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Hi Buddhism thread, I've been busy obsessing over coronavirus and hanging out with my insane bundle of energy semi-new dog, but good to see this thread chugging along as always. I hope everyone is staying healthy. I spent like 7 weeks with some horrible lung cold that matches all the covid symptoms and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.Hiro Protagonist posted:I saw a post online recently, and couldn't come up with a good response: why do English speaking Buddhists (generally) chant in the language of their tradition instead of English? Isn't it important to understand what you're chanting, not just in a "someone told me it means X" way, but through your own language? Chanting in both languages has been more common than one or the other in my experience. Though that's certainly not definitive. Also as far as chanting is concerned, in some contexts the actual syllables are considered more important than the meaning. Plus it's just a nice way to not instantly anglicize everything in a tradition. Also, at least in practice places (and this should be true pretty much regardless of tradition) there's often a sense that someone from the same tradition should be able to show up at any practice place (including past or present) and recognize the core practice
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Apr 17, 2020 11:19
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In response to some slightly older posts: Just on average, for every place that is minimally sufferable to hang out and chat about buddhisms, you're going to run into half a dozen wildly toxic, weirdly competitive 'im more enlightened than thou,' deeply dysfunctional groups or communities or cliques or whatever that aren't worth wasting your time with. maybe if you have the patience of a whole bunch of saints it's worth participating in and trying to be a generally positive force, but tbh you're probably always better off just finding a community that isn't mired in a ton of dysfunction. Don't necessarily give up on a community the second they aren't perfect, but also don't think that you can't just move on if there's too much weird baggage with a group. Online buddhist spaces in particular are extremely a mixed bag.
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Apr 30, 2020 10:12
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There's definitely an expectation generally that if you invest enough into a tradition to formally become someone's student (which can be formal or informal) that you direct the majority of your energies in that direction if possible, at least for some time. There's definitely nothing against double dipping and generally if you asked anyone in a teaching role, 'hey i'm curious to check out x' or 'hey it's way more convenient for me to go practice at y a few days a week' you'll probably just get nodded at and told to report back how it goes. Depending on a few things you might also get told a bit about how to speak of previous practice.. or not to. That last bit is primarily an etiquette thing: it's just more respectful to show up and take in the experience rather than barraging out a bunch of comparisons to 'back at the zen center' or whatever. Besides, you can't really experience something without experiencing it from the beginning. If you want to make a good impression and contribute, come up with some really good questions to ask. Also I believe the vast majority of people who have practiced a decent while have practiced in multiple places or with different traditions. After you've become fairly grounded in one it becomes a good way to gain some depth of understanding and insight into wtf all goes on under the banner of buddhism.
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May 15, 2020 22:25
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Paramemetic posted:Okay so there are some layers here. I think one of the really key distinctions between drug-induced non-dual experience and uh a non-dual baseline (by whichever name you want to call it) is that one requires doing something specific to induce it as an experience each time; the other is just a background state that exists, but is generally obscured or otherwise rather difficult to notice or perceive (or even to think to look for, as the case may be). One other important aspect is that the drug experience is more or less by definition one of confusion and even as the experience of self breaks down it's simultaneously hyper-subjective. That's not to say that a drug-induced experience of something more or less nondual in nature is bad or not worth experiencing or not occasionally helpful to people, but one of the handful of things in Buddhism that are put truly unequivocally is that drugs/intoxicants are not the way. That feels as true a statement as ahimsa. If anything, the opposite of intoxication: sober, unhindered, wide-awake awareness is the state to cultivate, what zen likes to call 'manning the sense-gates.' I think that's the condition you have to be in to be generally useful in the world. That said, as far as experiencing nondual states go, I suspect most people would find it far easier to experience in dreams than with drugs. Should be a lot safer, too. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 04:25
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imo anger is probably the main felt form that suffering takes in daily life. Depending on one's disposition it might be sadness, but I think they're generally two sides of the same emotion, just one tends to be directed more inwards and the other more outwards. Yeah it's normal, reasonable, healthy, etc. to feel anger at all the myriad things in the world that are absolutely worth getting angry about. Frankly it would be weirder to look at the world and not feel outraged. For all the emphasis on being somewhat calm and measured and reasonable in interacting with the world, really none of it is saying 'don't confront injustice head on.' The emphasis on equanimity is more about taking an emotional step back so you can see what actions would have the most effect with clearer eyes. Equanimity for no other reason than wanting the veneer of calmness is just numbness or something. On a practical level, that question of 'gently caress the world sucks, how the hell do i do anything to confront the injustice' is really one of the core questions that pretty much everyone and especially every practice place and every tradition grapples with. Imo just find something you find meaningful and sustainable to do that helps in some facet and do what you can, because that's all people really can do. Basically what I'm getting at is: from what you've said, yeah you're feelings seem entirely reasonable and understandable and even healthy, albeit I'm sure frustrating and at times overwhelming. And yeah there's really no way to side-step feeling anger. That said, if you need a break from staring at all the hosed up poo poo in the world, by all means take a break to reset. Personally I watch lovely sitcoms or romcoms or just stop reading the news for a while when I find it to be too much, but all that really matters is you find something that works for you. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 05:21
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Paramemetic posted:The "is it okay" phrasing makes the answer, for me, very straightforward: yeah, of course. Yeah there's very little intrinsically preventing anyone from either having a syncretic belief structure or even just finding both valid at the same time. Especially with a view of christianity that is primarily centred around jesus, the two are very compatible even if there would definitely be people from either camp who would probably have some objection. The only place it would maybe be a problem is if someone tried to be a full practicing member/vow taker in both a christian and a buddhist order. That said, there's a fair amount of overlap between christian and buddhist monastics on a practical level and i know of several christian orders of various types that clearly consider it fine to live and practice in a non-christian practice place. So yeah the response i think largely comes down to 'what is someone's goal? what is their formal engagement with a specific tradition that might have some standards around this?' Otherwise, yeah it's nbd. It's not hard to consider jesus a sage or a saint or some such.
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Oct 15, 2020 11:39
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Eh there's been both a significant history of buddhist dogmatic orthodoxy as well as many other religions that spread in a similar manner. Tbh most religions at their most doctrinally established points start complaining about all the casually religious just practice whatever the hell asssortment of local customs they feel like and how it's literally impossible to get them to stop all the local traditions. That said, buddhism being a generally non-evangelical religion does seem to make it's spread much more syncretic Achmed Jones posted:If you believe the four noble truths, you're a Buddhist. I'm not sure it's a necessary condition but it's certainly sufficient. I don't think you have to take refuge to be a buddhist. Then again, id say that since I haven't formally done so and consider myself a capital b buddhist, write "buddhist" for religion on demographic surveys, etc. zhar posted:Refuge in the three jewels isn't just some ceremonial thing. The dharma jewel is the last 2 truths (cessation and paths), sangha is whoever has made progress along the path and buddha jewel is both the physical buddha and maybe the culmination of the path (may be a little different in theravada). These two posts are accurate describe roughly where I'd see the line for 'can reasonably be considered a buddhist.' I'd probably add that some kind of tangible practice has been undertaken and sustained for a while, but I think that's largely secondary to the above (though it's probably the line for when other people, and in particular other buddhists, will start to consider you a buddhist). Still there are situations where those aren't set in stone and imo the label is a lot less important than whether someone considers living by the precepts important. Or even just taking one or two of the precepts really seriously. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Oct 16, 2020 |
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Oct 16, 2020 01:05
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Thirteen Orphans posted:At work (I work in a cafe inside a bookstore) we have an ant problem. They often congregate on the counter, and they’re had to see, so I’ll wipe down the counter and pick up a dozen of those little guys. I’m stuck; I don’t want to kill the ants, but I can’t let them get around and into the food and drinks, for obvious reasons. It isn’t my authority to call a professional, but can they do anything outside of termination? To me that sounds like being complicit in taking life. I’m curious about the Buddhist(s) perspective to this moral quandary. For the sake of the argument presume I took the precept vow not to take life. I think I've posted about this before, but one of the big zen communities on the west coast opened one of their forest center/retreat places and long story short, a bunch of wideyed zen folks thought the rats that showed up were cute as hell and let them wander around and basically have the run of the place. Eventually someone with some sens came by and chewed them the gently caress out for having a massive vermin infestation that they did gently caress all about and they had to kill all the rats. I think about this story a lot because it's such a, idk, concrete clash of idealism and the realities of vermin infestation. Also I had to kill a couple rats recently and it sucked. I say a little thing for them and try to make sure it's really quick, but ugh. Basically, do what you have to do to not put people at risk. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Oct 31, 2020 |
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Oct 31, 2020 05:37
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Paramemetic posted:Psychedelics provide altered states and some of those altered states have similarities to some characteristic of enlightenment but they don't deliver the Actual Goods. This is well put. Two other things I would add to this: 1) psychedelics in particular add a great deal of confusion and the overall experience is very muddled in most respects and generally inhibits the ability to perceive the world, even while it strips away the sense of self. That's not to say psychedelics aren't cool or fun or people should never do them, but all the intoxication parts of the experience is just replacing one obscuration of some non-selfed state with another obscuration. It's essentially exchanging one hindrance for another. 2) Drugged states not being the way is one of a handful of things that trace back very directly to Buddha himself and he really was quite extensively clear on that and for how many other points he otherwise was more circumspect or suggested seeing things for oneself, it's notable that he was so emphatic that intoxicants are not a shortcut or even really any part of the path. Anyways that's all to be taken in the context of plenty of people from all over are buddhists and do all kinds of drugs and while, imo, it's not ideal, someone doing some drugs is not going to outweigh an otherwise rightly lived life. I just think it's useful to ponder why that precept against intoxication exists and that it's very much not an accident that it's a precept. With that said, speaking as someone who did hella psychedelics, yeah they're good for getting you to start asking some good questions about just wtf is the nature of your perceptions, how much does mind or no-mind affect experience, or other similar sorts of questions. echinopsis posted:Thank you for that. I had heard stories of people who have apparently experienced non dualism and walk away with a underwhelmed vibe, this is posited as a reason to avoid showing people nondualism too early. For all the elaborate practices and art and imagery and stories or the bhakti-type practices and so on, fundamentally, buddhist practice is by and large extremely mundane, and especially so to an observer unfamiliar with the internal drama, so to speak. It just looks like someone leading their life and, to be fair, that's also what it is. There's often a misconception people have when showing up to buddhist communities that there's some super cool esoteric secret 'good poo poo' that they're holding out on and while it's true that there's some weird stuff that gets held back, all the 'good poo poo' is given free, up front. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Nov 18, 2020 |
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Nov 18, 2020 04:24
