Finding the right path for the individual
yagr
Veteran
I was introduced to Buddhism over thirty years ago and it has been my go to ever since. While I've never had any formalized study or belonged to a sangha I've practiced meditation for many years now and have read and studied a great deal. I am considering formalizing my continuing education in Buddhism and not sure where to begin. I'm quite certain, or at least comfortable with the idea that it makes less difference where I begin than it does to simply begin. That said, I would like to avoid bouncing from discipline to discipline while trying to find a good fit.
Some teachers resonate with me much more than others, which is to be expected. What I did not expect is that those who did resonate are from many different disciplines or sects. For instance, I love reading Ajahn Brahm (Theravada) as well as Lama's Yeshe and Rinpoche or Thich Nhat Hanh (Zen).
It occurred to me as I was thinking about this, that certain personality types might be drawn to specific schools of thought - not because one is better, but simply because it works within an existing framework. Even the Buddha taught the same lesson in different ways to best get through to the person he was teaching. And so, with that in mind, has anyone found that certain disciplines seem to attract a lot more folks who are say, artistic while others seem to be favored by those who are more cerebral...or any other such divisions?
Comments
That might have more to do with the community than anything, and if you live in a large, urban area, you probably see more of that than in smaller areas (because there are more groups it's easier to separate in that manner).
I would treat it like you do anything else in life. You don't just jump in and take the first apartment/house you find, you check out the neighbors, the neighborhood, the schools, ease of getting there, hours, and so on. It won't do you much good to pick something online and then find they do not meet in hours that work for you. So I think, if the opportunity is there, that exploring and visiting would be a good thing to do.
It is possible I might have chosen a different path for myself if I had to go through all the exploring of options, too. For me, it worked out that not only did I not have much for options but I had an immediate connection with my teacher the first time I met him, and the group that he leads. So there was never a question for me, I felt (and still feel) truly blessed to have found a teacher at all. I live in a town of 3500 people, 99% Christian, 98% white, basically. I helped to put together the local Sangha we started. My teacher guides our group, and a local man leads the group. My teacher lives 250 miles from me in Minneapolis, which has one of the larger populations of Tibetans in the US. There are some small Zen groups, and I think 1 Shambhala and 1 Theravadan center. But I am unable to travel that distance even somewhat regularly, so I am thankful our teacher comes to see us
Anyhow, long story short, I think it is work checking out, and then I think you will know it when you find it-the right group and teacher for you.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my experience is that you can find all sorts of mind-sets within all sorts of schools. You can find moon-croon-June types within what might be considered the fiery realms of Japanese Zen Buddhism. You can find go-for-the-throat-ers in the less-apparently-demanding worlds like Thich Nhat Hahn's. Trungpa Rinpoche's books can sing inviting songs in the mind and turn on a dime, inviting only the most courageous to advance.
I guess I think it boils down to compassion and clarity ... the not-one-not-two of spiritual life. Enter one door and you are forced, assuming you are serious, to take up the other. Enter the other and you are forced, assuming you are serious, to take up the one.
One without the other is not possible, but that doesn't mean individuals don't set out feeling more at ease with one or the other. So ... individuals make their choices and my sense is that those choices can be found in pretty much any school. The school itself doesn't care one way or the other, but the individual does.
No answers from here. Sorry.
I have a tendency to dilletantism and have much the same concerns.
Except I've sort of made some peace with the idea of my own life/being as the epicenter of a wheel with spokes reaching out to this teacher, that meditation training, that western philosopher, this thing I read in a fiction book that blew my mind wide open. It's like art, you don't know exactly what 'form' your piece will take in it's final form, or in this case, if it even has a final form . . . I acknowledge the forms as they come and go without worrying too much. One thing I do keep in mind is am I 'moving on' or looking around for something at the point where the most recent study is challenging me past my comfort zone? It's a matter of self honesty, it's something I've done in the past. Is it a comfort zone issue, or do I see something missing I need to find somewhere else? I'm not really that anal about it (I am not anal by nature) but I do keep some of that in mind as I explore.
I agree very much with @genkaku.
Most schools of Buddhism in the West offer some form of meditation. Depends how deep you want to go. You can go to several camps to start with. Narrowing happens sometimes or at times . . .
It is all up to you. Always.
Which sounds like tolerance, but actually is the complete opposite, like any response that tells you that it can explain you to yourself by reductionism.
True respect and tolerance is happy to applaud and support difference and does not seek to level everything down to where it feels comfortable.
