This helps for this, which I'm not going to be able to use tonight for the reason I just stated. But thank you, Vic. You did a good job getting me some good pictures. And they're pictures of the statues of Buddha. And if you look at your sheet, that's where we're going tonight, pictures of these statues of Buddha. And they're all over the East. Their Buddhism is pretty much gone out of out of India. It's pretty strong in Sri Lanka. It is, there's a lot of it in China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and some of the most impressive and giant statues in the world are statues of Buddha. But before we look at Buddhism, I want you to take your Bibles and I want you to open it up to 1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter chapter 1, and I want you to, let me read something to you. about what we believe. This is just awesome. First Peter, chapter one, verse number three. First Peter, chapter one, verse number three. It says, Blessed be the God and Father. Everybody there? First Peter, chapter one, verse number three. And it's right before second Peter. I know that helps a lot. Right after James. Okay. First Peter, chapter one, verse three. And it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance, listen to these words about your inheritance and about what we have to look forward to in Christ Jesus. To an inheritance, let me stop there again and stop and think about, just recognize and remember God's making plans for you. Isn't that wonderful? Have you ever been anywhere for a visit and you showed up and didn't seem like anybody made any plans for you showing up, you know, things like that? Well, this is just awesome. To an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. I hear people say from time to time, well, I don't believe in a literal heaven. I believe that heaven's here on earth just like hell's on earth. And I believe that we're just going to, our heaven is just going to be living on in the minds of our loved ones. And it's not a real heaven, it's a spiritual heaven. It's just a place where we live in the hearts of people. Well, that could fit in very well with Hinduism, Buddhism, and all these other isms that are out there. But that's not what the Bible says. Our inheritance is incorruptible, cannot be corrupted. It is undefiled, it does not fade away, and it is reserved. You have reservations in heaven. How do we know that if we placed our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and if we are believers in him, how do we know that it's secure? Because it says we are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. It's kept. How are you saved? One little word, a little four-letter word, kept by the power of God. And then in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, that's interesting, isn't it? What we think is so imperishable on earth is considered a perishable thing in heaven. Gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, you loved, though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy, inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls." We're kept by the power of God. Our inheritance is reserved in heaven. It's unperishable, incorruptible, cannot fade away. It is done so by the power of God, the God of the universe that keeps everything operating in this world. It seems as the ecologists and the eco-wackos of the world, they like to think that the earth is eternal, creation is eternal, the universe is eternal. But the truth is, the Bible says that all of these things, he's going to fold up like a garment and put them away. But the heaven of God that he's prepared for you does not fade away. Keep that in mind as we look at Buddhism. which is looking for the 180 degree opposite of what you're looking for. They are, their desire and their, what they are looking forward to is not eternal life, but absence of life and non-existence. Why that is attractive to anyone, I would have no idea. But that is exactly where it is. So let's look at it. And let's learn something and be ready to give an answer. What is the background of Buddhism? Once again, I give credit to Dr. Dave Johnson. I do not want you to think that I figure all this out. I didn't. I've had a lot of help and learned a lot. So let me move through this. Buddhism began about the 6th century BC in the area of India, specifically southeast India. You have to recognize that it's several hundred years younger of a religion than Hinduism. It grew out of Hinduism. It's a significant world religion, around 450 million worldwide. It's the fourth largest religion in the world. It's mostly in the East. However, there are nearly 800,000 Buddhists in the United States, and I met some of them who live in Des Moines. It is very prominent in Hawaii. So, Paul, I want you to tell your little story about Hawaii and how it's getting to be Buddhist again. How it was Buddhist, stopped being Buddhist, now it's getting to be Buddhist again. Actually, I would say it was pagan. Pagan. Because of the Hawaiian culture, the Polynesian people. As the missionaries came and they got converts, and the country turned to Christianity, and that was in the early 1800s. and now there's been a great influx of Japanese back into the state, and now the predominant religion in Hawaii is Buddhism, and the population of Japanese within that country, or in that state, is 40%. It's one of the highest populations. Think about that. Number one church in San Diego, California. Number one religion in San Diego, California. Buddhism. Think about that. So this is not something that's irrelevant. I want you to watch this video. As with Hinduism, it's parent religion, Buddhism contains many diverse schools, which means there's just a million different kinds of Buddhists. And we're going to be looking at the big picture of what Buddhism is and not going to be able to identify all of them. We will, some of them. Some of them are very unusual. Some of them you've heard a lot about. Phil Jackson is the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. He was the