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Affirming my faith, and showing others the way.
To begin, an introduction. My name is Payton. I was raised in the Christian faith, and I was a devout follower. But as my understanding of the religion grew, I became continuously uncomfortable with the teachings of my spiritual leaders and the book that supposedly held the way to eternal bliss. At some point I became aware of the exclusive nature of the Christian beliefs, and realized I could no longer reconcile them with my self. From there I turned to Atheism, and began speaking to my peers about my beliefs. Most were shocked. My closest friends understood. This continued for a few years, until an incident wherein one of my peers suffered a mental break, and lost touch with reality. I did not take this very well, and drowned in my guilt at having not been able to foresee the incident or prevent my friend from harm. After much introspection, I have come to understand myself more fully.
This is where I am now. My greatest suffering arises not from my own ignorance, but from the ignorance of others. Seeing my friends continue on a path that clearly led only to more suffering caused, and causes me more pain than anything else. I have recently (within the past few weeks) begun to read and begin my understanding of the Buddhist way. I am fascinated. What I have discovered is by far the clearest path to the reduction of suffering I have ever known.
But I am still infinitely ignorant compared to more experienced practitioners. I have finally found what I truly want to do; remove my ignorance, or at least lessen it as much as I possibly can, with all my will, and then use what I learn to help others do the same. I can imagine no greater path to walk. But, as I said, I am still ignorant. I have strived to understand the Noble Truths and practice the Eightfold paths, and I seem to be succeeding, but I am my only judge. I fear my understanding is inadequate. So I seek refuge.
Two questions:
The first, how can I join a community of Buddhists? I do not wish to become a monk, only to learn and perhaps teach when I am capable. I have located a temple near my residence, but I am hesitant to simply arrive on the steps and ask to be taught. I haven't found any information on the formalities of these things, so any advice here would be greatly appreciated.
Second, how does one go about guiding others to the path? This is my greatest desire, but I do not want to teach a corrupted path. I doubt my knowledge is adequate to begin speaking to others about it, but I am unsure even of where to begin to learn how to teach others. Can anyone point me in the direction of any scripture or essays on the subject?
Thank you very much for your time. Sincerely, a student.
This is where I am now. My greatest suffering arises not from my own ignorance, but from the ignorance of others. Seeing my friends continue on a path that clearly led only to more suffering caused, and causes me more pain than anything else. I have recently (within the past few weeks) begun to read and begin my understanding of the Buddhist way. I am fascinated. What I have discovered is by far the clearest path to the reduction of suffering I have ever known.
But I am still infinitely ignorant compared to more experienced practitioners. I have finally found what I truly want to do; remove my ignorance, or at least lessen it as much as I possibly can, with all my will, and then use what I learn to help others do the same. I can imagine no greater path to walk. But, as I said, I am still ignorant. I have strived to understand the Noble Truths and practice the Eightfold paths, and I seem to be succeeding, but I am my only judge. I fear my understanding is inadequate. So I seek refuge.
Two questions:
The first, how can I join a community of Buddhists? I do not wish to become a monk, only to learn and perhaps teach when I am capable. I have located a temple near my residence, but I am hesitant to simply arrive on the steps and ask to be taught. I haven't found any information on the formalities of these things, so any advice here would be greatly appreciated.
Second, how does one go about guiding others to the path? This is my greatest desire, but I do not want to teach a corrupted path. I doubt my knowledge is adequate to begin speaking to others about it, but I am unsure even of where to begin to learn how to teach others. Can anyone point me in the direction of any scripture or essays on the subject?
Thank you very much for your time. Sincerely, a student.
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Comments
Buddhism is not about teaching and learning things with the intellect, but with the heart. That's why the best way to teach others is to show them your peace and compassion that will be the result of the path; these are mainly the result of meditation and morality. So just be yourself and apply these things. They'll find out themselves how it changed you, maybe. If not, then not. But please don't go around 'convincing' others to be Buddhist and teach them things you've read or heard somewhere else. This is not effective and in my eyes not the Buddhist way.
If you've just discovered the path a few weeks ago, give it some more years at least until you start to think about actively teaching others, only if they ask. As we always say, you can't relieve others suffering if you are suffering yourself. This is a path that takes most a lifetime (or more) to develop.
With loving kindness,
Sabre
Thank you for responding so quickly. My desire to "know" intellectually has been a great obstacle in many other parts of my life as well. As has my eagerness. I should have recognized this at work in my thoughts before I posted; I apologize.
You can join a sangha, well that depends where you live. Simply google meditation centres or sanghas with your local area and see what pops up. You will not need ot shave your head or where robes lol, each sangha is diferent and you can even have a teacher without being ordained.
