Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Are all Buddhists calm....
buddhafoot
Veteran
I was reading a thread and a reply by a couple of members here. The question being posed or the statement being made was "All Buddhist are calm..."
I am not a calm person.
I am a very jovial person. My interactions with people at work are based around humor and laughs.
Are Buddhist really "calm" people? I mean, is being a Buddhist constantly peeling away layers of yourself until there is nothing but calmness? Is being a jovial or outgoing person bad?
I can see being an outgoing person that does not practice "Right Speech" or "Right Intention" because making a fool of oneself or finding humor in the ridiculing of another person is not a "good thing".
But, does finding humor in the human condition, in Nature, in friends and family, etc. - is that bad? Is finding or attaining "awakening" becoming almost comatose (probably a poor choice of words...)...? I'm just wondering if Buddhists that are farther along the Path than I, wander around like Caine from Kung Fu...
-bf
I am not a calm person.
I am a very jovial person. My interactions with people at work are based around humor and laughs.
Are Buddhist really "calm" people? I mean, is being a Buddhist constantly peeling away layers of yourself until there is nothing but calmness? Is being a jovial or outgoing person bad?
I can see being an outgoing person that does not practice "Right Speech" or "Right Intention" because making a fool of oneself or finding humor in the ridiculing of another person is not a "good thing".
But, does finding humor in the human condition, in Nature, in friends and family, etc. - is that bad? Is finding or attaining "awakening" becoming almost comatose (probably a poor choice of words...)...? I'm just wondering if Buddhists that are farther along the Path than I, wander around like Caine from Kung Fu...
-bf
0
Comments
Why does that not surprise me??
I agree with River...I think Buddhists are calm in situations where most people would get terribly worked up and upset. But I don't think being Buddhist means you have to walk around, being "comatose" all day long.
When I read the title of this thread, I thought, "Are all physics students Isaac Newton?"
A calm mind is one which is understood and whose movements have ceased to be chains that bind. In fact, the calmer the mind, the funnier the world becomes!
Well said Simon.
Calm is best used in describing a Buddhist practitioner's mind, not necessarily their actions. When a person has practiced meditation and contemplation of the Four Noble Truths, Dependent origination, etc. etc. their mind becomes calm, unbound, you see? How a person's 'personality' acts in public means nothing. A personality is a mask. The word itself comes from the Latin persona, meaning an actor's mask. Our personalities are tools used for interaction and surivial in a social structure, but they are not us (anatta again). Calm is when we achieve the state of being able to not attach to the many thoughts, fantasies, and emotions that arise from our sense organ of the mind. As Simon has said, one can tell a very good joke and laugh, but that person's mind can also be calm, still, not grasping at anything whatsoever. An average lay follower, such as myself, will surely not be perfectly calm, but we should strive to make our minds as calm as possible. That way we will have less less dukkha, fewer attahments, and the world will inevitable be a happier place.
Aaaaah, Grasshopper, it does not bode well to ponder the imponderable...just accept you're a jerk, and the world laughs with you!!
from "one who knows"!!
1) To be liked
2) To make myself seem cleverer than I was
3) As a means of getting myself out of trouble
4) To lighten a situation.
Many times this was ok, but more often than not, the humour was mis-placed and inappropriate.... Buddhism has in itself, through helping me see things more clearly, and through 'finding myself' (sorry 'bout the cliché) been instrumental in helping me evaluate my role, and recognise where I was using humour incorrectly. Something I never achieved in my Roman Catholic upbringing. Dare I say, that long episode probably contributed to my being severely screwed up for a while....?
Okay... now I'm starting to get a complex.
YodaMama just emailed me something out of her litterbox and Simon snuck in my office and hit me in the head.
Are these signs?
-bf
Yodamama - hahahahaha! I like that! I think that will be my new name.
-bf
I can more easily relate to the comments made through this thread so it seams like a good place to take to the water with my own comments.
I have only very recently started to gravitate towards Buddhism and it appears to be the pursuit of calmness that has opened the path for me. As I have matured a little I have become far more accepting of my current position in life. When I think clearly I realise that past problems were indeed often due to unrealistic expectations and attachments to material wealth - I think I can also begin to see that some of my current comforts may also be transatory at best. But, none the less, calmness is something I enjoy more of these days.
However, something else is beginning to crop up in my thoughts more and more frequently too - delight - not delight in my own actions but delight in what life reveals to me. Seamingly at the drop of a hat most of the time too. I won't try to describe these situations, because I can't! I just get a feeling that something wonderful is at hand waiting to be embraced - if I could only understand the brief glimpse that tantalises me. So here comes frustration again and calmness goes out of the window!
I think that you are quite right that equanimity (calm mind) opens us to delight. In one 'system', the enemy of equanimity is seen as 'envy'. When we stop envying, we can delight in the world as it is. Buddhism, despite an understanding of the pain-filled nature of incarnation, is not some sort of grim counsel of despair. As one of the sutra stories tells, it is this world of samsara that was chosen among all the multiple worlds for the Turning of the Wheel. A good world indeed, when we can see it so.
Tantalising, isn't it....? so near and yet so far! It is, in itself, a form of 'grasping'.... it is something so desirable, and so necessary, but the minute we think we've got it, it eludes us.....
Let it be, TwoShortPlanks.... it's like cradling liquid mercury in the palm of your hand... be gentle with it, and it lies there quietly shimmering and glistening in its own indescribeable beauty... try to hold it, and it slips away through your fingers... Sometimes, the trick is to ignore it..... and we find it stays just a little bit longer each time.
And sometimes it just seeps in through your skin and causes mercury poisoning.
Well, TwoPlanks.
A nice post to start off your joining with us. It's very interesting to hear what other people go through regarding the "experience" of life and then sharing it with us.
-bf
The healthy response is, as Fede says, the appropriate one, arising spontaneously from the situation rather than from our own neuroses and hang-ups.
Admittedly, without inappropriate laughter, we would probably have no jokes at all!