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Mushika posted:After a lot of self searching and some advice of my therapist, I reached out to the Thay of my temple in regards to my alcoholism, and also my spiritual practice. I was honestly afraid to do so; my problems are so small to the world at large, why would I bother someone who has an entire community to attend to? The Vietnamese Buddhist community here in southern Louisiana is quite large, and then there is the non-Vietnamese community that often go to him for guidance. I also didn't even really know where to begin. I emailed him and he enthusiastically agreed to meet and have tea on the temple grounds. It turns out that he has a PhD in addiction counseling and agreed to take me on as his pupil. He has agreed to meet with me for once or twice a week sessions with him as well as him being always on call via phone, text, or email. He also invited me to wander the temple grounds whenever I feel the need. The only thing he asks is that, once I'm comfortable with my progress, that I go out and help other people like myself who battle with addiction. I can't quite describe how happy and hopeful I am about this. That owns and is incredibly sweet and it sounds like a good community. Good luck with sobriety, it's a lot more doable when you've got multiple support structures behind you. As an aside, I've spent a few years totally sober and it's really eye opening on a bunch of levels, like it's staggering just how much people rely on alcohol to socialize or have fun. quote:Paramemetic and Herstory, thank you for your thorough and continuing contribution to this thread. And all of you other posters as well. You are most graciously helping the Dharma reach people. I, for one, dearly appreciate it. imo paramemetic and everyone else who participates deserves far more credit. I'm just happy to be able to participate sometimes because this thread is exceedingly friendly and encouraging compared to most other online buddhist spaces I've experienced.
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Nov 20, 2020 09:46
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NikkolasKing posted:Karma and rebirth. I'm open to the idea but can I say for certain that I think my mental stream or whatever term you want to use for it will survive after my body dies? No. That can't be proved so far as I'm aware, any more than a Christian soul can be proved. karma is literally just cause and effect (or cause and conditions, more broadly).
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Nov 24, 2020 04:44
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^yeah that owns Also re the faith and rebirth stuff: First, faith isn't really a thing in buddhism in anything approaching the way it is in christianity (or any of the abrahamic religions, for that matter) where it is very much central to the entire matter. Faith does occasionally play a role in things (some devotional practices involve or ask some act of faith, but even then rarely in anything approaching the christian conception of faith. Guruyoga or some deity practices will invoke something approaching faith as a tool, but that's still in contrast to the baseline of skepticism. I don't remember the source offhand, but buddha famously told people to examine teachers and teachings the way a gold merchant scrutinizes gold before purchasing. If it passes the test, then put stock in it. Second, On the subject of rebirth, by all means apply that same level of scrutiny to it, there's no need exactly to believe anything about the literalness of rebirth in one way or another. That said, rebirth is still an immensely important aspect of things and of all the various virtuous things in buddhism, bodhicitta (eg the intention to attain enlightenment specifically so as to be continually be reborn for the benefit of all beings) is widely considered the key thing that makes buddhist practice *work* (and this is consistent among every major school of buddhism afaik). Fortunately, cultivating bodhicitta doesn't require a concrete belief in rebirth to be beneficial, though they clearly are mutually supportive. Even with the most bare bones concept of rebirth (eg that the causes and conditions and effects and so on that led to your birth in the first place will continue after you, along with the additional things caused and conditioned and effected by what you did in life), cultivating bodhicitta is sitll going to work and be of benefit. Third, to tie all this together, it's useful to think about rebirth and karma literally as they frame and indeed are the foundation for a lot of buddhist morality and some really key points, like why buddhist views towards emptiness or non-duality are neither nihilism nor amorality. Really the opposite: with bodhicitta those things that some people see as a reason to not care or to argue that there is no good or bad instead become a reason and a means to work for the benefit of others. Anyways, that's a lot of questionably clear words to say, 'cultivate the desire to be of service' or more succinctly 'cultivate bodhicitta.' Hopefully I explained the relationship between these decently. The experience of wrestling with the implications of karma and rebirth and the like is something that pretty much everyone spends time on. That question eventually gets down to the differences between simple arhats (someone who escapes the cycle of rebirth) and bodhisattvas (someone who vows to seek enlightenment and stay in samsara---keep taking rebirths---until all beings are free). Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Nov 24, 2020 23:54
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thorsilver posted:Recently, alongside my readings of sutras and commentaries, I've been trying to learn more about the history of Tibetan Buddhism and some of the most famous figures in it, like Padmasambhava, Milarepa, Naropa, and so on. I got the bright idea to search 'Padmasambhava' on YouTube and see if I could find any interesting Dharma talks about him, but instead I found this documentary: If you want talks, https://dharmaseed.org/teachers/ has a ton of good talks on a huge variety of subjects from basically every tradition under the sun. Idk about good documentaries offhand, you'd have better luck probably just finding one of the biographies and reading that tbh. For pretty much everything else, rigpawiki is another good resource that generally will link you to the definitive works on a given subject or person if you're trying to track down where to even start your reading (eg https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Milarepa#Further_Reading or https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Padmasambhava ). Also if you've got any tibetan buddhist centers around you, they likely have libraries and/or book clubs and are worth reaching out to if you'd prefer not to buy copies of books yourself or you want suggestions or w/e
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Dec 20, 2020 01:20
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There's a considerably longer answer, but more to the point: the art is itself a point of meditation Yiggy or paramemetic could probably give you a better and much more expansive answer though. I'll write something later if I have some time
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Dec 24, 2020 21:10
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Paramemetic posted:Yes and no. afaik the vast majority of the controversy is cuz 'does spiritual stuff over the internet' was for a long time one of the like top 3 red flags of bullshit spirituality peddling or worse. On a doctrinal level, yeah there's a very strong case to be made that the precise medium of interaction shouldn't matter that much, particularly when one is using the method that is available that doesn't put people at needless risk.
