|
The Dark Wind posted:"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. This is essentially the same idea you find in the Chinese classic Great Learning: The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy. (old-fashioned James Legge translation found here: http://ctext.org/liji/da-xue) I sometimes think the idea to change the world but you can change yourself is a modern affectation, but it's been with us for a long time. To bring it back to Buddhism, I've never really grasped whether I should develop compassion because it's good for my mind, or because it's good for other beings. But in strictly Buddhist terms, I suppose there is no difference.
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2014 14:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 16:42 |
|
|
Paramemetic posted:Hey Mo Tzu importing a question from the other thread: does pure land still hold to the three practices of discipline, meditation, and wisdom? In the Chinese Pure Land tradition, the reciting of Buddha (Amitabha)'s name (nian-fo) is seen as compatible with other forms of meditation, and is often combined with Chan (Dhyana) sitting practice. Pure Land Buddhism did start out as "practice the teachings of this mystical Buddha", it's based on some sutras, one of which dates back to at least the 4th century CE and can be read here: wikisource posted:"Śāriputra, if there are people who have already made the vow, who are making the vow presently, or who will make the vow to be born in the land of Amitābha Buddha, then these people all attain non-regression from Anuttarā Samyaksaṃbodhi. Whether in a past life, present life, or future life, they will be in this land. Śāriputra, it is for this reason that all virtuous men and virtuous women who believe this, should vow to be born in this land." Later when people felt that the Dharma was in decline and the chances of attaining enlightenment in this world were low, this became a very popular practice. It's obviously also attractive to laypeople who don't have the time or capacity for the more involved forms of meditation practice. In China, nian-fo communities were the most common form of lay Buddhist associations for many centuries, and in Taiwan they're still reasonably common. I think there are also Tibetan Pure Land schools, but I don't know anything about them.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2016 15:33
|
|
|
Paramemetic posted:Having said that: My first steps into Buddhism were of the secular Buddhist variety. As far as I can tell, the main idea of secular Buddhism is that, one, meditation practice leads to a healthier and calmer mind, and two, Buddhist ethics seem very nice and self-contained, and also fit with modern values. Secular Buddhism does not generally accept rebirth after death as true, so there's no need to escape it. From a Mahayana perspective, you could say it's an extra small vehicle that only tries to save one person for one lifetime. I think the "secular Buddhism" label is appropriate. It clearly acknowledges where its ideas come from, but also provides the reassurance that it's not religious, which some people have hang-ups about. Of course, it can become a problem when people start calling it the true core of Buddhism, and claiming that other varieties are just superstition and tacked-on myth. I don't think that's specifically a racist thing, people who get weird about this tend to be even worse when it comes to people from their ingroup having what they consider to be superstitious beliefs. I do think secular Buddhism mostly makes sense to people who aren't from a Buddhist culture to begin with.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2016 07:54
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:Just as a quick thing I remember reading that the Silk process did kill the worms. People just liked silk so much they continued using it. It's possible to make silk without killing the worms, but you have to wait until they leave their cocoons before you can unspin them. So the threads will be shorter (cause a silkworm bit through them), and the silk will be of lower quality. I don't know if it's possible to take the silk before the worm comes out and have it live, if it is I've never heard of that. Afaik in the official Theravada monk rules, it's perfectly acceptable to accept gifts (assuming they're the kind of thing it's ok for a monk to have), even if an animal had been killed for it. It's just not ok if the animal was killed for that monk specifically and he knows it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2016 07:53
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:Christianity of course is so prolific that it's easy to find many audio Bibles (although there are still many translations without audiobook versions) but Buddhism is so popular that it honestly looks like there are more audiobooks for it than anything besides Christianity. It's quite impressive, although I have heard all sorts of scathing comments around the net about how Westernized Buddhism is not real Buddhism. I wouldn't know how true any of that is. Imho western Buddhism is as much Buddhism as any other form, you just need to be aware that it's a bit different and not go around lecturing people from Asian forms of Buddhism about how they're doing it wrong. People on the internet will get sanctimonious about anything. The Pali Canon is basically very old sutras, which are generally said to be based on what the historical Shakyamuni Buddha said, although they weren't written down until long after his death. They're not that central to most Mahayana Buddhists (they have other, later sutras that they care about), but they're certainly central to western Theravada Buddhism, and I personally find them very edifying.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 09:41
|
|
|
Senju Kannon posted:it's not about not eating meat, but not taking life. so about the same as eating any other kind of meat; depends on who you ask. some say you only need to not eat meat if you take the five vows, some say everyone has to eat veg, some say only monks, and some say it doesn't matter if you eat meat or not because there is no way you can become a buddha through your own efforts and so you have to realize ultimately that it is only through amida's grace and compassion that you are able to be reborn in his pure land and begin the hard work of becoming a buddha. To expand on this, vegetarianism is mostly a Mahayana concern. Theravada monks are supposed to eat meat if somebody donates it to them, and they know the animal hadn't specifically been killed for the monks. In Tibetan Buddhism, eating meat is also really common - the Dalai Lama eats meat regularly. Traditionally, Tibet was not well suited for growing vegetables, so eating meat was really the only way to live healthily there. Vegetarianism is becoming more popular in the tradition, though. In terms of ethics, I'm not sure that Buddhism traditionally makes a difference between different "grades" of perceptiveness in terms of a being's moral value. But if we're sure that the being can't suffer, I guess doing things to it that might cause suffering if done to a different being doesn't matter.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 07:10
|
|
|
Yorkshire Pudding posted:I have a few questions about vipissana meditation posture. About the legs, unless you're in a tradition like Zen that demands a specific position, feel free to put them in whatever way is comfortable to you. You can sit cross-legged, kneel, kneel with a little support bench or even sit on a stool with your legs down like on a chair. Just avoid positions that cut off circulation for a long time, ideally get up and move your legs a bit every 20 minutes or so. About your back, from my experience sitting without back support is very uncomfortable at first, but it becomes easier with practice and it's totally worth it. You can try some yoga or core strength exercises to make it easier to get used to it. In the short term, my teachers have recommended sticking your butt out towards the back a bit more than you naturally would, because that straightens up your back. If you have some medical problem with your back ideally talk to a doctor before deciding how to sit. And if the pain is very bad, leaning on some back support is also an option. But I would recommend trying to go without the support, it's worth it in the long run.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2017 13:50
|
|
|
Yorkshire Pudding posted:Can anyone expound on the procedural differences and practical purposes between Vipassana and Zazen? When I first started meditating I was very against the Zen tradition (for reasons I can't even remember now) and never looked into it at all. Reading about it recently a lot of people are saying "Purpose of both is the same, Zazen focuses more on a posture and typically has shorter meditation sessions". Depending on the Zen school, zazen can be about just sort of hanging out in the Buddha's posture until enlightenment strikes you, or it can be about emptying your mind and being in the moment. Vipassana is similar to the second notion, it's about developing mindfulness and awareness. It's practiced in a lot of different ways, and the non-Zen schools that teach vipassana in the West at least tend to have a much less ritualistic approach to meditation. If you like the Japanese flair and strictness of aikido training, you'll probably like zazen too.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2017 08:28
|
|
|
Nessus posted:
To be fair, that sort of interpretation is somewhat common in (some?) Buddhist countries. In my experience, Buddhists here generally are pro-Jesus and use some Christian terminology in their preaching. Buddhists in countries where Christianity isn't a common religion probably don't do that though. Buddhists in general probably view Jesus the same way that Christians view the founders of other religions. I.e. in the best scenario they see them as bringing up some truths in a non optimal fashion, and in the worst case as teaching false views and leading people away from the truth. I don't think the Buddha would have seen Jesus as enlightened or agreed that they have a common goal. The extant teachings of Jesus and the Buddha barely have any overlap, and the Buddha is recorded as strongly arguing against some contemporary teachers whose lessons were much closer to his own. There's certainly some overlap in the religions, but their cores are very different. I don't think Christianity got the idea of monasteries from Buddhism fwiw, but I'd like to see if anybody has some sources one way or the other.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2017 21:32
|
|
|
Caufman posted:I'd like to hear more about what you see as the very different cores. I mean, both Buddhism and Christianity have developed into very diverse religions, to the point that there are probably some forms of Buddhism that are more similar to some forms of Christianity than to other forms of Buddhism and vice versa. So it's dangerous to speak about the "core" of either religion. But when you look at the quotes from the founder of each religion, they focus on different things. For one thing, Jesus has a lot of opinions on social life, things like marriage and status, relation to authority and care for the poor. He also puts a lot of emphasis on encouraging people to swear allegiance to God and Jesus, since this is the only way to salvation. The Buddha on the other hand mostly talks about the noble truths and the eightfold path that leads to the cessation of suffering. So basically - the Buddha taught a certain metaphysics, and a path of discipline that makes sense in this metaphysical context (and to some degree also outside it), while Jesus mostly talked about how to live your life and how to gain access to an otherworldly reward, where the "how to live your life" bits can also be appealing without the option of ending up at an eternal wedding feast.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2017 07:35
|
|
|
Senju Kannon posted:from what i can tell it's the name of a temple, and during the ceremony i was told it meant "finding the path to a calm heart" or something like that, tho the jo is the jo of jodo shinshu and means pure and the raku means calm so i'm not a hundred percent where he got that from. i'm worried to ask cause i don't want to put him on the spot if he actually did massage the meanings of the dharma names you know? but then i'm not very familiar on how dharma names work in jodo shinshu since the only info i can find is on a few websites for individual bca churches and never anything more specific about names. and trying to search joraku online results in card game stuff for romaji and temple information for the kanji I'll use the Chinese characters here since I can't type in Japanese but I think you can extrapolate: 净土, pronounced jodo in Japanese, is the Amitabha heaven specifically. 樂土 "rakudo" is more generally paradise, in a buddhist way though it may be used for other religions idk "Finding the path to" is not really in the name, it's probably more of an explanation of the thought behind the name. 淨 straight up means clean, and it's pretty common in the name of buddhist places. 樂 means happy but in a chill way or comfortable in a happy way. Gokuraku means "extremely happy" and it's indeed the translation for Sukhavati. So congrats your buddhist name is chill out There's a good easy to use Japanese dictionary app called Akebi. It's not super deep on the Buddhism but it does have the basic terms. Wish you all the best 💮
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2018 05:36
|
|
|
Senju Kannon posted:i use rikaikun for ease of reading kanji when i'm on the web and jisho to double check it if i think rikaikun didn't give me what i needed. for my phone i use yomikawa but that's mostly so i can take photos of books and try to learn the meanings of the kanji. it's a very painstaking method of reading so i don't do it very often, but it kinda works. it took me an hour to read a table of contents but read them i did. god i wish there was more info about takagi kenmyo in english that would be nice I once read a whole book in Russian where I had to look up just about every word (and figure out for myself the Chinese transliterations). It's not fun exactly but it's rewarding. What happened to your av?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2018 06:10
|
|
|
Senju Kannon posted:nothing, as far as i'm aware. do i gotta clean out my cookies or something? I reloaded and now it's back 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2018 06:24
|
|
|
As far as I know "Hinduism" is kind of a generic name for a number of related religious practices in India that don't fall under a more specific label like Jainism or Buddhism. Some of them have the understanding that all gods are just manifestations of one divinity, others do treat the gods as separate entities, others again only worship one or a few gods out of the many. That said I'm not a Hindu and I haven't studied it too much, so there may well be a bit more of a common core than I know of. Whether Buddhism has gods really depends on what branch you're looking at and how you choose to use the terminology. Broadly speaking, Theravada acknowledges that gods exist but argues that a person trying for liberation should not concern hirself with them. Mahayana has the Bodhisattvas or the pure land Buddhas which are functionally treated as gods (prayer, sacrifice, place in the cosmology etc) but technically aren't. Some forms of Vajrayana do seem to use gods in their pursuit of liberation, though I don't know too much about that. And then there are relatively recent forms of Buddhism (Zen maybe? Definitely secular Buddhism) that don't really talk about any godlike beings at all or explicitly deny their existence. Adding on to what paramemetic said, trying to do Buddhism on top of the native religion is also really common in non Tibetan contexts. In China people tend to just compartmentalize, going to a daoist temple this week and a buddhist one the next without thinking too hard about how these things connect. In Europe on the other hand there's a relatively popular movement trying to harmonize Buddhism with the Christian tradition, which seems somewhat fundamentally incompatible but they do manage to make it work. So in the future maybe we'll have monotheistic Buddhism on top of all the other variations.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2018 20:19
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I don't think there is anything wrong with such thoughts, but you want to not do that while meditating. You don't have to be in a constant state of meditation. And, if you have the secret to nuclear fusion come to you during a sitting session, you can break the session and go write it down, the Buddha won't come and beat you up for that. There are definitely forms of meditation where you're supposed to think about things, this is sometimes called contemplation. It generally revolves around spiritual topics, but there are also forms where you think about your daily life. At least in Christianity... but Boris doesn't seem to be very invested in the religious affiliation of their practice.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2018 09:13
|
|
|
