What does the dhamma need in order to spread ? And how can we help it?

Jesus was not in the Exodus story. Exodus was about 1500 years before Jesus. Many Christians who believe Jesus was God believe are Tinitarians, believing “God” had three persons in unity, Jesus being the one which incarnated as a human.

The Old Testament is not a book, it is a canon of many books. And not everything in it is nasty, nor would be considered by Christians to be in opposition to Jesus’ teaching.

Your credibility would be lost by this argument, to many Christians.

… kill them with debate?

This entire strategy seems very hostile, egotistical, unfriendly, unpleasant. And thus, i doubt its effectiveness with others, or its harmlessness even to self. Coersive contemptuous generosity won’t imo work.

I hope the feedback is helpful. :slight_smile: The intention has my respect.

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In Christianity, Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Only extreme minority sects in Christianity are nontrinitarian.

I recently noticed one of my colleagues at work crying. I’m not sure what has been troubling her, but I just sent her this e-mail message:

Hi [name redacted],

I have had a tough year myself. I am finding that meditation helps. I have some resources if you are interested. Let me know. :pray:

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And sometimes they would get run over by a cow and die after he answered.
It’s risky asking thrice!

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I mean, he was an arahant at that point (Bahiya). Sounds like a good deal to me, I’d take that deal.

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“Extreme” has nuances which may not fit contemporary adherents of these denominations. But i agree, a minority view among Christians.

I don’t think this is an accurate representation of these beliefs, though legalistically, it would be correct. But Abraham, Issac, Jacob and their contemporaries would say "huh??? No, our God is Jehovah… Who’s ‘Jesus’? Never heard of him. And those who believe they worship the god of Abraham, Issac and Jacob (Jews, and some others) those would actually probably be extremely offended.

So why make the statement, as not even an adherent to those beliefs? edit: But it would be agreeable to Christians who who consider Jews heathens, and non Trinitarians, heretics. It’s appealing to ill will.

I guess that’s why all of the above people aren’t Christians?

Sorry, please see revised above. @Coemgenu

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Just a heads up that this is straying a bit far from EBT’s and the OP. PLease try to keep all posts linked to a thread topic, so that the archiving system and search functions remain useful.

:anjal::dharmawheel:

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Hi. Has anyone got some sutta examples that explicitly states this view or failing that suttas where it can be implied? “Forever” sounds very permanent.

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With the wasting away of [the first] three fetters, he is a stream-winner, never again destined for states of woe, certain, headed for self-awakening. SuttaCentral

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The only certainty one will find in EBTs is with regard to the ending of rebirth and suffering it ensues once the third noble truth’s respective ennobling task has been fulfilled by an arahant.

In regards to dooming oneself to the eternal damnation of samsara, it is an inference made possible by connecting dots found scattered in EBTs.

First there’s the recurrent quote from the Buddha which says he could not identify a beginning point to the suffering of rebirth or samsara.

He could only see an end to it and that is what the four noble truths are all about. See suttas like SN15.12 and others from the same chapter:

https://suttacentral.net/sn15

By inference one can say therefore than until one has brought about the certain cessation of suffering, he/she is doomed to suffer.

On the flip side, from the perspective of cessation, there is only the dependent originated ending of an impersonal process which involves rebirth.

This is why the element of nibbana is such that it doesn’t matter how many streams of rebirth cease it is not affected. See suttas like AN8.19:

“Even though several mendicants become fully extinguished through the natural principle of extinguishment, without anything left over, the natural principle of extinguishment never empties or fills up.
This is the fifth thing the mendicants love about this teaching and training.”

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How exactly do people expect to spread this kind of outlook through debate? It seems like an effort to first convince people that they have a sort of disease that they currently don’t believe they have - the disease of effectively endless future suffering - and then to try to convince the same people that you possess the cure for the disease. Since the beliefs in both the alleged disease and the alleged cure are faith-based, I don’t see how rational debate is likely to succeed in propagating the message. Only some kind of “brainwashing” is likely to work.

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That’s a theme in a lot of religions. In Christianity, the problem (or at least one problem) is damnation/hell and to which it offers itself as the answer. So, as you say, if you want someone to buy into your proposed solution you need to convince them of the reality of the problem it is supposed to solve.

Of course, a shared theme is mortality and death. That’s a problem that is rather more pressing and real (compared to ones arising from more theological frameworks), particularly as they get older. Both religions address (and propose solutions to that) too: eternal life in Christianity and the deathless in Buddhism.

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It seems like it was easier with Christianity, since the problem - that they were going to die - was one they already believed in, and the solution - a future resurrection of the dead followed by eternal bliss - seems to most people like a much better fate then just dying.

I suspect that in the early centuries of Buddhism, very few people were converted because Buddhism promised some kind of snuffing out of a long life extending backward and forward indefinitely in unendurable suffering. Instead, they probably heard about the possibility that they would be reborn as a rich person or even a deity if they lived right, and regarded that as an optimistic prospect.

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Also, a lot of the popular Buddhism I have encountered seems to represent nibbana as a kind of ultimate heaven - an eternal bliss unimaginably greater than even the happiness of the devas - that the arahant “enters” at death. It is not simply the extinguishment of the factors leading to cyclical samsaric rebirth and an end or blotting our of that wandering being, but the entering of that being into a far better place outside the cycle.

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They already believed in a resurrection after death before Jesus, at the time, though (see Mark 12:18 when a Sadducee tries to argue against resurrection with a “gotcha” question that only really makes sense in the cultural framework it was asked).

This probably made it easier to believe in a) Jesus’s alleged resurrection and b) everyone else’s.

Just like how people in the Buddha’s time likely already thought they were going to be reincarnated already, and already there was a notion that escaping cyclic rebirth was a good thing.

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I don’t see that. The passage only shows that Jesus preached a view of the resurrection that held the resurrected would be like angels, and that the marriage laws and other such legal requirements of human life would be left behind. The sadducees in that passage, on the other hand, seem to think the whole resurrection doctrine is absurd because there would be no way in the afterlife for the resurrected to harmonize the human legal requirements that would still bind them. The dispute doesn’t tell us much about what most ordinary Jews believed or didn’t believe about the afterlife.

My understanding is that during this period the more trafitional belief in She’ol, a kind of shadowy and unsatisfactory ghostlike post-existence was being replaced by rabbinic Jews with various apocalyptic teachings about a resurrection and world to come, but that these beliefs were varied and not all mutually consistent, and not universally adopted.

Also, as Christianity spread, it was spread among secular gentiles, right? Among them, beliefs in either no afterlife at all, or a dismal Hades-like afterlife would have been common.

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