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Mar 7, 2021 09:40
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Transferring my merit to beings in Avici but no idea how to do it to a guy 3 towns over by computer it's well known that 5g inhibits merit transfer~
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Mar 8, 2021 02:20
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In case you've ever wondered how it is that statues get the heads knocked off
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Mar 12, 2021 12:28
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100 degrees Calcium posted:What's the buddhist view on being reborn in another world, like maybe as a monster or a traveling adventurer. it's canon, also, literally kanin
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May 15, 2021 09:04
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NikkolasKing posted:So I had a very annoying argument on Discord. few thoughts going in largely the opposite direction of what other people have said to you 1) yeah material conditions do not particularly matter to realization. They don't not matter either, but a condition of privation or hardship doesn't make someone incapable of realization either (outside of maybe in the most extreme cases). Generally the better your position in life and the more luxuries you enjoy, the more distractions and attachments you're carrying around with you everywhere. 2) worth noting that the noble truths come/came out of, specifically, suffering and exposure to suffering. buddha had to leave his sheltered, comfortable existence to gain even minimal insight into the world. To be clear, this is emphatically at odds with the (some branches of) christian concept that suffering brings you closer to god. And indeed it largely goes in the opposite direction: it's widely acknowledged that a certain amount of stability in life is a pre-requisite to stable, sustainable practice. That said, wealth or luxury or power beyond that point of simply having enough probably hinders more than it helps. Other issues like the lead poisoning hypothetical likely are more impactful on capacity for beneficial activity than capacity for the necessary amount of realization. Like the important thing is that one lives decently via the eightfold path, not that one understands the entire reasoning for it. It's good for it to be understood as well, but that's secondary to simply living it. And in the inverse case: understanding it means basically nothing if you don't live it. Anyways fluffy's answer above is v good.
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Aug 15, 2021 13:01
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:New Pali canon being written right here on the SomethingAwful forums. we think it's a pali cannon but really it's a jataka tale
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Aug 20, 2021 06:10
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if absolutely nothing else, sitting for 20 minutes is 20 minutes where you are probably doing zero harm, which is a very good startTehSaurus posted:Ah, he does talk quite at length about the relative and the absolute, and that much at least makes sense to me. We can know things, but everything we know is filtered through our imperfect senses, and so this knowledge will always be imperfect itself. This is why Shakyamuni said that even his teachings are not the true dharma? Even if the teachings themselves were absolute in his mind they would become relative truths as his words were interpreted by other people. I think it's one of those truisms about buddhism, but it often gets emphasized that buddhism has an understanding of contradictions that is very different from (in particular) anglo and christian approaches to contradictions, where they are bad and must be forcibly resolved and one side declared the winner and so on. It's a pretty common point of friction. Generally in Buddhism contradictions are presented as interesting things to be pondered and examined, and imo I share the perspective that they're often the specific things that add the most depth and complexity to the world. At their core contradictions are usually just the superficial appearance of a deeper and more nuanced relationship between things. Idk the perfect approach, but yeah they definitely aren't something to be forcibly resolved, they're just kind of a part of it all. And yeah there's a lot of seemingly contradictory stuff in buddhism: all phenomena are empty!, good and bad is an artificial duality!, and yet your choices and actions still very much matter, exceptionally so even. Traditionally schools/branches of buddhism generally have navigated this by carefully ordering what people learn about and when. Eg first you grow up hearing jataka tales, then you learn about living by the precepts and practicing non-harm and not engaging in misconduct and not spending all day every day all hosed up. Then in a practice context, people would be involved in a sangha at this point and would be learning and experiencing that there are indeed consequences to actions when you exist in a community. Only then after they're grounded in all that would someone get around to teaching them the stuff about emptiness or w/e other less-public teachings. Which makes sense, cuz there was, a big risk that people would just wildly misinterpret it as 'there are no bad things, do whatever.' That ordering ofc has largely broken down now that people can just youtube or google search drat near any concept or traditionally not-public teaching and find a significant body of explanation and discussion on it. (there's a whole rant here about people fetishizing 'high' and 'secret' teachings, but I'll skip it) Basically yeah there are a lot of contradictions, dig into them if they're interesting. Many of them are also just the byproducts of the relatively unstructured way people often learn about buddhism. Still, buddhism often just delights in contradictions and hopefully you can live with them lol Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Sep 26, 2021 |
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Sep 26, 2021 20:10
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^ As an aside, at least one person who is (was?) quite seriously involved with ADZG posts here. ADZG is from sfzc lineage, albeit leighton has been around quite a variety of traditions and is an extremely skilled translator and I wouldn't be surprised if you bumped into more than just the suzuki lineage there. Also on the subject of San Francisco Zen center: SFZC people I have enjoyed my interactions with. I knew one of leighton's dharma brothers pretty well and got to talk to a few of their higher up people at fairly considerable lengths about the efforts they took in the aftermath of the dick baker scandal and idk it clearly was a huge wakeup call for them and it seemed to have shaken loose a bunch of the more blind idealism they had, if that makes sense. That was reassuring to hear given the potential for abuse in religious communities and I'd feel pretty comfortable recommending them to people. From what I've seen of them over the last decade, they appear to be on a good course and I think do a pretty good job of trying to translate zen into something that 'works' in an american context, but that still retains the original flavor. The main SF community seemed fully formal in their practice, but other of their communities do fairly stripped down services without all the bells and whistles, albeit they're still very formal as shikantaza pretty much invariably is. [disclaimer that I've sat with them a fair amount so I'm not unbiased, but I also wouldn't really describe myself as part of their community]. As to online buddhist communities: forums are very hit or miss, and imo very often with much more miss than hit. That's not to say they're all bad, I'd just take them with a big grain of salt and a fair amount of caution. In person communities have a big advantage in that it is generally easier to vet who you are talking to and that they will generally steer you towards people with a generally good understanding and some skill at communicating it. Sangha's that have moved online because of the pandemic are almost definitely the best bet compared to hanging out on forums or buddhism reddits or w/e, albeit if it works for you, then hey it works for you. To some extent anonymity, I think, does not work well with fairly serious efforts to practice or teach or communicate just because there are many things where you do need to know that the person talking about something is indeed qualified to be talking about it. On the oral and textual end of traditions there's a whole structure to how stuff is passed down where typically it will be introduced as specifically in the context of the precise lineage it proceeds from (and very often with some historical details of how, who, where and why it has been passed down) and I think having confidence in the identity is actually quite significant and probably just flat out is not compatible with anonymous message boards. That's not to say they're worthless or anything, just limited in their usefulness? Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Oct 10, 2021 |
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Oct 10, 2021 11:52
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Tbf enjoying life as it is without permitting a sense of foreboding get in the way of savoring the present sums up a lot of Tolstoy's literary output. It's one of his most recurring themes imo.
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Dec 15, 2021 07:17
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I understand that Buddhism has an idea of escaping the recurring suffering of reincarnation, did the original story give the man the option of doing ??? to escape the cycle? Couple significant things here 1) From a quite literal pov, yes that is possible at any time. From a practical pov, various otherwise-obscured inevitabilities probably are much clearer than normal when one is stuck clinging to the side of a cliff 2) That said, escaping the cycle of rebirth is not really a primary goal in buddhism, at least not practically. That tends to be a bigger thing in the various forms of hinduism. Attaining the insight and wisdom that would permit one to stop being reborn is seen as a generally very positive thing (eg arhats, in sanscrit), but nearly all branches of buddhism go beyond this to most significantly praise people who don't just peace out but instead who keep being reborn with genuinely altruistic intentions of being of service to others still trapped in the cycle of rebirth. 22 Eargesplitten posted:Thank you for that thorough answer, I'll read it again when my brain is working better so I can hopefully understand more thoroughly. My gut reaction is that some of the logic is similar to how I thought about happiness when I was severely depressed, not wanting to be happy because it would make the inevitable following unhappiness worse, which is not the thinking of a healthy mind, but I'm also not thinking clearly today so I might be misunderstanding. I don't see why enjoying whatever circumstantial pleasures necessarily equates to having a harder time enduring suffering, or the opposite, refusing to enjoy circumstantial pleasures equating to having an easier time enduring suffering. Key thing to note here is attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin: both are maladaptive (albeit entirely understandable) responses to the simple reality that all tangible things are temporary. Rejecting everything because it will hurt is no more effective than clinging to everything because you don't want to lose it. (Or more pedantically, aversion is a state of attachment to not feeling the pain of loss). On a practical, day-to-day, 21st century level, I think buddhism is much more about identifying the more disruptive or dysfunctional attachments we're carrying around than some absolutist exercise in trying to sever every last attachment or root out every aversion. imo that's probably more the domain of people sitting in caves for 3 years. Also I like what fluffy dog says above and I particularly can relate to the phrase 'depression mindset' there lol also hi earg, I hope the mountain living is treating you well Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 19:52
