Only righteous religions can truly save Taiwan

 

Only righteous religions can truly save Taiwan

There are many religions established merely to satisfy sentient beings' desires and sensual needs: If the followers want a lot of money, the founder then teaches them to cultivate in ingenious ways; if they love to show off, the founder then teaches them ways to obtain supernatural powers. But when the followers fail to get what they want, then the explanation for their failure would be, "You are not faithful enough, this is why you still have not yet obtain the supernatural power you want". Or "You don't make a lot of money because you still need to donate more to the religion, so good fortunes will descend upon you," and "You do not need to cultivate as long as you donate a large sum of money to the religion and join our membership, then you will get the supreme status you want". There are also cultivators who find the mundane world we live in to be intolerable, so they give up their families and occupations in the society for cultivation in the woods or some secretive places. Needless to say, this is of course not the right way to cultivate.

There are also religions center on the worshiping of their respective founders, which often lead to turmoil in the society. They are also religions established to suit the followers' needs, aiming to satisfy their delusions, leading them to the wrong path of spiritual cultivation and making them to believe imaginative cultivation can get them somewhere in the spiritual world. Quite unfortunately there are too many people share the same psychological delusion that is far beyond the reality. And if we ever try to guide them out of their delusions, sometimes it would mean threatening individual survival to them. Often times we lead the followers to think meditation is the same as Ling cultivation, chanting mantras will be responded by the deities, and also the building of grand temples and statues of Buddhas, these are all for the sake of giving rise to a sense of belonging and security in the believers temporarily, but not forever. For the problem with this method is that, people can easily lose themselves if they rely heavily on the invisible forces. Therefore we should reconstruct ourselves by beginning with self-examination and repentance in order to give rise to a sense of self-esteem as well as confidence in ourselves, and then follow with a sense of responsibility to the society. Only then has our mentality sublimated to a healthy state. Although religion like this rarely attracts Taiwanese people's attention, but it is truly the first step towards breaking away from our sense of id on the path of righteous cultivation on which human and god will become one.

 

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