u/TradRooster5627

How do you cope with the fear of eternal damnation?

What practical advice would you give to someone just starting out on this path?

I’ve recently started practising again and I feel good. The problem is that I have an addiction linked to a perversion that drives me to sin. I try to resist as much as possible, but it’s very difficult. The thing is, I don’t know how to handle confession. The idea of going to confession all the time is… I don’t know.

Hello, everyone. Having just read about a similar experience, I’d like to briefly share how I returned to Christianity through Buddhism.

Long story short, I’ve always had deep inner conflicts regarding the world, and the problem of suffering has always been central. Over the years, my vices have accumulated and taken root, obscuring many of my idle hopes. 

Buddhism, and also Gnosticism, were two paths I explored and practiced. In particular, Theravada and Zen Buddhism, since, unlike Gnosticism, these are traditions that still exist today and have not interrupted their authentic transmission.

The fact is that, during a zazen meditation session in the silence of an urban monastery, together with other practitioners, something interesting happened.

The teacher quoted the words of Dogen, the monk who founded the Soto Zen lineage: “Keep your hands open, and all the sand in the world will pass through your fingers; keep them closed, and you will have only a few grains.”

Following these words, the image of Christ first came vividly to my mind, and then his Good News. Amid a burning and unstoppable longing for Him, I began to feel the desire to pray. Well, mentally I began to recite the Lord’s Prayer automatically, almost without explicitly intending to.

In the days that followed, this thought kept coming to mind during my silent meditations, and at a certain point I decided to “surrender” and accept the fact that I am a Christian. 

Never before have I felt such a clear awareness that man is permeated by an extremely deep inner emptiness from which springs the desire to be filled with Love. We seek this Love in its distorted material forms such as sex, food, fame, and wealth, but these are all imperfect imitations. The only true Love capable of filling the soul is mystical union with God. Allowing the Word to overturn and destroy everything that occupies His temple, so that He may dwell there supremely. 

Now, this is very difficult for me, because I am confronting something that, on the one hand, has always been within me, but on the other, is incredibly new. There are issues I still cannot see clearly, such as the relationship between free will and God’s omniscience. But as a priest once told me, one must have respect for the Mystery, and have faith.

If you have any advice or similar experiences to share, I would be happy to hear them!