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Bilirubin posted:e. actually, which would be the combination of both traditional in teaching yet lack doctrinal rigidity? Is this a combination that might exist? Zen and Tibetan Buddhism are both fairly flexible, with some caveats, though they're also extremely big on the like 'thousand years of unbroken tradition' stuff, too. Particularly with zen, the flexibility of it might not be as apparent right away if you bump into formal practice, but a lot of zen's reputation for idiosyncracy and iconoclasts comes from a deeply flexible view of wtf a properly lived life as a buddhist looks like. Which is to say that it looks like basically whatever is appropriate for someone's respective circumstances, as opposed to some one-size-fits-all approach. Really the only completely rigid things generally are the five core precepts: 'don't kill' 'no sexual misconduct' 'don't steal'. Hopefully you already try to not lie or misuse speech, and while not using intoxicants is very much a good thing and something imo people should at least try for a while, that really can't be forced by anything external if people aren't there yet. In many respects you'll get something similar from tibetan buddhism, but formal practice there eventually involves a bunch of devotional stuff to a teacher that frankly is going to seem pretty weird to most people and unless you're going to an all-english community, you will be chanting in tibetan which might very well be too traditional as many people find it offputting. With all that said, if you want the low pressure way of getting to know more at your own pace, I highly recommend just starting off by reading whatever seems interesting. Zen dialogues with commentary have a lot of flavor if you want some primary source; if you're into poetry, there's a lot of good poetry. There also are a ton of good kind of general introduction books, zen and otherwise. The old thread had some really good book recommendations, but idk if they're listed in this thread anywhere? Personally the first books that made an impression on me were Thich Nhat Hanh's peace is every step and some collection of Rinzai's dialogues, which I thought was great, but whichalso convinced me that rinzai zen was not for me lol. Tibetan buddhists have a bunch of great introductory books, but I'm not a good one to make recommendations there as I'd just tell you to go read old biographies of people who have been dead for 500 years or something. I'm sure people here have better, more up to date recommendations for good books to start out with. BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:just go to the centers, bring a token gift (vegetarian food or toiletries can't go wrong. its traditional etiquette, shows your humility and respect for the contemplatives also they're supposed to live off the community) and explain you're just exploring. No one really cares that much or is going to expect you to commit right away unless its a cult or a scam. If its for you great, if its not its not. This especially ^
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Jan 19, 2022 12:20
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Bilirubin posted:Is he typical of Tibetan monks? He's super down to earth and engaging. And there is a sangha of his school here as well. who are you referring to? I'd steer very clear of expensive online course poo poo or w/e personally. There's an absolute treasure trove of extremely good material available for no or extremely reasonable cost. (rinpoche is a title, not a name, if that wasn't clear. similar thing with thich [pronounced like tick] as in thich nhat hanh) Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 18:13
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ah that's not a particularly egregious amount compared to what it could've been, but yeah no real reason to start giving a place money if you're just looking around. He's I think a bit more on the rockstar end of the spectrum, but is legit from a lineage standpoint: he's from kagyu tradition primarily, but also spent a substantial amount of time around nyingma lineages as well. generally with tibetan teachers the lineage of tradition they come out of will be one of the first things mentioned, which is a bit strange at first that his site doesn't list it right away, however in the expanded bio it does the more traditional introduction and from what I gather he's been associated with the rime movement in tibetan buddhism, which just means essentially, uh, a non-denominational mutual respect among various traditions, which would explain why the presentation de-emphasizes lineage. (btw this is a lot of words about lineage and I would suggest not worrying too much about it. It's something you expect anyone claiming to be a qualified teacher to have a connection to as a legitimacy thing, in the sense of, like, the difference between someone who went through seminary vs got ordained online, but beyond that it probably doesn't mean much without a lot more context) Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 18:53
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full special transmission of the ligma lineage pg17
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Jan 25, 2022 22:35
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I hear about stuff like this from a bunch of ancient cultures, and I'm always amazed. I wonder if it was pure willpower or a technique they all came across that we lost or whatever, but it would be amazing if we find a way to do this in the modern era (with the understanding that I'm sure many cultures around the world still can perform these practices, they just aren't cultures I'm familiar with personally). [debated posting this because my knowledge here isn't authoritative, but slamming the post button cuz idk, it's at least interesting and it might provoke someone who knows more than me to correct it] it's not lost and it's not ancient cultures, there are many oral traditions/cultures still around, they just generally are not especially available to outsiders without some pretty non-trivial effort to actually be meaningfully present in the culture or community enough that you'd start being exposed to them anyways. Shutting the gently caress up and listening and, at most, knowing how to ask particularly good questions are kinda the core skills for receiving that stuff. Still, a ton of it is family specific, too, and that stuff is just passed down by being in the family. A couple things on this note from having bumped into oral traditions a bit: Much of the stuff that needs to be communicated strictly gets communicated in an almost separate voice where it is clear the person is actively recalling and the social conventions are that you extremely do not loving interrupt, especially not with some extraneous bullshit. From the outside this looks like 'shut the hell up if an Elder is talking.' If it's a back and forth or involves more than one person, same applies, but it'll be two people doing it, often getting very into it, almost reliving it, with gestures and expressions and everything. The back and forth itself facilitates memorization, as do the gestures and emotions, which is why so much stuff across many wildly different cultures does get preserved in dialogue form. There's another whole body of stuff that is like 'stuff my grandpa/grandma/aunts/uncles used to say that their grandparents