coach, and what is he? He's a Zen Buddhist, and they call him the Zen Master. And although I would like to see Phil Jackson step down in that lowest position with a straight back, I bet he can't do that. Anyway, the founder of Buddhism is a man by the name of Siddhartha Gautama. And he lived from 560 to 480 BC. He was born into the Kshatriya. You remember last week we talked about the four levels of society. The up of the Brahmins were the highest level, the priestly caste, and right below them were the ruling and the warrior caste. And so his father was a ruler of the Satya clan. He hated religion. And he tried to shield his son from the suffering of the world, sickness, old age, death, and all ascetic holy men. And I've read this story. He tried to keep him, he lived on a big plantation. And this young man lived to be 30 years old without ever going outside the walls of his own place where his father, his father provided everything a kid could ever want. I mean, and he grew up, he wasn't married or anything. He was 30 and he was going to, he wanted to pass off this great plantation and business to him without him ever seeing all of the holy men and old people and dying people. He didn't want him to see any of those things. Because if he was able to be exposed to Hinduism, he had sort of this spiritual tendency, this guy did, even at a very young age, he would meditate. And his father shielded him from being able to see death, old people, sick people, invalidity. He didn't want him to see any of those things. But when he was 30 years old, he scuttled the wall of the place. He had to go out and see it. And the very first thing he saw was old people, sick people, people laying everywhere. And so he completely renounced anything having to do with wealth. And he started his trek toward becoming who he became. After encountering all of these types of things, sickness, old age, death, and holy men, on this trip outside the palace, Guatman was disillusioned with his pampered life. He made what he called the Great Renunciation. You probably need to fill that in on your sheet. And which meant he left his parents. He did have a wife. His wife, his son, and he did something unthinkable. He cut his very long hair. There are pictures. One of the most prominent pictures in Buddhism is the picture of him cutting his hair off because that was like the biggest sign of the status that he had. They'd grow their hair really long. Have you ever seen a lot of these movies? these old Chinese, I call them kicker movies. And they have those guys on there. They're always had that really, really, really long hair. Well, he was one of those guys. And so he cut that hair off. And he began his quest for spiritual enlightenment. So he spent six or seven years wandering around looking for enlightenment, and he finally, and I'm not even going to tell you all of the gross things that he did to himself. It's just the most despicable things that you can imagine a human being doing, trying to afflict himself and to make himself suffer. He wouldn't eat. He would eat one grain of rice for a day. He'd eat other things. that are just terrible to mention, and he did all kinds of horrible things trying to afflict himself to the point of having a religious experience. He wanted to have some kind of religious experience so that he would know what the truth is about everything. And so he finally sat down under a bodhi tree, and it's actually a fig tree, but they called it a new name there that has to do with Buddhism, it's a fig tree. He sat down under it, crossed his legs, and sat with his back straight and determined that he would not get up until he had a vision or some enlightenment of what the truth was. And he did. He stayed there for days. And so he finally had this enlightenment and became a Buddha. And the word Buddha for them meant an awakened one, an enlightened one, or a blessed one. So he became a Buddha. In his awakening, he saw the path to enlightenment was what he called the Middle Way. It was that their idea is that you're not supposed to try to be affluent. You're not supposed to try to live in poverty. You're supposed to live an aesthetic life. You're supposed to not live towards self-indulgence. You're not supposed to live towards self-denial, but in the middle. So the middle of the road, that's where you're supposed to go with everything. He gathered many followers. He spread his message for 45 years. He died when he was 80 years old, and he died of food poisoning. Here's one of his major things that he said. Decay is inherent in all component things. And his major teaching was work out your salvation with diligence. Notice the word work. Work out. You're going to notice something about every single religion and every single supposed Christian religion that is not true. There's always going to be the component of work. You're going to make yourself presentable to something. The scriptures of Buddhism are called, he called the Tripitaka, which meant the three baskets, and then I'm not even going to go into it because it's nonsensical, reflecting Gautama's teachings, and it was recorded by his following. Now here are some of the, here's what you want to get. These are the basic beliefs of most Buddhists today. One, Buddha separated himself from Hinduism, and here's how he did it. First of all, he eliminated the caste system. You remember the caste system was those four rock-hard castes, where the chudras were the ones that said, they were 90% of the people, they served everybody else, and they were happy to do it because the better they served, the better their life would be the next time, they thought. And so, but he eliminates the caste system, and second, he rejected the Vedas. In other words, all of the writings of the Hindus that, from which come the Hindu religion, he rejected all of them. That created a problem for Siddhartha and all of his followers because they were run out of India pretty quickly. It didn't last in India very long. They had to go to China, to Southeast Asia and many places. The