If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, "you belong in hell."

[snoopy369]

Purgatory is based on 'works' not based on 'faith'. As Jon says, if you are noncatholic you probably don't believe in purgatory, and you can avoid death through faith in Jesus' sacrifice to attain new life.

Forcefeeding children this line in a public school is wrong ... (Though forcefeeding children this thread on Apolyton is just funny...)

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Relion is junk. Don't believe it.

I know WalMart has a bad rep hereabouts, but I don't think there's any call to suggest that Relion is junk ... i'm sure they serve a need, somewhere ...

[Dinner]

BTW Baptists are the worst. They're the craziest of the lot and the always are attempting to force their religion on everyone else.

[General Ludd]

Re: If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, "you belong in hell."

Originally posted by aneeshm
Link




Nice to see tolerance being practiced in the classroom. I wish some Hindu or Buddhist in that class had told him that he'd be re-incarnated as a dog, for that was the way his karma was tending (slavishly following your religious master and all that).

Does buddhism / hinduism really teach a hierarchy of life forms - that (so-called) lower life forms are being punished and to be human is to be rewarded?

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I must say the Catholic view makes more sense and I say that as a guy who was raised nominally Protestant. So if everyone who ever lived goes to hell unless they accept Jesus as their personal savior then what happens to the millions of people who lived and died prior to the birth of Jesus? I guess they're all in hell but I must say a god would have to be an evil god to condemn everyone to hell without even giving them a chance to be saved. I mean it is crazy to say EVERYONE goes to hell unless Jesus is your savior but then not to send the savior for thousands of years knowing full well that everyone alive will then be sent to hell.

Relion is junk. Don't believe it.

Through Christ versus knowing of him and being a Christian. There are some groups who think that only Christians (only only true Christians like thme) will be saved.

But most see that it is ludicrous to beleive that people before Christ's birth weren't saved through Him. This is supported by letter's from Paul. Additionally, Paul supports (But agreeably not as clearly), the idea that those after Christ's birth can be saved through Him without being Christian.

JM

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, "you belong in

Originally posted by General Ludd


Does buddhism / hinduism really teach a hierarchy of life forms - that (so-called) lower life forms are being punished and to be human is to be rewarded?

Nope. It's not a punishment, it's an evolution. The same way that we all have to pass through stages in life, most of us have to pass through different births in order to learn life's lessons and to work out our karma.

And being human is not the ultimate reward, but it is the last stage - only a being in the human form can attain to enlightenment. Even though there are forms more subtle and higher than the human one (siddhas, yakshas, charanas, gandharvas, gods), only a human can free himself from the cycle of life and death and rebirth. Usually, once you incarnate as a human, you usually re-incarnate as a human, too, unless you forget some lesson.

The "reward" for good deeds in this life is the time spend by your soul in heaven, and the punishment is the time spent in hell, after which you are born again on this Earth.

[kittenOFchaos]

Many of my pupils are going to hell for being evil little sods

[Wernazuma III]

Re: Re: Re: If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, "you belon

Originally posted by aneeshm


Nope. It's not a punishment, it's an evolution. The same way that we all have to pass through stages in life, most of us have to pass through different births in order to learn life's lessons and to work out our karma.

And being human is not the ultimate reward, but it is the last stage - only a being in the human form can attain to enlightenment. Even though there are forms more subtle and higher than the human one (siddhas, yakshas, charanas, gandharvas, gods), only a human can free himself from the cycle of life and death and rebirth. Usually, once you incarnate as a human, you usually re-incarnate as a human, too, unless you forget some lesson.

The "reward" for good deeds in this life is the time spend by your soul in heaven, and the punishment is the time spent in hell, after which you are born again on this Earth.

Isn't, for hindus, the requirement rather to be a brahman than simply being a human? A casteless wouldn't be able to, right?

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: Re: Re: If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, "you b

Originally posted by Wernazuma III


Isn't, for hindus, the requirement rather to be a brahman than simply being a human? A casteless wouldn't be able to, right?

I don't know where these ridiculous ideas come from. There is no caste bar to God-realisation. Even a very superficial examination of Hindu philosophy makes this clear. Caste is not even mentioned by the philosophers - they consider it completely irrelevant.

Let me explain a bit more in detail. Usually, when a person wanted to become a spiritual seeker, he would renounce the world and commence the search for a realised guru, or teacher, who would guide him. Caste was relevant only for people who were attached to this world - the renunciate was not bound by the institutions of this world, and thus had no caste, no status, nothing at all.

Renunciation was an institution which was supported by society. The seeker would subsist on whatever food was gifted to him that day. This was to ensure that he would not become attached to the world.

There is a saying in India - do not seek the source of a river and a renunciate. It is supposed to mean that once a person has renounced the world, what status he occupied before the renunciation is irrelevant - a priest, a king, a merchant, a labourer, and an outcaste, all are at par once they have entered the renunciate order.

Once you have entered the order of monks and renunciates, that's it. All caste, wealth, status, everything disappears.

I can give many examples.

Consider this one:

During the long stay at Kasi, one morning Sankara was returning with his disciples from the temple of Visvesvara. An outcaste, leading four dogs, stood on the way. Sankara asked him to clear away from the path. But the outcaste did not move and asked Sankara, "From which, do you want and, what, to go where? Do you want this body, which has been similarly built out of food? Do you want one living consciousness to go away from another? What do you say, Oh! Learned Brahmin? Which do you want to differentiate; this body of matter or the living Chaitanya?"

