Confession

It's not uttering your confession to somebody else that makes all the difference, it's RECOGNIZING that sin to begin with.

So when you are man or woman enought to confess your sins to yourself, you've come a long way, baby.
 
Another tenet of Buddhism that resembles Christianity. We're supposed to love everyone, even our enemies, because of the immortal soul in each of us.


Quite a challenge, isn't it? How are we to love the immortal soul in a criminal who committs a heinous crime or a person who deliberately hurts others because they find those acts gratifying?

We don't bow to their negativity, we bow to the pure essence that can never be harmed--as a buddhist, I call that Buddha nature and as a Christian, you may call divine essence within each being, the immortal soul.

Do you think confession ought to be public or private? I favor and practice confession in private.
 
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Quite a challenge, isn't it? How are we to love the immortal soul in a criminal who committs a heinous crime or a person who deliberately hurts others because they find those acts gratifying?

We don't bow to their negativity, we bow to the pure essence that can never be harmed--as a buddhist, I call that Buddha nature and as a Christian, you may call divine essence within each being, the immortal soul.

Do you think confession ought to be public or private? I favor and practice confession in private.

In Christianity, we call it hating the sin, but loving the sinner. You're supposed to hate the evil of the act for the damage it does to the victim(s) and also to the soul of the person committing the act (I define "soul" as the part of us that continues on after our bodies die, in whatever way one believes that we continue on. I guess for a Buddhist, that would be the part that is reincarnated and eventually reaches nirvana). And self-improvement is ALWAYS difficult. Anything worth having probably will be.

I think it depends on what you're confessing. Some things require public confession - say, if you murdered someone - but most things only require confession to the one hurt, and many would actually cause that person MORE pain if others knew. If one was cheating on one's spouse, for example, you probably aren't going to do him/her any favors by letting the rest of the world in on it.
 
I'm the first one to admit that it is NOT an easy practice to imagine an enemy in front of you, and to bow to that person's Buddha nature.

But the truth is, all the stuff on the outside that we see and dislike is adventitious. We may loathe the person's speech and actions, yet someone else may worship the same thing we think is harmful.

Nothing is so solid. The truth is bigger than our own biases and adventitious distortions.

This is a bit off the topic, but it's on my mind. How do we explain forum phenomena of fighting with posters? Many of the folks I waste the most time with on line I would have nothing to do with in RL.
 
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