Which religion should I join...?

Friends,

I want to live a complete happy life…I have tried my best… every where I have limits.. but I want to live limitless & full life…Is it possible…? can any religion satisfy me…which religion should I join…? 

hi devindernagpal… first of all i don't think that i want to suggest you to embrace my religion… and so sorry if you find some of my Muslim friends are coaxing you to join islam… yeah…it looks like the people in here were selling their religions to u…actually it depends on your heart… your mind… and definitely your own thought…. i think u should hmm…babysteps???(how can i say this ahahha)

observe everything around you… take a look at your friends which are from different religions… make differences between them…their attitudes, their thoughts…. and you should think that having religion is for your future life and for your future generations… not just for a few days after that….

ah well i'm not really help you but i think you should think of it first before making your final decision…. 

yep hasan5 was right….if you were given an opportunity to eat an ice cream only once in your lifetime….would u ask the people which flavor that you should pick??? well it's ok if you still wanna ask them… maybe you want some opinions from them…if you ask me i would say "choc" n maybe you didn't agree wif me…but u should make a right decision so that you can feel the freshness and the coldness in a single bite…and you will never regret of what you're doing….. hahaha sorry if this is too far hahahah…

but don't eat them all cz you're gonna be fat 

yep hasan5 was right….if you were given an opportunity to eat an ice cream only once in your lifetime….would u ask the people which flavor that you should pick??? well it's ok if you still wanna ask them… maybe you want some opinions from them…if you ask me i would say "choc" n maybe you didn't agree wif me…but u should make a right decision so that you can feel the freshness and the coldness in a single bite…and you will never regret of what you're doing….. hahaha sorry if this is too far hahahah…

but don't eat them all cz you're gonna be fat 

Hello,
I am not intending to suggest which religion is good. I only want to share some of the teachings of Buddha. It's called "38 Blessings" from Mingala Sutta. It doesn't include any serious religious philosophy or biased practices. It is only for a daily living human to practice as a good human.

In Buddhism, a person does not need to become a buddhist to reach the perfect stage or find the true happiness. And no one can give you such things too. Even if somebody could give you happiness, it would be only for temporary. Buddha left us precious teachings to practice in our daily life to live as a good human. These are not meant to be complete but I found these practices precious to measure how a good person should be. Instead of blindly praying or hoping for somebody to help, we can just try to practice these and eventually we find true happiness in life (No offence, sorry).

1. Not to associate with foolish, to associate with the wise and honour those who are worthy of honour. This is the highest blessing.

2. To live in a suitable place, to have done the meritorious actions in the past, and properly to keep one's mind and body. This is the highest blessing.

3. To have much knowledge, to be skilled in crafts, to be well-trained in discipline and to have good speech. This is the highest blessing.

4. Looking after one's mother and father, supporting one's wife and children and having an appropriate career. This is the highest blessing.

5. Generosity, righteous practice, supporting one's relatives and blameless actions. This is the highest blessing.

6. Abstaining from evil thoughts, abstaining from evil deed and speech, restraint from intoxicants and not-neglecting wholesome acts. This is the highest blessing.

7. Being respectful, humble, contented, grateful and listening to the Dhamma at a suitable time. This is the highest blessing.

8. Being patient, obedient, meeting the wisdoms and discussing the Dhamma on suitable occasions. This is the highest blessing.

9. Having subdued evil actions, leading a noble life, seeing the Noble Truths and realization of Nibbana. This is the highest blessing.

10. The mind of a worthy one , confronted with the eight worldly conditions is not shaken. It is sorrowless, stainless and secure. This is the highest blessing.

Having fulfilled such blessings these being are victorious everywhere and gain happiness everywhere. These are the highest blessings for them.

And there are 5 most basic buddhist precepts to practice for everyone.
1. To avoid killing or harming living beings.
2. To avoid stealing.
3. To avoid sexual misconduct.
4. To avoid lying.
5. To avoid alcohol and other intoxicating drugs.

Real Buddhism is not a extremist religion. It is a "Middle-way" practice which is free from two extreme axis (Too strong and too soft). Buddha had a good beginning, a good middle, and a good ending in this whole life. He was born as a price and enjoyed all the pleasures of life. When he was around 29, he abandoned everything and meditated 6 years to find the truth and true happiness and the way to end all sufferings. After that he became Buddha and taught his teachings for the whole life.

In his life as a Buddha, he never harmed anyone or demanded any wealth or position. And he was not killed by somebody too ( Of course many religious sects tried to kill him many times). Nobody could harm Buddha. He lived all his life teaching Dharmma peacefully and happily without harming others and being harmed.

In the religion historys, it is very rare to see a God or a Saint or a Philosopher who lived up to full life without being killed. Buddha could conquer everyone only by his love and teaching. Buddha never used harsh words to anyone too.

I am not offending any religion. I just simply admire and respect buddha after reading his teachings. Goodluck.

Correction to my post:

He was born as a "prince" (not price) and enjoyed all the pleasures of life.

All of the many teachings of the Buddha centre on the Four Noble Truths.

"The First Noble Truth is that life is suffering. To live, you must suffer. It is impossible to live without experiencing some kind of suffering. We have to endure physical suffering like sickness, injury, tiredness, old age and eventually death and we have to endure psychological suffering like loneliness, frustrations, fear, embarrassment, disappointment, anger, etc."
Buddha did not deny that happiness exists. He simply says that to live is to experience physical and psychological suffering which is a statement that is so obvious that it cannot be denied. The central concept of most religions is a myth, a legend or a belief that is difficult or impossible to verify. Buddhism starts with an experience, an irrefutable fact, a thing that all know, that all have experienced and that all are striving to overcome.

"The Second Noble Truth is that all suffering is caused by craving. When we want something but are unable to get it, we feel frustrated. When we expect someone to live up to our expectation and they do not, we feel let down and disappointed.
Even when we want something and are able to get it, this does not often lead to happiness either because it is not long before we feel bored with that thing, lose interest in it and commence to want something else. Put simply, the Second Noble Truth says that getting what you want does not guarantee happiness. Rather than constantly struggling to get what you want, try to modify your wanting. Wanting deprives us of contentment and happiness."
Buddha asks us to make a difference between what we need and what we want and to strive for our needs and modify our wants. There are needs that are essential, fundamental and can be obtained and this we should work towards. Desires beyond this should be gradually lessened.

"The Third Noble Truth is that suffering can be overcome and happiness attained. This is perhaps the most important of the Four Noble Truths because in it the Buddha reassures us that true happiness and contentment are possible. When we give up useless craving and learn to live each day at a time, enjoying without restlessly wanting the experiences that life offers us, patiently enduring the problems that life involves, without fear, hatred and anger, then we become happy and free. Then, and then only, do we begin to live fully. Because we are no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish wants, we find that we have so much time to help others fulfil their needs. This state is called Nirvana. We are free from psychological suffering.


"The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path leading to the overcoming of suffering. This path is called the Noble Eightfold Path and consists of Perfect Understanding, Perfect Thought, Perfect Speech, Perfect Action, Perfect Livelihood, Perfect Effort, Perfect Mindfulness, and Perfect Concentration.
Buddhist practice consist of practising these eight things until they become more complete. You will notice that the steps on the Noble Eightfold Path cover every aspect of life: the intellectual, the ethical and economic and the psychological and therefore contains everything a person needs to lead a good life and to develop spiritually. (See http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html for more explanations on Noble Eightfold Path).

Source: http://www.buddhanet.net/qanda.htm

Hi  my friends I will give u advice  read about all religion and see which one is right and make u feel happy and satisfying.

You need to know about god and life.

yes, be a atheist, its mean no religion, just faith and believe to myself.. no war, just clear mind

hi dev,

all religion invite to believe in god and spread peace and humanity between people, i think you need to read more about main religion and know more about it then you can thinking and find your self in one of them.

about my self i thanks god i am muslim.

I cannot tell you what to believe (that is something you will have to come to on your own), but I will tell you why I personally have faith in and follow Jesus Christ.

I grew up without any sort of religious upbringing but always believed that there was a God.  I always wanted to find favor with God, so I would do whatever I felt like it took to be a good person.  I'd stay away from "bad" stuff like drinking and sex and I'd go out of my way to do good things for others .  And I'd pray.  I thought I was overall a "good person" on the outside, but I knew that on the inside that I would still think malicious (bad/evil) thoughts that were rooted in anger, jealousy, greed, etc.  So basically, it seemed like everything good I would ever do to "please God" would be counterbalanced by something bad or just simple ugliness within if that makes sense.  

So then for a while I was feeling hopelessness.  I learned about many different religions (similar to what you are doing right now) and found that they were all sets of rituals and things that you must do in order to find favor with God (or the Gods).  But in learning of these things, I thought to myself "what if I can't live up these expectations well enough?" and felt that all of these rituals and things to "earn my salvation" would be even further bondage to me from knowing God because I would constantly have the pressure hanging over my head to live up to these standards.  I even experimented with a few buy always felt so much pressure to "live up" to it.  So basically I was feeling the same way you feel when you have written in this forum.

Not too long after, I nearly lost my life in a car accident.  It was then that God revealed to me that the reason I felt so much weight and hopelessness is because I was in bondage to my own sin, and that I could be spiritually freed from this bondage.  Having grown up in a country where most people call themselves Christians, I had heard the story of Jesus Christ dieing on the cross and then being resurrected to take away our sins, but it never really made that much sense to me.  I didn't really understand the significance or implications of it.  But then after I realized the source of why I felt so weighed down all the time in my life, Jesus' story made perfect sense to me and quite honestly it suddenly became the greatest news I had ever heard!  This is why the Bible refers to it as "Good News"

I can give you a few verses from the New Testament in the Bible which sums up my faith:  The first is Romans 3:23 which states "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God".  Everyone is in the same predicament…none of us are perfect, and none of us "measure up" on our own accord.  So, according to this, no one who has posted on this topic is spiritually "better" than you because we ALL sin.  We all miss the mark.  We all fall short.  Even if we live a prescribed religious life, we all sin.

The second is Romans 6:23 which says "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord".  Notice the difference between a wage and a gift.  A wage is something that you earn by your own merits, but a gift is something that is freely given to you whether you think you deserve it or not. 

The third is Romans 5:8 which gives us more insight to what this "gift" is: 

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  The reason I bolded "still sinners" is to emphasize the fact that we don't have to do a bunch of good deeds or perfect ourselves before receiving this "gift" of eternal life.  God reaches down to us with this gift where we are as soon as we are willing to receive it.

Here is another verse supporting that:  

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works so that no one can boast – Ephesians 2:8,9.  The definition of grace in the dictionary in this context is "the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God."

Now how do you receive this gift of salvation/eternal life?  Romans 10:9 makes it very clear:

If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Similarly, Jesus said Himself:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in - Revelation 3:20

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6

my experience was that I prayed telling God that I was sorry for my sins but that I wanted to place my faith in (believe in) Jesus and be forgiven and after that God affirmed to me that this was truth because I saw that my heart completely changed from the inside out and as I started to really read the Bible everything made so much sense.  And I started to see prayers being answered.  As previous posters have said, I feel that I know God personally now because, through Jesus, I am no longer separated from God by my sin.

And I feel total freedom.  Because I receive salvation by grace and not by rituals or "works", I am free to express my love and gratitude to God in worship and in prayer and in fasting and in giving without constantly fearing that it will affect God's love for me.  And not as a ritual or something that I "have to do".  Instead it is an outpouring of my heart and my love for God.  In other words, I pray because I love God and because I want to; not because I feel like I have to in order to find favor with Him.  The same with any other thing that is "religious".  It is no longer "religious" because it is something that I enjoy and love doing and not something that I feel that I have to do to earn merit with God.  To me, this is such freedom!!!! 

Another thing I should mention is that you don't have to change your culture or anything like that to follow Jesus Christ.  Anyone from any religious background or culture can follow Jesus because it is a decision of the heart.  I don't say this to "sell" you my faith, but so that if you ever did decide to follow Jesus, you won't have to give up your Indian culture or anything to do so.

I hope that my post was not too long and boring, but I wanted to share with you my own personal journey in my faith.  I will be praying for you as you continue to embark on your spiritual journey, and may God show you his endless love and grace!