Western vs. Eastern religions

[Hagoth]

I have been woefully ignorant about eastern religion most of my life and now I'm trying to fill in the gaps. I am coming to the realization that I have been missing a lot of potentially valuable insights.

First of all, I will state that I believe that religion in general, as presented to the masses is mostly unnecessary window dressing that likely does more to obscure the value of the religion than enhance it.

In comparing eastern and western religions I see one astounding difference. Western religion is all about obedience to a higher being in order to fend off his wrath, whereas eastern religion is all about realizing the potential within yourself. Christianity actually bridges the gap to some degree, being an axial religion along with Buddhism and post-vedic Hinduism.

Exhibit A: Deuteronomy 28:
This chapter begins with Moses telling you all the ways God will bless you for perfect obedience, but then it gets down to the real meat:

15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:

16 Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.

17 Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.

18 Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

19 Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

20 The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.

21 The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

22 The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

Hinduism has 330 million gods. A few of them are worshiped in some places with the same devotion and intensity as Yahweh. Even some sects of Buddhism worship the Buddha as a god. BUT if you remove the gods entirely, those traditions still work to help people improve themselves and to serve others because they recognize the divine as part of each of us. Hinduism embraces polytheism, monotheism, monotheism, pantheism, panentheism, agnosticism, and atheism. So does Buddhism. Even Sam Harris, one of the atheistic Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse embraces Buddhist concepts and teaches meditation. Once you get away from magic people in the sky, eastern religion, it seems to me, appears to have a more substance and usefulness.

And this is where Christianity becomes interesting again. If you strip away the virgin birth and resurrection and walking on water, it seems like maybe the essence of Christianity is: 1) Do unto others, and 2) The Kingdom of God is within you. Those philosophies seem to share a lot more with eastern religions than with anything else that came out of the Ancient Near East.

Imagine a world where everyone believed those two concepts and lived accordingly.

[Arcturus]

This is awesome Hagoth. I find eastern religion fascinating.

If you haven't seen this book, I recommend checking it out. "The Fifth Way" by David Brisbin. Interesting angle in bringing in "eastern" insight into Jesus' life. The author talks about how Jesus was more likely influenced by eastern than western philosophical thought.

https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Way-Wester ... way&sr=8-1

[Hagoth]

This is awesome Hagoth. I find eastern religion fascinating.

If you haven't seen this book, I recommend checking it out. "The Fifth Way" by David Brisbin. Interesting angle in bringing in "eastern" insight into Jesus' life. The author talks about how Jesus was more likely influenced by eastern than western philosophical thought.

https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Way-Wester ... way&sr=8-1

Thanks Arcturus, I just added it to my list.

[jfro18]

When I first started going through all of this a year ago and was talking with DW, so ordered the usual cocktail of apologetic books (Terryl Givens, Patrick Mason, and I think one other?)... she was going on about how Givens actually finds all of the places where Joseph Smith was pulling 'eastern religious' ideas where most religions here were western. She of course took that as proof he was a prophet instead of the evidence based approach that he was lifting ideas as he saw fit.

Either way... he was still pulling from a religious concept that has problems so it's not exactly the helpful proof they think it is.

[BriansThoughtMirror]

This is really good stuff. Some time during the fallout of my faith crisis, I read a book called "Radical Acceptance: Embracing Life with the heart of a Buddha". It was such an incredibly refreshing perspective after the hell I had been through. It told me in a pretty convincing way I was actually OK. I ended up reading it again later because it was so profound to me. I needed that sort of self-compassion.

I also read a book by Jonathan Haidt called "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom". It was awesome. As a counterpoint, Haidt is an atheist and psychologist who researches moral emotions. He was studying ancient religions to find ways they may benefit practitioners. He expected to find eastern religions to be more beneficial, but was surprised to find that, when they are working well, Western religions provide a host of social, emotional, and psychological benefits. Reading Haidt's work (this and a few other things) really helped me to lose a lot of my anger at the church and see some of the good it has done. I hope it helped me be a bit more compassionate, but others will have to be the judges of that, I guess.

I highly recommend both of these books. I think there is value to both Eastern and Western religions, at least for a lot of people. I also think both can be damaging. My personal religious experience, I think, has done me a lot of damage. But it really works for some others, so I try not to damage that for them (as long as they aren't hurting others).

I also went to Thailand with my wife once. I was very surprised to see just how "religious" Buddhism was there- it felt very worshipful, heirarchical, and full of all the trappings of very deeply rooted sacred tradition and organized religion. It was beautiful, but it made me uncomfortable sometimes. I think reading about Buddhism from Western writers and secular writers de-emphasized the deeply religious parts and emphasized the emotional, psychological, philosophical, and "spiritual" parts. So, it was kind of jarring. Of course, that was one of my favorite things I have ever done, too! Super amazing trip.

[moksha]

Taoism (pronounced Daoism) is a rather gentle faith tradition. Taoism like Buddhism seems to straddle being both philosophy and religion. I like saying "how now brown Dao".

[Just This Guy]

I find eastern religion very interesting.

For the Sci-Fi nuts out there, I wonder if the Membari Religion from Babylon 5 is loosely based on Hinduism. The Hindu idea of us being a small part of god is very similar to the Membari idea that live is the universe breaking itself apart in an attempt to understand itself.

IOT had a couple podcasts where they talk about Secular Buddhism. I found those fascinating. Though school and engineering, we are always taught that the universe can be explained and you can access the knowledge to answer any question. Secular Buddhism the opposite. Understanding what you don't know is such an opposite to how we are raised to think in the western world. I find the dichotomy interesting.

