About
Bodhi Buddha
. I began constructing this site in March of 2008 as a way to chronicle and help myself and others studying Buddhism. I have always been interested in Buddhism and studied many aspects in a very informal manner. It was not until I let myself let go that I was able to truly learn.
I was born into a Spanish/Irish Catholic family. I was raised in the Catholic faith but I always had questions that I felt the religion could not answer and instead of just saying “we don’t know” they came up with a concept and called in faith. If you did not believe everything then you just didn’t have faith and thus were a bad Catholic. Welcome to the guilt.
Really my major objection with the religion came in about second grade when we were learning about reconciliation. This is where you go and confess your sins to a priest and he tells you to do something in order to make right what you had done. In class I had a question, “if a person lead a respectful life but was not catholic and never believed in Jesus Christ nor confessed their sins would they still go to hell?”
I came up with this question because in my non religious after school care program we had recently read a story of a young man in Asia who was wealthy and was always giving away his stuff to people who needed it. One day the Gods looking down decided that he only gave away his stuff because he had enough and if he had less then he would not be so nice. They decided to test the young wealthy Asian man. So at night the Gods took many things. The next morning the young man awoke to find some of his belongings missing. The young man came to the conclusion that people had need things but were too embarrassed to ask so they just came and took them during the night. This same pattern repeated itself for many nights until one morning the young man awoke to find all of his things gone. Now each morning that he awoke to find things gone he always had the same idea, that people had needed things during the night and couldn’t ask him for them. This morning that he awoke to find nothing in his house he came to the same conclusion. As he had nothing in his house and nothing to eat he decided that he should go out and work in the fields. So he went out and worked. He worked very hard. He used what he needed that day and then gave the rest away. The Gods were dumbfounded. They had taken everything yet this man would not change. He was still the same nice and giving young man.
I don’t remember what this story was called but I really liked it. I thought to myself “no surely this guy was the epitome of a good person. “ I only wished that I too could be that strong one day. So I brought that story to our class and asked if this young Asian man would go to heaven. I was waiting for the teacher to reply, “oh yes, this man is a great man and you have found such a great story, wonderful.” I was waiting cause if she agreed that would mean that I really understood the purpose of this religion thing. To my surprise she replied that no this young man who I thought was the epitome of good was not going to heaven, he was going to hell because he believed in multiple Gods, he did not believe that Jesus died for our sins on the cross as the son of God, he did not go to church, he did not complete any of the sacraments… and she went on and on about all the stuff he did not do.
Yet I thought all of the things the he did not do were not that important. I thought the whole point was to be a decent, respectable, good person. I mean you could go to church every week and yet be a complete asshole to the other human beings around you. And believe me in the following years that I would be pulled to mass by my parents I saw it; these alleged pillars of the religious community being such assholes about silly stuff like a parking spot.
Right so the point I came up with was that weather or not you believe Jesus Christ to be the savior/son of God, a prophet, a common man, or just some fictional character made up in order to spread wisdom, his teachings are still the same. His image many times interferes with what he was trying to say, it even drastically has divided us as Homo sapiens and has been the reason for much bloodshed and violence. I would like to think that if he were alive today and were the all knowing type he would say “ya’ll have totally missed the boat on this one.”