strongest Buddhist, the biggest Buddhist population in the world today is in Sri Lanka as far as percentage of the people, Buddhism. And so here's some more beliefs. Gods are not important to enlightenment. They are ignorant too. Much of modern Buddhism, get this now, much of modern Buddhism's worldview is atheistic. They are atheists. My question is, if there is no God, there is nothing to be accountable to, why on earth would you put yourself through what they put themselves through? All existence, this is pretty much in agreement with Hinduism, all existence is maya, and we've used that word before. It is complete illusion. You are not real, you people I'm looking at out there. In fact, when you look in the mirror, if you don't like what you see, don't worry about it because it's not real. You know, you're not getting older, you're not sick, there's nothing. You know, there's... Think about that. You're not getting older, everything's an illusion, you just think you're sick, you're not sick. Can you think of any religions that have... United States that have foundings in this kind of teaching? Christian science. Neither Christian nor science, but they call it Christian science. All existence is maya, complete illusion, behind which is nothingness and the nothingness of sunyata. And this is a very, very key element of Buddhism. Sunyata, the void, the nothingness, the absence of everything, not even air, nothing. Sunyata, and that's behind everything. They believe not in Atman, which is the true self, identical to Brahman. Brahman and Atman, if you remember in Hinduism, everything was Brahman. We talked about it. Everything was God. You're God, I'm God, the earth's God, the carpet's God, the lights are God, the air is God, the worms are God, everything is God, and I'm God too. Well, this is the opposite of that. There is no God, and so Buddhism says everything is anatman, or it's the opposite of. There is a non-self. In other words, there is no true self. Salvation occurs and your deliverance occurs when you recognize your place of non-self in the void. You say, well, you're not making any sense. Correct. I am not making any sense because it does not make any sense. You, your real desire is nonexistence, non-self. You're not trying to find yourself. You're trying to forget yourself. You're trying to eliminate yourself. You're trying to be nothing and nobody, and that's your big goal in life. And so karma, and that's the same word that we use and found in Hinduism, works very similar. All living things are subject to the law of karma. The principle is cause and effect, which controls the cycle of reincarnation. Buddhists as well believe in reincarnation. Their goals of reincarnation are not the same, but they still believe in the cycle, the samsara. They believe in that continual cycle that goes on and on. And here's something very interesting and different about Buddhism from Hinduism. While there is no soul to be passed from one body to another, whereas Hinduism does believe in that, but there's only a set of feelings, impressions, present moments, and karma. And the way they try to give the example is, like a flame from one candle lighting another, they call it transmigration. Not reincarnation, but transmigration. So what are they trying to say? They're saying that the fuel of your existence is your natural body. That's the fuel of your existence. So when this natural body stops, you, which really you don't want to be you, you just want to be nothing, but if you have to keep existing, your memories and your, you know, all those, you know, the essence that is you, feelings, impressions and all that, it passes on from you, not as a soul, but only as impressions, and you take over again like a candle lighting another candle and the first candle going out. Now then you have a new fuel source, but the flame is the only thing that passes from one to the other. And that's the explanation of it. And I'm thinking, okay, right. I really have a hard time understanding that. They also believe in nirvana. And one escapes samsara by enlightenment at death. The best thing that can happen is not that your candle lights another candle, but that your candle is blown out and that you enter the realization of one's non-existence. Can I ask you a question? How could you be conscious and realize nothingness, non-existence? Oh, this is great. I no longer exist. The Four Noble Truths. This is really basic, the Buddhism. This is really, really, really. This is Siddhartha Gautama himself. One, this is the summary of his life. To live is to suffer. All life is tough. Existence is painful. Even death does not stop suffering because of reincarnation or transmigration. In other words, to live is to suffer. So what would be the opposite of to live? So to die would be not to what? Just think about that. What might that, if somebody really gets into this really heavy and they believe in transmigration, blowing out the candle and lighting it somewhere else and life's not good and things are bad, what might they do? Well, who would be behind that kind of thinking? Why? Because if we get them to kill themselves and not ever hear the truth, what's going to happen to them? To live is to suffer. Second, suffering is caused by desire. My problem in life is that ice cream cone that I would love to buy on the way home. If I did not want that ice cream cone, I would not suffer. Because if I don't have the money to get the ice cream cone, yet I want the ice cream cone, then I have this desire in me that eats away at me and causes me trouble. And if I just had no desire for the ice cream cone, then I would not have the anxiousness about being willing to get one. By the way, as I mentioned that you do know that Granny's is open. I just thought I'd tell you that. Suffering is caused by desire, greed, and attachment to the impermanent and illusionary things of the world lead to hatred and ignorance of true reality. Read this through now. Think about it. Greed and attachment to the impermanent or the temporary and