u/DramaQueen202s

There is not much overlap between Buddhism and Christianity, but I think they seem to be alignment on the importance of forgiveness in some form. In Christianity this is mainly from God, but also it's encouraged among the people. Yes, they use different words, but Buddha's and Jesus' behavior of non-escalation and non-violence can often be found emphasized in both religions. This does not mean that violence is strictly forbidden in those religions, but it's discouraged. I understand this is the theory... yes, there are violent Christians, and there are violent Islamophobic Buddhist monks, but I'm talking in the context of the theory.

It seems in the West 'forgiveness' have semantically shifted for reconciliation, but religions rarely preach reconciliation unless it's for people of the community or close family. Jesus had enemies that tried to catch him, Buddha also had dangerous enemies even among his own family. Being forgetful does not mean reconciliation, but it seems more like discouragement of escalation. Forgiveness is not a concession either, you are not saying your enemy is right. It seems Buddha was right on the idea of non-attachment... 'cause that probably a good definition of forgiveness.

People often see forgiveness and reconciliation as something very personal, or assume it's something that comes naturally, but that's not always the case, specially in tribalism. I was reading about anthropologists describing tribes in Africa that hate each another because a dead ancestor from another tribe stole a cow decades ago. Not long ago almost all human societies were like this (we can see this tribalist dynamic in Romeo and Juliet), and many societies still are, so it makes sense religions and even secular missions often put such emphasize on reconciliation and forgiveness for healthy societies.

People often get defensive, and jump to assuming it's about forgiving someone for something unthinkable as r*ape or m*rder, and yet for many of us it's just about moving on from a former friend that betrayed us in high school, or an ex that cheated (yes, it's terrible, and no, that does not mean reconciliation). It also seems that even Jesus had reasonable exceptions to forgiveness, such as those who hurt children (Matthew 18:6) or adultery (Matthew 5:32, 19:9).

The problem is that people seem to assume forgiveness is a kind of submission, while the actual submission is putting an enemy on a pedestal, rent-free in your head. Resentment is drinking poison and expect the other person to die. It seems we have redefined forgiveness a burden too heavy to carry for most people, which is very unfortunate.

TLDR: If we returned to the original meaning of forgiveness, it would be easier for us to forgive.

I don't get the controversy around Mother Theresa. Of course that if I'm not a traditionalist Catholic I will disagree with her views of sex or her discouraging birth control. However, that says more about her beliefs than her deeds. Her views of suffering as a noble sacrifice are also not so alien to Catholicism, and even outside of religion there are some secular ideas that considered struggle as necessary for growth, or at least a defining factor of our humanity.

I get Theresa's mission had not the standards of a hospital, but she managed a place where people go to die instead dying on the streets in a very populated country that even today has problems with sanitation and healthcare access... it was not a hospital. Not saying she could have done it better, but helping homeless dying people is also empathic.

In any case, I do believe her contributions are mostly overblown, but that's not her fault either... people make an idealistic image of someone as a "saint", or adopt a famous priest/nun/monk as an ideal, to then find that they were people with faults and defects as any other. We love to put people on a moral pedestal and then get mad when we find that person was just a normal human being, with their own defects.

No, I don't consider her a hero, but also she was not evil as some people tried to paint her later on.

It's strange how Manichaeism almost completely vanished after spreading for so far into Asia. I suppose other ancient and medieval universalist movements also died off, but it probably was way earlier, not after spreading so far. The strange thing is how Manichaeism grew and expanded, it became a well-documented religion, and then vanished. It's rare for established universalist religions to disappear as they are not restricted to an ethnicity, and later on some ethnicities adopt them as their own, in the same way that Armenians basically made their flavor of Christianity an ethnic religion.

I suspect Manichaeism don't fully died, but integrated its concepts into existing religions until it had no unique identity on its own, in the same way that Hindu regions in Southeast Asia became Buddhist but kept many Hindu elements. You could also argue that Manichaeism probably didn't have many original elements on its own, as it rather borrowed lots of ideas from Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity... which makes it harder to know what came from it or from those religions directly.

The other explanation may be that Manichaeism was a higher class religion that was preached to educated and nobles, but never established solid roots among commoners. This may explain why it's so well documented but died off. Nobles eventually adopt the commoner's religion because it's easier than changing the people's faith.

In any case, we have a lot of information about this religion, but almost no real reason about why it disappeared. It was not significantly prosecuted or preached against either. Very odd.

TLDR: Manichaeism was a universalist religion that widely expanded, we know a lot about, but somehow vanished into irrelevance completely with not much historical explanation.

It seems Hinduism is more like a collection of religions that share a common culture or origin.

Considering Hinduism as one religion seems to be as odd as considering all Abrahamic religions the same religion because they share God and some prophets. Yes, Hindu denominations recognize each other as kind of valid, but so you can say about Islam recognizing People of the book or Christians recognizing Judaism as having some truth in it. There are also fundamental dogmatic disagreements among Hindu denominations akin to that between different religions of the same family.

BTW this also seems to happen in the West too, to a lesser extend. For example, Mormonism has a totally different and unique view of God to that of mainstream Christianity, it even has a totally different book on top of the Bible, but they are still considered Christian for most purposes.

I believe this view of Hinduism as one religion is based mainly on colonialism and Indian nationalism. This is similar to the "Chinese" language which is not really a thing, but a collection of languages that happen to share same writing and Chinese culture.