This essay, focusing on Tibetan Buddhism, gives a good overview of the ways Buddhism has been interacting with people's (secular / esotericist) perceptions in the west: https://aeon.co/essays/what-lies-behind-the-simplistic-image-of-the-happy-buddhist quote:Perhaps the best-known esoteric tradition in the West is the Kalachakra Initiation, the ceremony in which the Dalai Lama or other high-ranking monks slowly construct beautifully intricate mandalas out of coloured sand, and then wipe them away. Laypeople in the West usually read this ritual as simple religious art married to a lesson on the impermanence of everything. But building the mandala is part of a larger ritual process meant to prepare young acolytes for spiritual transformation. To drastically over-summarise, the mandala becomes a representation of, and portal into, the abode and mind of an enlightened deity, which monks can mentally travel through, psychically mainlining the whole of Buddhist thought from an elevated perspective. The mandala is seen as so magically charged that its dissipation actually spreads spiritual benefit into the wider world. Many tantric practices are similarly opaque and magical to outsiders, yet, because they deal with compassion and meditation, remain somewhat comprehensible to the pop-Western mind.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2018 05:43
|
|
|
If you at some point think "I've reached the third Jhana and it's actually [ ... ], not at all like what those old Buddhists describe it as", consider that what you've experienced may not actually be the third Jhana. Same for any other Buddhist concept, and doubly so if you haven't studied Buddhist teaching very deeply.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2018 13:10
|
|
|
Mighty Crouton posted:Fundamentally what I’m saying is, I don't think there's anything “supernatural” going on with non-dual awareness or “awakening” or whatever term we want to use to denote that. And that should pretty dramatically alter the way in which we regard it (the “holy hush”, etc etc). What qualities would an experience have to possess in order for you to consider it supernatural? Are these qualities the same as those that would make an experience deserve to be treated with a sense of reverence, or different ones?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2018 16:28
|
|
|
I found a nice wikipedia Article: List of games the Buddha would not play ... what games would the Buddha play?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2018 12:16
|
|
|
I feel like we have many more opportunities for enlightenment than people have ever had, although we also have many more distractions. The Dharma is freely available to everybody now, you can read the Pali canon and most of the important sutras right here on the internet in a language you understand. And if you want to learn some of the original languages, that is also easier than it has ever been. Over numerous lifetimes, the modern lifestyle will definitely pass away again, even if it is in the far future. I don't think that will, on balance, be beneficial to spirituality. Living comfortably is not a hindrance in Buddhism, and becoming a monk has always been a difficult choice that few people are ready to make at any given time.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 22:13
|
|
|
I think the general understanding is that Tibetan Buddhism has a lot of practices that are considered somewhat dangerous, and there are rules about who can teach them and to whom. But not all western schools abide by these rules. There's also a bunch of sectarian conflict been different strains of Tibetan Buddhism, to the point that some of them consider others illegitimate. Is that about right?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2019 23:17
|
|
|
Siivola posted:Do people actually call it that? "Oh yeah, I'm real into Dark Buddhism these days, all about that kindness and compassion to job creators"? I mean, of course they do because this cyberpunk future is stupid but It's pretty common among secular Buddhists, and even western Zen Buddhists, to believe that Buddhism is all about mindfulness / emptiness meditation and nothing else. So any mental dissonance about Buddhist ethics is sure not to arise, because these people never think about Buddhist ethics in the first place. So I can imagine that the same people who call themselves dark enlightenment would also think dark Buddhism is cool.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2019 14:31
|
|
|
When I went to a Buddhist center it was pretty much 100% white people. I only remember two people who weren't. Now that I go to a Pentecostal church, on the other hand, it's about 10% Koreans and a good mix for the rest, which is remarkable because Koreans are like 0,05% of the population in my country. I know of two "ethnic" Buddhist centers, one Thai and one Kalmyk, but I haven't been to either and from what I hear they're struggling to keep members. On the other hand, "ethnic" Christian churches seem to be thriving, every major city seems to at least have a Chinese one. So I guess what I'm saying is, in my European country, Buddhism is practiced a bit as an ethnic religion, but mostly as a diversion for educated white people. At least as far as public centers go.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2019 06:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 16:42 |
|
|
Nessus posted:Especially if it's Theravada, right? Theravada almost certainly won't make you worship other gods, although the Buddha is kind of an edge case here. He's not a god, but he is a very revered, sort of supernatural being. And some gods appear in the sutras afaik, although you're not supposed to worship them. The thing that could be a problem is, some Buddhist philosophers have strongly emphasized that there is no creator God, which does kind of contradict the whole premise of Judaism and Christianity. Many modern people have a different interpretation and combine the religions easily, but it's something to be aware of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_in_Buddhism
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2019 07:35
|
|