Desire

Had a long lecture on something about how religion has affected Japan. Gotta say if this kind of lecture has been held in Singapore, I would be snoring. But somehow since I had to travel 1 hour just to reach school and listen to a 1 1/2 hour lecture, before spending another hour to reach back to the dorm, I decided to be a good student and listen to the lecturer.

The lecturer then went to explain that the egoistic nature of westerners. Cos' Judist-Christianity claims something like this. This world is created by GOD, and then it would end sometime. And we happen to exist somewhere within this time frame. If you accept Christ during your lifetime, when you cease to exist as a human, you go to heaven if not you go to hell. That's the end. Simple as that. Life is a simple linear function.

While Buddhism sort of branched out under the influence of Hinduism. And the belief in karma is very strong. So everything flows in a circle, including life, what you do now has an effect in your next stage. Siddartha Gautama, founder of Buddhism, was the first person to attain Nirvana and sort of broke out from that cycle.

"I think, therefore I am" by Descartes, a Frenchi
"I want therefore I suffer" - sort of a summary of Buddhism. Since we all have desires, we suffer cos' of all these desires, in Buddhism, if you are able to put away all the desires and realise that we are just a small negligible part of all the events flowing in the world, we attain Nirvana.

That's just a very easy way of saying things. So since Asians are under Buddhist and Hindi influence for a longer time, we tend to put parents, and the whole communtity in front of personal interests. Cos' we know we belong to a larger community.

So if you ask me, I tend to believe in Buddha more than Christ, cos I like their logic more, we are just a minute part of all the events in the universe, makes more sense. More than a simple linear time line, and then if we believe in Christ, we go to heaven.

Everything has its causes and effects, if you behave badly, you are going to have a tough life your next life. Rather than I behave badly, I would still go to heaven if I embrace Christ. A very egoist thought I would say.

Sorry for the preaching session, expressing my personal thought, but I don't believe in such things. I still desire stuff, and don't see it as suffering. I haven't had mystical forces telling me that I would go to hell if I don't do something soon....
So I would still believe in we make our own way and go where we want to....