Wrong Practice
lobster
Crusty Veteran
As an un-Buddhist/X-Buddhist/unbeliever etc. I may be a Buddhist. There is nothing wrong with that. After all finding out where we are wrong is a practice in empathy. You mean we missed world empathy day yesterday? Surely some mistake ...
Where have you gone wrong and found the stream/path again?
For me it is in undervaluing the voices of the unreasonable. Come to think of it I may be one of them ...
Come, come, whoever you are!
If you are an unbeliever, an idolater or a fire worshipper: it matters not.
Our dargah is not a place of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a hundred times!
Come, come again!
Bodhi Rumi
http://sufi-tavern.com/sufi-stories/self-mastery/
or then again ...
http://www.viewonbuddhism.org/resources/texts.html#3
Maybe we are just naturally all over the path? Back and forth as in the zennith mahamudra and consumerist dzogchen @how mentions in the next post ... ?
Comments
From a Dzogchen teaching
When engaging in a meditation practice, we should feel it to be as natural as eating lobster, breathing and defecating. It should not become a specialized or formal event, bloated with seriousness and solemnity. We should realize that meditation transcends effort, practice, aims, goals, and the duality of liberation and non-liberation. Meditation is always ideal; there is no need to correct anything. Since everything that arises is simply the play of the mind as such, there is no unsatisfactory meditation and no need to judge thoughts as good or bad.
In leu of a sign post, I leave tracks behind me like a slalom racer. Somewhere in the middle is a very criss-crossed path.....I think!
Hmm so that's where I've been going wrong....
Oh @lobster where are you @lobster? I've just run a nice warm bath for you to relax in...
The practice of Buddhism is the practice of empathy, compassion and gratitude...
Peace to all
When I start to get worried about Views, I know I’ve gone wrong. For example, is violent protest right or wrong? It doesn’t really matter—it’s happening regardless. For me, getting back on the Path is realising it’s more important to understand than to hold a View.
Thanks for the post @lobster 💛
If you say you are a Buddhist, then you are a Buddhist. There is no membership pin or certificate, no requirement for so many years of service. It is easy. Though you may be a bad Buddhist and resigned to accumulating much bad karma...
Much of the unreasonable comes out as poetry, as Bodhi Rumi aptly demonstrates. Often your posts also have something of the poetic in them. The idea of Metta, of sending good wishes to everyone, is also not reasonable.
The unreasonable is a wide field. There is much to be experienced alongside those who profess crazy wisdom, and it can be both positive and negative.
It is only when you start following Osho that you need to worry 😆
That is interesting because I find understanding encompasses the criss-crossing that @how mentions. In other words we may hold a view and find its opposite has value, we may even move to a temporary polarity. Understanding in this sense is not possible as a singularity, also it is not a dukkha doubt or dogmatic faith or principle.
It is fluid to the point of dissolving ...
Example: concentration type exercises are a focus but meditation focusses without tightening (ideally). Another example used in conflict resolution. Switch roles in order to gain insight into another position ...
These knots of 'right practice' are broken by the crazy wisdom @Kerome mentions. Which is never abusive but may confront our certainties.
This is maybe why I find Taoism so helpful. Offering a yin-yang change at the moment we thought the water was just right ... 🦞
Hmm, an interesting view on crazy wisdom, if it is abusive it may be crazy but it is no longer wisdom. It is not an excuse for everything, take note various ex-teachers.
But I agree the Tao is helpful. My uncle (who is still slowly dying but is on holiday at the moment) sent me a short piece of prose the other day, an answer to a question I had posed him about our life’s joy... he said:
“Don’t become attached to detaching and don’t hold on to letting go. Stream with the water and blow with the wind. Let go of thinking, without letting go because the path is what it is, Panta Rhei (Heraclitus) that which streams!”
Which I thought had a rather Taoist feel. It’s the pattern of nature that underlies all things, the harmony of existence which we all follow if we are wise. Suffering is an artifact of the mind, if you manage to reach the no-mind, actionless action, then you can count yourself among the wise.
