alanbwt on Nostr: “Buddhism is a way of liberation instead of a religion. And we can see the ...

“Buddhism is a way of liberation instead of a religion. And we can see the difference most effectively if we look at Buddhism and Christianity with regard to their different social functions. A religion like Christianity serves the social function of cementing a community together, giving that community its laws, its principles of ethics, and its common objectives. The function of Buddhism, on the other hand, as a way of liberation, is as it were to provide a cure for the inevitable ill effects of making the conventions of a community too strong, making the bonds of a community too strong.”

— Alan Watts, Buddhism and Christianity

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note1les…rw79

“In the beginning, there was God who created the world. But through the evil one, and through the fall of man, the world fell away from the perfection in which he made it. To restore it to that perfection, God the Son himself entered into the world and became man in the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and took upon himself all the tragedy, all the evil, and all the suffering of the world in the act of being crucified. And in doing this, he, as it were, united the divine nature and the divine power with death itself, in such a way as to transform death. He rose from the dead and founded a church. Note this. He founded a community, and this community has as its purpose, as it were, the bringing together of the whole universe back to the sovereignty of God. So, it is a historical religion, looking for its fulfillment in the course of time. But in the end, its objective is to put God, or to acknowledge God rather than put him, as ruler of the universe.”

— Alan Watts, Buddhism and Christianity