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Various schools of Buddhism
FallingAwake
New
As I learn more about Buddhism I find myself wondering what sect or path to take? From what I have learned there are many schools such as Theraveda Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen (school of Mahayana Buddhism) and thats just to name a few. For now I am studying the four noble truths and with so much to learn I thought that would be a good start. Just not sure of what school of Buddhism I'm learning from. Are the Four noble Truths part of of the teachings in each mentioned above ?
Edward
Edward
0
Comments
Distinctions such as Therevada and Mahayana are not as useful as you might think. Individual schools/centers/teachers vary greatly. They all agree on the 'core', but have very individualistic ways of teaching things.
In my opinion your best bet is to visit those places near you and spend some time getting to know people and see what feels right to you. What feels right today may not be right tomorrow. At the same time, once you find a school you fit with, don't be in any hurry to leave unless there is some significant reason to do so. There is something to said about committing oneself to the path, regardless of the flavor versus spending time tasting all the flavors in a superficial way.
Thanks
Edward
So why are you asking which school to choose from when your options are so limited?
Yes, you are on the right path, but the further you go, the easier it is to slip off the path. A teacher is pretty much a necessity. A teacher is simply one who has traveled the same ground you wish to.
Yes, but intellect alone is not capable of producing liberation from suffering. Liberation from suffering requires an experiential knowing that requires... experience, not just head knowledge.
Yes, but not really. Karma has many explanations, but ultimately it is a mystery. Why was a person born with serious disadvantages? Does karma alone explain it? Why do I get angry when so and so does such and such? Does karma explain it? Ultimately all religions, Buddhism included, debase themselves by crustifying into mind numbing traditions wherein solid answers are given to the unknowable.
Buddhism is decentralized enough to resist this phenomenon in an institutional sense, but you will see it everywhere anyway. Really, nobody knows how karma affects anything, but this doesn't stop theories from forming and individual pathologies clinging to this or that understanding. The Buddha pretty much took the Hindu understanding of karma which was pretty direct cause/effect and diluted it to the point it was incapable of explaining anything.
Even so there are many flavors to the understanding of karma. If you are looking for solid answers the Buddhist path isn't going to be very comforting for you. It tends to lead to more questions than answers unless your personal pathology finds a home in a crustified tradition.
Sorry , I meant what sect to study from. I know my options are limited as far as meditation centers to visit, but on the other hand I think my options are wide as far as reading and learning.:)
How does one gain the experience you talk about, is it gained through meditation?
Learn through life. And meditation. You can learn truth anywhere!
In my personal view which is worth nothing to you since it's all in my own mind and could be flat out delusional it works like this:
There are facts, some true some false. We have to separate between them. This is an error prone process as we are all susceptible to confirmation bias. If a proposition is in agreement with what we already accept as true, we tend to accept it without much examination. If it disagrees with what we already accept as true, we tend to scrutinize it to an extreme and avoid accepting it even after it becomes obvious it is true. Rarely does logic overcome emotion.
Once a proposition makes it past our really messed up filters and we accept it as true on an intellectual level, it has little to no power to actually change the way we think, what our beliefs are or what our actions will be. To really change us the truth of the proposition needs to be felt on an emotional level. This isn't a touchy feelly emotional level, rather it is a more intimate knowing than what intellect alone is capable of. It is experiential knowing. It's a 'feeling it in your bones' kind of knowing.
To be direct about your question of 'does one gain this understanding through meditation?' the answer is yes, sometimes. Meditation quiets the thinking part of our mind and allows the more intuitive part to rise to the forefront. This is the part of our mind that 'knows' without thinking. Sounds really stupid, but from an experiential perspective it does or will make perfect sense.
The type of experience I am talking about can kinda sorta be thought of as a knowing that is both experienced 'in the bones' and confirmed through normal logical, rational thought processes.
Now, lets leave this conversation and move on to some real meat.
You asked "what school to study from". This is an ignorant question. It is ignorant in the sense that you have no frame of reference to even ask the question. This is not an insult. Again. this is not an insult. It simply reflects the fact that you are approaching a subject of study from a position of knowing nothing and asking "how the hell do I make any sense at all of this stuff?"
So, I will give you my answer. The tradition is meaningless.
Every tradition is a mess. They all are caught up in their own dogma and pathology. They are all mind numbing religions with well crustified remains of truth set on an altar. They are all equally useless. None of them tell you the truth, they instead tell you their pathologically inspired stories.
Still, they all have something to offer you. They are all capable of pointing you to the path that you must follow yourself to liberate yourself from your own self imposed suffering and dissatisfaction with your experience of life.
There is no truth to be found in following a tradition. Every tradition has meaningless, powerless symbols and artifacts and ceremonies. It's really just a bunch of old farts deceiving the younger generation because they are comforted by the old ways. The old farts don't do this intentionally in most cases, they do it because they are blissfully unenlightened and unaware of what they are doing.
Forget about this school or that school or this tradition or that tradition. All of them are already dead and lifeless and have no value. They have all crustified the mystery of life into solid answers that are unreal and can't satisfy.
Instead, accept that your quest to bring a cessation to suffering starts with the realization of suffering. It is all pervasive and intolerable. If this is your experience then you really have no choice but to try to do something about it.
To that end you will need teachers. Some of those teachers will be traditional teachers, some will be non traditional teachers, others will be life experiences seen with new eyes. Ultimately your journey is like birth and death. You do it alone and if you manage to find someone who can actually help, consider yourself extremely blessed.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that all traditions are wrong, as i'm nowhere near knowing all traditions, but I will say that the individual journey is what matters, not the sect.