Its funny, because when I started talking to him I thought it might be good for him to have someone to talk to about spiritual things, but I had no idea he was so into the Tao.
In Sufi lore/dharma we never leave the spiritual path. For life itself is the vehicle of forgetting (ignorance) and remembering (attention/mindfulness).
I like this word understand - to stand under hopefully wisdom and ambrosia, blessing and refuge if you will.
I really like this, I think it is so. As soon as you enter the spiritual life, you never leave it again, you carry it with you. And a nice illustration of the connection between sufism and buddhism.
It puts me in mind of Da Free John, who talked quite a bit about ‘the man of understanding’ as the goal of his spiritual journey.
I hope to enter or leave the spiritual path any moment now ...
In other words purposefully going nowhere until arrival/departure ...
In a sense we can only succeed in our search for Nibanna by acceptable failings. In other words not being spiritual as a dichotomy but as an encompassing.
For example in my Covid shielding garden, after rain or watering the Future Buddhas, who are the Present Buddha Nature come in order, spiders on silk, preparing for hunting, flies, then bees. Then sun and birds. So I am in the Pureland.
Not sure if this is totally a Dharmic wrong turn, or really a wrong turn at all but more of an new understanding.
I tend to approach disagreements and opinions contrary to mine as valuable opportunities to increase my own understanding. And perhaps naively I think I was assuming that others generally try to do the same. On Facebook, perhaps not the best place to look for positive examples, I entered the comment thread on a story where one side of a political disagreement was making efforts in the direction of the other. None of the comments acknowledged that fact though, they all continued to criticize other aspects of the opposing "team".
Anyway, I guess I sort of realized that many people aren't really interested in truth but are in it to win points for their side. Why bother searching for greater understanding when you're already always right?
Its kind of depressing and I'm not sure how to process it. I'm thinking the people most likely to post or speak out are probably the one's with the hardest opinions and that there are those on the margins listening in who may still be open to other views or compromise.
ETA: I'm ruminating over the idea that it may be too late to try to bring about some sort of unity or understanding and that things may have to get worse, hopefully not a lot worse, before they get better. I think I still believe in finding a third way though so maybe I can put efforts in with others to build a path or a frame for people to find when they too have had enough and decide to lay down their arms.
I'm trying to be hopeful and optimistic, I'm just having this feeling I can't shake that the US is headed towards another civil war, maybe only a cold one, and that a break up of the country may be at its end.
@person I used to be like that only before the internet. It was like a contest to me 'winning' an argument/discussion and I learned it arguing points with my brother. I remember realizing that fact and over time eventually changing my tendency to do that.
If everything changes, and we actually understand this, then an idea represents this truth only as long as we are prepared to re-visit its validity within each new moment.
Here, an opinion is little more than an idea held in higher esteem than impermanence's truth.
Definitely, I guess for me though I believe in rational debate and an open but skeptical attitude. So if my opinion is to yield to impermanence it needs to win my own personal, intellectual king of the hill.
Thanks, that's an important point that we do need to yield to good arguments and opinions rather than saying whatever we need to do to win. I think what I was reacting to was something more. Rather than just about winning any particular differing battle of opinions, it was more about the winning the whole ideological war. Where one side couldn't acknowledge, let alone appreciate, any movement from the other side because that might strengthen their opponent or weaken their own position.
I suspect that debates on even moderately strongly held opinions are often a waste of time, and mostly just lead to rancorous exchanges. I often just make my opinion known and then withdraw from the discussion, considering it not worth my time or effort to try and change a mind. Most people just are not very rational.
Win an argument? Pah!
Change a mind field ... much healthier ... but how?
Present extremes.
Fortuitously The Truth does not side.
The calmest being sits in the line of fire. It is always dead still.
Can there truly be such a thing as wrong practice ?
Things are meant to happen as they happen and can't happen any other way than the way they happen at that present moment in time...
No right or wrong practice...just practice...with fluctuating levels of skillfulness, due to one's ongoing karmic patterns
In the ultimate scheme of things... for it to be wrong it would have never happened/unfolded...Hmm a paradox of sorts....
