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Re: Don’t be a Buddhist, be a better whatever-you-are
His concern, I think, is the putting on the trappings but not taking in the substance.
An example is a group, of people going the a talk by the Dali Lama and paying $50 OR $100 to be there as they blow by temples and centers where they can learn for the price of just going in the door. They are more interested in the image, the flash, than the message. The wear the trappings but do not hear the message.
Buddhism, no matter the specific tradition, is to be lived. It is not show, it is life.
I live my Buddhism. I do not put on airs, I do not shout out how great I am because I am a buddhist. I live it. It is not the flash or flavor of the day. It is a life, a culture, a way of thinking and acting that has become embedded in my life and living. It is an understanding transcending words. It is to live fully as a human being, to live honestly, warts and all and allow/enable other to do so as they are.
Just a thought
Peace to all
Lionduck
(Un)natural Disasters.... Is Mother Nature Trying to tell us something?
Well around the world, storm after storm, quake after quake, flooding after flooding, heatwave after heatwave, fire after fire...Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something....Enough is Enough...
Shoshin1
Re: Don’t be a Buddhist, be a better whatever-you-are
@Beej said:
What a brilliantly compact way to say the path to Enlightenment/God/Understanding is not monopolized by any singular tradition, they are all functional tools that can help the mind focus it's way towards this understanding, and it's beneficial to work within the cultural connotations
There are many paths up the mountain, that is true, and no one path has a monopoly. I think within it His Holiness was also trying to express a certain compassion for the community, by having people convert to Buddhism you fracture the community and create different senses of belonging.
If you say to the Christians, don’t become Buddhists but become better Christians, you encourage them to upgrade their faith from within. You may find these congregations find themselves on the path to a better conception of Jesus’ words.
Jeroen
Re: Don’t be a Buddhist, be a better whatever-you-are
I don't think His Holiness was gatekeeping Buddhism, rather he was taking the pressure off people feeling the need to "convert" out of their current religious faith. I know Christianity and Islam "witness" and their MO is to gain converts by pressuring others to renounce their former religions to be "saved". Buddhism doesn't require this. I think that's what His Holiness is highlighting here.
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
Imagine being so so mindful as to go for years always knowing the reason for ever feeling sad & disappointed.
how
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
@Jeroen said:
For the first time in many years I feel sad and disappointed without any reason.
Thus have I heard..
Just as sadness is Dukkha, happiness is Dukkha both are unsatisfactory due to their nature....A desire for one to go away (aversion) and a longing for the other to stay (desire)
Both states are impermanent ...
Dukkha arises due to aversion towards one and clinging to the other...
And as @how has mentioned, we need to develop an acceptance of both experiences for what they are just energy in motion "feelings/emotions" which come and go...this acceptance I guess is what's known as the middle way...
Rumi sums it up...
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably._
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
>
Shoshin1
Re: About mind-altering experiences
From what "I" gather....back in the trippy times of the 1960s & 70s many Westerners who had 'experimented' with psychedelics began to realise that there's more to life than what meets the eye/I (Things are not quite what they seem once awaken from the dream) it would seem they were drawn to Eastern philosophies & spirituality ...
The seeds were planted ie, the psychedelic drug mind blowing/opening experience), and then cultivated and nurtured by Eastern philosophies and meditation practices...deepening experiential understanding of the mind
I guess for many, Eastern meditation practices and philosophies are the psychedelic/mind opening experiences one can have without taking the drug ...
Shoshin1
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
From the meditative perspective, I am not much of a fan of the deliberate inducing of
either moods of negativity or positivity. Both carry the seeds of their own potential suffering. Not that I'm insinuating that this is what you do.
Just that there is the first noble truth, that a practice can assuage for a while....until this too changes again like everything else..which signals and challenges our practice to find just as much acceptance within of that which feels uncomfortable as we formally did with that which was more comfortable or neutral in nature.
how
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
"I'm going to speak my mind, so this won't take very long.
"Despite what they say graffiti is not the lowest form of art. Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it's actually one of the most honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission.
"A wall has always been the best place to publish your work.
"The people who run our cities don't understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit, which makes their opinion worthless.
"They say graffiti frightens people and is symbolic of the decline in society, but graffiti is only dangerous in the minds of three types of people: politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
"The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every allowable surface but you're never allowed to answer back. Well, they started the fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back.
"Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place."
— Banksy (British graffiti artist)
Jeroen