ok, maybe not so far away, but back when I was a lay person, I remember watching one of those Miss Universe pageant on the television. I always thought it was super cliche when during the question section, the contestant would declare their wish for world peace.
Increasingly, I start to appreciate what peace, world peace is, when I see all the chaos happening in the world.
Did you know that there is a battle going on in Syria?
CNN: In 50
Years, will People Still Believe in God?
In US, a Pew Survey shows that there is an increase of people who doubt the existence of God.
2007: 83% never doubted
2012: 68% never doubted
Also discussed, “Playing Devil’s Advocate – Questioning the Existence of God”.
Stephen Hawkings – “There is no God”.
An interesting point mentioned was how many Americans are cultural Christians and Jews, meaning that they do not necessarily believe in the Bible or the Christian teachings, but would identify themselves as Christians and Jews anyway. This may be similar to cultural Buddhists or Taoists in Singapore where one take on either religion simply because one is born into it.
Perhaps this may apply worldwide and have deeper implications as knowledge of the various beliefs and teachings become more readily available.
In the 80s, when Singapore Ministry of Education started a Religious Knowledge (RK) programme in its secondary school (middle school in US), it is later attributed by some to have led to a rise in Buddhism in the 1990 and 2000 census, when Buddhism rose from 27.0% in 1980 to 31.2 (1990) and later 42.5% (2000). [1]
Could the recent drop to around 33% in 2010 census be due to a decline in interest in religion as a whole? Or is this the after effect of the stop of the RK programme? Buddhism has traditionally not made it mandatory for new Buddhists to attend foundational Dharma classes on Buddhists teachings, so there is a tendency that cultural Buddhists, or as I like to term them ‘form-Buddhists’ by virtue of the forms they fill in, identifying themselves as Buddhists, usually do not know enough about Buddhism to really benefit from its teachings.
Add to the fact that I’ve had devotees who has filed complaints with me about 1) driving instructor who preached to her about his religion for two hours, 2) colleagues who would share their faiths and pressure Buddhists at work and 3) feedback about the press giving imbalanced coverage towards certain religion, to the extent of glorifying them.
Meanwhile, in the past few years, we’ve had at least two to three reported cases of attacks on Buddhism, either through distortion of its teachings or ridiculing it during some religious services. And these are the reported ones.
There is probably no one single factor responsible nor one single solution to solve it all. One area stands out, and it is publicity.
Buddhists who are active, may sometimes feel like that are (too) many talks and classes already, while nominal (form / cultural) Buddhists may feel like Buddhism only exist once or twice a year during Vesak and Ullambana month.
Even if they wish to know more about Buddhism, their parents, from whom they inherited Buddhism, may not be able to share with them what Buddhism is. Consequently, they may be at a loss when it comes to taking that first step to know Buddhism.
We need to publicise our events to the general public. And we need to do it beyond Buddhist society and temple notice boards. We need to publicise outside of Buddhist magazines. And we need to do it now.
Sharing of Dharma. Coming soon.
~ 隨緣 According to conditions.
My motto in life is to put in place those conditions we can.~
I would like to ask, do in Buddhist believe in Destiny?
Do our life are destined or planned?
Maybe for example are you destined to be a Monk?
Or some people are destined to be a great man, or certain people are destined to just suffer for his whole life?
Buddhist do not believe in Destiny / Fate, at least not in a fixed one, nor do we believe that our life is totally random, nor determined by some divine being or power.
Our life is a combination of past actions and present conditions, and how we think, speak and act now affects our life moving forward.
Am I destined to be a monk? Hmmm … conditions led to me becoming a monk, but it is in a way not fixed. But the inclinations were stronger than most people I guess.
No one is destined to suffer, but we do sometimes get stuck in mindsets or wallow in our own misery, refusing to snap out of it. If that duration is long enough, it may last several days, weeks or even years.
From the view point of a stranger looking at such a person in a year, it may seem like he is ‘destined’ to suffer for that one year. But one can change. How easy it is depends on how willing we are to give up mindsets, cravings and attachments that are hurting or harming us.
So for some, it may seem to be ‘destined’ while for others not so.
But there are also external conditions, such as when a person is born in a war torn country. The external situation is not necessarily due to him, but affects him directly, sometimes fatally. In such a case, the general suffering or happiness level is somewhat ‘fixed’, unless something drastic happen in a large scale.
But even then, a person with a positive and wholesome mindset can be relatively ‘happier’ than one who is negative or pessimistic.
As Buddhists, we should try to help improve those factors for others and try not to make it worse.
