Wednesday, January 18, 2006

World Religions and tolerance

As a part of our community day this past friday. we visited the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya outside Fort Collins. This monument is a buddhist monument to human kindness. I learned alot about Buddhism and I think that it is not wholly incompatible with Christianity. A lot of my fellow community members did not appreciate the discussion. I was upset that they felt that by engaging in meditation at this retreat center, they were somehow being disloyal to God. My roommate Jeff's only comment was, "Where was God?" That is not the point! Buddhism is actually not a religion, but a way of viewing the world. There are actually alot of parallels between Buddhist attitudes and the Christian attitude of Grace. I am planning on researching this a bit more.
I feel like we could learn alot by just opening ourselves to new things. I always try to approach my world with the attitude, "know that you might be wrong". I just cannot understand people who think that they are right. Jeff was just so convinced that Christianity is the RIGHT WAY that he will not even entertain the idea that perhaps someone else might have a better idea. Sometimes I get accused of being a relativist, but really, I think that I am just enlightened.

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