religions is one of the reasons why I was agnostic for so long. I
thought this bit of text from www.buddhanet.net might be interesting to
show that not all religions act in the same way:
No Buddhist who understands the Buddha’s teaching thinks that other
religions are wrong. No one who, has made a genuine effort to examine
other religions with an open mind could think like that either. The
first thing you notice when you study the different religions is just
how much they have in common. All religions acknowledge that mankind’s
present state is unsatisfactory. All believe that a change of attitude
and behaviour is needed if the human situation is to improve. All teach
an ethics that includes love, kindness, patience, generosity and social
responsibility and all accept the existence of some form of Absolute.
They use different languages, different names and different symbols to
describe and explain these things; and it is only when they
narrow-mindedly cling to their one way of seeing things that religious
intolerance, pride and self-righteousness arise.
Imagine an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Chinese and an Indonesian all
looking at a cup. The Englishman says, “That’s a cup.” The Frenchman
answers, “No it’s not. It’s a tasse.” The Chinese comments, “You’re both
wrong. It’s a pet.” And the Indonesian laughs at the others and says
“What fools you are. It’s a cawan.” The Englishman gets a dictionary and
shows it to the others saying, “I can prove that it is a cup. My
dictionary says so.” “Then your dictionary is wrong,” says the French-
man “Because my dictionary clearly says it is a tasse.” The Chinese
scoffs at them. “My dictionary is thousands of years older than yours,
so my dictionary must be right. And besides, more people speak Chinese
than any other language, so it must be a pet.” While they are squabbling
and arguing with each other, a Buddhist comes up and drinks from the
cup. After he has drunk, he says to the others, "Whether you call it a
cup, a tasse, a pet or a cawan, a cup is meant to be used. Stop arguing
and drink, stop squabbling and refresh your thirst." This is the
Buddhist attitude to other religions.
Ven. S. Dhammika
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Graeme [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 11 March 2004 17:02
To: CF-Community
Subject: Re: Comments on Catholic Church
I think it's also worth acknowledging though that attacking other
religions
is pretty much a necessity for any religion. At their core, religions
serve
two purposes: 1) codify a set of rules for behaviour for the
preservation of
a culture; and 2) attempt to explain the big hows and whys of the
universe.
These are both predicated on convincing people that the given religion
is
the correct way to acheive these two things. For the protection of the
religion, it is essential for it to include written "truths" that other
beliefs are false, and it will almost always have a cultural set of
behaviours to reinforce those truths. (Typically the first is from the
Torah/Bible/Koran, the second is from the mechanics of the church.)
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