Quote:
You are among the minority who believe that Jesus never existed. Even non-Christians scholars grant the existence of Jesus. You do not mention the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul DID meet Jesus, on the road to Emmaus. (Acts chapter 9)
My mistake...wasn't a quote, but a suggestion that we should read Scipture...
In Buddhism we have relative truth and absolute truth.
Buddhism is a lifelong quest for the truth.
When everyone around you makes certain unspoken assumptions, it's hard to keep from making them yourself. That's one of the greatest problems we Buddhists have in western society.
The assumption I'm concerned about is "literal truth". People may argue over whether the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, or even the Book of Mormon is literally true, but they all make the assumption that "literal truth" is possible.
I say it's not.
Look at the nature of language. A word, for instance "dog", is a pattern of air vibrations, ink on paper, electronic on-off signals or whatever, that 2 or more entities have agreed to use to represent something else.
Incidentally, since all this is needed before there can even be words, you can see how I might be a bit skeptical about "In the beginning was the word".
A dog has four legs and chases cats. The WORD "dog" has three letters and never changes. Since words don't act the same as the things or actions they represent, they can never represent them perfectly. Truth, as the Buddha said, is not expressed by words.
Fortunately, in Buddhism, the goal is not to memorize an accurate expression of truth, but rather to perceive reality. In Buddhist writings, truth is likened to "the finger pointing to the moon". The finger is NOT the moon. At best, when understood correctly, it is an aid in seeing the moon, but only if we're willing to turn away from the finger and look instead where it's pointing.
Of course, a finger pointing in the wrong direction wouldn't help us see the moon at all. I guess you could say that, even if "truth" doesn't exist in any absolute sense, falsehood does.
