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What is some advice for a new Buddhist? Where should I start?
I didn't agree with Christianity. I just don't agree with it. Some of it I agree with, but I cannot side with the god orederd genocide, malice and hatred as well as the overall unforgivingness. A priest once gave a speech saying anyone who has had sex before marriage will never be fit to become a priest. That is very hypocritical. Maybe perhaps they could have been examples of coming back up from a hard past, (I know some people don't think much of premarital sex but that's fine)? With Christianity, I cannot just accept one part. It's either all or nothing and I choose nothing.
I have a list of reasons for leaving but I will not list them all.
Buddhism has really impacted my life. I am less inclined to seek revenge and I am less of an angry person. I have a new found impact in my life and the relationships i have with other people have healed and flourished.
Growing up, I remember being sexually abused by a stranger. I have tried my best to suppress it and have told NOBODY I know in my real-world life. It has haunted my past forever. I found sanctuary in Buddhism.
My mom was both physically and emotionally abusive to me as a child. I HATED her. It was only now that I learned to forgive her. You could say one reason I left Christianity was being forced to accept it and receiving a beating for not getting it right, but again, I have a list of other reasons. I was once locked out of my house by my mother. We were moving things into our new home and I have this condition where my eyes are unable to adjust to changing light. When I look up, I see no stars because it is too dark. I see as well as anyone in the dark, but at night, I am null. I can't even navigate a movie theater without accidentally bumping someone. I am turning blind. Today, tomorrow or sometime in the next fifty years I will simply wake up blind though I see as well as anyone in the day. Anywho, I dropped a box on the ground and could not see anything. My mom called me stupid knowing about my condition and would not let me in the house until I found every piece. I was in the rain on my knees searching the wet ground looking for every piece while biting back tears and trying to escape the heart ache that my own mom did this to me. I came in after an hour because my sister pitied me. From that day forward I had almost bitter hatred for my mother and shear anger. My father was seldom in my life directly. He was behind the scenes trying to make money via the US Merchant Marine. I loved him but did not like him for he treated my mom poorly as a wife. He would accuse her of cheating, be so cold to her and not comfort her when she was in sadness. He was a momma's boy. He would treat his own wife like trash and his mom like a queen. I always felt my dad was in-compassionate to the feelings of his own wife. Sometimes I did not blame my mom for her anger and blaming me for being unable to help their marriage.
Years later while in my freshman college year, I ran into a Buddhist girl. At the time I was still wondering why I was Catholic, I was only Catholic because I just so happened to be born into a Catholic family. This girl became my best friend. I wa later introduced to a community of Buddhists. I fell in love with their forgiving attitude and compassion for every living thing - something I seldom saw for 18 years of my life. It touched me how some of them had such awful pasts yet still found it in themselves to forgive. They did not let the bad in their life change them. I'm not saying Christians can't do this, but with these people, it was WOW. I read some of the Lotus and Kalama Sutra and was blown away at the wisdom of this all. I questioned it as best as I could and found less subjectivity, hypocrisy and intolerance.
I have recently left for the semester and my new found friends live quite a distance away from me. Thing is, I never asked about rituals like what to do before eating a meal, night time and morning prayers. I never asked for a full copy of the sutras as I only read small pamphlets. I never asked about being vegetarian or shaving my head, (All though none ever did that from what I saw). Also, how do you deal with the attacks from family and people you know? I had to basically stand trial before family, family friends and a few priests. I stood in the center of a room being questioned as though I commited a crime. I understood not to debunk their religion. I understood that the important thing to do was tell how Buddhism helped me over Christianity. I know one should NEVER need a religion to find out things like morality or peace, but Buddhism had simply helped my life and so why not?
I have a list of reasons for leaving but I will not list them all.
Buddhism has really impacted my life. I am less inclined to seek revenge and I am less of an angry person. I have a new found impact in my life and the relationships i have with other people have healed and flourished.
Growing up, I remember being sexually abused by a stranger. I have tried my best to suppress it and have told NOBODY I know in my real-world life. It has haunted my past forever. I found sanctuary in Buddhism.
