Buddhism

Leading the Sunday School discussion about Buddhism went OK, but mainly because nobody much came, and, of those that came, nobody much cared. Maybe that's not fair of me. Seeing that the actual point of the book is that one cannot worship God using any of the 8 major religions interchangeably because 7 of them are wrong, this is probably the kind of chapter on Buddhism, one should expect. It made a very serious religion seem laughable, though. He really didn't seem to try to understand, or to present the belief in a balanced manner. He also chose to use inflammatory language when talking about the religion, for instance, he uses the term "fairy tale" to talk about some of the "old testament" Buddhist stories. Would he call "Noah's ark" a. fairy tale?

I got to tell my favorite Buddhist teaching, though. It is that a monk goes to the Master and asks, "Master, what must I do to attain enlightenment?", and the Master pulls out a sword and cuts off the monk's arm!

Having taken 4 or 5 classes in Buddhism about 30 years ago, that story actually makes a vague sort of sense to me. The real reason I remember it, though, is because I used to hang around the "Green Room" in the Culbreth Theater between classes and study, and this was one of the stories I read out loud to the other drama majors who were hanging around, and they all just hooted.