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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
Why we are here?
to play games
Where do we go?
I hope God prepared nice flats with high end PCs for as...
...arghh well, everyone has its own dreams and ideas about heaven |
Mon Jun 10, 2002 5:20 pm |
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Airk
Commander*Warrior*Rogue
Joined: 05 Mar 2002
Posts: 930
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Where did we come from?
We just came from Slashdot.org. Or...I did that is.
Why are we here?
We are here because we love RPGDot.
_________________
~AIRK~
~Member of the Lost Four~ |
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Mon Jun 10, 2002 5:25 pm |
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Val
Risen From Ashes
Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 14724
Location: Utah, USA |
@LonePaladin: Right at the beginning we started out as The Church of Jesus Christ. After a bit of confusion over that they prayed about and it was revealed they should call themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So, pretty much from the beginning we've called ourselves that. During the 1800s people started calling us Mormons as a sort of nickname. After all, our full name is a little too much for a rampaging mob to shout. 
The term 'Mormons' is based off of the Book of Mormon. We believe in the Book of Mormon so people refer to us as Mormons. I don't know about any Chinese god named Mormon and I sincerely doubt the founders of the church knew about it either. No Internet back then. Mormon was the name of a prophet from the Book of Mormon. He was one of the last prophets of the Nephite people before they were wiped out. Mormon had compiled an abridgement of all the scriptures and records of their people then gave it to his son Moroni with a charge to keep them safe. Since Mormon is the one who compiled everything the set of scriptures were named after him.
Currently most Mormons will refer to themselves as LDS (Latter-Day Saint). It's a more 'politically correct' term. But I don't care which name people choose to use.
@mDrop: That's some interesting stuff. I've only just gotten my feet wet when it comes to learning about Buddhism. I'll have to learn some more about it before I can respond to your post. Don't want to sound like a complete idiot.
_________________
Freeeeeeedom! Thank heavens it's summer!
What do I have to show for my hard work? A piece of paper! Wee!
=Guardian, Moderator, UltimaDot Newshound=  |
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Mon Jun 10, 2002 5:53 pm |
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TheLonePaladin
Mighty Warrior
Joined: 27 Feb 2002
Posts: 1808
Location: San Francisco, CA |
quote:
Originally posted by Val
Don't want to sound like a complete idiot.
well, at least i wouldn't be alone 
thx for explaining that. more of those nassssty rumors getting all jumbled up in my head 
_________________
=Follower of Righteousness=
"Though the gates that stand between the mortal world and the immortal Realm of Chaos are now closed to me, still I would rather die having glimpsed eternity than never to have stirred the cold furrow of mortal life.
I embrace death without regret as I embraced life without fear." |
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Mon Jun 10, 2002 6:50 pm |
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mDrop
High Emperor
Joined: 06 May 2002
Posts: 479
Location: Under the desk |
@Val: I just hope no true zen-buddhist sees my writings or I will be the complete idiot As I said, my views are only based on zen..
Does anybody have any buddhist smileys? |
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Mon Jun 10, 2002 7:03 pm |
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Marshall Medan
Capitan of the Dark Knights of Nekara
Joined: 16 Feb 2002
Posts: 1123
Location: Beriut Lebanon !!!!!! |
lol lol no why hindu simielys dude
_________________
WHAT IS CHEESE WITH OUT EGGS ?????
<img src=http://www.locusinn.com/images/ryan/dragonball-gohan.gif>
[img]http://www.olympiquedemarseille.com/Multimedia/Images/indexlogo.gif[img]
--Moderator of the RPGDot Warriors--
ANY ONE WHO LIKES DRAGON LANCE IS SUPER COOL IN MY BOOK |
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Mon Jun 10, 2002 8:33 pm |
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Val
Risen From Ashes
Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 14724
Location: Utah, USA |
quote:
Originally posted by mDrop
Does anybody have any buddhist smileys?
Will this work? 
It's the closest one I could find.
_________________
Freeeeeeedom! Thank heavens it's summer!
What do I have to show for my hard work? A piece of paper! Wee!
=Guardian, Moderator, UltimaDot Newshound= |
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Tue Jun 11, 2002 12:20 am |
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Northchild
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 232
Location: New York, USA |
quote:
@Val: I just hope no true zen-buddhist sees my writings or I will be the complete idiot As I said, my views are only based on zen..
Oops.
There are a bunch of different flavors of Buddhism out there. Zen, in particular, tends to steer away from speculation about what happens in the next world. I quoted a parable involving a man shot with an arrow in another recent post here. This man was overly concerned with who shot the arrow, what tribe that person was from, the design of the arrow, and so on. Buddhism, first and foremost, focuses on taking the arrow out. The arrow is the suffering in this life caused by unmindful speech, actions, and so on.
Tibetan Buddhism seems to be more concerned with the next life/lives/existences, though I may be mistaken. If I might bring up another metaphor, I think that at least some Buddhist references to an afterlife are like coaxing children out of a burning building with candy. It's the teacher's job to help the student to open her or his eyes and to stop dividing reality with words, concepts about this life or other lives, and so on.
To return to mDrop's response: Yes, Zen is often like a journey. It's one of those strange things... when you get home, you've found that you really didn't need to go anywhere at all. And Zen is also none of the above. It's not words. It's not something that you can describe in a book or three and put on a shelf somewhere. Thich Nhat Hanh, (a big fan of books), has an excellent work out there called "Living Buddha, Living Christ" that describes some interesting parallels between the two religions, plus it's fun reading.  "The Accidental Buddhist" (Dinty Moore) is also a fun book about how a Catholic found Buddhism, (I was suprised to see that there are Catholic priests that teach Zen meditation.)
