Are Buddhists mystics?

lobster

I once heard ajahn Sumedo tell his monks and particularly his nuns, 'we are not mystics'. The nuns were all into Rumi at the time and as far as I was aware, were in a better place than a lot of the monks . . .

There is a lot of nonsense that is described as mysticism, just as a lot of nonsense is associated with dharma. However the developed mystic knowledge has more in common with realisation than with for example scientific knowing . . .

Have you transcended labels or are you still a misfit mystic . . . Or is that just me? :wave:

Jeffrey

I don't know whether I am a mystic or not!

sean

nope

person

yep

blu3ree

Wiki definition of mystic is someone who seeks through contemplation and Self surrender to obtain unity with the deity or absolute. Then this small iPhone screen cuts the rest off.

ThailandTom

I like Sumedo and also in my post about Neo-Buddhism the author of that book said actual Buddhist practice should have nothing to do with fantasies, deities, spirits and all of that jazz. This is my opinion OP.

DairyLama

blu3ree said:

Wiki definition of mystic is someone who seeks through contemplation and Self surrender to obtain unity with the deity or absolute.

That sounds like a good description of a Buddhist if one leaves out "the deity".

Cinorjer

Jeffrey said:

I don't know whether I am a mystic or not!

Mystics (and Rumi was certainly a Sufi mystic first and foremost) believe there is a hidden, transcendent, or alternate reality that we as human beings are unaware of or cut off from, and that our purpose in life should be to regain this connection to the transcendent reality.

Many Buddhists are mystics in the way they view Enlightenment and Samsara, in their seeing Buddha Nature as something hidden beneath the illusion of this life, and a mind has to be transformed into an elevated state of consciousness in order to achieve this connection. If that is the teaching and practice, then go with it. However, many Buddhists see Enlightenment from a mystical viewpoint like this even when the particular teachings of their practice point out this is not it.

Using Zen speak, I'd explain it by saying a mystic considers our human experience to be empty of meaning, and that seeing past that emptiness to the true form underneath it all is our goal. For Zen, at least, there is not "underneath or transcendent or hidden reality" to achieve. Form and emptiness are the same thing. Nothing hidden about it. No secret rites or altered states of consciousness needed. Only a clear mind.

Florian

ThailandTom said:

I like Sumedo and also in my post about Neo-Buddhism the author of that book said actual Buddhist practice should have nothing to do with fantasies, deities, spirits and all of that jazz. This is my opinion OP.

Yes, but is it mysticism? I would say that there's no question about it. I've never seen a definition for 'mysticism' that would exclude it. I have trouble distinguishing it from Rumi's doctrine other than in the superficial details. As one sage remarks, there is only one mysticism. All roads lead to Rome after all. By Cinorjer's definition for mysticism Buddhism would be excluded, but this is not a standard definition. At any rate, in my attempts to write about mysticism I take Buddhism as a paradigm example, and nobody has shouted at me yet.

ThailandTom

Florian said:

ThailandTom said:

I like Sumedo and also in my post about Neo-Buddhism the author of that book said actual Buddhist practice should have nothing to do with fantasies, deities, spirits and all of that jazz. This is my opinion OP.

Yes, but is it mysticism? I would say that there's no question about it. I've never seen a definition for 'mysticism' that would exclude it. I have trouble distinguishing it from Rumi's doctrine other than in the superficial details. As one sage remarks, there is only one mysticism. All roads lead to Rome after all. By Cinorjer's definition for mysticism Buddhism would be excluded, but this is not a standard definition. At any rate, in my attempts to write about mysticism I take Buddhism as a paradigm example, and nobody has shouted at me yet.

Sorry to all, never mind my ignorance. I confused the definition of the word with a different one in my jumbled up brain. Please continue as if I had said nothing whatsoever.

BhikkhuJayasara

I'm just a simple observer(or attempted observer) of reality as it really is, no fancy name for that.

Florian

ThailandTom said:

Sorry to all, never mind my ignorance. I confused the definition of the word with a different one in my jumbled up brain. Please continue as if I had said nothing whatsoever.

No need to aplogise TT. Mysticism is a word that causes endless trouble, and your rather damning interpretation of it is not at all uncommon.

Dakini

blu3ree said:

Wiki definition of mystic is someone who seeks through contemplation and Self surrender to obtain unity with the deity or absolute.

Isn't that a component of Buddhism? We had a thread quite awhile ago about whether Buddhism was mysticism or not. I think the meditation component definitely introduces an element of that. Look at the Buddha: upon reaching Enlightenment, he saw his past lives, saw 32 realms of existence, and according to some reports, experienced clairvoyance and other "supernatural" abilities. If that isn't mysticism, I don't know what is.

But the interesting thing with this mystical component in Buddhism is that it's tempered with a lot of very down-to-earth observation, logic, and discipline. So it's not exclusively mystical; it also has a very rational aspect. Kind of yin and yang in quality, isn't it?

Nevermind

Buddhist try to be mystics, but not everyone makes the cut.

sean

maybe

zenff

Jeffrey said:

I don't know whether I am a mystic or not!

“If you say this is a stick I will take it away from you. If you say this is not a stick I will give it to you.”
I can’t find the reference right now but that’s how one Zen Master started a conversation about the nature of reality.
It says we can’t deny the reality of the phenomenal world but we also can’t stick to our conventional understanding of it.

So I think as a Buddhist I am a mystic but this mysticism is not about anything special. It is about real phenomena; about life here and now just as it is.
We wake up to “God” who is not in heaven but who is right in front of our noses. And that we may call “the identity of relative and absolute”.

The key – the way I see it – to the mysticism of Buddhism is that we stop putting layers of words, concepts and preferences on top of reality.

Before we can give names like “here and now”; before we can separate subject and object conceptually; before we can think about spiritual or mundane; the truth is revealed immediately. But we will never know it; not conceptually. We can never grasp it.

We can never escape the trap the Master lays out for us if we enter the realm of affirmation and denial.

riverflow

First, an old Zen story:

Bankei was approached by a priest who boasted that his master possessed miraculous powers. This master could take a brush and write Amida in the air and the word would appear on a sheet of paper in the distance. Challenged to equal this, Bankei replied, "My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink."

The word 'mysticism' is such a loaded and easily misleading word because it usually suggests something of an 'otherworldly' nature. To use the word, it must be highly qualified to make any sense of the term. It seems to me that the Buddhadharma is, as @zenff similarly says, transcending not the world but rather the conceptual (and dualistic) overlay we place upon it--we distort reality with all this pushing and pulling, and great harm comes from it. The ego IS this habit of pushing and pulling.

In this sense, the actual problem is that we are 'otherwordly'--we want anything but THIS world--our minds are always wandering somewhere else, chasing ghosts. We prefer our ideas about reality to being that reality itself, and this reality is not somewhere else, but is always im-mediate.