The message may be coming in under the rubric, in the guise of Buddhist works, but it didn't have to. It could have been anything as long as it resonated. But if they are Buddhist works resonating, doesn't that make me Buddhist? My emphasis goes on the "could have been anything" rather than on what just so happened to have resonated.
You can build your world, your understanding, your cosmology around any religious fabric, you can build the world around you in the images and beliefs of the works that resonate, but the bottom line is the self as an accountable, responsible agent of whatever, hopefully something positive and "good" (unless you're a minion of Satan, in which case that would be counter-productive and could get you fired and sent to heaven).
I've heard people say that the Bible isn't supposed to be historical or literal, but metaphorical, and if you don't get the learning behind the stories, or if you're using them in decidedly un-Christian ways, it's of no use knowing them. I've also seen people offended by those claims.
And with Buddhism, you worship, you bow, you offer, you visualize, and there's a world of gods and deities you hope will guide you and support you, whose favor you must recognize, but all of this is a trap, these are all tools to accomplish what one can't accomplish without them – to realize they are all and only you, thirty dirty birds at the end of the journey.
I imagine Buddhists being offended by that distillation.
And I can't believe I tried to summarize the six existence realms of suffering in an earlier post. That was a miserable failure. I shouldn't even try to summarize shit, I suck at simplifying; I end up mucking it up (it makes sense to me).
It's interesting how liberation in the reality between matches the end of the journey in The Conference of the