My mom was both physically and emotionally abusive to me as a child. I HATED her. It was only now that I learned to forgive her. You could say one reason I left Christianity was being forced to accept it and receiving a beating for not getting it right, but again, I have a list of other reasons. I was once locked out of my house by my mother. We were moving things into our new home and I have this condition where my eyes are unable to adjust to changing light. When I look up, I see no stars because it is too dark. I see as well as anyone in the dark, but at night, I am null. I can't even navigate a movie theater without accidentally bumping someone. I am turning blind. Today, tomorrow or sometime in the next fifty years I will simply wake up blind though I see as well as anyone in the day. Anywho, I dropped a box on the ground and could not see anything. My mom called me stupid knowing about my condition and would not let me in the house until I found every piece. I was in the rain on my knees searching the wet ground looking for every piece while biting back tears and trying to escape the heart ache that my own mom did this to me. I came in after an hour because my sister pitied me. From that day forward I had almost bitter hatred for my mother and shear anger. My father was seldom in my life directly. He was behind the scenes trying to make money via the US Merchant Marine. I loved him but did not like him for he treated my mom poorly as a wife. He would accuse her of cheating, be so cold to her and not comfort her when she was in sadness. He was a momma's boy. He would treat his own wife like trash and his mom like a queen. I always felt my dad was in-compassionate to the feelings of his own wife. Sometimes I did not blame my mom for her anger and blaming me for being unable to help their marriage.
Years later while in my freshman college year, I ran into a Buddhist girl. At the time I was still wondering why I was Catholic, I was only Catholic because I just so happened to be born into a Catholic family. This girl became my best friend. I wa later introduced to a community of Buddhists. I fell in love with their forgiving attitude and compassion for every living thing - something I seldom saw for 18 years of my life. It touched me how some of them had such awful pasts yet still found it in themselves to forgive. They did not let the bad in their life change them. I'm not saying Christians can't do this, but with these people, it was WOW. I read some of the Lotus and Kalama Sutra and was blown away at the wisdom of this all. I questioned it as best as I could and found less subjectivity, hypocrisy and intolerance.
I have recently left for the semester and my new found friends live quite a distance away from me. Thing is, I never asked about rituals like what to do before eating a meal, night time and morning prayers. I never asked for a full copy of the sutras as I only read small pamphlets. I never asked about being vegetarian or shaving my head, (All though none ever did that from what I saw). Also, how do you deal with the attacks from family and people you know? I had to basically stand trial before family, family friends and a few priests. I stood in the center of a room being questioned as though I commited a crime. I understood not to debunk their religion. I understood that the important thing to do was tell how Buddhism helped me over Christianity. I know one should NEVER need a religion to find out things like morality or peace, but Buddhism had simply helped my life and so why not?
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Comments
You are an adult now. In terms of your family, if there cannot be basic harmony, I would stay away from them for the time being. Eventually, we all learn that time heals most wounds and wounds most heels.
Then I'd not worry about the more complicated aspects of Buddhism, but rather spend some time learning about the 4 Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the 5 Precepts. Once you are feeling more comfortable with those basics, begin to look a little further into things.
Where would you like to start? Study? Mantra? Advice? Confession? Ritual? Retreat? Meditation? Companionship? Diet? Simple living? Behaviour change? Becoming enlightened?
How about a joke?
Q: How many Buddhists are Beginners?
A: All of them.
:wave:
http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/ebdha346.htm
Where to start?
Right here, right now, in your mind.
In contrast to many other religions, Buddhism isn't 'outgoing'. What I mean is, it places no faith in an external God, or eternal heaven - things like that outside ourselves. All we have is inside, it's our experience of body and mind. Yes, we have scriptures, but these are only supportive for the practice, they are not the practice themselves. Also, they are not the answer or solution in themselves.
Buddhism is about seeing what we can do in this moment to polish our mind, to make it more kind and peaceful. You can only do that right where you are, in the present moment. Yes, you could read suttas, do prayers, be vegetarian, and that's all fine, but is does't touch the core. For example, you may read about anger and how to overcome it, but that's not the same as feeling anger and finding a way around it with your own mind.
So the forgiving and compassionate attitude you see in a lot of Buddhists is not simply a decision they made, or a 'gift' they received because of being Buddhist. Instead, it's a result of all the hard practice they did to overcome anger and ill will again and again. To not act upon it, but find a way towards kindness.
This may sound logical and redundant advise, but over the years of practice this has proven itself to me to be very important again and again. Even in Buddhism it's easy for people to get lost in the 'outside' things.
