable [81]) that draws us in.

Finally there is the 3-Fold Unity “which is in us by nature”. The quotes on the nature of God that I have given earlier are from this stage.

I am still working through this material but I think this gives a basic sketch of the path as he describes it. The view that what one can do is practice virtue and everything else springs from that is very similar to a number of suttas such as AN 11.2

"For a person endowed with virtue, consummate in virtue, there is no need for an act of will, ‘May freedom from remorse arise in me.’ It is in the nature of things that freedom from remorse arises in a person endowed with virtue, consummate in virtue.

"For a person free from remorse, there is no need for an act of will, ‘May joy arise in me.’ It is in the nature of things that joy arises in a person free from remorse.

"For a dispassionate person, there is no need for an act of will, ‘May I realize the knowledge & vision of release.’ It is in the nature of things that a dispassionate person realizes the knowledge & vision of release.

I disagree. Eastern religions like Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. are not theistic in the sense that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are.

They not only don’t agree with each other, they actually regard each other’s teaching as foolish and even harmful. Which is also true for the relationship between Islam and Christianity: in Quran, there is no other message repeated more frequently than the final destination of everyone not believing in Islam, namely hell. It is literally repeated on almost every page. So if Islam, Christianity and Judaism are leading to the same goal, why should the foundational text of Islam insist so actively these Abrahamic religions will bring you to hell?

Please limit this discussion to the difference between Buddhism and other religions even though op seems to suggest otherwise.

Yes. It was my feeble attempt at British understatement.

We are veering off topic but I did spend a couple hours looking at this and I think the issue is more complicated and somewhat relevant to the discussion. The view of the Prophet Muhammad as I understand it is that what Jesus taught was true and the word of God but that the teachings were corrupted and added to later on.

If you have quotes from the Quran that say something different then feel free to PM me with them as I would like to see what you are talking about.

My understanding is that the Quran believes that over time Jesus was essentially deified. The Quran teaches that he was a man and not equal with God. So the issue the Quran has is with those Christians that have essentially turned Christianity into a polytheistic religion - not with Christianity per se. The view being that such a belief is incorrect and won’t help you (meaning ‘you will rot in eternal hell’).

We see similar disputes with respect to different doctrinal views within Buddhism - particularly between EBT’s and later commentary - IMO.

But to what extent was the Prophet Muhammed knowledgeable of Christian terminology at a deeper level? - I don’t know.

I think we have to look at the mystics, we have to understand the terminology as it relates to practice - and this requires understanding the culture and mythology of the society in which the mystic taught.

The Quran not only believes that Jesus’ teaching was true, it also believes that you have to acknowledge Mohammed as the last prophet, otherwise you go to hell, period. It contains maybe hundreds of places where it says that Islam is the only true religions and all others are false.

This narrative gets called “The Great Apostasy” in Protestant Christianity. Islam believes in a similar narrative concerning the singular religion of God, which is always Islam, which is sent down to humanity through the prophets, and then forgotten when the texts are altered (taḥrīf) and the teachings are lost. Mohammed is believed to be the “Seal of the Prophets”. Giving the original teaching in a definitive form that will not be altered.

Whichever “Great Apostasy” narrative: the idea is generally that the prophet originally taught “our version”, but then there was a great apostasy away from the true teaching.

For instance, some spin this narrative involving Early Buddhism and Mahākāśyapa, the early saṅgha being the setting for the apostasy, Mahākāśyapa being the instigator, altering the Buddhavacana & inserting all of this business, allegedly, that there was ‘no self’.

The issue is coming up with the proof for such an apostasy, be it the early Roman Church allegedly apostatizing, the early followers of the pre-Mohammed dispensations of the prophets of the “One True God”, or the early bhikkhu-saṅgha.

in response to the thread’s title question: yes. but then again, i do know that there are A LOT of people who will definitely disagree with me, but at least that’s my opinion based on my observations that I have noticed by reading about different religions, talking with other people from different religions and many other things and to be honest, so far I haven’t met anyone to change my opinion. but then again, this is only my opinion so peace to everyone!

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Well, without any substantive arguments, such opinions are ultimately just empty statements.

One would have to give good reasons for any opinion to be taken seriously.

So far perennialists have failed to do so which is why I and others disagree.

It’s not like we disagree because we dislike the idea, or that the idea isn’t nice. It would be nice if all religious ideas and all ethical ideas led one to the same happy place, because that way one would not have to worry too much.