illusionary world lead to hatred and ignorance of true reality. But what is true reality? non-existence. The next one, suffering will cease by eliminating selfish desire. Once we don't cling to desire, the pain of existence will be gone and the fires of greed, hatred and ignorance will be blown out. The last one, desire is eliminated by following the eightfold path. So we got four noble truths and we got an eightfold path. Now, some of these Some of these on the Eightfold Path are going to sound very familiar to you. One, it's eight right things. First of all, we've got to have the right view. And according to them, the right view is understanding the truths of existence. But I thought that true existence is what? Non-existence. So why would you even study or consider what the truth of existence is if the real goal is non-existence? But it's part of the Eightfold Path, the right view and truth of existence. And have the right intention, being willing to achieve enlightenment. This is your intention. I want to be enlightened. This is my only desire is to be enlightened, which means to cease to exist. C, I've got to have the right speech. I have to speak clearly and truthfully. So there's one. Tell the truth. Sounds familiar. The right action. Perform Proper actions and avoid immorality. And I have a question. Once again, this is a religion that does not believe in right and wrong. No dogma, no truth, no error, no sin. What's immoral? How would you define immorality? Huh? Come on now. How would you define immorality when there are absolutely no rights or wrongs? How are we trying to define it today? What do you say, David? What somebody else does. OK, if they do it, it's immoral. OK, somebody else. How what's happening today? How are we? What is it? What is it about Christianity that the world at this moment really doesn't like other than the cross of Christ, which says, You're so bad that it took a God's death to save you. Other than that, what is it that they hate about the concept of Christianity? Absolutes, right and wrong, and that somebody's going to have to give an account. Right? So how are we determining in this nation of ours right now? Come on now, be honest with yourself. How are we determining right and wrong in this nation and in many so-called Christian denominations? We're voting. Societal opinion. All right? But is not that what is happening? Is it popular opinion determining what is right and wrong? Situational ethics, relativism. All these things are related and interrelated. I don't know how you could have right actions and avoid immorality, how would you do that? The congressman up in New York hasn't done anything wrong according to him yet. I won't even call his name. Right livelihood, living simply, an honest occupation. I wonder why they have to have an occupation and I wonder why they have to provide for themselves? Why would they need to provide for themselves since they're just an illusion in the first place? I've always, you know, I have a hard time with things that are unreasonable. The right effort, directing one's energy properly, right mindfulness, meditating properly, controlled thinking, this is huge in Buddhism, right concentration, Maintaining continuous focus, form, and content of meditation are crucial to understanding reality. Meditation. And again, it's not meditating on a thought. It's meditating without a thought. Moral precepts. Buddhists must refrain from, one, the taking of all of life, all forms, not just human. But I thought there was no right and wrong. They're not supposed to steal. They're not supposed to have immoral sexual behavior. Again, what is immoral? Monks are celibate. They are to avoid lying. They are to avoid the taking of intoxicants, alcohol, drugs, and many times even medicines and so on. And so these are moral precepts. The goal of Buddhism, two of them. Here they are. This is big. The goals of Buddhism, number one, is the immediate goal is to eliminate the cause of suffering. What's the cause of suffering? Desire. So you can eliminate all desire. If you just don't want anything, you don't desire anything, and you can just get yourself into the situation where that ice cream cone is undesirable, then you will have peace, and you just do that with everything. Immediate goal is to eliminate the cause of suffering. The ultimate goal is nirvana, which is non-existence. And the author has written new existence on there because there is the supposition, perhaps, that there is some other form of existence that's not related to this universe and that there's another existence that perhaps that non-existence in this universe is some other kind of existence in another universe. But basically, their ultimate goal is to stop existing. Same thing for Hinduism, too. is to finally get off the wheel of samsara, stop living in this terrible, physical, horrible life, and stop having to go on and on, entering into nirvana, which for them would be to be reabsorbed into the great Brahman. and like a drop of water back into the ocean. Now, beliefs uniting all Buddhists. Here we are with their major, major things. Number one, fundamental negative attitude toward life. Existence is the problem. What's wrong with life? The fact that you live it. That's this. What's wrong with it? What's wrong with this life? You're alive. That's the problem, you know. I can even see the tree-hugging world and the people saying they can agree with that. Yep, the problem with this world is too many people. Fits right in. Negative attitude toward life. And then the next one, Buddha. No matter how conceived, provide a solution to the frustrations of life. In other words, if you can just follow in the ways of Buddha, whichever one you, whichever one of them or every interpretation of them, if you can just follow in this way, then you're going to provide solutions to the frustrations of this life. Here are the major sections of Buddhism. I found this amazingly interesting because in Christianity we have the same thing. We have, they have the Theravada Buddhists, and