Curious!

[Curious]

[QUOTE=Trapped;90250]Do you have a source or some more information on Guan Yin dealing with sin by excusing it? I Googled a little and didn't come up with anything immediately, but also didn't have much time to spend on it.[QUOTE]


Dear Trapped,

To find information on guan yin that analyses the eastern interpretation of mercy in contrast to the biblical one, requires some level of investigation into ‘eastern pantheistic monism’ as a whole.

There is a thought process that ties eastern spirituality together and within that ‘kindness’ is not linked to ‘accountability’ as it is with the God of the bible. However, It’s not a clear and debated spiritual principle that is presented in the intellectual way we process these concepts in the western mind. So I don’t think you’ll easily find a categorical statement about it on the internet.

I practised a level of eastern religion myself before I became solidly a Christian so my awareness of this topic comes from some direct experience and exposure. As part of my reforming my thinking to a Judeo-Christian world view, I read in the book ‘the Universe Next Door, a basic world view catalogue’ by James W Sire, and published by Inter Varsity Press. I recommend this book as one chapter is devoted to eastern pantheistic monism and sums it up quite well. Other Christian books that explain buddhism would also be likely to comment on mercy as understood in the east and how it is different from the west. Guan yin really just personifies and reflects the thinking, is not per se, the source of the ideas on mercy.

IVP publishes other books that compare and contrast religious and philosophical systems of thought, if interesting to readers of this forum. They always gently and respectfully, (and intellectually!) back God’s Truth and the biblical account of truth as far as I know.

Personally, I see more than just the concept of mercy being adapted from eastern spirituality, in the LC frame. WL borrowed on communism, facism and Christianity especially from the Keswick convention and other individuals. Additionally, he borrowed from an eastern religious point of view too…..in my opinionated opinion!!

One point that I noted as I was evaluating what I was learning of the teachings, was this idea of God being processed into man, to become God again, and man, in the process, becoming God. This might be a good time for me to run my theory on this idea past y’all on this forum:

In eastern mystical thinking, the idea of reincarnation exists. Humans live multiple lives in sequence where they begin as something small like a bug, and after death, repeatedly return as increasingly complex beings, then as humans, learning ‘lessons’ along the way until eventually they reach ‘nirvana’ where they exist in some heavenly state for a long time and then rebegin the process all over again. Being of a high ‘caste’ in India, (their class system), is called a ‘Brahman’, which means you’re up there at the ‘God’ level. ‘Atman is Brahman’ means ‘self is God’, we only have to actualise it by recognising it, and practising mantra’s and transcendental meditation enables one to enter into this ‘reality’.

In short, you could say, Man is processing himself into God through reincarnation.

What a clever thing WL did…he turned it around! God is ‘processing’ himself into man through his ‘reincarnating’ of himself downwards towards man instead of man ‘processing’ himself upwards towards God.…..and achieves the same end result of man becoming God! It’s like WL just flipped it over and has God doing all the work instead of us!! Like reincarnation but better (for us that is, not God). Being incarnated as Jesus was one step, becoming the Holy Spirit was another, entering the person through regeneration is the next one then the whole new Jerusalem thing is the last one, it seems.

I don’t know what others will think of that, but I suspect WL may have borrowed from his own pre-Christian heritage, consciously or unconsciously, for his own questionable reasons….And in the process, he messed with what he didn’t really comprehend the significance of, creating damage through such carelessness. Personally, I give him top marks for ingenuity tho.

(Someone is going to need to rap me over the knuckles soon, for all the outrageous things I’m likely to say once I get going!!)

I hope that sort-of answers your question, Trapped. Being in a meditative state and not in your mind is very eastern, another link from WL to eastern thought. Simultaneously it explains why you won’t easily find definitive statements about eastern concepts like mercy, etc. (Maybe also it explains how the BB’s use words where the meaning is unclear too, as that is another feature with them).