Best Of
Re: Is faith important? Are deities real?
Faith & deities can be helpful, unhelpful, neutral or compounding's of each other.
Like reality, trying to accurately assess them beyond the colorings of our own ego's story line remains the real challenge.
how
Falling in love with meditation again...
Ajahn Brahm is helping me fall in love with meditation again. It's a nice feeling.
His Friday night guided meditations are excellent for us Noobs 
Bunks
Re: Pragmatic Buddhism
@person said:
It sounds interesting. The pragmatic side is appealing to me, the real world is messy, holding to ideals can lead to worse outcomes.
This is why opinions, beliefs etc are faulty.
Once one is formed, it's as if you're trying to freeze time because the universe changes completely in the next moment.
Bunks
Re: Pragmatic Buddhism
You know I think that all Buddhadharma at base is pragmatic or it’s not Buddhadharma. But whisper that quietly in some places..some people think it’s a philosophy in competition with other philosophies...😉
Choephal
Buddhist context: Ontology versus Epistemology
I came across these terms reading about 'the three natures' which is a yogacara teaching that is similar to the two truths in my understanding. I would say that it has dependent origination as a 'nature' that bridges fabrication to the unconditioned Buddha nature.
I had heard of ontology and epistemology before in western philosophy and my understanding is that ontology is about what reality is versus epistemology is how we 'know' reality.
So the example I found in my pan Buddhist dictionary in the T section was Tris-svabhava nirdesa is a work by Vasubandhu talking about the Three Natures Doctrine and he argues that it should not be considered so much as philosophical idealism because it deals with epistemological matters.
And also yay I created a topic which I rarely do!
Jeffrey
Re: Troubling thoughts on negative karma and Buddhanature
@spiderlily said:
Dear friends, I hope all are safe and well. Buddhism has always been a soothing balm to my restless nature and mind. But in recent weeks, I've been troubled (or plagued) by a few thoughts...
I would submit that being troubled or plagued by some thoughts for a few weeks is the more pertinent issue to address than the topic they just happened to settle upon.
The Buddha nature & negative Karma will quite happily continue independently of whether our mind understands them or not. A mind, however, that fixates on one specific topic to the exclusion of all others, limits the equanimity required to see much of anything with clarity.
When you recognize that your mind has fixated upon something, try instead to deliberately pay attention to all of your perceptions to explore all of what this fixation has actually been excluding. Divert the minds myopic focus simply by equally sharing ones attention with it's more spacious counterpart.
Here, such a balance not only allows some of suffering's cessation to become more experiential but many of our pesky spiritual questions simply settle into contexts that in themselves, when freed of our own storylines, offer their own answers.
how
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
I took my dog for a walk in the Town's cemetery today... I have been going for walks there since the start of the current lockdown..
I seen snowdrops pushing up... I seen crocuses do the same.. I seen narcissi and Arums pushing up, and now I see daffodils pushing up, but nowhere on the cemetery is anyone pushing up daisies...!
federica
I built a dojo in my attic
I started blogging about a year ago, and this past month I had been away from my dojo for so long due to quarantine that I broke down and spent a bunch of time & money to give myself a proper space in my house.
Martial arts is Buddhism-adjacent in my mind so here ya go.
Linc
Re: Out of curiosity; what school do you follow?
I used to be very into "Lotus Buddhism" of the Tendai school. That tradition still has a place close to my heart, but I found the contemporary teachers and communities I was moving in too doctrinaire. Oddly enough, the straw that broke the camel's back was that I don't believe there are over 30 bodhisattva bhumis. It's just too many.
Another issue was the sectarian history. When you join a Buddhist sect, sometimes you are expected to embrace a host of alternative facts and non-realities that are the convenient truths of the sect and are not, in fact, true in the truest sense of the word true. Oftentimes, these sectarian histories are trying to cement and concretize an ambiguous conflict between temples from something like the 1600s that no one is sure concerning the details of anymore.
I consider myself a "Mahayana Buddhist" now rather than a "Lotus Buddhist" or a practitioner of any particular school. I practice with a Chan community and am still in contact and good terms with some old friends from the Tendai days. My profile picture is of Shaka and Taho enshrined in the taho-to (the ratnastupa), a lingering influence. I suppose I ought to update my profile here.
Re: No snow?
Here in Memphis, we are melting out of the snowfall over the last week. We haven’t had this amount in 50 yrs. Boiling water bec of main breaks, no water pressure and nothing at the stores. It’s been quite a week so far...logged on and saw the snow .... made me smile. ⛄️
Vastmind