To be honest, when I saw Lighthouse Evangelism Pastor Rony Tan’s video with a Joseph Wee on criticizsng Buddhism, as a Buddhist I was rather enraged by it.
But The Buddha said, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger”.
Hence after much thoughts, I have to thank Pastor Rony for giving me the spur to find out more about what the Lord Buddha and Buddhists think about fear.
As such, I am embedding the video below, not to incite others against the Pastor, but rather to point out some of the points raised by the Pastor and Joseph.
At about 1:20, Joseph and Pastor Rony was talking about a particular chant of a word in Pali that Joseph said he didn’t know what it meant nor did his senior Buddhist fellows. According to Joseph, the chant will “protect him against all devils, demons and gods.” Pastor Rony at 2:15 then said that one could chant “ee ee ou ah ah…” to similar effect.
After some research, I think that one word or two words actually could be the mantra chant of “Hari Om” which means to remove fear/uncover bliss.
One can clearly see that “Hari Om” doesn’t come with the intention as a protection chant but rather than a chant to remove fear or uncover bliss.
It is this fear of devils, demons and gods that create a need for us to be wanted to be from protected from them. If we were to remove this fear, wouldn’t it be as good as being protected against this evil spirits?
View on Buddhism wrote,
As fear is based on something that we think may happen in the future, it is clearly a mental process which tries to predict the future - in that sense, the reason of fear is a projection of our mind.
As such, if the chant is enable you to calm your mind to think of only the chant “Hari Om” and therefore remove your fear of “devils, demons and gods”, why then would you need protection against them?
Also, if one were to chant “ee ee ou ah ah..” as suggested by Pastor Rony, but that makes one mind to focus on the words and forget about the fear of “devils, demons and gods”, then maybe that person should chant “ee ee ou ah ah..”.
As such, if you at from this point of view, both Pastor Rony and Joseph have actually encourage the importance to find peace by controlling the mind and thus removing fear. A fundamental Buddhist teaching.
Here is Ajahn Brahm’s video about fear and how to overcome it.
As I continue to listen to the conversation between Pastor Rony and Joseph Wee, it actually encourages me to find out more about Buddhism as opposed to being disheartened.
For Lord Buddha said,
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
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