Catholicism and Buddhism compared
The word "Catholicism" should indicate a sort of "universalism", in a religious sense, in reality there is no more sectarian and closed faith than this. I am not speaking of "Christianity" in the strict sense but of its deviated form managed by the Vatican and its Pope. Christianity could still have its dignity, in consideration of the Gnostic doctrine and the apocryphal gospels, while the papal dome is a simple apparatus of power that over the centuries has shown its true intentions: world domination.
Finally all the knots come to a head and the Vatican congregation has added thousands of knots. I refer not only to recent scandals, such as pedophilia or economic speculation, but to the innumerable faults accumulated over the centuries: doctrinal fictions, the sale of indulgences, the inequality between males and females, the persecution of heretics and witches, the prevarication and intimidation of the succumbed and frightened masses, obscurantism, holy wars, historical falsehoods about innumerable facts and people ... See for example the fable of the "legacy of Constantine", on the alleged donation of lands to the church of Rome.
The Donation of Constantine (Constitutum Constantini) was used by the Church to legalize alleged rights to territorial possessions and only in 1440 did Valla prove that this document was a forgery, even if it was necessary to wait until 1517 for its conclusions to be published; but only from non-Catholic circles, having been inserted by the Church - coincidentally - from 1559 in the index of prohibited books. A fake, therefore, today universally recognized as such, but lasting about 500 years. The foregoing to show that a fake, if well designed and defended indefinitely by those who know how to manipulate popular credulity, can resist for a long time.
The rest is under the eyes of all the repeated media pounding thanks to which many "truths" imposed by the propaganda are uncritically shared by the majority of the population, which does not even receive the echo of contrary thesis, often without adequate means of diffusion, when not even criminalized by the priests of "official truths".
Another example of falsification is the manipulation of the physical existence of Jesus, at least that described in the canonical gospels. Of course, everyone is free to think what they believe, but as far as the "story of Christ" is concerned, I agree with the researcher Luigi Cascioli (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Cascioli) who brought clear evidence on the historically dubious figure accepted however by the church. This for many reasons.
Between the Catholic mythology and that of many other religions, previous or contemporary, we note the absolute absence of references to Christ in the works of contemporary authors (the canonical Gospels were written and approved centuries after the alleged birth and death of Jesus) and yes they show obvious absurdities - logical, linguistic and geographical - in the Gospels themselves; attempts at falsification made by the Church by introducing references to the figure of Christ, with the evident purpose of documenting its existence. In the historical work "The Jewish Wars" by Flavio Giuseppe the author had not considered it appropriate to quote it, despite being a meticulous reporter of far less interesting events.
The only pairings that could be made with a hypothetical "Jewish messiah" - identifiable at least in part with the Catholic Jesus - are those referring to a master described in the Qumran Scrolls of the Essenes (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Storia_dei_manoscritti_di_Qumran), whose value is however denied by the church, although these documents are considered historically valid and genuine by respectable lay researchers.
Fedor Dostoevskij wrote: "Atheism is limited to preaching nothing, Catholicism goes further, and preaches a distorted Christ, a slandered and outraged Christ, a Christ who is the antithesis of the Son of God. Catholicism preaches the Antichrist , I assure you, I swear to you! This is my personal opinion and I know how much I suffered in realizing it! Roman Catholicism believes and proclaims that, without a temporal power capable of embracing the whole earth, the Church cannot exist ... "No possumus! No, Roman Catholicism is not a religion, it is the continuation of the Western Roman Empire. In Catholicism, in fact, everything is subordinated to this idea. The Pope took over the land, occupied a terrestrial throne, he took up the sword and surrounded himself with a following composed of lies, intrigues, impostures, fanaticism, superstitions and wickedness, in the hands of the Church of Rome, the most sacred, the most naive and the most just feelings people have become weapons. The Vatican has done all this for money, with the sole purpose of consolidating its earthly domain. And what is this if not the doctrine to the Antichrist? "
After so many lies unmasked by science and history it would seem that the Catholic religion has no escape and is simply destined to disappear into a smoky cloud of shame. Yet the millions of duped by the "faith", or for fear of hellish promises promised by the pope to non-believers, continue to follow the Catholic dictates, the commandments imposed in the form of a legal threat.
