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Thoughts on Matthew 13, 14, 15



The Buddha talks about a mustard seed, but he tells a grieving woman to find one from a house where nobody has died. She learns that everyone has lost someone and that death is the way of the world. Jesus goes the other way. He's talking about heaven, and not in the here and now, but an afterlife. 

Buddhism has the image of a net. The net has jewels in each axis and each jewel shines on the other jewels. So the teachings reinforce each other and illuminate each other. 

Jesus throws out the garbage fish in his net.

Mt. 13:58--Jesus doesn't do miracles in a town where they do not have faith. Seems like you should go the other way on that. I mean, do a really good miracle and they would probably convert. In other places he hangs out with bad people on purpose to convert them. Maybe he knew these people were not somehow open or receptive. I'm the kind of person that is easily incredulous because in my experience there is a lot of hooey out there, and people don't speak clearly. 

By forcing someone to articulate a doctrine or teachings, they have to be more clear and explain things. Now it can be annoying when someone asks you to justify your beliefs, but it is useful to know what is connected to what and why. Philosophers create elaborate systems that try to answer everyone's question in advance, it can be quite annoying but at least you know what you're getting into.

There are basic ideas I don't want to have to justify to my children. Being mindful, ethical, clean, polite, thoughtful, considerate, kind. Getting along with others isn't easy but it's the most important thing.

You can find so many contradictions. It's not what you say, it's what you do, but then later, getting into heaven, it's the concord of what you say and what you do that is measured. I suppose in different places, there are different teachings, for different circumstances. I think in the past I would have dismissed Christianity for the contradictions instead of seeing complexity, but by finding my own spirituality and people playing logic games and purposely not seeing the complexity, I can now interpret the spiritual texts with appreciation and the right attitude. 

Reading that Christ would retreat to pray made me think about how the Buddha was turned away from a dispute in a monastery and he just went off and meditated when he was told he was not needed. 

I feel like in Christianity there is an insistence in believing in the system. The Buddha was more inclined to say "don't take my word, test it out in your experience." Perhaps they were in different times. Buddha perhaps had less resistance to his teachings. Jesus seems to be more threatened by doubt.

People come along and refresh spirituality, fighting superficiality. For the Buddha it's kindness and insight. For Jesus it's belief in his teachings which include kindness and insight but it's almost like he wants you to buy the whole package before you even see all the goods. In the end, if you are critical, you can apply the right teachings to good result. 

I would say that the focus on miracles is essentially saying, "you are too stupid to understand, so we'll make some extravagant claim that you can't disprove because you were not there, to try to override your intelligence and incredulity.

Truly amazing things happen and simple little ways of seeing things can be really helpful. I don't believe in anything that somehow circumvents conditionality.

I'm tempted to read Thomas Jefferson's version that takes out all the miracles. Here's an article about it.

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