Tradition provides a philosophical ground upon which one may base their learning and practice. And just as the Buddha taught in different ways to different audiences at different time so it is with traditions.
Certainly one may read extensively but one also needs the contact that a Buddhist Centre would provide. By engaging with a centre your meditation will more disciplined which will provide some consistency in your practice. And you can ask questions. As your meditation and practice progresses so will your experience as you apply the teachings. It is not an overnight thing and the essence of the Buddha's teachings are both profound and disturbing to our own sense of reality.
The essence of the teachings is that our sense of reality is faulty as it is based in a dualist understanding of our surroundings/environment. But before one can engage with that depth of teaching some of the basic groundwork needs to be appreciated.
The Four Nobel Truths are the start point and the Eight Fold Path the way forward. But to start appreciating those teachings one needs to begin with what in the Tibetan tradition are called the Preliminary Practices - the fact that we are human, that everything is subject to change, that death and impermanence are unavoidable, that actions brings about results and the fact of rebirth. Depending on your level of skill this may take some time and application.
A tradition will provide a framework within which these teachings are taught. Without that framework, again depending on the individual level of intelligence, one will be struggle unnecessarily.
So, Yes, tradition is important - at least for the first ten years. Learning Buddhism is like learning to fly a plane - slow progressive steps over an extended period under the auspicious of a competent instructor.
Assuming the tradition retains some semblance of the truth and the teacher heading the school isn't a deeply psychotic moron this is true.
Of course the question is how would a noob to Buddhism know if the tradition pointed to the path or not? How would a noob know if the teacher was a deeply psychotic moron or not?
There is no end of Buddhists who spent years in the monastic life only to emerge from it and say plainly it was, for them, an escape from reality rather than an embrace of reality.
There is no end to the psychologically weak who were used as sexual objects by supposedly enlightened teachers who convinced the student that their sexual union was really a deep, spiritual connection.
Well respected teachers <won't bother="" naming="" names="">can be seen as obviously wise and experienced teachers who knew what they spoke of from personal experience, but yet they used drugs, became addicted to alcohol, screwed every student who moved etc.
Of what real use are such losers? None. Clearly their beliefs resulted in no real change in the way they approached, lived and understood their lives that differs from the most debased amongst us. It is an endless insult when I read/hear Buddhists speak favorably of these completely ass hatted losers. They speak of their vast wisdom and learning and teaching authority as if these losers were not alcoholics, drug addicts and sexual predators.
The books written by these losers continue to be best sellers and within the dogmatic, moronic contingent of really stupid and gullible Buddhists these friking idiot losers are still respected as if they had anything practical or useful to say.
Lets now be real: What moron points to a sexual predator addicted to alcohol and drugs as an example to follow? A moron Buddhist, that's who.
Buddhism is not immune to the stupidity and self deception that is all pervasive in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc. Human pathology is human pathology and humans bring their pathology to their faith and religion.</won't>
Find one you are comfortable with and then stick with it, Progress along the path is made by continous and unchanging practise and effort, The 4 noble truths are part of every school of Buddhism some elaborate on them more some on them less, But it so happens that In general every teaching Buddha gave can be included within the 4 noble truths as they are themselves a method of accomplishment.
People always say that i'm clinging whenever I post about a realization I had on here
Yes. But I already did.
Buddhism can be seen as a path that each person works out for themselves or it can be seen an an institutionalized religion with each tradition having it's own set of beliefs that must be accepted to be admitted to the club.
Awhile back I OPed a thread asking folks to indicate if Buddhism was, for them, a religion or not. Most said it was a religion according to their own understanding.
To me religions are useless relics of mass conformity centralized around a teacher. Am I biased? Of course I am.
Who ever attained much of anything by following tradition? Jesus could have just been a good Jew and more than likely he wouldn't have been crucified on a cross nor would any of us remember anything of him. Buddha could have just accepted the teaching and practices of his close to enlightenment teachers and lived a great life, but he chose to not conform and instead do his own thing.
The traditions that are so revered and respected are just shells. "This" major tradition holds a complete loser like so and so who was a sexual predator as one of their finest and they stupidly explain away their revered teacher's "indiscretions" as an anomaly in the same way the republican party in the US regards one of it's own not as a homosexual, but a moral person who was simply caught with his pants down in a public restroom soliciting gay sex. Complete denial and full blown psychosis. Nothing to learn here other than how to be a full blown insane person solidly disconnected from reality.
Well respected teachers like Ajahn Shah lamented the fact they were so revered that there was nobody left who would take them to task. Within Ajahn Shah's culture it would have been immoral to suggest that the Ajahn was less than perfect. In the west it would have been more normal, but Ajahn Shah didn't speak English and if the way we treat the ultimate protector of child sexual predators, the pope, is any indication it wouldn't really matter.
We so revere the asshat that is the child molesting predator protector that is the Roman Catholic asshat, I mean poop, I mean pope that it's pretty much hopeless that we as humans could ever form an institution that reflected anything more profound than our own neurotic psychosises.
The only thing I object to is not telling the truth about the sex being just sex, but I am not sure if YOU are telling the truth about that. That is, saying the sex was spiritual.
If you don't respect people who drink, are gay, or are promiscuous that is something about YOU and not them.
I don't agree with pope but don't get confused, he didn't molest any children he just covered it up.
Thankyou, I will continue my understanding of the Four Noble Truths. There is so much to learn and understand, I have to start somewhere.
Jesus did not say he was the Messiah - just to clear up that little myth.
Lam Rim is pretty good for moving the mind to the right place It contains all the essence of the 84,000 teachings Buddha gave on mind training.