As to the main question of this thread - I find it very interesting that most major religions have very strong beliefs about heirarchy, admissions requirements, and so on in the so-called afterlife. One of the more difficult things for me was to allow for the chance that we don't know anything about what's going to happen. Even more difficult to accept is the chance that our egos, or who we think we are now, will not continue after we die. People that I've talked to about this will generally do ANYTHING to avoid the thought that they might not live eternally in one form or another.
So what do I believe? I think that who I am is dependent on everything else. As my hero Dak'kon would say "One does not exist without the other." If you want to know where I came from or where I'm going, look around.
Whew, I'm done babbling now. |
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Tue Jun 11, 2002 3:56 am |
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mDrop
High Emperor
Joined: 06 May 2002
Posts: 479
Location: Under the desk |
@Northchild: good points, I've got to check out those books you mentioned.
@Val: The born one and the unborn one, yin and yang, that'll do 
Zen is a journey where you should stand still
And it really can't be described in words, as an old chinese saying goes, "If we had words, we could tell the universe in a day. But we can't even tell a butterfly in an eternity"
I think one of the hardest and most interesting points of Zen is the art of letting go. There is no good karma or bad karma, there is only karma. The more you hold on to your life and try to force yourself to live it, the more karma you get. Bad actions raise your karma even more, since they distrupt the flow of life. If you try to force yourself to let go, your karma will raise even more. The letting go has to come naturally, without effort and thinking. When a person lets go, he/she understands the way life can be lived within the life itself, not outside "don't be in the stream, be the stream".
The other interesting point is that ancient, original Zen-Buddhism didn't accept meditation, since they saw it as forcing oneself to tranquility. Of course they had some meditation techniques, but they were very light and simple compared to buddhist meditation and yoga. They believed in 'sudden godly understanding', where things come to you on their own time and enlightenment comes when you are ready. The methodistic mediation came to Zen only when the monasteries became larger and started accepting more students. What easier way for the monks to get some peace than to make all the young boys sit in a room and do yoga.
An old monk was on his daily walk in the monastery garden, when he spotted an young monk sitting on a stone in lotus position, eyes firmly shut and humming. The old monk sat next to the young monk and watched him for some time. Finally, the old monk asked 'what are you doing?'. The young monk opened his eyes, a bit frustrated about the distraction and replied 'I'm meditating to reach the enlightenment'. The old monk nodded and the young monk continued his exercise. The old monk watched for a while and then picked up a stone from the ground and started rubbing it with his robe. The young monk, interrupted again, asked the old monk 'what are you doing?'. Replied the old monk 'I'm making a mirror' |
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Tue Jun 11, 2002 9:37 am |
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DarkWeaver
A Dark Prince
Joined: 07 Dec 2003
Posts: 517
Location: The Netherlands |
| Re: Where did we come from, why are we here? |
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Well...thats a very good question.... lol.
Maybe we are created by someone or something?
Maybe we are created by some sort of wonder or exident?
I always ask myself this question:
Why are we made so perfectly, nature, animals etc.?
I dont realy belief in 'God' or something like that, but it realy makes you think.
Hmm...Actually i dont realy know what to think or belief.
Maybe we are just unimportant beeings or just dolls of the someone or something person maybe 'Devil' or 'God'.
Well....i dont know. |
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Sat May 01, 2004 2:21 pm |
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Chekote
Where’s my Banana?!?!
Joined: 08 Mar 2002
Posts: 1540
Location: Dont know, looks kind of green |
To answer the first question:
We are here because of the laws of physics and how it affects the matter within the universe. Reality as we know it, is here because God created it.
The reason we are here: Life is the reason for life.
In regards to the religeous discussions before this, I personaly dont beleive there was anything apart from God before Reality as we know it was created. I dont beleive there was any kind of pre-existence.
I am a man of science, and unlike most people beleive, science and God are not mutualy exclusive.
My beleifs in regards to God and the Universe are very difficult to explain in writiing, but I will try:
Since I beleive in science, I accept the fact that the simplest explanation must be the truth most of the time.
I beleive that God created Reality as we know it. Note that I do not use the term Universe, or world. I do not beleive that he actualy placed planets in space with his hands.
I beleive that God himself doesnt exist as we understand it. Terms such as existence, and creation had no meaning before he created Reality. The only thing that existed before our Reality was him. There was no Time, no Physics, not Matter, No Space, nothing...
Many people who say they beleive in Science are usualy trapped by their own beleifs. What they dont understand, is that Science is simply the study of the Reality that God created, and they use the laws of this Reality to prove that God doesnt exist, and thats true, God couldnt exist in this reality, thats how he made it. But he doesnt exist here, he doesnt even exist as we understand existence.
People say if God created the universe, then who created God. But that question only has relevance within our reality. If there is no time, then how can something be created? Creation is a construct of time. God wasnt created, he just is.
Since God exists outside of our reality, and there is no such thing as time for him, that explains why he knows everything, and why is he everywhere, always.
Well thats basically it. I am sure I missed some stuff, but that is basically how I understand it.
I spent most of my life as an Agnostic and could not fully beleive in God because my beleives were grounded in Science. This is how I currently explain the existence of God within the bounds of science.
Now that you all probably thing I am a complete nut job, I will go
_________________
IMHO my opinion is humble |
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Sat May 01, 2004 3:35 pm |
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