All religions are not the same. They can be quite different. Buddhism, for example, is a religion based on truth, that is, of seeing ultimate reality which is beyond words. The religions of Abraham, on the other hand, are religions based upon the word of God. God supposedly speaks to prophets who, in turn, relate his message to their followers. The prophet is the divine middleman, so to speak.
The Buddha doesn't want us to depend upon words except as they point to what is beyond them. For example, the word, "Lake Tahoe" points to a real lake that is not man-made but nevertheless quite real. The Lake Tahoe sign points to the the real Lake Tahoe which is even beyond the name we give to it. The name is only for the purposes of communication.
The Buddha, by his discourses, wishes us to intuit, directly, our true nature which becomes apparent when our mind is no longer stirred. Such a mind is the awakened mind or Buddha Mind. It is mind, as essence, in its native unborn purity. It is the very substance of all that we are presently perceiving in the way of phenomena including our thoughts that we constantly reflect upon.
The scriptures of Buddhism are not the same as, say, the scriptures of Christianity. Yes, it is true that both scriptures are held to be sacred by the faithful. But they are quite different in other respects. The Buddha wants us to see what he saw when he became "Buddha." He does this through his teachings which come by way of words. At the same time, he doesn't want us to cling to words and thereby miss what he is pointing to. He tells his monks,
"Bhikshus, having known the parable of the raft, you should abandon even the Dharma, how much more that which is not Dharma!" (M. i. 135).
Always, at the back of what he teaches, the Buddha wants his followers to come and see what he saw. There are no commandments of a God to obey—no thou shalt nots; there is nothing to be obedient towards other than to find within oneself what the Buddha found by which he became awakened.
It this is not your cup of tea which means you are not up to looking deep within yourself to see what the Buddha saw whereby he became awakened, then Buddhism is probably not your religion. Look elsewhere for salvation because Buddhism demands of us that we look within past language and scripture.
Comments