always said.' Often this stuff is inseparably local: every time they walked by this stream they would tell this story, etc. Ritual is one of the other big cornerstones of how information is put into form to be passed down and this is where a lot of the song/verse/chanting tends to come in. To tie this back to buddhism: buddhist institutions have pretty much always had something approaching an obsession with self-recording and you see this continued today with how drat near every formal dharma speech or ritual practice has a microphone and a recorder present. Because buddhism has been practiced primarily in a communal form and setting (whether a sangha literally is under one roof or in the much looser sense of people spread over a district who only occasionally convene, both are fundamentally sanghas), people running the communities would be evaluating the various capacities that each person brought to the community: one person might be skilled at understanding and communicating abstract philosophical concepts, another might be a gifted cook, another can keep a herd happy and healthy, another is good at managing people and keeping accounts if necessary, another is a skilled meditator or good at keeping up with rituals, and so on. Well one of the qualities, or capacities that was very much sought out were people with extremely good recall of conversation. Finding someone with an eidetic or near eidetic memory for dialogue was actually a pretty big deal. They'd often become attendants of, uh, people with a lot to pass down and would function as almost living record keeping or libraries and eventually would typically end up in a fairly prominent role as a result of this. Then, eventually it would be their turn to start looking for younger people showing up with an unusual capacity for recalling conversation and the cycle repeats. To be clear, the above kinda overemphasizes the role of the individual. in buddhist communities the fundamental gold standard for preserving information orally is and, as far as we know, pretty much has always been to incorporate it into a ritual practice in chanted form. Chanting sets aside the entire question of capacity for recall because nearly anyone can memorize almost anything by just chanting it enough times. Keeping written records is a somewhat later development, though it also, of course, bloomed into a huge thing with monasteries eventually producing quite large amounts of written material and seemingly endless commentaries and commentaries on commentaries and so on. Even as writing took off, memorization of a core set of scriptures was expected and respected, or if nothing else, nearly inevitable just as a byproduct of ritual practice. Anyways, there's a fair bit of oral tradition still present in buddhism. It's maybe not the oldest (not by a long shot), but it's still quite fundamental to a lot of the ways buddhism is practiced and shared and spread. One thing about oral tradition in general that is true in buddhism too: you aren't always aware that it's happening. As a final point: humans are basically structurally hardwired to memorize and accurately preserve useful information. It's essentially one of the core few raisons d'etres of our grossly outsized brains: we're meant to be able to preserve every potentially vital bit of information or skill or technique that we or our communities might some day need to stay alive and people did that for tens of millennia, and our ancestors for vastly longer before that, without ever writing anything down. This assertion probably seems kinda antithetical to the extent to which the modern world seems just fuckin full to the brim with disinfo and miscommunications and algorithms amplifying the dumbest most outraging stuff, but I'd actually posit that a lot of those issues come specifically out of how hardwired people are to hear information and to store it away as if it is true and worth remembering. Notably, too, written language lacks the critical social contextual cues of 'is this someone I should listen to or is this just some crazy rear end in a top hat ranting about buddhism and oral tradition' ahem anyways if you for some reason read all this, ty for bearing with me. as always, if I butchered anything, please do correct it
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Jan 26, 2022 23:38
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there's some way of saying it in buddhist terms, but setting those aside, i think it's a total waste of time and energy to try to trick anyone into being a buddhist who doesn't want to and that all they're going to take from it is some self-serving misunderstanding of how 'actually there's no right and wrong so it doesn't matter what you do' which is generally the idiotic message people take from buddhism when they just ignore/aren't at all drawn to the ethical framework, which is both the precursor to and the result of practice) that's not to say don't wish the best for them or w/e
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Jan 31, 2022 13:08
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Paramemetic posted:There's no futile actions, just cause and effect. If you do good things that help people, you create good causes and get good results. If you do lovely actions that create suffering, you get those results. it sounds kinda boring and mundane, but imo one of the most legitimately transformative things is just how much life changes after you've meaningfully worked to not be destructive and harmful and hopefully even have worked to be decent and supportive person for a while. It doesn't change the past, and of course it isn't some 'you have good karma so now life is all good and you are always happy' thing either, but it's a lot like lifting weights: if you stick with it, eventually the results pile up and you look like someone who has been lifting weights for several years, even if you weren't perfect or doing some scientifically optimal program. anyways i realize I'm mostly just paraphrasing what you already said On a similar but somewhat different note: I don't always know what tf to do in life, but if absolutely nothing else, trying to figure out the path through situations that doesn't do harm and doesn't add to the trauma of the world has never let me down. Definitely doesn't always turn out how I'd prefer, but man I've literally never regretted using that as a guiding principle and wherever that leaves me always seems better for everyone than the alternative. That's probably pretty obvious to most people, but idk I was a huge rear end in a top hat and had to learn that the hard way.
