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发帖数: 2737 | 1 http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aiia/aiia-buddhism-harris.htm
I came to the Buddhist path as a seeker. I was skeptical about religious
claims, but felt a deep void in my life. I yearned for meaning and truth in
a unpredictable and often hostile world. In Buddhism, I thought I had found
what I was searching for.
Buddhists has never started a war. There was never a Buddhist Inquisition.
They emphasized wisdom, compassion, lovingkindness, and personal
transformation. And they certainly never threatened me with eternity in a
lake of fire.
But it was not meant to be. That deep void in my life? It was what has often
been described as a “God-shaped vacuum”—the emptiness that only God can
fill. We are His creation, made in His image. He intends for us to have a
relationship with Him and, when we are without Him, we feel empty and alone.
No matter how long I meditated or what teachings I read, I could not fill
this emptiness in my life. For in Buddhism, there is no sovereign, loving
Creator.
True, some Buddhists purport to believe in a god, or in a realm of higher
beings called devas. Others pray to statues of Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama).
But as a whole, Buddhism is not a theistic religion. It has a law—the law
of karma—but no lawgiver.
According to the Buddhist worldview, all beings accumulate karma based on
their actions, and karma dictates their life circumstances. When a person
dies, the karma accumulated in that lifetime (and all previous lives)
determines his or her lot in the next life.
To many Buddhists, this means that a person born into a wealthy family has
good karma, while someone who lives in a poor, disease-infested village
would have accumulated negative karma.
Buddhists believe karma keeps one trapped in an endless cycle of death and
rebirth (samsara), and the only way out is through enlightenment. To become
enlightened, one has to eliminate desire. Buddha taught that desire is the
root of suffering; that it causes attachment, which leads to suffering, and
in turn causes other beings to suffer. This produces negative karma. If one
eliminates desire and stops causing suffering, one can become enlightened,
as he had.
But eventually I began to question. Who or what had set this law of karma in
motion? Who judged these beings' actions and sentenced them to another life
of pain? Why were beings punished for actions they would be unable to
remember? Was desire always a bad thing? Wasn't the desire for enlightenment
still desire? If so, how could one ever attain enlightenment?
So I strayed from the Buddhist path, the emptiness within me greater than
before. I began to examine the claims of Jesus of Nazareth in a new light,
laying aside the biases and prejudices that had caused me to dismiss Him as
merely a “great human teacher.” The more I searched, the more I came to
believe that there was a sovereign God who loved me and that Jesus was who
He claimed to be—the Son of Man, fully human and fully God. I accepted
Christ into my heart.
In doing so, I now feel that I've found true enlightenment—through a
personal relationship with my Creator.
What's more, I discovered that what I had sought through the Buddhist path—
wisdom, compassion, and lovingkindness—were found in the life and teachings
of Jesus Christ. The supreme act of compassion was His sacrifice on the
cross—that while we were still sinners, He died for us.
No human alive could ever demonstrate this kind of unselfish, unconditional
love. No human can match God's divine mercy and lovingkindness, no matter
how long we meditate or what books we've read. Yet we must try, for when we
receive Christ, we become a new creation and begin the process of becoming
Christ-like. The apostle John wrote. “He who says he abides in Him ought
himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:6, NKJV).
If this kind of personal transformation is not enlightenment, I do not know
what is. To me, having a personal relationship with God and the assurance of
salvation brings true peace. And it's ours if we but ask for it! |
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