With kindness,
Sabre
The first thing you'll discover is that Buddhism, like any ancient world religion, is actually very diverse and has different schools or sects that can disagree with each other over how to practice the Middle Path as taught by Buddha and translated into action by their particular Roshi. If you think of the difference between the Catholic and Pentecostal Holiness churches, you get an idea of what you're up against. What they all have in common is a determination to live a life the way Buddha taught and better ourselves and the world.
I think it's important at the beginning to either start learning how to meditate at home or much better, find a group to meditate with but don't go overboard. Meditation is but one part of your practice.
Then the next is starting to explore the Dharma. We have both the honored sutras and the writings of the Buddhist Masters past and present.
And the final leg of your stool will be exploring your questions and what you're doing with other Buddhists, a Sangha. That might be us. Here you'll find people from different schools of Buddhism and learn what they have to say about issues important in your life.
Again, Welcome.
See here
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/18434/came-around-christianity#latest
The only place you can. Here and now.
Decide what your intentions are, and try to follow through
with them. If you stumble...start again. Reset intentions....
and go again. The only person you have control over
is you....and that's usually enough shit to keep us
busy. Getting past all the lies people tell us about ourselves,
and the lies we tell ourselves is not pretty work....but work
does produce results. You reap what you sow, right?
BTW...you are not the story you are telling.
Nice to meet you and nice to have you here.
For me, these 3 actions began the beautiful change.
Meditation is one starting point particularly for westerners.
In the east it is like xtianity in a way. The people believe buddhism can transform them so they don't need to start at meditation and see fruit. These start at: the precious human birth, the sorrow of samsara, the increasing entanglement in karma and samsara in our lives, and the shortness of life to attain.
Don't overwhelm yourself. It is easy to want to learn as much as possible, but if you go too far, the more advanced things will not make sense until you grasp the foundational things, as @vinlyn said. True understanding of "just" the 4 Noble Truths is quite difficult for a lot of people.
What worked for me:
Learn to meditate if you don't already. Start slow if you have to and add minutes as you get comfortable. Try different styles and see what feels right to you. Once you are practicing meditation daily, you'll probably find you bring it to your daily life automatically. Thich Nhat Hahn is a very good author for beginners. He is a Vietnamse Zen Buddhist, but he tends to stick to the basics that you can apply to any tradition and he makes it very easy to understand. I started with "The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings." It took about of year of regular practice and foundation work to even get to the point where I could read basic sutras and start to understand what they meant, and said.
The biggest thing, whether it is study, mindfulness, meditation or whatever you are working on, don't be hard on yourself. This is a life long practice, it is not something you master just because you decide you like it. As with anything you practice, some days will be great and some of them will be overwhelming and confusing. That's normal, don't let it discourage you.
I like Buddhism because when you're learning about the basics, it's very logical. It's more psychology than religion. Go to the bookstore and find an introductory book, that explains the 4 Noble Truths, the 8-fold path, mindfulness, compassion, and the precepts. Get a book or a video on meditation (you could probably find material on youtube, for free). Start meditating (breath technique is important, to calm the mind and body), to achieve some calm. Just those things should keep you busy for a good while.
Please read 1 Samuel 15
God EXPLICITLY orders the genocide of infants and people alike
A quick google search will tell you. The bible I feel contradicts itself. At least with Buddhism you need not accept everything from what I am told. I should learn to drop my anger at Christianity. Again I do not dislike Christians, just Christianity, or at least most of it.
And attacks? From family. They know I am pursuing Buddhism because I have been seen reading notes about Buddhism. Then my mom asked what I was doing with them so then she told the entire family. They will not leave me alone about apparently I am going to hell. As for my friends, I told them. You would think you could open up to some for your friends but some just won't listen to me.
Lastly, all the things you said about why you like Buddhism are my reason for choosing it.
I will certainly check out all the links you have sent me once I am done with work and planning out a summer semester.
Remember the difference between a non-violent man who would have got on very well with Shakyamuni (the Buddha) and a violent Christian Church which does little to represent him well.
Forgiveness is a massively importance spiritual practice.
Buddhists call this practice 'Metta' and Jesus said to 'Love your enemies' - same thing.
Imagine such a world and know that you are moving in that direction.
A really moving post @MonsantaClause - kind of gives me hope.
Haha nah, my relatives on my dad's side own a farm ironically, but they aren't very good business people...
My mom's side owns a small ferry service.
All of this is in the Philippines.
These ^ represent 84000 dharma doors and they are all inviting you!