If I ever to go back to religion, I could easily find myself going into those avenues and away from traditional western religion. Right now, I'm just not at a point in life where I have little more than a passing interest to learn about these.

[Hagoth]

"Radical Acceptance: Embracing Life with the heart of a Buddha".
"The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom".

Thanks Brian. I added both to my summer reading list.

I really like your perspectives about both eastern and western approaches. The major breakthrough in my life is the realization that I already have what I need and what's important is following a path that helps me discover and expand on that. Teachers can help me along my way, but just as often they can trip me up. The real secret to life, in my opinion, is developing the ability to see through the bullshit.

It seems to me that a problem with religion and philosophy in general arises when ostensibly simple, useful ideas get weighed down by centuries of embellishment and misdirection. At some point, particularly in western religion, it becomes not about who you are and what you do, but about what you believe. So you believe Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected? Good! Do you believe he is a unique individual or a manifestation of the trinity? Answer cautiously because your answer might mean the difference between eternal bliss or a lake of fire. People burn other people at the stake because they only believe 90% of what they're supposed to believe. That other 10% has more weight than the 90%.

I just came across a lecture by Alan Watts called "Just Trust the Universe." I highly recommend it. He talks about religious organizations as revolving doors. They want you to keep going around and around in the door and they have no tolerance for those who actually use it as a door and then move on. As long as they can convince you that you are falling far short of the goal they set for you they can continue, as he puts it, to keep stealing your pocket watch and selling it back to you.

[Hagoth]

Taoism (pronounced Daoism) is a rather gentle faith tradition. Taoism like Buddhism seems to straddle being both philosophy and religion. I like saying "how now brown Dao".

Thanks Moksha, that is a pond that I have barely skimmed. I will take a deeper dive.

[BriansThoughtMirror]

The major breakthrough in my life is the realization that I already have what I need and what's important is following a path that helps me discover and expand on that. Teachers can help me along my way, but just as often they can trip me up. The real secret to life, in my opinion, is developing the ability to see through the bullshit.

Yes! This is huge for me. I don't know if I accept any "truth" or "secret to life" or whatever 100%, though. I found that I could take what made sense and was helpful to me, and disregard some parts that weren't- knowing that I may know as well as anyone else. I personally never felt able to do that with Mormonism or Christianity.

I will check out the Alan Watts lecture! I've really liked some of what I've heard from him.

[Hagoth]

Yes! This is huge for me. I don't know if I accept any "truth" or "secret to life" or whatever 100%, though. I found that I could take what made sense and was helpful to me, and disregard some parts that weren't- knowing that I may know as well as anyone else. I personally never felt able to do that with Mormonism or Christianity.

I'm trying to look at is as a blind men and elephant problem. If there is an Ultimate Truth out there, any religion or spiritual (or psychedelic) experience might be picking up on some slice of the bigger picture. On the other hand, there's always the chance that they might just be feeling up the rock next to the elephant and missing the elephant altogether. Even if everything we consider religious/spiritual is entirely physical and a result of chemistry and evolution, it is still real; all have it inside our skull and have potential access to more depth than we recognize in our normal day-to-day experience.

[BriansThoughtMirror]

I think all of these sorts of experiences may have some kind of value for us, whether we understand correctly what that value is or not. By the way, I should have posted this TED talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haid ... anguage=en

This is from Jonathan Haidt, the author I mentioned before. He's discussing the value of spiritual experiences. He thinks they likely were critical for the development of civilization, and still have value for individuals today. If you like this video, you'll probably like the book, too!

[Mad Jax]

For the Sci-Fi nuts out there, I wonder if the Membari Religion from Babylon 5 is loosely based on Hinduism. The Hindu idea of us being a small part of god is very similar to the Membari idea that live is the universe breaking itself apart in an attempt to understand itself.

I believe that comes from Saganism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLigBYhdUDs

[Lucidity]

Glad to see Eastern religion getting some love on here. I think everyone would benefit from looking into these varies traditions. Regardless if you’re are a TBM or atheist. These are essentially traditions of personal examination into the nature of your experience. They are very empowering and liberating.

I explored Taoism as a TBM and found it very interesting and helpful. Buddhism then served as my main home as I transitioned out of mormonism, and although I don’t identify as a Buddhist I do still maintain a regular meditation practice and continue to study buddhism and other “non-duel” traditions.
I think western practitioners are particularly lucky because as Buddhism, Vedanta, and other eastern traditions made their way to the US, midway through the last century, much of the trappings of dogma and supernatural elements were cut away, or at least not held to as necessary, and we are left with more accessible and generally usefully traditions.

Zen, was a big influence with D.T. Suzuki, Shunryu Suzuki, Alan Watts and others all playing a huge role in influencing the 50’s and 60’s counter culture spiritual movements. I used to view these as dumbed down western versions. They are not. In a strange way western interest in the eastern traditions has caused a renaissance and a wide examination in the commonalities on within the varies traditions. These are amazingly rich traditions and you can explore without pressure to belief anything on faith. At there core these are “non-dual” traditions, with rich teaching on ethics and supernatural lore and sprinkled on top.

For those interested here are some good books to start your exploration.

The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan Watts
Waking Up, Sam Harris
Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening,  Joseph Goldstein 
The Three Pillars of Zen, Roshi Philip Kapleau
Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, Shunryu Suzuki
How to Attain Enlightenment, James Swartz
The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira