Exposing Buddhism

Buddhism and Touch Therapies

Siddhartha Guatama was born about 500 B.C. i a province of northern India. He was the son of a local Raja or King and a member of the Brahman caste system. Living a sheltered life in the royal court, Siddhartha enjoyed every luxury of life. At his birth, it was prophesied that he would either be a great ruler or if he chose the religious way of life, the savior of the world. On Siddhartha's 20th birthday, his father gave him the gift of 40,000 dancing girls. He eventually chose his cousin Yodhartha to be his wife.

Siddhartha was curious about the outside world and stole away from the palace to explore it. When he escaped the confines of the palace, he observed the suffering of the world for the first time. On the night of his only son's birth, he left the palace never to return. Instead, Siddhartha entered the monastic way of life and became a monk. traveling from place to place and practicing asceticism, he tried to find a way to escape the sufferings of this life. While sitting under a tree in Deer Park in a city in northern India, Siddhartha experienced a spiritual transformation and became the Buddha or "Enlightened One". Buddha traveled the countryside preaching his gospel of an ethical system which would deliver those who heard it from the struggles of everyday life. He died of poison at the age of 80.

The Buddha's teaching introduced three major ideas; 1. The existence of Nirvana. Nirvana is the goal of life. It simply means "nothingness". The goal is to empty the self of all anxiety and self and merge with the energy force that consists of all things. In this, Buddha introduced the idea of an impersonal god. This concept of god is called Pantheism or that "god is all and all is god". All living things are part of the god consciousness. 2. The second belief that the Buddha introduced is the idea of karma. The way that that people achieve freedom from suffering is through a system of good works. The worked that you do determine what form you take in the next life.  3. The final concept that the Buddha introduced is reincarnation. Escape from the sufferings of this present life is found through an endless cycle of death and rebirth into higher and higher forms of life. The goal is to merge with the Universal life force and empty oneself of all personal identity. The means of doing this is achieved through Karma.

Touch therapies are based on Buddhism's pantheistic ideas of god. In touch therapy, the existence of a Universal Life Force is key to understanding how healing works. This all-pervasive energy is channeled by the therapist into the bodies of the clients to produce healing. This concept is a direct derivative of Buddhism. Touch therapies also hold to a pantheistic view of God in that all things are related by spirit. Not only do people have a spirit, but o do animals and inanimate objects such as rocks and trees. These may be contacted in touch therapy sessions for information and direction. The spirits of the dead are contacted as well. Deceased family members and the spirits of deceased teachers are channeled in order to assist the therapist in healing. Some say that these help them perform psychic surgery. Touch therapies practice the principles of karma and reincarnation believing that they can regress into past and future lives to affect events contained within both.

Christians should not have anything to do with touch therapies. Touch therapies are based on religious ideas that deny the core of the Christian gospel. They deny the sinfulness of man, the need for Christ's vicarious death and the hope of a bodily resurrection. Christians need to plainly realize that touch therapies are not alternative medical choices but are in essence religious ideas based on Eastern religion and the occult.