It does not assume a commonality within traditions that it claims to see more clearly than the adherents of those traditions.
Thats Anthony Blanche syndrome...in Bridehead Revisited the artist Charles Ryder is visited by his old friend Anthony at an exhibition of Charle's paintings..
'Come with me Charles' says Anthony, condescendingly, and ' I will explain your paintings to you '..
I am not sure that thinking that there is a right path for you out there, is anymore real than thinking there is a right person out there for you. It is not that there isn't a right path or a right person out there for you but finding them often just requires you letting go of enough personal ego to allow them in.
It is like saying "That when the student is ready, the teacher appears".
It turns out that the teachings and the teachers can be met anywhere our hearts allow.
@Citta -- OK, let's suppose I am a mealy-mouthed reductionist. I hope you will follow up with the crystalline distinctions and differences you discern in the various schools of Buddhism and how -- in practice -- they vary so clearly. Is there a blue enlightenment in one school and a green enlightenment in another? Is there a yellow compassion in one school and a red compassion in another? What precise differences do you see that require applause and support and respect and tolerance? Are you referring to robes and rituals and languages and gadgets on the altar?
Inquiring minds ... etc.
I have no crystalline insights.
Save knowing that I cannot reduce the wide variety of Buddhist tradition arising as they do from differing needs and temperaments and cultures to a few few cute sound bites which enables me to convince myself that I have touched their inner core.
Sound bites like ' Be aware and take responsibility' as just one example.
Let a thousand flowers bloom.
I don't feel a need to reduce them to fit my garden.
@citta -- You're right. Does that help?
No it doesn't.
No one is right. I am not right. You are not right.
Let a thousand flowers bloom.
Even flowers that do not conform to my template of what flowerdom looks like.
Quirky flowers, devotional flowers, faith fuelled flowers, fundamentalist flowers,
unqestioning flowers, conformist flowers, sad flowers, 'other power' flowers.
Let them all flourish,
A reminder that one definition of toleration is "to accept with disdain".
Even THAT is better than taking on a mission to reduce everyones' views to a level with which we are personally comfortable.
True toleration it seems to me is saying 'I don't accept what you accept. but I will support your right to believe it and to express that belief without being subjected to heckling and orange peel from the stalls '.
@Citta -- Am I mistaken or does that sound remarkably like the "comfort zone" so liberally imputed to others?
You are mistaken.
Not that I personally used the hackneyed formula ' comfort zone ' anyway. So I am not sure why the quotation marks are needed.
@citta -- You are right, you didn't use the term "comfort zone." But perhaps you can see why I might mistakenly have thought you had. I will try to be more precise and less hackneyed.
I try to pay attention and take responsibility, but it doesn't always work.
OK, lets put aside that fact that you interpreted rather than quoted my words, I think any reading of my actual words was showing that I was welcoming the blooming of ways of thought far removed from my own ...I have for example no brief for fundamentalism, or unquestioning responses, but they are all part of the 'Buddhist ' garden.
And I have no interest in policing that garden. And I dont see why anyone would think that they need to.
These things find their own level...
I have come to regret that I asked the question. Any chance of letting this go and remembering who we really are? I really appreciate both of your contributions throughout this forum.
My apologies @yagr.
As a sidelight, if we remembered who we really were, would we be participating on a Buddhist bulletin board in the first place? I really don't know.
I think @yagr, that you have discovered something fundamental regarding the right path for the individual - that no one can point out your path, but they can illuminate their own and also highlight where their paths might cross or deviate from anothers.
I like to think of all our paths (not just Buddhists) like how a rescue chain is. We are each on our own path, but all walking side by side towards the same or similar goal. Some of us might have minimal grass and mud to walk through and some of us might have entire trees to cut down in our path or lakes to swim. But we all keep going along on our path and it's best not to stray onto someone else's.
I appreciate why you say that but it is also worth considering those that inspire, carry, offer shoes they no longer need, pave the road, cut the vines, remove the obstacles, kill Buddhas going in the opposite direction etc.
Though the road is 'travelled alone', we take trust/refuge in the company.
. . . and now back to the strays . . .
Follow your heart
@lobster absolutely. I didn't mean to insinuate that our paths should never cross. Just that the inner work we have to do alone with the support of others. But I think how they choose to support us is up to them to determine and not up to us. My analogy didn't work as well as I thought, LOL! Thanks for pointing that out :clap: