How to graft a new religion out of all the already established religions? Since they all lead to the same afterlife essentially, that should be the unifying piece which is Peace if you behave.
Commit to what Wendy? There was nothing to commit to… can we not enjoy any moment for what it simply is?
An old buddy of mine would constantly get caught up in each such ‘moments’ then bed the guy the same night on fake promises of dating… it broke her for years after… she should have took the moment for what it was, and then took herself home to her bed. These guys were serial monogamists/liars, and she… not very clued up on posh attractive alpha-male rugby-playing public-schoolboy-educated serial monogamist/liar types.
There is always someone waiting to take advantage of the weaker other… it’s like a human default setting… I’ve seen it happen all around me over the decades… humans simply cannot help themselves. Having a non-responsive setting to counteract the human default settings come in very handy during times like these.
Eating a fancy cheese plate and drinking a flight of beer on a lovely patio, reading the news, collecting pokeballs and waiting on a friend’s boyfriend to pass out so that she can come and meet me for drinks.
That Buddhist forum was a bust. Hardcore moderation of even simplistic questions. Half of my posts, which were so restrained, were not approved. Not a place to ask questions, not a place to learn. Anyway, I told them to close out my account. Studying alone is often safer than falling victim to moronic teachers.
I know a few monks and occasionally hang out with them. Lama this and Lama that. I don’t think one chooses to be or not be a Buddhist, I think its just a fairly accurate description of how the world is. What’s so hard about it? Avoid attachment, realize that the self is an illusion. Everything is circular, yada yada. I saw the Dalai Lama once. Sat in the 5th row. He was alright. I’m going to a thing a few weeks from now where one of his translators is giving a lecture. I think eastern religions are remarkably simple, and properly stated, quite eloquent. It just seems like intuitive stuff that most kids already know. They just don’t know the jargon. People look for depth where it isnt. Religion is an easy path, philosophy not so much. Most people just don’t want to read Russell or Kant. So they make believe that religions are deep in their mysteriousness. Its a waste of aptitude in many cases, and thereby somewhat of a tragedy. I don’t think that the Buddah would have given anyone a vocabulary test, he probably would have just said to live in peace as a result of understanding some fundamental things about philosophy. But that’s too hard for a lot of people.
I had so many, I can’t even remember them all. However, I did ask the sites admin. about what you wrote and the person said it was all relevant to Buddhism except the “everything is circular” which I was told was more about Hinduism.
The metaphysics of Buddhism amd Hinduism are closer to each other than they are to anything else. So the circular thing kind of holds. Reincarnation=circular. Shedding of skandas, peeling the onion, nothing created or destroyed, rearrangement of the skandas into a new illusory self without retaining any of the previous illusory essence=circular.