Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
Daveyboy...as with all other theist practises you should know better than to lump all Buddhists in the same pile. You seem to count your particular Buddhist version as the true Buddhism yet discount one of the oldest versions known...Yes its the Tibetan version...you know the one with Dalai Lama? I would hazard a guess that the DL may be the most famous of all worldwide Buddhists.
Christians hate lumping Catholics or Mormons into their fold...but guess what...they are part of the Christian fold like it or not.
Tibbetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is a religion in exile, forced from its homeland when Tibet was conquered by the Chinese. At one time it was thought that 1 in 6 Tibetan men were Buddhist monks. The best known face of Tibetan Buddhism is the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since he fled Chinese occupation of his country in 1959.
Tibetan Buddhism combines the essential teachings of Mahayana Buddhism with Tantric and Shamanic, and material from an ancient Tibetan religion called Bon.
But like I said earlier...IF I chose to follow a religion I would probably choose Buddhism. |
Tibetan Buddhism is actually one of the newer versions of ethnic Buddhism. The oldest would be Theravada, which could probably be translated as "school of the elders".
I agree with you Tibetan Buddhism is very influenced by Bon (which I said) it is also influenced by Daoism among other things.
I stand by the claim that Buddhism, especially in its Theravada and Mahayana form is a non-theistic religion.
Buddha never said there wasn't a God or there was a god. It's irrelevent to ending Dukkha (suffering) and acheieving Nibana (englightenment). The Buddha was a non-theist and I'm quite confident that the majority of Buddhists and religious studies profs. would agree that Budddhism was a non-theistic religion.