Buddha please can you help do you place your ...

Hi Isobel:

To pray, you can think of calling Buddha and pray for your wish to come true.  Whatever luck you need, visualize that Buddha appear in front of you in the air,  blessing you with very brilliant white light toward you and your wish (whoever concerning your wish, people and places), visualize that Buddha bless on your wish to come true, visualize that white light enter your body, turn all the bad luck into dark vapor, leave your body throught the skin poles.  White light keep coming in, and dark negative energy leave your body, your whole body rediate great white light, full of possitive energy.  Frequently do this visualization, will help you with a lot of osticle and prayer in your life.  I hope this help.  :)

This is pathetic, naive superstition.  How do you like your green cheese - on a glass plate or on fine china with unicorns and stars on it?

Buddha is not a "god" but a representation of the SELF achieving enlightenment leading to Nirvana.  Buddha is not an entity or a god that brings you luck or anything else.   The elaborate structure of behaviours that arise out of Buddhist ethics, especially respect for all living things, is benign and if people generally followed this, we'd have a more peaceful world.

Silence's posting visualizing white light dispelling negative energy also reflects a very self-centred focus -  "it's all about ME".   Buddhism may be benign, and certainly compared with (say) Islam it is, but it would be much more benign if it were OUTWARD focused as well - focusing on yourself in relation to community and society,  and fostering altruistic behaviour for their own sake rather than as the intellectual outcome of what is essentially utilitarian humanism.

Isobel suggests "you can think of calling Buddha and pray for your wish to come true".  But there is no Buddha - Buddhism has no sentient, conscious, interventionist God at all.  So the suggestion is meaningless except as a device for marshalling your own, internal, resources of quietness and WILL.

David T-

Regarding your last comment.

Here is a very interesting quote from a very interesting source:

Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home.

- Tibetan Book of the Dead

An additional point to remember is that, no matter what your faith or belief, compassion for others and their way of belief is a sign of an elevated heart/mind.

How do we define "superstition"?  We with our human eyes do not see "God" nor "Buddha", how do we know the existence of "God" or "Buddha"?   To my understanding, it is the belief of oneself, or even clearer, it is the affinity of oneself toward their own feeling of "God" or "Buddha".  Since Isobel called for help in the name of "Buddha", I believe that Isobel believe in Buddha.

Buddhism teaches the existence of previous life, present life and next life; cause & effect; the existence of possitive karma and negative karma, as those have been transmitted from one life to the next.  It is due to negative karma / sin, that all the unplesant thing happen, for example bad luck.  To deal with negative karma, we can increase the possitive karma by doing a lot of good deeds, which is physically.  Where as spiritually, visualization of white light is the way.

I personally don't see "visualizing white light dispelling negative energy" reflects a very self-centred focus - and "it's all about ME".   Because I believe once every each individual has light inside of oneself, with all the possible possitive energy, the whole community will be all in light and being in possitive position.  Besides, it would be even wonderful if every each individual think of light shining toward the whole community or the whole world, not just on oneself.  Sorry for English isn't my 1st language.  I hope you understand.

I don't know much about Buddhism. I don't know that I ever met anyone who believes thus.

But I know a lot about religious intolerance. The Christians consider Buddhism to be idolatry; which is to say the worship of objects.

Of course, they have their crosses, icons, fancy statuary and books. I see many of them wearing shiny metal crosses in the manner of a necklace: is this anything more than a magical amulet?

They look askance at ancestor worship, which is a whopping big deal to many cultures; yet they venerate saints and other long-dead shamans of their faith.

If I am not mistaken, Buddhism venerates life. The 'big three' monotheisms venerate death. You will find the very same statuary mentioned above in their cemeteries.

The Muslims venerate a rock. No amount of Islamist mumbo-jumbo alters this fact.

They do not look to improve the lot of Man in THIS world. They look forward to some mystical cloud city: they are obsessed with some sort of survival of natural death in a 'better land' than this.

Death, death, death.

I don't know what difference a Buddha totem facing one way or the other would actually make. If it has actual power I would think possession of the object would be enough. But if it is a comfort to place it this way or that then by all means do so.

Dear Ahau Kin:

I agree that religious intolerance is painful.  I'm a Christian but have to take issue with you on just a few things:

1. As an educated Christian I don't consider Buddhism idolatry, because I think the statues are representations of an idea rather than a physical thing worshipped.  Catholics would say the same about statues of the Virgin Mary, and Orthodox say the same about icons.  Most Protestants aren't keen on statues, and some of them consider them verging on the idolatrous.  I think Russian Orthodoxy has embodied a lot of the same sort of quasi-idolatry in the veneration of particular icons too.  Certainly,  in the history of sectarianism within the church, there has a lot of name-calling about statues. 

2. Some Christians (cultural Christians, not well educated ones) may wear a cross as a sort of amulet.  That is theologically unsound if they think IT will protect them.  Undoubtedly in the past many Catholics had that mindset with their (superstitious) Saint Christophers in cars, etc.   Wearing a cross is much more a profession of faith .  On a trip to Tibet and China two years ago I wore a cross (which i don't usually do) specifically as a talking point .   Unfortunately, for some people these days, including many who never go near a church, a cross is just a fashion accessory - same as pentagrams and New Age stuff (like the Egyptian Ankh) are for others. 

3. Many Christians do NOT venerate saints.  Evangelical Protestants don't.  There is a great difference between respecting and admiring past Good People as examples to be emulated, and attributing to them miraculous powers, including powers of intercession.

4. Buddhism certainly DOES venerate life.  Its whole philosophy (better word than theology) is an elaborate intellectual structure designed to guide behaviour in the present life in a way that is benign and wholesome.

5.  Christianity ALSO venerates life , and I mean THIS life and not just the next.  Jesus said "I came that they might have life, and have it to the full."  He meant that if you internalize (follow) his teachings, your quality of life in the here and now would be much better - quite apart from the promise of eternal life.   In contrast, Islam places a very low value on life in the here and now;  in fact it does a hell of a lot to make present life thoroughly miserable, especially (but not only) for women.   All the pernicious Islamic theology about jihad and 70 virgins in the next life (in strange contradiction of Islam's sick hangups about sex in the present life!) comes from a disdain for the value of the present life.  Islam makes Allah into a pimp running a brothel for murderers - and what sort of life in the hereafter does he consign the poor women to?  What an evil, satanic cult!