they are the ones that are the ultra, ultra, ultra traditionalists. They are the ones that follow the tradition of the elders. The religion is centered on the monks, who are the only ones who can attain nirvana. Everybody else is just to help them and hope that they come back as a monk. If they are, if transmigration happens, they get to come back as a monk, because only by becoming a monk could you ever hope to get to nirvana. So if you happen to be alive and live 85 or 90 years as just a regular person, not going to happen this time. You're never going to enter into nirvana from that life. You've got to come back again and be a monk. And so that's Theravada. They call this Hinayana or the little raft. In other words, there's not so many of them, they can all fit on the little raft, the little raft in the ocean of life. And then after about two or three hundred years, there was a great outcry by the clergy, not by the clergy, but by the laymen that were part of Buddhism, saying, hey, this isn't fair. You know what I mean? Just the monks can be enlightened. We think anybody can be enlightened. And so there was what they call a Mahayana, which is the greater raft. You've got the little raft and the greater raft. And this provides laymen more ways to enlightenment, multiplication of divine beings. A Buddha is the one that is enlightened, and a bodhisattva is one that is on the road. He's almost a Buddha. He's on the road to becoming a Buddha, and so there's supposedly lots of bodhisattvas today. Their scripture is the Lota Sutra, and there are many schools of Mahayana Buddhism. It's polytheistic. They do put up with gods. in the Mahayana brand of Buddhism, whereas the Theravada and the original Buddhists didn't believe in any gods. They were atheistic. These do believe in gods, and they have all kinds of idols and so on. They are idolatrous. Then there are the sects of Mahayana. First, Tendai. This is the rationalist school of Buddhism. All beings are part of the Buddha nature. What does that sound like? All beings are part of the Buddha nature. So like Hinduism, because Atman and Brahman are the same thing. Atman, that's the individual you. You are part of Brahman. Everybody's God. It's just you're just been separated from God for a little while until you can get absorbed back into Him when you're enlightened. And so Tendai Buddhism is very similar to Hinduism and was totally rejected by the majority of Buddhists. Then there's Pure Land Buddhists. They worship the Buddha Amida, who provides salvation. And there is a paradise for them. In other words, In this brand of Buddhism, there is a place that they would like to go, and it's their idea of a paradise. And then this one's a big one. Zen Buddhism or Zen Mysticism. And this one's very, very popular among movie stars. You know, it's popular among a lot of people in the United States. Mysticism. Enlightenment is found apart from words and explanations. In fact, I read the story. The myth is that this guy who founded Zen was standing in a room, and he was holding a daisy in his hand and staring at it, staring at it, staring at it, and he looked up at Siddhartha Gautama, and as they looked at each other, Siddhartha Gautama grinned at him, and therefore they knew some great truth that had been communicated through his acknowledgement of this daisy in his hand and the long period of time that they look at each other. And so there was some great truth that was transferred without words. And so Zen is a, it is a, it is a religion where the truth can't be, is not supposed to be transferred by words. But if you go out to Barnes and Noble, you can find all kinds of books written on Zen. Interesting. So it is enlightenment found apart from words and explanations. Knowledge is transmitted only from master to disciple, and the greatest example of this is Yoda and Luke in Star Wars, taking reality as reality. Now, here's one that you're going to really enjoy. Koans. By the way, in Zen, they do think that there is reality. They do believe that things exist. They think they exist. They just think they do want to stop existing, but they don't believe in maya. They believe that, you know, a pencil is a pencil and a stick is a stick. I mean, they believe that things are real. And then, now, Toans, they use these. These are very helpful to reach Satori, which is enlightenment. And I'm going to tell you what those are in a minute. But first of all, one of the things that's very, very common in Zen Buddhism is what they call Zazen meditation. And it is cross-legged sitting for hours and hours on end for discipline's sake only. It's to sit with a straight back, straight up, legs crossed, hands out, and just sit there and sit there and sit there with an empty mind. And in the Zen schools, the Zen master will walk around the room with a stick, and if somebody slouches or moves or wiggles and shows any movement whatsoever, they get smacked, you know, and then they'll thank their master for drawing their attention to the fact. They have to thank him. So, thank you, master, for helping me realize that I was not, you know, holding form and I was not sitting still because I have broken my meditation. I must start over. And so that's Zazen meditation and only straight back sitting. is valued. You've seen pictures on different places and TV shows where these people are sitting there doing that. All right, then I'm going to come back to the koans. Koans, now get this, this is very, very, very big and zen. They are riddles without rational answers. And so here's one of the riddles that's very famous. What is the sound of one-handed clapping? So I was in my office and I got to thinking about that and I said, I'll try it. And I couldn't make very much sense of what is the sound of one-handed clapping. And the other one is, this is great. What does a one-ended stick look like? I mean, they talk about this. And then this is a famous one. How crooked is straight? I can ask you a question. If you were to sit and think on those things and just do it for hours on