I think for us as practitioners on the path, the challenge is for us to reflect our understanding of the teachings in our daily lives, yet also not lose sight of the ultimate goal – otherwise we are settling for something far less than the Buddha taught was possible. As I would see it we are settling for some measure of happiness and comfort in our lives rather than full and complete liberation.

But aside from that, he took issue with virtually ever aspect of Brahminism. He rejected the idea of caste. He rejected the idea that the gods could be controlled by ritual. He disagreed with animal sacrifice. He disagreed with the idea of ritual purity. He disagreed with the entire fabric of Brahminism, argued against its key tenets and practices, and often parodied its beliefs. So it doesn’t make much sense to say, as some do, that the Buddha was a reformer of Brahminism. He was more of a demolition expert.

It’s hard in fact to see how the Buddha could have distanced himself more sharply from his Brahminical contemporaries. The only real overlap was the shared vocabulary they had for talking about suffering, freedom from suffering, and how you get from one to the other.

Anyway, whatever the book was that Ron refers to (the one that says “Neither Jesus nor Buddha set out to form a new religion. In their own ways, they were looking to reform the religious tradition that they were raised in”) I’d profoundly disagree, at least as far as the part about the Buddha goes. He wasn’t a “reformer,” but a radical religious innovator.

I could go on and on all day about Paul. Yes, his letters were, in fact, LETTERS. They were written with specific groups and problems in mind. One town had problem X, so he wrote to them about THEIR need to solve that problem. Each letter was tailored to the target group, and played to their strengths and weaknesses (I once did a paper on Paul’s use of rhetoric in Galatians). They were never intended to be read and obeyed by strangers two thousand years later. There are a few inconsistencies and contradictions in the letters, and this is the reason.

That being said, there is a lot of good information in the letters, and they do have their place in the Bible. The thing is that people should realize that they were not written as long-term instructions that apply to everyone, but rather should be looked at at useful historical documents explaining what the “church” was like in those days.

Another interesting point, though maybe not as relevant, was that Jesus’ message was somewhat political. He came out of a poor, repressed society and was trying to change things.

FINALLY, and the basis behind a lot of my faith questioning lately is that much of the religious writing that has reached us today is (likely) far removed from what actually (likely) really happened. There’s a good article in the Atlantic this month that discusses how many of Paul’s letters to the small Christian communities were what amounted to marketing letters. He was trying to sell the idea of Christianity, and tweaked the message to his uses.