But here we should consider that the ethics imposed does not lead to any improvement in the level of individual and collective consciousness. The ecclesiastical norm that grants only to priests and prelates the religious management, making them "judges" and confessors of the sins of the people, have made secularism, secularism, a sort of lower category of human society. Secularism is a sin, says the pope, especially if it is true secularism, not that accepted by the church that would indicate the position of a member of religion but not ordained in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The Catholic deviations began by masking and denying the matrix of the Christian religion and they also continued after it. The rabbis were obliged to marry and so it will have been for the figure of Jesus. In the first centuries after Christ the priests were regularly married then the obligation of celibacy took over for the sole purpose of maintaining the wealth accumulated by the church, which otherwise would have been dispersed to the carnal heirs. Hence the tendency of Catholic priests to satisfy their desires with young confreres.
The consequence of this "unnatural" rule of priestly celibacy is what we see today in the form of pedophilia and homophilia inside the church. The prelates maintain a facade of chastity by ensuring that sexual needs are met with the same members of the church (and every day we read the news on all media).
But the cause of all this, or the need to "preserve the riches inside the church" began when the Roman Empire, for purely political reasons, established religious unity under the aegis of Christianity, and the rule of celibacy to the clergy was a way not to disperse the properties that the papacy was amassing. The Roman papacy, among other things, is also a late institution with respect to the formation of Christianity. At first the bishop of Rome was elected by all the faithful, in democratic form, and was not recognized as head of the whole of Christianity. Later it became a "royal" position sanctioned by the high prelates, or church princes.
In truth the pope of Rome replaced the emperor of Rome and to guarantee continuity there should have been no internal family diatribes, the pope was elected in a context of celibates. This system, excellent from the point of view of the maintenance of the Entity, is absolutely harmful instead for the preservation of spiritual values, basing its doctrine on the simple concept of "sin".
In this regard said Osho: "Religious thought is the key to human failure ... Religious preachers have convinced the whole world:" You are sinners! "And this is good for them, because if you were not convinced their business did not You may be a sinner, only in this way will churches continue to exist. Your staying in the sense of sin is their good "season", your guilt is the foundation of the most powerful churches, the more guilty you feel and the more churches will continue to consolidate themselves. They are built on your faults, on your sin, on your inferiority complex. Thus they have created an inferior humanity. "
But let us leave these considerations aside, which could continue indefinitely, since it is now clear that Catholicism is absolutely not spiritual values or universal love. The true spirituality in Catholicism is opposed and often denied, see for example the persecutions against innovators like Giordano Bruno or Tommaso Campanella.
For the pope secular spirituality is a heresy to be fought with anathemas and denunciations of deviation, behaving like the mischievous midwife who throws the newborn along with the placenta and hot water.
In Buddhism, on the other hand, there are no doctrinal indications comparable to our commandments, the most important thing is instead to save the "child", that is the human being from ignorance and suffering. In Buddhism the only concession that is made to the existence of a "god" is in the form of a compensation power inherent in the law of cause and effect. He is therefore described as the neutral dispenser of karmic retribution. The belief in a "creator and lord god" propagated by monolatric religions, such as Catholicism, is both a consolation to one's hypothetical inferiority (with respect to our perceiving ourselves as particles present in the world) and a functional speculative thought to the separative lusion. In truth the "Sunya" or Absolute is an inseparable whole and as in a hologram every single particle contains that Whole in an integral way. This is also true in a logical sense since the Whole can never be split, even though it manifests itself in apparent differences.
Indeed even when we believe we are a part and separated from the Whole we cannot help affirming it through the consciousness that is the root of our feeling and the only proof of our existence. This consciousness is a common characteristic of every living form and is inherent in nature itself. In fieri, or in latency, in the so-called inorganic material and in evidence in the organic forms, that of the matter are a biochemical transformation. And it is precisely in this Consciousness - better to call it Awareness - that manifestation takes shape and therefore becomes a sensory experience. And this Consciousness, as a natural expression of the Absolute, is unique and indivisible, it represents the true reality of every being. Be it a hypothetical "god" or an amoeba or a germ or a stone ...
Buddha can therefore be defined as a true "lay person", he married and also had a son. And both the mother and father of the Buddha that his wife and son followed in his footsteps thus demonstrating that celibacy is useless, what is needed is sincerity and honesty in spiritual pursuit. Love does not mean the annulment of human relations but the elevation of them.
The purpose of Buddhism is to help people overcome "suffering". Buddhism is fundamentally a life practice with the aim of reducing and eventually erasing the suffering due to emotional and intellectual attachment. But the ultimate reality cannot be described and a "god" is not the ultimate reality. This is why in Buddhism there is no talk of believing or worshiping a "god", but there are indications of how to rediscover one's true spiritual nature, merging into universal consciousness.
Everyone has the power to reach awakening within himself. It is therefore a matter of becoming what we already are: "Look inside yourself: you are a Buddha".