end, would you ever get anywhere? Would there ever be any... Would there be an answer to that? I hate to tell you, but in many Catholic seminaries in Peru, they spend hours on end arguing how many angels can stand on the point of a pen, but I won't talk about that either. Zazen meditation, koans, and here's one. They are big into arts. I know you've seen this and probably seen demonstrations of it. They're huge into calligraphy, sand art, rock gardens. A lot of you out in California, there's a lot of these. My name actually saw one in San Diego when Rick was out there. Sand art, rock garden, and of course, the big, big thing was then is martial arts. Lots of martial arts. The next one, and this one is even really interesting. It's called Nichiren Soshu. It's an exclusivist school where chanting is the key to spiritual advancement. Chanting. And anyone can gain Buddhahood after only a few years' effort. It's an exclusivist school. Chanting is the key to spiritual advancement. Anyone can gain it after a few years' effort. Now watch. In Japan, a division of this Nichiren Soshu is called Sokagaki. and they literally worship. I get that. This is what they worship. They worship a highly decorated piece of paper upon which are written the ten stages of life from the lowest to the highest. Now, have you ever seen any of the, maybe on a movie, I don't know, Hawaii Five-0, or maybe you've seen some of these movies, and they'll have these trees, and they have these little pieces of paper rolled up and ribbons around them, and they tie them off the trees and things like that. Or you'll see somebody bowing down to a piece of paper that's hanging, and it's partly curled, and it's got all kinds of shiny things on there. That is what this piece of paper is. In Soka Gakki, they literally bow and worship for hours. and they'll mumble to them. And what are the ten stages of life that are written out on this paper? They worship it. And the lowest level is hell, then anger, then animality or animism, hunger, tranquility, rapture, learning, realization, bodhisattva, which is the path to being a Buddha, and then finally Buddhahood. The stages can be climbed and traversed by means of focused canning. I'm going to try to say this. I heard it. I pushed a little thing on my computer and had it say it. And they say this in a droning, slurred, monotone manner, using an item like a rosary to help them count the number of times they say it. And it's na-mu-nyo-ho-ren-kyo, na-mu-nyo-ho-ren-kyo. And they'll say that over and over and over and over and over. And they get to saying it in such a slurred way that nobody could understand at all what they're saying. It's not about being heard. It's about the mumbling. It's about the monotone chant. And it means, literally, I bow down to worship the beautiful teaching of the Loda Sutra. It doesn't mean they study the Lotus Sutra, which are their supposed writings about what is sacred. They don't study it. They just bow down and worship it. The equivalent would be to hang a Bible off the pulpit up here on Sunday, just hang a Bible here by a string, and everybody just come down, and I bow down to the Great Ten Commandments, or I bow down to the Holy Book, you know, to worship that leather-bound book. That is exactly what they do. And they do this for hours and hours and hours in just this mindless, And they just do this on, and they sit there, and sometimes they'll do it with a little prayer wheel. They'll spin the wheel. Sometimes they'll use the rosaries, and over and over and over. Can I ask you a question? Where did a religion like this come from? It's got to be, you said in Corinthians 4-4, that Satan is blind to the eyes of men, unless the light of the gospel could shine to them, and they could repent and be saved. And that's the only explanation for that. It is just so unbelievable. Then there's another division, the Tibetan Buddhism called Vijrayana. The Tibetan Lamaism is known there. They do a lot of meditation. Their identity merges with deity. The most famous order, you've probably seen this on television programs, certainly on the news, the Yellow Hat guys, and he's headed by the Dalai Lama, and the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama. So they believe every Dalai Lama has come back as the Dalai Lama. Another one is Shingon. It's a school of the powerful word. They worship a certain Buddha of Iroquois. He is the cosmic embodiment of the Buddha nature. And then here we have Buddhism versus Christianity, and here's what I want you to see. In Buddhism, a person works out his salvation by following steps. In Christianity, a person receives salvation as a gift resulting in following Christ. There's always following. But in Buddhism, they follow the steps to become Buddhists. But in Christianity, you receive Christ and then you follow in his steps as a follower of Jesus. And so following and teaching versus a relationship with the teacher and so on. Then in Buddhism, a person is motivated to escape suffering. In Christianity, a person is motivated by love for God and for others, escaping pain versus showing love. So the motivation for Christianity is love. In Buddhism, a person is focused primarily on individual enlightenment. In Christianity, a person is focused primarily on serving God and others. One is totally self-centered so that you can get enlightened. One is other-centered so others can find their way. The next one, problems and contradictions, and this is where I'm going to end up. We've only got about five minutes. A, where does the law of karma come from? We ask this of Hindus. Here's another good question we can ask of our Buddhist friends. Where does the law of karma come from? It seems similar to moral law, but that was written by a person with a mind, God. Here's the question. How can an impersonal universe that doesn't even exist, or worse yet, If the desire is non-existent, how can they write karmic laws or care about who violates them? If there is no origin and everything is just, everything is non-real, illusionary, non-existent, how