Dear friend,
I wish I could give you a big warm hug to comfort and encourage you, instead of a virtual hug. You told of hard experiences for a young girl. The virtual hug I can send you is warmly felt in my heart. :-))
You raised an important subject that may be also be on otherpeople's minds.
Superstition is a important thing to root out of your life. Itbrings fear, and a feeling of powerlessness. It can make you a plaything, or a pawn of others. You lose your free will to a powerthat doesn't even exist. It undermines your own ability to trust thatthis is a rational world, and that you can trust your rational mind.It lets you feel that magic can influence your life, rather than yourown efforts. It is a dangerous and weakening delusion to allow to have any influence over you. So, I will take this reply to a root article, and give it a new name.
This friend wrote about superstitions she has had to endure. To understand and avoid superstition is an important subject for a person's life strength and happiness. These painful experiences, though, useless in other ways, helped her to learn to think for herself. So there was some unintended good in them.
An old women, said to be a soothsayer, said two moles on your face would cause your father trouble or death. You wanted to keep your family safe, :-) so you agreed to have some something done, but what it was you didn't know yet. She put some kind of acid on your face to burn them, and it was very painful, made an ugly mess. and left scars. Of course, this was superstition. The results, and your friends' reactions caused you to think it through and realize that for yourself. :-)
Later, you and a friend wanted to help your friend's departed grandmother in the next world, :-) so you went to a service that was supposed to cleanse her soul and free it from any wrongs she didin this life. Again, your motive was a good one. :-) Other people made you feel stupid about it, and this made you think about what had gone on, and if it was likely to be of any good to the grandmother. You realized that the ritual performance was superstitious. Since it was a religious ritual you decided that all religion is superstition. You clearly have a mind that works well for you, dear girl! :-) The only problem was that you didn't have quite enough real information to work with.
One thing to know is that because Buddhism is very, very old, a lot of things have been added into it that were never put there by Gautama Buddha. In fact I have heard it said by an excellent authority that in Buddhism now, none of the original words of The Buddha exist any more. There are hundreds or thousands of books of scripture, but they are all from others much later, and none from Gautama Buddha, Himself. However,if a person wants to turn their heart trustingly to the goodness of Gautama the Buddha they can still use that avenue to reach the GreatCreator.
Your Mom said you had insulted the Highest Power because it was a Buddhist ritual that you rejected. She wanted you to beg forgiveness. Your Mom was doing the best she knew how again, to avoid more difficulties in your family, and to show respect. :-) You continued to think the ritual was superstition. :-) The next day you had troubles, and so the superstition had its hold in you because you concluded they came because you had thought for yourself, and said what you honestly thought. So you feared your Mom might be right and that it was punishment.
These things probably would have happened anyway, but you had it planted in your mind that you might be punished, so you thought the difficulties were the punishment. Things that are believed in superstition aren't eventhe way a wise and loving parent would treat a child, and it certainly isn't worthy of, or the way of the Greatest One of all. It wasn't punishment.
Your Mom is trying to do the best she can for all of you, according to what she has heard may help. However, sometimes she has been tricked. Probably she even had to pay some of her much-needed money to get the old women to tell her why her husband had trouble, and to burn the moles from your innocent face. Probably the grandmother's family paid a lot for that ritual you attended in the Temple.
All of these things you described are superstition. None of them are real religion. If people put them into a religion it is something put in, and not the real original religion as it was given. None of the world's great religions teaches this stuff. In the case of Buddhism and others of the world's great religions, things have been added over thousands of years. A lot has accumulated. Priests of varying motives have put their imaginings, and misunderstandings, and ways to keep employed, and to keep power, into religions in the form of dogma and rituals that were not from the Founder. If you are sure you have the real words of a Founder, then they are what you can trust. The parts about how to live with others are the most important parts to think about and take to heart. The rules about diet, inheritance, marriage and divorce, types of legal punishments for crimes and so on, are probably too old now to work in our times.
One of the problems for people is that superstitious spells, words and so-called remedies can seem to have effect. For instance, if a person *believes* deep inside that they may or will be injured by a curse it can happen, just because the person believes it will happen. That is how those curses in Africa work. The person believes, and so can bring it to happen, (such as sickening and dying,) through the action of their sub-conscious mind, even though consciously they don't believeit. That is how dangerous they can be.
Or like you, friend, they may attribute difficulties, or good thingsthat would have happened anyway, to the promised punishment or reward. None of us, including me, know how deeply the old superstitions may be buried in us. We may think that we don't believe them at all, but deep inside we may have something left over from childhood, or from race memory. That is the reason that some people in the West send chain letters that promise trouble if they don't send them along to six of their friends, and promise a reward if they do. They don't want to take the chance that a superstition might be true because they have an ancient, meaningless fear. Or they don't want a black cat to cross in front of them. These small things show that superstitions are being practised and kept alive in us, and so are present and able to influence us in more dangerous ways if we should happen to run into a situation such as being cursed with a spell. It is best to stay far away from any of this superstitious stuff, and not to keep its power over you alive by practising even the little ones. Things are changing in the world. Here in the West I see that there are some people who think they can practise black magic again. That is part of the decline in civilization. So don't leave yourself open to any such person's damaging suggestions.
There is a way to protect yourself. If you ever run into this stuff again, turn your heart to the Great Good, and say inside your self to the Greatest Good Power that exists: "Help me....Help me....," and then trust that you will get the help you need. You are calling upon the caring and All-powerful, that created everything there is anywhere, to help you to protect your inner deep self from being affected by the power of suggestion to your sub-conscious mind, so it won't believe it and allow you to damage yourself. This can also help you in other dangers, too, as you will find out for yourself.
END OF PART ONE
