Dali Llama? (Buddhism, reincarnation, atheist, Christianity, Christians)

[Aupmanyav]

Originally Posted by anders

I'm not very fond of "offshoot" explanations.

You may not be very fond of 'offshoot' explanation, but what do we do about history and beliefs which are hardly any different. True, the explanation of afterlife in Buddhism is different and jumbled. Even buddhists cannot explain it satisfactorily. There were many atheistic streams in Hinduism. Samkhya, Vaisheshika are from the main stream. Charvak was not in the main stream. Buddhism was not something new. There were six historical Buddhas before Gautama. These did not establish any other religion, consequently, they can be presumed to be hindus. The first Buddha was Kapila, who is considered an important sage in Hinduism also. Even Buddha was not dismissive of many hindu beliefs. He praised brahmins at every opportunity and talked about 'Brahman'. For centuries hindu-buddhist, hindu-jain, and hindu-sikh hop-step-and-jumped from one belief to another, nobody cared. The differences occured only in the 20th century and were basically engineered by the British. A great many hindus are monotheistic (especially the Vaishnavas). Every line of Japji (the prayer book of Sikhs) contains the name of hindu Gods, Rama, Vishnu, Krishna, Hari, Govinda, Gopala. What should we make of it? Hinduism is perfectly at ease with even 'no God'. I follow 'Advaita' (non-dualism). For me there is no God, since I am (as everything else is), a part of 'Brahman', the universal substrate.