Featured Local Guest: Mike Vasquez, St. Gregory Retreat Center
Featured National Guest: Dr. Anthony Clark, Whitworth University, Spokane, Washington
Guest Host: Mike Vasquez, Board of Directors for St. Gabriel Communication
Mike Vasquez, a member of KWKY's Board of Directors as well as a founder of the St. Gregory Retreat Center near Des Moines, joined Bill this morning. The St. Gregory Retreat Center has a location in Baird and another in Adair, Iowa. They are an internationally known retreat center that offers people help recovering from substance abuse. With researchers providing the staff with new and different ways to help people to grow past this addiction, their program focuses on helping these people form ways to deal with situations.
Mike finds that substance abuse begins with an immature response to adult situations. And by immature response, he is pointing toward the desire for instant gratification. Through their two month intensive program, weekly updates and continued help for a year following, many people from around the country have found the strength to beat their addiction.
Dr. Anthony Clark, a professor of East Asian History at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington spoke about the intrisic differences between Catholicism and Buddhism. As a committed Catholic, Dr. Clark noticed that many people thought that they could be both Buddhist and Catholic. With his studies of East Asian History, he identified that this could be problematic so he decided to dedicate himself to communicating the differences that make it impossible to be both Buddhist and Catholic.
One of the main differences is Buddhism's idea of the after-life or salvation. Nirvana, is the term that is used to describe teh attainment of the goal of Buddhism. Nirvana itself means "Extinction," if that give you a clue as to the practices of Buddhism. What the core principle of Buddhism is is that life is suffering and that suffering is bad. The key to eliminating suffering is to detatchi yourself from desire and ultimately from yourself. This means that the ultimate goal of Buddhism is the extinction of self, which can be attained in any of the different lives a person lives. Our Catholic faith is rooted in the fact that as a human people, we live one life and our goal is eternal life with Christ.
This extinction of self lends itself to a nihilistic approach to reality. The philosophy that there is no such thing as truth is something that Buddhism hones in on. Buddhists say that all perceptions of the world come from your mind and are not reality, but they are your reality. There is no such thing as objective truth in Buddhims. Catholicism abound in the beauty of objective truth and the belief that Christ is indeed the way the truth and the life. There are moral codes in Catholicism that a decision can be right or wrong and that sin exists. Buddhism diminishes all things to personal perspective.
For more information you can find articles written by Dr. Clark like this one on line.
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