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Which School/Tradition and Why?
Greetings and Blessings.
I would love to ask each of you which school of Buddhism and tradition do you follow. Can you share a bit about what lead you to it. Thanks.
Wayne
I would love to ask each of you which school of Buddhism and tradition do you follow. Can you share a bit about what lead you to it. Thanks.
Wayne
0
Comments
Clear-cut, no-nonsense, straightforward, plain and simple.
No frills, no whistles and bells, no complex rituals, no added colours, flavourings additives preservatives or sweeteners.
Bon appetit.
Then he gave a blackboard to each of them. He told them, "On this, you have to write down the entire Dharma that you have understood in your life in just one sentence. The one who writes best sentence I will select to be the next high priest." The younger one said to the older one, "you write down something and you can be the next high priest. I will write nothing because I don't want the job. The older one wrote down, "Mind is a mirror." Everyone came in the morning to see the blackboard. They saw two sentences on the blackboard. One was "Mind is a mirror." And the second one was "Defilement is the dust on the mirror."
Consider these two sentences.
After reflecting on the two sentences, the high priest said "the one who wrote the second one will be the high priest." The older one then said to the younger one "you lied! you said you wouldn't write anything on the board, but you did!" The younger one said, "no, I didn't. I didn't write anything!" Everyone started asking, "Then, who wrote it?" Finally they discovered that the one who had written the second sentence was a person working in the temple kitchen. The teacher went to this man, and asked him to leave the temple and to go somewhere else because by rights he should be the high priest here, but people would never accept him. So he left the temple and started one of his own, which became the first Zen temple in Japan.
Think about those two sentences: "Mind is a mirror." And "Defilement is the dust on the mirror."
If you have ink on your face, how can you know?
1. One way is to find a person who can see it. If you ask a blind person they cannot help you. Many others cannot see my defilements because they are blind. 2. The other way, is to see it through our own mirror. But here we are faced with the same problem if there is dust on our mirror. What to do? Clean the dust off the mirror. If we can do that we can see ourselves as we are.
What do we do usually? We draw pictures on the mirror. We draw pictures of this kind of person with these kinds of qualities and these kinds of degrees and toys, etc. We draw pictures of Arahats or Bodhisattvas, etc.
That is the ego. We don't want to remove the dust, we are making art on top of the dust.
I just told you a story from the Zen tradition.
If a Zen Master or a Tibetan Lama can help me clean the dust off of my mirror, that is good! Let's work together!
That's the heart of Buddhist practice. If it doesn't help clean the dust off the mirror, then it's not essentially Buddhist. Because that's what Buddhism is all about. That is the wonderful project that we are all working on in each of the different traditions.
We need one another. Buddhists from other cultures can sometimes help us understand the Dharma better, because they don't have the same cultural biases that we have. Tibetans can help Sri Lankans. Sri Lankans can help Japanese. Westerners can help Asians, and Asians can help Westerners. The Dharma does not "belong" to any one culture. It is beyond culture.
But we are not beyond culture. We belong to a certain culture. And our culture affects how we understand Dharma. Culture can also be like dust on the mirror. That is why we need one another so much. Together, helping one another compassionately, we can come to a more pure understanding of the Buddha's teachings.
_()_
Wayne
I feel tradition-less: all of the traditions for me have good things and some have bad things.
Not to mention an exhaustive scholastic/philosophical tradition to draw from.
I feel the same way. I'm drawn to Theravada for its simplicity, but I am a shameless fan-girl of Pema Chodron who is almost completely Tibetan.
One can practice vipassana within the Tibetan tradition.
I'm way too skeptical and western and secular and stubborn and cynical to be anything else. But I hope someday I'll grow up to be a real Buddhist, as I read more and ponder and practise.
The Buddha's words are so fresh, marvellous, clear, relevant, insightful & timeless.
EDIT: What is Thai Forest tradition?
This could (mostly) describe me also. I'm definitely a cafeteria Buddhist, but returning to the present moment doesn't have any lineage or boundaries.
As to why i like Shaolin Buddhism... well to be honest it was watching the David Carradine Kung Fu series repeats as a kid that got me into martial arts and subsequently Buddhism..
there is something about the way the Shaolin rever nature and learn lessons from it, their understanding of chi and the material world, mixed with the teachings of Buddha that to me seems very balanced and makes a lot of sense ...
Dogmatism still plagues Zen in many ways, whereas Thien is emphatically nondogmatic. This is not to say that they have done away with ritual, it is still an essential part of the tradition, but that the religiousity of ritual behavior is downplayed in favor of results.
"Thien is an attitude or methodology for arriving at knowledge and action. For Thien the techniques of right eating and drinking, of right breathing and right concentration and meditation, are far more vital than mere beliefs." -- Ven. Thich Nhat-Hanh