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Feb 2, 2022 06:04
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Achmed Jones posted:keep in mind buddhism is the middle way. monastics are _going super hard core_ with it, and do special things. householders don't have to refrain from eating garlic or w/e (but yes, should refrain from going garlic-crazy and losing their poo poo over garlic futures or whatever). rinpoche lost our temple when he traded it for a box of garlic bulbs, sigh~ Anyways this is a good point and imo there's nothing wrong with being a bad buddhist. I don't mean that as people should go out of their way to be, nor that anyone should be complacent, but almost by definition, all the precepts are quite a lot and essentially require some lifestyle change and almost no one doesn't have one or two that gives them particular trouble. Practically, it's the aspiration to do better as well as giving meaningful consideration to what of the precepts can and can't be done feasibly that I think largely sets people off in the right direction. imo some of the precepts are more about just setting your life up in such a way that eventually you can sustainably live by them than instant demands that everything needs to be changed. Like if someone has been self-medicating for a decade, getting off of intoxicants isn't about instantly going cold turkey, it's hopefully going to be establishing some other system of treating the need, eg via therapy and exercise and, if needed, proper medication, rather than just dealing with it by smoking a quarter ounce of weed a day or w/e. I think most things worth undertaking in buddhism are like this: you build the foundation for as long as it takes, then later hopefully you experience the results. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 05:53
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Re sitting and cushions: seconding what paramemetic said about trying two cushions (or all manner of height variations, I'm not especially tall and I need at least 5-6" of butt-elevation to get full lotus to really lock into place. On a related note, long-term it's worth working towards full lotus as it is, ime, by far the most stable and easiest and least uncomfortable way to sit for prolonged periods of time. It's stable because it interlocks your lower body together so you're basically just at rest compared to other ways of sitting that require using more muscle or balance to hold the posture.prom candy posted:I am finding the book club book a bit difficult to get through. Does anyone have any recommendations for something that's a bit deeper than the secular buddhism for Westerners genre but still written to be approachable? I just read 10% Happier and I enjoyed it but it definitely handwaved a lot of the metaphysical aspects of Buddhism. The metaphysical aspects are part of what I'm hoping can help me reduce my attachment to my current conception of self (and hopefully therefore stop having my day completely railroaded by health anxiety every time I feel a little unexpected sensation or whatever.) Nagarjuna's Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way idk if it is approachable exactly (it's certainly not impenetrable, at least) but it really, really gets into buddhist metaphysics. Probably find a translation with some commentary or at least really good footnotes
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Mar 6, 2022 12:49
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Beowulfs_Ghost posted:I thought about suggesting that one, but I'm also a philosophy nerd, and enjoy reading things like Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Yeah I liked that translation. The commentary was quite helpful, too.
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Mar 6, 2022 20:47
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some kind of grodysattva
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Mar 9, 2022 21:41
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I missed karma chat earlier, but someone was asking about it in the context of how other religions view fortune or the like. tldr in buddhism 99.9% of the time karma is not a supernatural thing (and most of the exceptions are pretty esoteric, but even then those don't transcend the functioning of cause and effect), it's literally just the junction between cause and effect and suitable conditions. By and large it's exceedingly mundane and there isn't really anything about it that requires any more faith than the knowledge that putting your hand on a hot stove will lead to your hand being burnt. In nearly every case you can substitute 'cause and effect' or probably more precisely, 'cause and conditions' for karma and retain the full meaning. There is a common misconception that karma suggest bad things happen to someone because they have bad karma. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of karma. First, good and bad karma is an artificial duality applied after the fact. Second causes and conditions are very often much greater than the individual caught up amidst them. Individual's actions absolutely can and do have negative outcomes, and recognizing the extent to which we can impact things is very important, But karma is a secondary concept used to describe something, not a literal cause of things. The actual causes of things are the causes and conditions themselves. Karma is just a word for the system, not the system itself. For Instance: someone trapped in Mariupol has extremely unfortunate karma because it's a horrifying place to be trapped right now, but it's not bad karma as in something that they 'have' that is causing bad things to happen to them. For another example: being the child of neglectful parents is extremely poo poo karma, but it is not a reflection of the child in any way, it's just a way of describing the circumstances. catgirlgenius posted:hi thread! i have been real into mindfulness for a couple months now as a way to reroute my brain away from my ADHD's worst triggers, but seeing how yesterday i gave into my anger and told a transphobe to poo poo blood and then drink it, clearly, i can always go chiller. not like Texas is gonna get any more calm... if in your travels you meet the buddha on the road and he says some transphobic poo poo, tell him to poo poo blood and then drink it Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Mar 24, 2022 |
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Mar 24, 2022 08:50
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Bilirubin posted:I koan take these puns This is comically absurd and I highly recommend ignoring internet buddhism weirdos and avoiding places that are full of the worst of them as much as possible. The kernel of truth there is that it is indeed advantageous to find communities with knowledgeable or experienced people both because they generally can provide better guidance and can steer you clear of some of the common pitfalls. But lol that as-stated is so ahistoric and counterfactual. As an aside I've been part of quite casual, sanghas (but also entirely above board by even the strictest definition) where you didn't actually know if the people there were monastics unless they actually felt like sharing it so in many cases I don't know how someone would even know. There are also lay and householder lineages of practice, so add an additional lol onto the heap. Slightly related but I would be very wary of anyone professing to be a buddhist teacher without some connection to an established tradition/lineage. That's a huge red flag. I don't mean someone claiming to be knowledgeable so much as someone initiating master:student relationships, which have a high potential for abuse even in the best circumstances. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Apr 8, 2022 |
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Apr 8, 2022 07:28
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for all of zen's dumb esoteric, self-indulgent answering-a-riddle-with-a-riddle stuff, one of the more poignant zen stories that always sticks with me is just about a surgeon getting repeatedly turned away from a monastery that he kept trying to join because the abbot thought that his day job was more explicitly dharma than anything he might learn in a monastery
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Apr 24, 2022 10:46
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Nessus posted:Did the surgeon later get into a car accident, from which he recovered at the cost of the loss of his fine dexterity, at which point he was admitted to the monastery? Or am I thinking of another story? No, but yeah basically. There likely are other version out there. quote:17. Stingy in Teaching (from Zen Bones) Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 20:57
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My favorite description of where to rest one's focus or attention while at meditation is 'man the sense-gates.' Things will come up that will drag your awareness away, but when you catch yourself getting pulled away, just return back to your breath and your senses.
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May 4, 2022 03:15
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