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How long did it take you guys to understand Buddhism
ericcris10sen
Veteran
I have a question. A LOT of you guys on here have a lot of knowledge on Buddhism, and I was wondering, how long did it take you guys to understand most of it? I can understand the basics of Buddhism and meditation, but there are some things (as stated in one of my other threads) that make me scratch my head and think:
'How does ______ arise within you when you practice/meditate _____?'
I learn a lot from you guys because the books more or less tell you, if you do this, this will happen. And it doesn't really tell you HOW or WHY it would come to be within you and/or how it will positively affect others.
But like I asked, how long did it take for you to start understanding a lot of the more "deeper" aspects/teachings of Buddhism? And did you have questions like what I'm facing and/or not understand these things?
'How does ______ arise within you when you practice/meditate _____?'
I learn a lot from you guys because the books more or less tell you, if you do this, this will happen. And it doesn't really tell you HOW or WHY it would come to be within you and/or how it will positively affect others.
But like I asked, how long did it take for you to start understanding a lot of the more "deeper" aspects/teachings of Buddhism? And did you have questions like what I'm facing and/or not understand these things?
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Comments
However, the people who practice various forms of Buddhism ?
Now there's a group of people that is sometimes really really difficult to understand.
Your questions are completely normal.
Buddhist Knowledge is a river flowing by that we dip our fingers into. It is constantly moving. What our fingers felt yesterday will probably be different with tomorrow's touch.
I think the depth of ones current Buddhist experience or understanding is connected not to how firmly one grasps at the flow but how willing you are to simply surrender to it's currents.
For myself that flow is most easily felt through my willingness to allow it to meditatively be itself, un molested by my conditioned inclinations to affect it's flow.
For others it can be through scriptural study or faith devotional forms.
When I first began attending a Zen center whose main activity was zazen or seated meditation, I was full of questions. Occasionally, after an evening silent sitting, there would be an informal tea at which people would chat and munch cookies. And it was during such times that I would listen attentively and occasionally ask questions ... what do you do, how does it work, that sort of thing. There was a lot of new information to absorb and I did my best.
But at one such informal tea, I was feeling a bit cranky about all these spiffy people sitting around in their spiffy robes and dropping Chinese and Japanese names and nomenclature. And my mind (though luckily not my mouth) exploded, "Why don't you assholes just tell me what I want to know so I can get the fuck out of here?!" I wanted THE ANSWER and I wanted it NOW! No more fakey-humble and oh-so-sincere bullshit ... just gimme THE ANSWER, I can go home, an you guys can play your little spiritually-adroit games!
Looking back, I'm quite sympathetic to the person I was then. How else was I understand something called "Buddhism" without some sort of intellectual understanding -- the how/why of it all both in general and in particular. Rational thinking was what I knew how to do ... but it was all I knew how to do.
Luckily, my cranky outburst did not dissuade me from practice and a little at a time, some kind of experience, however limping, began to take hold. Books were good, belief was good, analysis was good, but, as with playing the piano, there is simply no substitute for the experience that practice provides. Experience trumps belief. Experience trumps praise. Experience trumps intellectual and emotional understandings.
My feeling these days is, go ahead, gather up all the information you like; understand one aspect after another; learn the lingo and ritual; find as many deep or shallow meanings as you choose ... go ahead: It's all a bit of a help.
But practice ....
Practice and see what happens.
Hard to say really. Depends on so many things.
/Victor
My suggestion is instead of wrapping your mind around it, try to use the teachings to shift your view. Not "what do they say about what is" but "what do they say to do?" (Hint: it involves a butt, a cushion, and a breath)
IMHO,YMMV,etc.
Most of what I actually learned boils down to, "Yeah, it's no big deal. The Masters weren't being all enlightened and mystical when they told us it's our everyday mind. They were telling us the unvarnished truth. We just refuse to believe them."
We get to gates. We get thought them. We can move back and forth.
As people say, you can run, you can sutra study, you can chant, you can Yidam yourself, you can take empowerments from Manjushri and the Buddha herself. One day you are going to have to sit with only 'your self'.