However in the conventional world of duelistic thinking , labels of right & wrong are used to describe the outcomes or possible outcomes of actions both physical & mental ...based upon likes dislikes...good evil.......which in turn are based upon the skill levels of the action performer ....
Perhaps at times one may not have developed the special skills needed to produce a beneficial outcome...a karmic spanner in the works so to speak....
When it comes to practice and the twists & turns of the Path.... I'm reminded of Thay's simple sentence of four words..
"No Mud...No Lotus"
So it would seem we are all on the wrong right track, it's just that some leaves are not as easy to turn over as others...
Sometimes making our opinion known is the hard part. I find some people purposely misunderstand an argument just to put the topic off course with many calls to clarification in an effort to trip up their "opponent".
I have to say the States aren't looking too good from Canada. Please stay safe and maybe take heart in the idea of the world coming together even as the States may be falling apart. Hold on until November and then hold on even tighter.
Or as Ajahn Brahm puts it, its all manure for the mango trees.
Maybe I'll be joining you after it all goes down. 😄
We should not make fun of Canadians, even if some of them are a little too Frenchist or anti-Jesusists
Tee Hee then again ...
.. ziz-zag, yin-yang is just one way to be wrong ...
We can with sufficient practice be right wrongish on a variety of levels simultaneously.
So for example sutra/scripture may hold a variety of meanings all at once. Traditionally in Sufism seven ...
https://fgulen.com/en/fethullah-gulens-works/key-concepts-in-the-practice-of-sufism-3/gods-friend-saint-and-gods-friends-saints
and now back to the righteous dharma ...
Shall we add that to the Precepts?
But don't we practice because everything is wrong?
In a sense yes.....
But Right & Wrong are relative...and from what "I" gather we practice because we find certain things unsatisfactory and things are unsatisfactory because we judge things on a Right & Wrong bases and we more often than not, do this to the extremes...
"NO Mud...No Lotus" =No Wrong...No Right...No Balance...
It is not completely wrong ... but has a component of this quality. As @Shoshin mentions it is us wrong uns/disenlightened/unbalanced/ignorants who do not encompass the possibilities beyond polarities and paradoxies ...
We are the hole and the Whole. Not in it?
@lobster
Beautifully put!
Today I thought about this thread while heading to the chiro. And considered how getting too attached to non attachment is probably one of the wrong outcomes while practicing. It could be considered wrong practice, but at least there is an engagement. Inevitably the path will open up. Or, even if rejected..it will come up.
**TANGENT -
**
Samsara has to have an end...at least theoretically, no?. And then, it starts once again. It is like when we are meditating, but then we are flooded with discursive thought, emotions, etc. The cycle breaks off Nibbana. But then Nibbana is ultimate. So how does it generate itself? I know it is said that the vastness of Nibbana cannot be understood and it is futile, but if anyone wants to share their view on this...I'm interested!
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Some of you have mentioned the importance of simplicity, naturalness during one's practice. As long as this is followed, and there is some mindful appreciation towards the precepts or teachings based on them, the dhamma, it is good enough already. Therefore, I think I would be careful when labelling something as wrong practice, except for myself.
PD:
I like this
The usual intent behind defining anything, has as it's basis, a self oriented program running to maintain the dream of our own specialness.
This is simply us seeking to establish a separation between self and others, make the chaotic nature of existence into something more controllable, convince ourselves that we will continue to exist beyond deaths door, and a host of other similar dream production support structures.
Here, reality has a flawed foundation with duality as its substrate, where the answers about Samadhi/Nirvana/practice/ enlightenment become skewed even before the questions can be asked.
Each nano sliver of time is another seeker in another existence with another choice to make in how to meet it.
There is ignorance and there is the absence of ignorance.
There is a self in a dream and there is an awakening from that dream.
Just who is this self with a right or wrong practice?
Because everything is obscured.
No, the world is right, it is an expression of what is. The only thing that is wrong is our perception of everything, the way our minds build up a representation of the world. The things that are wrong are in your mind and in the minds of other people.
