Misconceptions about buddhism

I have met enough people with misconceptions about Buddhism that drive me to write about this article about my understanding on this subject. Back since the days I was researching myself about the “Creator God”, I was researching Buddhism as well.

Here goes.

1. Buddhism is NOT a religion, its more like a philosophy of life

Contrary to what many people believes, there is no “god” in Buddhism. If you read the ORIGINAL scriptures, there was never any mention of a conscious highest being in the world. Rather, the highest being was regarded as nature (non conscious, non judging) itself. The Indian prince who started Buddhism, he is gone forever. He did not become an immortal or something. He became a “Buddha”, which merely means he is enlightened, but that won't make you an immortal, just a very happy man due to enlightenment.

In fact, the scriptures discourage the practice of praying to idols. Like wooden carved statues or stone made idols. The reason is simple, Buddhism encourage you to THINK, and people who pray to idols tend to “leave everything to god/Buddha/miracles and believe all is going to be fine” and not use their brain to understand the ultimate source of suffering

2. Buddhism invites you to challenge his teachings.

Yes! It is stated in the scriptures actually. The reason is simple. Buddhism wants you to THINK, and not just follow blindly or repeat a verse inside the scriptures over and over again without knowing what it meant.

3. Buddha do not require you to go to temple and pray

Frankly speaking, nowhere in the ORIGINAL scripture will you see him saying, “build a temple in my name and worship me”.

In fact, the scriptures discourage the practice of praying to idols like wooden carved statues or stone made idols, for the very same reason I stated above. Buddhism encourage you to THINK, and people who pray to idols tend to “leave everything to god/Buddha/miracles and believe all is going to be fine” and not use their brain to understand the ultimate source of suffering.

4. Happiness through 100% understanding

What Buddha hope we achieve is very hard to attain by most human beings. To put it in a simple example:

Say one day, an enlightened man meets an enlightened lion. The man understands it is but nature for him to want to run away from the lion as it might eat him, as this is how the meat-eating lion is designed by nature to react.
If the lion fail to catch the man and eat him, the lion will not curse and treat the man as enemy, as the lion understands the man is just doing what he is designed to do. If the lion manages to catch the man and eat him, the man will not blame the lion, as this is how the lion is designed to do.

Thus, enlightenment is really a 100% understanding of how our world works and embraces it. However, Buddhism advocates more towards compassion towards everything in the world, including plants and animals. That is another higher level of enlightenment above my example. So in this higher level of enlightenment, the man will not even run but offer himself as food for the lion. As for the lion, it will force itself to be vegetarian instead.

5. Retribution, how it works

This is a very complicated theory in the scriptures, which till today, I have yet to fully understand because there is too many sub theories that branched out from the most original writing, and all those stories on 18 levels of hell did not help. But what I understand, just my very humble understanding, is this.

Because the “good” and “bad” in Buddhism is really very relative and most of the time, depends on one’s state of mind, education, upbringing etc, its hard to say whether a particular retribution is “good” or “bad”. Therefore it is more like
One’s conscience at work and what goes around comes around (watch “The butterfly effect”)

Buddhism spread from India to china, Japan, South east Asia etc etc in early days going thru many different cultures and many different explanation by people of all sorts, including clever people, ignorant people, greedy businessmen, ambitious politicians, therefore you see all sorts of different practices of Buddhism in many countries. The Indian prince must have foresaw with the education level of the general public at that time, to spread his words and at the same time, making them understood is impossible with all those that will twist his teachings for their own secret agenda. Therefore, he added the part that encourages people to challenge his teachings (which could already be twisted when it reached a particular person) and always have independent thought with 100% understanding on any matter.

These are about the most common misconception I heard from friends. Let me know if you have any questions, I am not the more knowledgeable “Buddhist” but I also want to hear counter arguments to help myself fully understand Buddhism thoroughly too.

-------------------

unproven theories of rolento

photography | film | theories | rolento