Can someone explain why this statement is wrong?

Question

Heaven is Love without the ego
Nirvana is Bliss without the self.

Why are those two ideas so mutually exclusive? I understand that Buddha received Enlightenment as a state of nothingness. Perhaps Love was and still is non-existent but brought itself into being?

Can something be non-existent and have a state of being at the same time?

Jesus said: "Say to them, we are beings of light from a place where light brought itself into being?"

Also, St. Genoa wrote that Heaven is nothing more than an exchange of love between the saint and the creator? Or does the self have to be infinitely small to be in a state of both nirvana and heaven? Perhaps the Buddhist view is not so different from the Christian heaven afterall?

My question is intended for people who know about both religions.

Answer 1

I think I understand both religions.

I was raised Baptist, then I explored all sorts of other religions including Zen Buddhism.

They are NOT mutually exclusive.

The young carpenter said "The Kingdom of heaven is within".

Buddha said that man's natural state is enlightenment (nirvana, satori, or kensho take your pick for the label of preference.)

Joshu (if memory serves) asked a kaon (pronounced ko-ahn) "Does a dog have a buddha nature"

Another zen master said that even a stick used to scrape feces from a shoe is buddha.

This means that God or heaven is EVERYWHERE. But for people to see this kingdom of heaven; they have to open their hearts, and see things after putting the mind in neutral (the state of no mind) ie stopping the tendency to judge things good or bad.

As a kahuna; I have been an energy worker for many years. My website and blog on Yahoo 360 contains much information about Hawai'ian mysticismm abd the conditions I walked out of.

33 years ago I was a MISERABLE excuse for a human being that people did not want to encounter if I was having a good day, I regret to say that I came close to killing people, and I killed a lot of animals just because I was angry.

1973-74 I had the extreme good fortune to meet a Taoist master. He taught me Taoist meditation, then three forms of Qigong. After he taught me things that turned my worldview upside down and inside out (such as punching a hole in a cloud three miles away, and influencing the movement of animals; I realized that the thoughts and emotions were NOT ratteling around in my pointed little head; but they went out and affected the world around me.

About two years later I had a eureka! moment. I realized that every day I was being given a choice to make a positive or a negative influence on the world around me. I started making those positive choices. and several years later; all of that hatred, and anger left.

My studies in Hawai'ian mysticism has proven to my satisfaction that we are all interconnected, and when we do something to someone else; something just as bad comes back to us.

I think when humanity is wise enough to see what I have seen; humanity will understand that both Buddha, and the young carpenter were right .

Enlightenment is everywhere even the stick used to wipe feces off of a shoe, and the kingdom of heaven is within.

The choice is up to you. are you going to open the heart and stop the mind, or are you going to keep running the mind, and keep the heart closed?

Answer 2

I think your trying to complicate things to much. It is a lot more simple than that. Where did Jesus supposedly say that, by the way?

How can something that is nothing bring itself into being, also? If it is nothing, it would not be something. Being is something. Nothing is not really non-existent, either. That is how I percieved the teaching, at least. Like most "religions", they are offshoots of the Belief In Christ, so as to not involve Him and His work. Just an attempt to give comfort without acknowlegdement. The view points are very different however. Especially the more critical aspects of both.

God Bless and guide you into His Truth!

Answer 3

The best kind of love, and the best kind of happiness, is the kind where you lose yourself. You stop seeing everything just as how it applies to you, you look at the whole.

Plato wrote about people as if we were prisoners in a cave. We couldn't see out of the cave, we could only see the shadows on the cave wall as they passed by the opening of the cave. And from that we had to deduce the shape and appearance of those things. This is the relationship between our perceptions of things and the real things themselves.

We can feel love and bliss as humans, but they're imperfect, because of our own human imperfections. From what we experience of love and happiness, we can only imagine what Heaven or Nivrana could be like--the perfect form of love and bliss. The thing that keeps us from getting closer to these real things, the Platonic 'ideals', is our human nature--selfishness, ego, etc. We can only see the 'shadows' of them.

It's a little bit amazing that Christians and Buddhists would share this idea! But the idea is found in MANY places, it is something we understand intuitively, and most 'religious' ideas are like that. Jesus taught us about 'the brotherhood of man', but do you think he made that up himself? Of course not.

Buddhism is closer to this idea, though. They believe that all suffering in earth is caused by desire, i.e. -wanting- something, which is all about self. We achieve happiness by overcoming desire, by losing our selves.

Answer 4

Try unpacking those little aphorisms. You will get completely bogged down in defining the words. The love in heaven bears no relationship to the human concept of love here on earth. There is no part of you that does not go to heaven. You are tripartite - body soul and spirit and it all goes to heaven albeit in an altered state. As for Nirvana, bliss and the self, I find they they have several incomprehensible explanations - as your comments show only too well.

Answer 5

Silence is lack of sound. Ignorance is lack of knowing.

Through contact with the state of pure consciousness, characterized as without empirical content, we access bliss. We are also present to rememeber this experience, so that nothingness must be our self. But since it is nothing, it is also correct to call it non-self. Many Abrahamic mystics have reported the same experience, and associated it with God (1). The problem is, there is nothing in the experience to suggest it is not simply an anamoly of the nervous system, so the theological claims are unwarranted. Perhaps the major differences in all religions is in how they interpret this (and related) deep experiences, and in how the text writers came to them.

Answer 6

"Jesus said: "Say to them, we are beings of light from a place where light brought itself into being?" "

I don't think Jesus said that, and I don't care what St. Genoa wrote.
Something can be non-existent and have a state of being at the same time only if words are relatively meaningless.

Answer 7

I can't tell you why they're mutually exclusive, but I can tell you why they're wrong. Without a sense of self (an ego) you would have no reference point for anything. You wouldn't exist and thus couldn't have bliss of love.

Answer 8

BLISS IS MISSING IN THE HEAVEN SHOULD READ

HEAVEN: A PLACE OF BLISS
NIRVANA; A STATE OF BLISS