Sankara was struck dumb at this, as the very purpose of all his teachings, that the Self alone is the sole Reality, had been summarised by the Chandala in a single verse. Sankara immediately understood the Vedantic purport of the Chandala's question and also conjectured that the Lord Himself had come in the form of a Chandala to test if Sankara had realised the truth that he had been teaching. He then uttered in reply, those immortal slokas which go by the name of "Manishapanchaka". These represent the high watermark of Sankara's teaching, where the consistency of a remorseless dialectician, Sankara declares, that he, who has realised the oneness of the Brahman, and he who has intuited the Truth of this doctrine, is fit to be even Sankara's master, even though he, be a Chandala or a high caste Brahmin by birth. Even as he was about to conclude the small poem, the outcaste and his dogs disappeared and Lord Visvanatha was seen above the place, blessing the Acharya.

Or take the example of the god-realised butcher (very low caste, according to the old orthodoxy, because he was the person who took life) in the Mahabharata:

A young Sannyâsin went to a forest; there he meditated, worshipped, and practiced Yoga for a long time. After years of hard work and practice, he was one day sitting under a tree, when some dry leaves fell upon his head. He looked up and saw a crow and a crane fighting on the top of the tree, which made him very angry. He said, "What! Dare you throw these dry leaves upon my head!" As with these words he angrily glanced at them, a flash of fire went out of his head — such was the Yogi's power — and burnt the birds to ashes. He was very glad, almost overjoyed at this development of power — he could burn the crow and the crane by a look.

After a time he had to go to the town to beg his bread. He went, stood at a door, and said, "Mother, give me food." A voice came from inside the house, "Wait a little, my son." The young man thought, "You wretched woman, how dare you make me wait! You do not know my power yet." While he was thinking thus the voice came again: "Boy, don't be thinking too much of yourself. Here is neither crow nor crane." He was astonished; still he had to wait. At last the woman came, and he fell at her feet and said, "Mother, how did you know that?" She said, "My boy, I do not know your Yoga or your practices. I am a common everyday woman. I made you wait because my husband is ill, and I was nursing him. All my life I have struggled to do my duty. When I was unmarried, I did my duty to my parents; now that I am married, I do my duty to my husband; that is all the Yoga I practice. But by doing my duty I have become illumined; thus I could read your thoughts and know what you had done in the forest. If you want to know something higher than this, go to the market of such and such a town where you will find a Vyâdha (The lowest class of people in India who used to live as hunters and butchers.) who will tell you something that you will be very glad to learn."

The Sannyasin thought, "Why should I go to that town and to a Vyadha?" But after what he had seen, his mind opened a little, so he went. When he came near the town, he found the market and there saw, at a distance, a big fat Vyadha cutting meat with big knives, talking and bargaining with different people. The young man said, "Lord help me! Is this the man from whom I am going to learn? He is the incarnation of a demon, if he is anything." In the meantime this man looked up and said, "O Swami, did that lady send you here? Take a seat until I have done my business." The Sannyasin thought, "What comes to me here?" He took his seat; the man went on with his work, and after he had finished he took his money and said to the Sannyasin, "Come sir, come to my home." On reaching home the Vyadha gave him a seat, saying, "Wait here," and went into the house. He then washed his old father and mother, fed them, and did all he could to please them, after which he came to the Sannyasin and said, "Now, sir, you have come here to see me; what can I do for you?"

The Sannyasin asked him a few questions about soul and about God, and the Vyadha gave him a lecture which forms a part of the Mahâbhârata, called the Vyâdha-Gitâ. It contains one of the highest flights of the Vedanta. When the Vyadha finished his teaching, the Sannyasin felt astonished. He said, "Why are you in that body? With such knowledge as yours why are you in a Vyadha's body, and doing such filthy, ugly work?" "My son," replied the Vyadha, "no duty is ugly, no duty is impure. My birth placed me in these circumstances and environments. In my boyhood I learnt the trade; I am unattached, and I try to do my duty well. I try to do my duty as a householder, and I try to do all I can to make my father and mother happy. I neither know your Yoga, nor have I become a Sannyasin, nor did I go out of the world into a forest; nevertheless, all that you have heard and seen has come to me through the unattached doing of the duty which belongs to my position."

Or the example of Vishwamitra, who was born a king but realised the title of Brahma-Rishi. Or the example of Krishna, who was God himself incarnated in the form of a cowherd. Or Janaka, another god-realised king.






I have a question for you - where did you get this idea that only Brahmins could realise God, in the Hindu scheme of things?

[Heresson]

argh, polish (or russian) baptist! scary.

anyway, it was clearly wrong, what was said.

Baptist do accent Jesus, yet, as non-catholics, they go to hell

[chequita guevara]

If hell is non-existence, they we are all going to hell, no matter how many good works you do or what you believe. Oblivion is our only destination. We are all going to die and be nothingness, forever.

[Ninot]

to Aneeshm for the non-India thread

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If hell is non-existence, they we are all going to hell, no matter how many good works you do or what you believe. Oblivion is our only destination. We are all going to die and be nothingness, forever.

[Kuciwalker]

Aneeshm is the last person who should be complaining about this.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Aneeshm is the last person who should be complaining about this.

seriously, this pales in comparison to the wacky hindu nationalistic terrorism that occours daily in india.