One day the 'non self' will start to 'unfold'. Like a lotus. Like you have read about in a multitude of ways.
This is the real beginning.
You are the Buddha. No more. No less.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Quite ordinary.
Is ignorance a game? When the Buddha looked around at the people around him, he noticed they were all enlightened but not awake to the fact. Ignorance, clinging, skhandas had obscured their pristine and pure nature.
In effect the Buddha decided that the acquisition and development of mind states, which he had excelled at, was effectively, useless. It was a form of witchcraft in modern parlance and spiritual glamour. Look at me, I can sit with my head up my ass. Look at me, starved meself silly, must be sincere. Hey I can quote the vedas/sutras and therefore I know what I am talking about. I had this secret mantra whispered by the secret Buddha of the Himalayas and . . .
. . . games . . .
You will have yours. I have mine.
Then a remarkable thing. We stop trying to impress others, ourself. We stop being impressed by the world, the spiritual path, the glam rock and roll dharma. We decide to get serious. No more games? Not ready? Games galore . . . carry on. Play on.
Some will be ready. Some have been ready. Some are always ready. Now what? Now you practice. Not as a game. Not for reward. Not for Buddha or your future salvation. Not for nothing.
You want to be told this again. Game? You want to hear it another way? Game!
You go to the basics. You have always had them. Nothing has been hidden from you. You play, the master game.
Your choice. Are you ready yet?
Game on! :vimp:
Purifying the mind of all Non virtue & Cultivating virtue such as Morality, Compassion, Wisdom. Destroying the true cause of Suffering and getting what we've always wanted real unchanging happiness.
To gain an intellectual 'understanding' unsupported by practice is possible, I would say, via the study of metaphysics, but in the end such a superficial understanding would be a pretty worthless thing, other than that it may bring some confidence in the teachings.
My answer would be that the initial question is unanswerable without some further definition of 'understanding'.
Each time it could have been easy to think I had it all wrapped up but I tend to scrutinize and a thread comes lose.
A little part of me says not understanding is a big part of understanding but I don't understand.
I'm currently doing the Meditation Challenge. Where you meditate for a full month, 2 times a day for 20 minutes long. And each week has a different type of meditation you do, and each weekend, there's a different Challenge they want to see if you can do. It's damn hard because I've had trouble meditating for 20 minutes in the past but so far I've been doing fine.
Yup. Just keep on truckin'
Like I'll read, absorb, explore, and make an experiential reality of the teachings.
Then I'll read, absorb, explore and make an experiential reality of teachings that contradict the previous learning.
Buddhism is seemingly complex and seemingly simple.
And then you have the whole issue of everyone saying this or that. That knowledge is bad but experience is good. Or that experience is bad and knowledge is good.
But all that aside.
The deeper aspects of the teachings only made sense once I became kinder, relatable, and human. It is that simple.
@taiyaki awesome post
Walt Whitman
Just modestly deny any understanding of Buddhism and sit back and watch your wee crop sprout like mushrooms in a damp forest...
Buddhism didn't make sense until I studied dependent origination and emptiness exclusively. They are pointing to the same thing.
What I found ignorance to be is a persistent: I got this, I know this, I get this. Ignorance isn't something we don't have but what we believe we have.
And in line with that emptiness points to a lack of something, not a nothingness.
The subtly takes quite an intelligence.
Basically when I first was learning this stuff I tripped over my own misunderstandings, my own shit. I felt like I've smarter in the last couple years.
These teachings have humbled me, pissed me off, made me lose my shit countless times, brought so much joy and love I can't even express, and they continually keep giving.
The more I am willing to be kind and compassion the more these wisdom teachings make sense. And the more I cut away at the sea of kleshas the more I viscerally feel that I am actually doing something useful with my life.
As a 25 year old male. That is a lot.
I don't even dare claim to have understood emptiness fully. I've had a couple successes and many failures. And that is the spiritual journey, rather any journey that we devote ourselves to. WE are going to fuck up, bad. We are going to weep. We are going to drop all this and run for the hills.
But you can't escape your own mind. Ha so it all begins with pardon my language, some balls to just sit and look at that mind.
And sorry but it was funny.