Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
I will be here all week....
one thing that I find interesting, on this forum and on other buddhist forums I have come across is the often humorous take used by a lot of the poster's reply, not only in regards to themselves but to buddhism itself. Not in a way that is making fun of buddhism, but that shows buddhism has a certain levity that say a guilt based religious system like catholicism doesn't seem to carry.
does this make sense to anyone? and if so, why do you suppose that is?
does this make sense to anyone? and if so, why do you suppose that is?
0
Comments
Life's too short to spend it miserable....
Levity is the sustenance of the spirit.....
Laugh a lot, cry a little, and hug.
Always.
Thankfully, they're in short supply here but there are plenty on other Buddhist sites if you take a look around.
Buddhism's not immune to it.
I'm short, see.....?
Well good things come in small packages they do say.;)
Palzang
... oh, and the quote thanking god for maintaining atheist status. Good sarcasm is always in short supply.
I've never seen a picture of Jesus laughing. Indeed, I've been told that the shortest sentence in the Bible is, "Jesus wept." (It's in the Lazarus narrative —not Lazarus in the parable, who was the leper outside the callous rich man's house, but Lazarus the "Beloved Disciple," according to Raymond Brown.)
Of course, we've all seen the "chubby" smiling or laughing buddhas! BTW, is it irreverent to laugh while rubbing their bellies?
Western ethics sees things too narrowly, really —as either good or bad, essentially. It is precisely that simplistic, dualistic judgment of things that drives wedges between people and makes them take a stand or take sides. The consequences of such stern judgments may not always be the stuff of which jokes are made, either, it turns out.
The East, on the other hand, essentially see things as just "there." Things just are "the way they are," and the way we think about them doth not necessarily correspond with their reality.
The East sees attachment to things as problematic and senses that our Likes and Dislikes are really what govern the bulk of our behavior. Realizing this, the Eastern practitioner accepts his or her likes and dislikes, but strives not to Identify with these phenomena.
Therefore, the Eastern adherent is freer not to take it all so derned seriously.
Time's up.
What d'ya think, Dude?
I think that Jesus was a lot like FDR. They never snapped a picture of FDR in his wheelchair, or being helped out of a chair, or walking on the floor with his hands because it was convenient. Somewhere along the line Jesus, in a moment of mortality, cracked the slightest of smile and the world would have been better knowing it.
Perhaps that is what christianity lacks, one person bucking the trend and painting Jesus, with a beer gut and a smile.
My present thought fo you, Dude, is why can't we choose to turn any mental "afflictions" we may have around and make them work for us, rather than against us. In other words, why not consider the odd quirks people sometimes have as avenues to new discoveries rather than as dead ends? Though true that some roads in life are one-way-only, many of these are still uncharted or begging for more traffic.
I know I have my oddities, but I look around and get involved with people and I find meaning and joy in what I do. My niche is nursing and my quirks help me much more than they hold me back.
Don't listen to anyone more than you listen to yourself --just make sure you're being truthful. If you're at a complete loss, ask someone you trust or listen to someone who gives you a critique on yourself, so long as the person does it in a gentle way. If it's not gentle, it probably won't be either thoughtful or true.
__________________
You were kidding about the el duderino thing, I hope! I tried it but I was laughing so hard I kept misspelling it. Methinks that I have too many hangups.
So I'm guessing you'll never be accused of being in short supply!!!
If you've never seen it, the play "Jesus Christ:Superstar" did exactly that. It "humanized" Jesus, brought him down out of the stained-glass windows, and made him accessible to the masses. A human man, with human frailties, whom I'm sure laughed and cried just like us. In the supreme effort launched by the early church to imbue divinity to Jesus, he lost much of his "humanity" I feel. An action I'm sure that did not make Jesus laugh!
Dang! Busted again! But the sunglasses were because it was very bright in India (where the picture was taken).
Palzang
lol
Well you know I never thought about it but you're right there is a lot of humour here and thank goodness!
On another site I was a member of (and that I left owing to a very high windbag ratio - lol) there was a quote where a lama had been asked what buddhism was.
Instead of some intense explanation he simply replied "buddhism is 'laughing all the time'" and I think that's just perfect. And true
~nomad
I see you're still here, Dude, having recently posted in the Attic. Hope you're enjoying your time here.
Another part of this over-seriousness/levity split, I think, is a matter of how secure people feel in their religious/spiritual philosophy or how insecure. Now the truths of the uniqueness of particular manifestations of godliness are not self-evident, as demonstrably the truths of Buddhism and other more cerebral faiths are. If your religious or spiritual ideology is built upon an unassailable foundation, you will probably be secure enough to withstand someone poking gentle fun at some of your incongruities. To be human is to be inconsistent and at least a bit fickle sometimes. To have to protect the assertions of what sometimes has preposterous implications maketh one have to speak with forkèd tongue.
I like the wonderful enlightened statement by some wonderful Eastern sage who said that "God [or ultimate Truth] is not so stingy as to have only one revelation of himself [itself]." I can't argue with what she said. It's much like what Mirabai said about having to adhere to narrow definitions of propriety:
and now you want me to climb on that jackass? Try
to be serious.
An interview genkaku did with his teacher --
Q. Are the approaches to Zen different in Japan and America?
A. NOOOOOO! Everyone has happy time. Everyone is laughing!
Zen Abbott Interview