Your second question is a bif grey, not so black and white if you ask me. In buddhism we try not to preach to others and convert, this is not the way really. You can drop hints to those who you know who are acting in an inskilful manner that are maybe drinking alcohol or taking drus etc, but converting is not really something we try to do. If somebody comes up to you and asks about the dharma and buddhism, them sure, speak speak and speak on their level. Compassion is an important part of buddhism, helping others with regards to suffering. I have learnt that trying to teach parts of the dharma to non-buddhists is really hard so I don't try, but you can explain a certain situation with compassion without using the words buddha or buddhism etc.
I hope this answers some of your queries
2nd - if you have a desire to guide others then youre not ready to be a teacher - your greatest challenge will be teaching yourself... if someone asks you directions for example, you will teach them the way to their destination - to do that however, you have to know both where you are and where you are going (and perhaps even been there yourself first to be sure!)... this shouldnt dissuade you from having an opinion and sharing that opinion along the way...
Good luck on the rest of your journey.
then learn it.
If you chose Vipassana for example, you would still need to choose between the two main school.
Goenka or Mahasi.
If you were to choose Goenka, before you can consider becoming a teacher, you would need to go to something like 10, 10 days retreat and something like 5, 1 month retreat and a longer one.
Your teachers would assess you and tell you when you are ready to teach.
If you were to choose Mahasi in asia, it would be pretty much the same. Many retreats and your teachers (and yourself) would evaluate your progress.
you cannot begin to teach before you reach very high understandings of the paths and some very important milestones...
If you were to so Vipassana in america, you could go to http://www.spiritrock.org/ for example and follow their teachings. after many retreats and talks with your teachers, you would eventually be qualified to teach.
For tibetan Buddhist, i believe there is a 3 year retreat to attend before you can even begin to think about teaching (i might be wrong, others can confirm or correct)
for whatever tradition, it's going to require a serious dedication, experience and work before becoming a teacher. and there are no guarantee. it can take a year or it can take 10-20 years depending on many factors.
but, you can always teach mindfulness meditation, mindfulness meditation is like the first basic step in meditation and you get to teach it to the general public.
There are courses and certificates everywhere for this, from psychologist type of thing.
You can also use your intellect in Buddhism, but it is not the main focus. Just knowing 100 'facts' about the teachings does not get you one step closer to happiness. It's all about applying the teachings.
Maybe not entirely the right context to quote this sutta, but I still do it: Sabre
2) An enthusiastic student asks his teacher: "Master, what can I do to help all the suffering beings in this world?" The teacher answers: "Indeed, what can you do?"
So, even if I am genuinely concerned about the welfare of others, when I am hopelessly lost in my own problems, trying to deal with the world, how can I help others? I would be like jumping into a river where someone is drowning, when I cannot swim myself...
Therefore, I should first learn to swim myself, learn to deal with my problems, learn how to become liberated from my problems, or at best, become all-knowing or enlightened. The realisation comes: "change the world, start with myself".
I should realise that at this moment my help is limited, simply because I don't know all the results of my actions.
A short real story as example: one time at Tushita Meditation Center in Dharamsala, India, people who were in a meditation course decided to collect money for the beggars after hearing the benefits of generosity. When looking the next day to hand out the money, only one beggar could be found. The generous people decided to give this beggar all the money. A couple of days later, the beggar was found dead in the street: he had drunk himself to death with all the money.....
So my goal should be first and foremost to rein in my own self, and free myself suffering, and that in turn will create less suffering for those around me.
I will start by choosing a tradition to base myself in. Thank you all again for the guidance.
IMO a sangha/teacher that does not really appeal to you can cause more problems/conflicts than it solves.
AFAIK, there are many on this forum who are not associated with a tradition and may never be.
'He who wishes to change the world, should start with a small garden.'
Or as the wonderful Gandhi put it, "Be the change you wish to see, in the world."
Secondly, I have been following a Buddhist path for night on 20 years.
It took me nearly that long to choose a tradition.
And even now, I incorporate factors from others.....
The Tibetan book of Living &Dying.
Anything by HH the DL
Anything by Pema Chodron
The "Awakening" trilogy by Lama Surya Das
this website:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index.html
Anything by thich naht hanh
Urban dharma by Arthur Jeon....
Happy reading!
According to a venerable master of about 20 years of dharma learning and teaching, by enforcing a teaching on other involuntarily is like paper pressing over fire. Once the paper is no longer there, the fire starts to continue burning wildly. Paper is like enforcing buddhism to other and fire is their usual involuntarily self acting along your enforcement. A worst scenario if they are misled. It causes more damage to both the beauty of buddhism and yourself. The first approach is to develop your dharma and buddha field through practice.