After spending most of my Buddhist life in the Tibetan tradition I moved away from it because I could no longer reconcile my own skepticism and need for evidence to hold a belief and the way supernatural explanations were baked into the teachings.
Looking into more western oriented Buddhism I found them to be too politicized for my taste.
I was thinking about the Tibetan lojong teachings and spent some time looking at them again and found myself moved towards them. The feeling is something like finding a jug of water while out wandering in the desert looking for a home. I was going to buy a book, but in shopping I realized I already have one, by Chogyam Trungpa that I had yet to open.
Anyway, hoping my wrong practices will lead to a new perspective on a familiar view.
I have a great deal of sympathy for that viewpoint, it is more or less where I also arrived at with respect to Tibetan Buddhism. After that I moved on to the Thai Forest tradition, which I still find very beautiful, but it’s too dry for me, too renunciate. I am currently unhomed.
When I look at western Buddhism, my hope is that secular Buddhism will find a partner in psychology, and there will arrive from that union some happy offspring. But there are other movements which I like and I feel at home in, such as the Zen Peacemakers and Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition.
I’m still reading all the free books that I can find to download. Currently still in Papaji’s satsang book. I know, I’m a heretic.
There are plenty of small western movements that still deserve a look. Recently I discovered a Triratna center not too far away, I might go and have a look sometime.
I wish there were more westerners that taught Tibetan Buddhism. In large part I think that is due to their lineage system and that it is hard for a westerner to receive permission to teach.
There is only one western monk in the Tibetan tradition that has a podcast that I am aware of Karma Yeshe Rabgye, Buddhism Guide. Though they aren't that long or that frequent. It would make me happy if people like Thubten Chodron or Judy Lief had more audio teachings publicly available.
I like people that have ties to the tradition, I think those who don't often stray to far from the teachings. But I also don't like such a strict adherence to traditional ways it has been taught, which I don't feel is very suited to a western mindset.
@person
Perhaps,
with the endless variants of personal needs that Buddhist leaning folks might have, thinking that your personal mix of them should be able to be shoe horned into just one of a limited number of schools of the Buddha Dharma, ...might be the real problem.
Some of the Buddha's last teachings were.....
"It may be that after I am gone that some of you will think, ‘now we have no teacher.’ But that is not how you should see it. Let the Dharma and the discipline that I have taught you be your teacher. All individual things pass away. Strive on, untiringly."
One of the things that this has meant for me is to not confuse the limitations of the human condition, like our search for completion through any tribal membership, with the buddha's path towards suffering's cessation.
If you can allow the sincerity of your practice within this one fleeting moment to be foremost as your teacher, then you've already stepped upon a path that leaves behind the dualistic notions of right or wrong practices, at least within that same moment.
This requires no more effort than what you can devote to the next one nano second before you. Repeat endlessly to make it dance along the path towards suffering's cessation.
Learning the Canadian Anthem vs the Hallelujah Chorus of pseudo Christians (JesusLand) sounds better every day. Canada has it's problems, but they doesn't has the followers of Psycho Christ - at least not in great numbers.
The PsyCr folk make the Taliban look downright progressive. Quite a feat.
Now - reality - they are still a minority and most Americans are reasonably sane.
{We just happen to be in "Interesting Times".}
Peace to all
When it comes to Dharma practice...I like to think I learn from my mistakes, (well eventually I do-at times it may take a little longer for the penny to drop)
...and if I didn't make mistakes, I wouldn't learn from then.... can't have one without the other
So if so-called wrong practice is a mistake (which it is) and I learn from this mistake (which I eventually will/should), then it can be seen as just part of Dharma practice warts & all....hence no wrong practice...just Dharma practice, which involves experiential understanding of & eventually the overcoming of Dukkha .....
Well something along those lines...
Tee hee!
Seems about right not rite.
Dear Friends of The Perfection (wait ... check out NT1 ... oops no such thang)
Dear Friends of The Imaginary Ideal (yep it is Baby Jesus, Harry Krishna Ami Tarbucks Buddha, the Buddha as Coffee)
Dear Friends of The Empty Teachings aka Neti-Neti ... yep we can go around in cycles for ever and a day ... 😌
https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/neti-neti
... or we can be calmed by our Mind/Buddy Body Bodhi/Sole 👤
Sit quietly Dear Friends, walk placidly amidst the haste ...
Be Buddha or be Nothing 🧘🏽♀️
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/max-ehrmann.html
Iz plain plan ... 🧘🏿
https://medium.com/publishous/the-meaning-behind-the-desiderata-poem-8c2e3296d6cb
Bravo Dear Friends.
She who stairs, Wins (SAS mantra)
While you can say that no dharma practice is wrong practice, you can say that some activities are not wholesome or conducive to the path. Things that lead away from peace, that lead to delusion, or to the kilesa’s, to clinging, are not going to help you. Not all activities are dharma.
Wrathful staring is included I think. It just seems to lead to stirring up anger, wanting to win, feelings of enmity. Which is why I do not watch certain TV programmes. Not sure how this combines with wrathful deity practice in the Tibetan tradition, but then the Tibetans are a bit odd.
Ironically or not, I often find myself taking refuge in exactly that.
The interesting thing about being unhomed as far as a tradition goes, is that you are free to wander and sample the buffet...
I was listening to The Psychology Podcast today (highly recommended) and they talked briefly about how people can get really identified with their belief systems and what can happen if that identity intersects with a moralistic mindset. When that happens if someone disagrees with them they don't just disagree or even think they are wrong, they then make the step of thinking that someone is bad and then evil.
That made me think of this thread and was noticing and so very appreciative of the fact that not once on this thread was there any real note of a wrong practice really being wrong or a hint of anyone being the least bit judgmental or unsupportive.
Culture is not dharma.
So what @person says above is important. Black Lives Matter ... we may be whitewash, dishwashers or mixed up.
I like my Chan free of China, Korea, Japan or Beatnicks. I like my Vajrayana clear of ethnic Tibetans, Sanskrit or Nepalese vestments ...
However I am no Perfect Fantasy Buddha from a former farmers life-field ...
OM MANI PEME HUM as I like to say
Be Kind or Be Square Daddy O
Some practices though are.... I don't know how to define them.
I was catching up with a former co-worker and he has picked up meditation (Integral Zen). However, he has done a slight alteration. He was very concerned with the breathing aspect, and explained to me how much "air" and "excessive breathing" is done in general by us humans - and how unnecessary it is. Therefore, he sits and spends much of his time extremely tense trying to breath as little as possible. By tense, I mean you can almost feel him shiver.
I had mentioned before on this thread how wrong practice doesn't really exist, or at least we should be careful when labelling someone's practice as wrong practice. But this is an easy one to point out: attaching too much to discursive thoughts and restrictive practices (restraining your own breathe...can it be anymore restraining?).
As How once pointed to me. A good instructor can help and remove certain bad habits quickly before they turn to worse. Like a yoga teacher makes sure you stretch properly so you don't injure yourself while trying to do a downward dog.
Ajahn Brahm talks about how when in deep meditation the breath naturally slows, sometimes to an almost imperceptible level. Its the mental state that causes the reduced breath though, reducing ones breathing I don't think is said to have an effect on one's mind. At least that is not the way Buddhism goes about it, perhaps there is some yogic technique that I'm not aware of.
I have a cousin who recently got into meditation. He likes something known as the Wim Hof method that the person of the same name created. I guess its some sort of breathing technique. He likes to ask me questions about meditation and there is plenty of crossover but a lot of the time I simply have to say that there are many different styles of meditation.
Thus have I heard:
The Chinese believe that everyone is gifted with a predetermined number of breaths for their lifetime.
So, while (according to them) we have only a certain number of breaths allocated to us, we can prolong our lives by learning to breathe more slowly...
However, I would consider that affecting our breathing to the possible detriment of our health, is definitely playing the Lute with the strings too tight....
My father regularly does the Wim Hof method breathing meditation too. He says its short, intense and produces an effect not unlike a vipassāna sit. He has been interested in Wim Hof for a while, and we both went together to his world record attempt in the most people doing simultaneous ice bathing.