"Happiness without desires. The mind is the source of all happiness, the creator of all good intentions, or, if misused, the generator of all misfortunes. In Buddhist view, judgment is not the highest faculty, and the mind that produces it is not the 'ultimate principle'. Behind the mind there is a neutral, judgmentless gaze that observes the incessant movement of thought.The spiritual practice consists in trying to focus on reality from the point of view of that neutral look ... "(Dalai Lama)
There have been many Buddhas, the Dalai Lama - for example - is considered a manifestation of the Buddha, and many will still be there. Buddhism does not recognize any authority to ascertain the truth, except the intuition of the individual. Everyone must suffer the consequences of their actions and learn from them, while helping their fellows to achieve the same liberation. Buddhist adepts are masters, not in the classical sense, they serve as an example but in no way are they intermediaries between ultimate reality and the person.
Maximum tolerance is practiced towards every other religion and philosophy, because nobody has the right to interfere in the journey of his neighbor towards the goal. Buddhism is a system of thought, a spiritual science and an art of living, reasonable and practical and all-encompassing. For two thousand five hundred years it has satisfied the spiritual needs of about one third of humanity. It has a fascination for the West because it has no dogmas, it satisfies both reason and the heart, insists on the need to rely on oneself and to be tolerant of other people's opinions, embraces science, philosophy, psychology, ethics and art, believes that man is the creator of his current life and the author of his own destiny.
Therefore Buddhism cannot be considered as a religion in the strict sense, since it lacks the idea of a "god-person" and therefore of a theology. Its fundamental assumptions are similar to those of many other secular and "mystical" spiritual paths developed in every part of the world and in every historical epoch.
Buddha had founded his community for about two centuries at the time of the arrival of the Macedonian Phalanges in the Indus valley, while the memory of the "Veda" the sacred books of Hinduism was already millennial, and indeed the Buddhist teaching is not it differs from the Mahavakya (great declarations) of the Upanishads.
Buddhism is based on the belief that suffering and bad-to-exist derive precisely from the false dualistic notion and from the attachment to the illusion of an individual and collective identity.
Desire and suffering are intrinsically connected and Buddhism tends to the extinction of individuality, to the unmasking of the illusory nature.
"Those who cling a to the mind does not see the truth that lies beyond the mind. Whoever strives to practice Dharma does not find the truth that is beyond practice. To know what is beyond both the mind and the practice, we need to cut the root of the mind and look naked; we must abandon all distinctions and remain calm. "(Tilopa)
Paolo D'Arpini
Finally all the knots come to a head and the Vatican congregation has added thousands of knots. I refer not only to recent scandals, such as pedophilia or economic speculation, but to the innumerable faults accumulated over the centuries: doctrinal fictions, the sale of indulgences, the inequality between males and females, the persecution of heretics and witches, the prevarication and intimidation of the succumbed and frightened masses, obscurantism, holy wars, historical falsehoods about innumerable facts and people ... See for example the fable of the "legacy of Constantine", on the alleged donation of lands to the church of Rome.
The Donation of Constantine (Constitutum Constantini) was used by the Church to legalize alleged rights to territorial possessions and only in 1440 did Valla prove that this document was a forgery, even if it was necessary to wait until 1517 for its conclusions to be published; but only from non-Catholic circles, having been inserted by the Church - coincidentally - from 1559 in the index of prohibited books. A fake, therefore, today universally recognized as such, but lasting about 500 years. The foregoing to show that a fake, if well designed and defended indefinitely by those who know how to manipulate popular credulity, can resist for a long time.
The rest is under the eyes of all the repeated media pounding thanks to which many "truths" imposed by the propaganda are uncritically shared by the majority of the population, which does not even receive the echo of contrary thesis, often without adequate means of diffusion, when not even criminalized by the priests of "official truths".
Another example of falsification is the manipulation of the physical existence of Jesus, at least that described in the canonical gospels. Of course, everyone is free to think what they believe, but as far as the "story of Christ" is concerned, I agree with the researcher Luigi Cascioli (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Cascioli) who brought clear evidence on the historically dubious figure accepted however by the church. This for many reasons.
Between the Catholic mythology and that of many other religions, previous or contemporary, we note the absolute absence of references to Christ in the works of contemporary authors (the canonical Gospels were written and approved centuries after the alleged birth and death of Jesus) and yes they show obvious absurdities - logical, linguistic and geographical - in the Gospels themselves; attempts at falsification made by the Church by introducing references to the figure of Christ, with the evident purpose of documenting its existence. In the historical work "The Jewish Wars" by Flavio Giuseppe the author had not considered it appropriate to quote it, despite being a meticulous reporter of far less interesting events.
The only pairings that could be made with a hypothetical "Jewish messiah" - identifiable at least in part with the Catholic Jesus - are those referring to a master described in the Qumran Scrolls of the Essenes (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Storia_dei_manoscritti_di_Qumran), whose value is however denied by the church, although these documents are considered historically valid and genuine by respectable lay researchers.
Fedor Dostoevskij wrote: "Atheism is limited to preaching nothing, Catholicism goes further, and preaches a distorted Christ, a slandered and outraged Christ, a Christ who is the antithesis of the Son of God. Catholicism preaches the Antichrist , I assure you, I swear to you! This is my personal opinion and I know how much I suffered in realizing it! Roman Catholicism believes and proclaims that, without a temporal power capable of embracing the whole earth, the Church cannot exist ... "No possumus! No, Roman Catholicism is not a religion, it is the continuation of the Western Roman Empire. In Catholicism, in fact, everything is subordinated to this idea. The Pope took over the land, occupied a terrestrial throne, he took up the sword and surrounded himself with a following composed of lies, intrigues, impostures, fanaticism, superstitions and wickedness, in the hands of the Church of Rome, the most sacred, the most naive and the most just feelings people have become weapons. The Vatican has done all this for money, with the sole purpose of consolidating its earthly domain. And what is this if not the doctrine to the Antichrist? "
After so many lies unmasked by science and history it would seem that the Catholic religion has no escape and is simply destined to disappear into a smoky cloud of shame. Yet the millions of duped by the "faith", or for fear of hellish promises promised by the pope to non-believers, continue to follow the Catholic dictates, the commandments imposed in the form of a legal threat.
But here we should consider that the ethics imposed does not lead to any improvement in the level of individual and collective consciousness. The ecclesiastical norm that grants only to priests and prelates the religious management, making them "judges" and confessors of the sins of the people, have made secularism, secularism, a sort of lower category of human society. Secularism is a sin, says the pope, especially if it is true secularism, not that accepted by the church that would indicate the position of a member of religion but not ordained in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The Catholic deviations began by masking and denying the matrix of the Christian religion and they also continued after it. The rabbis were obliged to marry and so it will have been for the figure of Jesus. In the first centuries after Christ the priests were regularly married then the obligation of celibacy took over for the sole purpose of maintaining the wealth accumulated by the church, which otherwise would have been dispersed to the carnal heirs. Hence the tendency of Catholic priests to satisfy their desires with young confreres.
The consequence of this "unnatural" rule of priestly celibacy is what we see today in the form of pedophilia and homophilia inside the church. The prelates maintain a facade of chastity by ensuring that sexual needs are met with the same members of the church (and every day we read the news on all media).
But the cause of all this, or the need to "preserve the riches inside the church" began when the Roman Empire, for purely political reasons, established religious unity under the aegis of Christianity, and the rule of celibacy to the clergy was a way not to disperse the properties that the papacy was amassing. The Roman papacy, among other things, is also a late institution with respect to the formation of Christianity. At first the bishop of Rome was elected by all the faithful, in democratic form, and was not recognized as head of the whole of Christianity. Later it became a "royal" position sanctioned by the high prelates, or church princes.
In truth the pope of Rome replaced the emperor of Rome and to guarantee continuity there should have been no internal family diatribes, the pope was elected in a context of celibates. This system, excellent from the point of view of the maintenance of the Entity, is absolutely harmful instead for the preservation of spiritual values, basing its doctrine on the simple concept of "sin".
In this regard said Osho: "Religious thought is the key to human failure ... Religious preachers have convinced the whole world:" You are sinners! "And this is good for them, because if you were not convinced their business did not You may be a sinner, only in this way will churches continue to exist. Your staying in the sense of sin is their good "season", your guilt is the foundation of the most powerful churches, the more guilty you feel and the more churches will continue to consolidate themselves. They are built on your faults, on your sin, on your inferiority complex. Thus they have created an inferior humanity. "
But let us leave these considerations aside, which could continue indefinitely, since it is now clear that Catholicism is absolutely not spiritual values or universal love. The true spirituality in Catholicism is opposed and often denied, see for example the persecutions against innovators like Giordano Bruno or Tommaso Campanella.
For the pope secular spirituality is a heresy to be fought with anathemas and denunciations of deviation, behaving like the mischievous midwife who throws the newborn along with the placenta and hot water.
In Buddhism, on the other hand, there are no doctrinal indications comparable to our commandments, the most important thing is instead to save the "child", that is the human being from ignorance and suffering. In Buddhism the only concession that is made to the existence of a "god" is in the form of a compensation power inherent in the law of cause and effect. He is therefore described as the neutral dispenser of karmic retribution. The belief in a "creator and lord god" propagated by monolatric religions, such as Catholicism, is both a consolation to one's hypothetical inferiority (with respect to our perceiving ourselves as particles present in the world) and a functional speculative thought to the separative lusion. In truth the "Sunya" or Absolute is an inseparable whole and as in a hologram every single particle contains that Whole in an integral way. This is also true in a logical sense since the Whole can never be split, even though it manifests itself in apparent differences.
Indeed even when we believe we are a part and separated from the Whole we cannot help affirming it through the consciousness that is the root of our feeling and the only proof of our existence. This consciousness is a common characteristic of every living form and is inherent in nature itself. In fieri, or in latency, in the so-called inorganic material and in evidence in the organic forms, that of the matter are a biochemical transformation. And it is precisely in this Consciousness - better to call it Awareness - that manifestation takes shape and therefore becomes a sensory experience. And this Consciousness, as a natural expression of the Absolute, is unique and indivisible, it represents the true reality of every being. Be it a hypothetical "god" or an amoeba or a germ or a stone ...
Buddha can therefore be defined as a true "lay person", he married and also had a son. And both the mother and father of the Buddha that his wife and son followed in his footsteps thus demonstrating that celibacy is useless, what is needed is sincerity and honesty in spiritual pursuit. Love does not mean the annulment of human relations but the elevation of them.
The purpose of Buddhism is to help people overcome "suffering". Buddhism is fundamentally a life practice with the aim of reducing and eventually erasing the suffering due to emotional and intellectual attachment. But the ultimate reality cannot be described and a "god" is not the ultimate reality. This is why in Buddhism there is no talk of believing or worshiping a "god", but there are indications of how to rediscover one's true spiritual nature, merging into universal consciousness.
Everyone has the power to reach awakening within himself. It is therefore a matter of becoming what we already are: "Look inside yourself: you are a Buddha".
"Happiness without desires. The mind is the source of all happiness, the creator of all good intentions, or, if misused, the generator of all misfortunes. In Buddhist view, judgment is not the highest faculty, and the mind that produces it is not the 'ultimate principle'. Behind the mind there is a neutral, judgmentless gaze that observes the incessant movement of thought.The spiritual practice consists in trying to focus on reality from the point of view of that neutral look ... "(Dalai Lama)
There have been many Buddhas, the Dalai Lama - for example - is considered a manifestation of the Buddha, and many will still be there. Buddhism does not recognize any authority to ascertain the truth, except the intuition of the individual. Everyone must suffer the consequences of their actions and learn from them, while helping their fellows to achieve the same liberation. Buddhist adepts are masters, not in the classical sense, they serve as an example but in no way are they intermediaries between ultimate reality and the person.
Maximum tolerance is practiced towards every other religion and philosophy, because nobody has the right to interfere in the journey of his neighbor towards the goal. Buddhism is a system of thought, a spiritual science and an art of living, reasonable and practical and all-encompassing. For two thousand five hundred years it has satisfied the spiritual needs of about one third of humanity. It has a fascination for the West because it has no dogmas, it satisfies both reason and the heart, insists on the need to rely on oneself and to be tolerant of other people's opinions, embraces science, philosophy, psychology, ethics and art, believes that man is the creator of his current life and the author of his own destiny.
Therefore Buddhism cannot be considered as a religion in the strict sense, since it lacks the idea of a "god-person" and therefore of a theology. Its fundamental assumptions are similar to those of many other secular and "mystical" spiritual paths developed in every part of the world and in every historical epoch.
Buddha had founded his community for about two centuries at the time of the arrival of the Macedonian Phalanges in the Indus valley, while the memory of the "Veda" the sacred books of Hinduism was already millennial, and indeed the Buddhist teaching is not it differs from the Mahavakya (great declarations) of the Upanishads.
Buddhism is based on the belief that suffering and bad-to-exist derive precisely from the false dualistic notion and from the attachment to the illusion of an individual and collective identity.
Desire and suffering are intrinsically connected and Buddhism tends to the extinction of individuality, to the unmasking of the illusory nature.
"Those who cling a to the mind does not see the truth that lies beyond the mind. Whoever strives to practice Dharma does not find the truth that is beyond practice. To know what is beyond both the mind and the practice, we need to cut the root of the mind and look naked; we must abandon all distinctions and remain calm. "(Tilopa)
Paolo D'Arpini