Why Religious Tolerance - Buddhist Perspective

We featured Dr K Sri Dhammananda for our wesak advert recently (http://letusaddvalue.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-propose-social-contract-this-wesak.html). Perhaps you may want to check his writing and understand and appreciate Buddhism better. To a large extend, even many who call themselves Buddhist need to understand their faith deeper.

Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!
Anas Zubedy

WHY RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE ?
By
Ven. Dr K Sri Dhammananda

BUDDHIST TOLERANCE

This is a very important subject for us who live in any multi-racial and multi-religious country. As Buddhists, we must know how to regard other religions, how to accommodate them and what place we are going to give them in our religion.

First we must understand the various ways which the different co-religionists regard each other: we must understand how the various religious groups react to each other: some religious groups are indifferent to the teachings and the practices of other religious. Some maintain their religious affiliation and yet respect other religions and appreciate their teachings. There are those who do not have a religion and look down upon every religion, while there are still others who do not bother about any religion and completely ignore all religion: their excuse is that they have no time to think about religion or to practice religion since they are always engaged with their business and family affairs.

Buddhists belong to the religious group that accepts and appreciates the reasonable teachings of every religion. Buddhists can also tolerate the practices of other religious, cultural traditions and customs, although they may not necessarily wish to emulate them. In other words, Buddhists respect the other man’s views and appreciate other practices without harbouring any religious prejudices. This is called religious tolerance. And if there are certain Buddhists who feel they are unable to appreciate the ways of other religious practices, then the least they could do is to maintain their silence and refrain from any undue criticism: this attitude is very important for peaceful co-existence. This is called sympathetic understanding.

To read further click here : http://www.ksridhammananda.com/pdf/new/WHY%20RELIGIOUS%20TOLERANCE%20-%20edited.pdf

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