does non-existence give any kind of measurement so that you would know whether you're ever doing right or wrong? If karma were true and you believed it, what good would it do you? If you can't remember a past life, you can't know what you did to merit your current conditions, whether good or bad. What good is punishment if you don't know what you're being punished for? If bad karma causes you to be reincarnated as an animal, how does an animal do anything morally good to rise the ladder? Is an animal self-conscious, and does he know right from wrong, good and evil? Even by our own terminology of right from wrong, good and evil, we say no, of course. An animal operates according to his instinct. You know, people who raise, you know, raise pit pythons and things like that, and the python gets out and kills their children in the house, got nobody to be mad at for themselves, because the nature of that animal is to eat things, squeeze them and eat them. People who have these wild pets are nuts, I'm just being honest. You know, might as well go get you, why don't you just, some of you, some of these people doing that, I wish that they would just go ahead and get them a warthog. Just get you a cute little warthog or a little tiny tusk, you know, let the thing grow up and turn your house upside down, dig up the foundation of your house. I don't understand it. But in any event, would that warthog know what he was doing? I mean, is he just doing what he does? I mean, does these wild hogs that are tearing up South Carolina and Florida right now, that are rooting... Do they know that they are doing something right or wrong? I mean, are they able to... No, they're just hungry, man. They're just wild hogs. They're boar hogs. They're out there tearing up everything and eating it, because that's what they do. They're not people. is as I think about this, and you think about Buddhism and Hinduism and all the things they think, it does, as I said last week, give you an understanding of why we have so many people in the world that are ready to give the same life to animals and to crickets as they are humans. You know? I mean, it's just where we are. If bad karma caused you to be reincarnated and so on, then if Guatma truly had insight into the ultimate non-reality, where did this insight come from? What did he see? If it did not come from the creator of the universe, because there is no creator, why should someone believe Buddha over anybody else? Because where did the information come from? It just came out of his empty head, or from Satan. And so, on the other hand, if Guatema was or became a divine being, why did he not think that the subject of God was relevant to his teaching? Here's another one, if everything we perceive is really maya or an illusion behind which is nothingness, how can we believe that Buddha's teaching are not also illusion and therefore worthless? Guatma and all he taught are part of a big illusion. Speaking specifically of Zen Buddhism, if Zen is true, why do people write books to explain it? I asked that a few moments ago. The next one, if there is no self, no soul, what reincarnates? Isn't that the simplest of all questions? I mean, they say that if your karma's bad, you've got to keep living and reincarnate until you can finally, but I mean, if there is no soul, there is none, there's no spirit, there's no soul, there's no existence, just this fictitious flame that goes out. Well, what holds the memories? You know, the memories, the feelings, the sensations, What holds that? If there's no soul, there's no mind, there's no spirit, there's nothing. If Buddha was right, he never existed. I mean, the whole, I think, therefore I am, is the opposite. I think, therefore I am not. That's, you know, it's amazing. So if there is no self, no soul, enlightenment is realizing nonexistence, then who told us all these things? If Buddha was right, he didn't exist. And who did he tell them to? Because they didn't exist. Neither does his followers exist. And the ultimate self-defeating statement is, I do not exist. Has there ever been a greater and more self-contradictory statement? Good morning, my name is Phil, and I am not here. This is not real. Let's just... You know, there's a lot of people trapped by this, but I mean, I'm not trying to mock, I'm just... It's just amazing, amazing. How can any religion or philosophy start with the premise that nothing exists and be taken seriously? How can any belief system be true which demands one ignores the undeniable reality that he exists in order to solve the problems of his existence? How can you ever hope to solve any problem? If you don't exist, neither does the problem. Why be motivated to do that? Then, here's reaching out to Buddhists once again, a firm common ground. You know, they talk about desires. Yes, desire can cause suffering, you know, if our desires are out of control. That's what the Bible talks about, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. Sure, they can cause you all kinds of troubles if you're out of control. Personal peace will be found when we abide in that which is permanent. It is best to live a moral life. They're saying moral. They don't have a standard for morality, but they do admit it's better. I mean, things go better. Even though this life that we're living doesn't exist, the illusion of it goes better if people live and act in a moral way. Self-discipline has spiritual value. They're very, very, very, very, very, very self-disciplined. But for what reason? I don't understand what would motivate you to just sit still like a board hours on end or to sit in front of something and mumble to a piece of paper, just mumble for hours and hours. I don't understand it. Proper meditation and prayer are important, but not meditation on nothing, but meditation on something that is true. Compassion is a virtue that should be nurtured. And then they need to be told about Jesus, who tells us to have right desires, not eliminate them altogether. Blessed are those, listen to this, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because they will be filled. I mean, that's a good desire. You know, the desire to, you know, great, great motivations and great desires gave us all kinds of answers. The desire to solve smallpox and the desire to figure out, I mean, there was great desires. Desire is not always evil. But illicit desire, desire out of control, of course that's wrong. So we've seen two of these major religions. Next time we're going to look at Chinese folk religion, which is as amazing as any of these. But we've seen Hinduism and Buddhism. And I have to ask myself, we told you last week why people are Buddhist and why people are Hindus. They were born into it. And somehow they've been, you know, why people are Islamic. They didn't wake up and say, OK, I really, you know, I think Islam is it. Or I think Buddhism is it. Or I think, you know, Hinduism is it. They don't do that. They grow up in it. They're told that's what you are. And so on. So you meet a Hindu. You meet a Buddhist. Then you run from them and say, look at the guy with the funny hat on his head. He's a Hindu. He's got his head wrapped up. And you just run from him because you're afraid of him. These people, you know, they can be very kind. They can talk. They will listen. They need to be listened to in a relationship. I'm going to just say this. Pastor Tom Pace, missionary Tom Pace, went to Pensacola Christian College one day. And I'm just going to say this. And he went to the class that they had for evangelists and pastors. And it was a big class. They were just all full in there. Bonnie and I happened to be there that day. And I was in the class. He looked at all those guys and he told who he was, what he'd been doing, how he'd been a missionary all these years. And he had three or four kids, went to that school, graduated. And so he asked all of them in there and he said, well, listen, I'd like you to tell me about some of the people that you're working on Share Christ. He said, just who are your unsaved friends that you're building a relationship with so that you can share Christ with? And he just looked at them. And they just sat there. And they looked. They said a bunch of things. And in a class of evangelists and future pastors, nobody could raise their hand and name. This is like 150 people in the class. Nobody could raise their hand and say, well, George, Bill, Tom, Sue. They couldn't. They couldn't name anybody that they had any kind of a relationship with that there would ever be any hope of sharing the gospel with because there just was no relationship whatsoever. So, I won't ask it tonight, but I wonder how many of us, if we met somebody that had a rag on their head, or if we met somebody that was dressed funny, or we met somebody that had, you know, a red dot in the middle of their head from India, would we run from them? Would we be afraid of them? Scared of them? What if they moved into the neighborhood? What if they lived next door, you know? How about regular people, you know? Do we do we as Christians are we afraid of the lost world? That's the big question. Are we afraid of the lost world? Are we? It's either it's either we're apathetic or we're so Calvinistic that we think, well, they're going to be saved whether I do anything or not. Or we are just afraid. And, you know, many of us have said this many times in here, and many of you look at me like, you know, you hear it, but I think it goes in one ear and out the other. Many of us have been taught a separation that is unbiblical. We have been taught to come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord of Hosts, and touch not the unclean things. Therefore, I just can't, oh, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll hand out a track or I'll, you know, I'll send somebody a Bible, but I just don't want to, I don't want to be influenced by the world. We're preaching on that on Sunday, right? We're talking about it on Sunday and, you know, the water in the boat, boat on the water and all those things. But do you know that that verse of scripture says, come out from among them, be ye separate? It's talking about coming apart from Christians who are living in moral lives. It is not talking about coming apart from lost people who don't even know the Lord. We have been sent to the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you know, we are supposed to not don't misinterpret me. I'm not saying go to the bar, sit down, have a drink. I'm not saying that you have to sit down and just become what they are. That's not what the Bible teaches at all. I hear people say sometimes, well, Jesus hung out with prostitutes and sinners. That's not, that's a lie. He did not. But when he encountered them, he showed them love and he showed them the truth and he talked to them. He didn't run from them. He did not hang out. in places like that. Now, here's what I would like you to see. I would like you to see that as Christians, we do have a message to share. That makes a whole lot more sense than Hinduism or Buddhism. And I just wonder how many Buddhists or Hindus have ever heard anybody with compassion in their heart listen to their story and then just share from an honest, well, you know, the Bible, instead of not wanting to exist, we believe that Existing forever would be a really good thing instead of thinking life is horrible. We think life can be very good. And we think life can be a wonderful thing. And so, but I just I just ask us all to let you go. It's time to go. But I just ask all of us, do you just think this thought and just rehearse yourself in your own mind? Do you have any contact with anybody that is not a believer? Do you have any contact with them? With any kind of a situation where you might even ever get around to talking to them about the Lord? very difficult to have an impact on somebody with whom you have no contact. We need to think about that. You know, Des Moines, Iowa, 450,000 strong has 250 to 260,000 of them who never go to church. And this is our mission field. Let's pray. Father, I pray