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.
Help on Meditation, and Catholic Parents
Hello,
I am 15 years of age and live with a deeply religious family of Catholic/Christian. I find it difficult to take adherent in my studies due to only being limmited on what is on the internet. I live about 5 minutes away from the Oxnard Buddhist temple but I would be dead if caught. I am also finding it difficult to find Buddhist text on the web, any help on that? Thank you.
And last, I need to learn more of what meditation is and what it is doing.
Thank you.
I am 15 years of age and live with a deeply religious family of Catholic/Christian. I find it difficult to take adherent in my studies due to only being limmited on what is on the internet. I live about 5 minutes away from the Oxnard Buddhist temple but I would be dead if caught. I am also finding it difficult to find Buddhist text on the web, any help on that? Thank you.
And last, I need to learn more of what meditation is and what it is doing.
Thank you.
0
Comments
Your local public library is a great place to start (not everything is found on the internet, contrary to what your generation may believe). Good old fashioned books are well worth seeking out. For meditation I recommend reading Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Full Catastrophe Living" for starters. A quick card catalog search will yield probably thousands of books on Buddhism, and I'm sure your local branch will probably have some of them on its shelves.
Read this
http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/mindfulness_in_plain_english.pdf
Listen to these, as well as other podcasts by Gil Fronsdal
http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/
Go here for the ancient Pali canon texts
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/
If you prefer to listen to some of them go here:
http://www.suttareadings.net/
1. When teenage hormones start to kick in, almost any discipline will seen as onerous and worthy of rebellion. It just seems to go with the territory.
2. Buddhism tends to bend over backwards for Christianity, but the reverse is not the case. Buddhism is not threat-based -- you won't go to heaven if you do it and you won't go to hell if you don't. Buddhism does not, to the best of my knowledge, suggest that it is the one true faith or anything similar. Like piano-playing, Buddhism is a practice. If what I have written is true -- and I only base it on experience -- then saying to parents that you want to explore something new rather than disdain something old sounds like a good tactic. Good tactics don't always work, but bad tactics never do.
Best wishes.
Wikipedia and AccessToInsight are great starts!
From my experience Catholics have been more open-minded that I thought they were! You might be a little pleasantly surprised with your parent's response. Another tactic you might like to try is tell them that you wish to practice your religion more deeply and you wish to investigate meditation as a form of getting to know god better. This is a practice used by Christian monks as well (eg Trapist Monks, etc). In fact, some of them meditate with Buddhist monks - Ajahn Brahmavamso in Perth, Australia "consorts" with trapist monks in this way. This is in fact the way I came to Buddhism, by practicing Christianity deeply, starting to meditate then discovering the Dhamma by reading books that I had downloaded online.
Which comes to my next point. The most useful website that I found in my Dhamma discovery was www.buddhanet.net. It's a great resource when you are first starting off with online lessons and many pdf and plain text books you can download. One of the best books I have read on meditation is: MIndfulness in Plain English by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana which you can also freely download from the web (buddhanet might have it also).
I wish you luck with your parents and your journey in life.
Metta,
Vangelis
good luck
I see good advice but I'd advice you to be 100% honest, which doesn't mean you can't use bad tactics.
If all fails eventually I would advise being as straight forward as possible about having your own mind and wanting freedom as somebody who wants to learn.
I don't think meditation per se results in a movement away from Christianity. They could be good complements. The book, "Living Buddha, Living Christ" by Thich Nhat Hahn is decent. (Unfortunately, few churches would see it this way.)
I think the real problem is that many young people move to Buddhism as a result of their rejection of Christianity, not because of it.
Meditation is placing the mind on a wholesome object. A wholesome object is an object not connected with greed, hatred or delusion.
From developing meditation on a wholesome object, the mind will development inner peace, inner joy, love and wisdom.
Some scriptures are attached below.
All the best
DD
I am at a stage of my life where I am can study Buddhism freely, but I was raised Catholic and understand your concerns. In my experience, many Catholics are open-minded and tolerant but there are those who feel deeply threatened by any belief system other than their own.
You are the best one to judge how your family would react if you expressed an interest in studying Buddhism. Being open with them might work very well but they may also react with fear and hatred. You could think about whether openly expressing your interest in Buddhism will do harm or good.
I've met many Catholics and other Christians who have moved away from their birth faiths so far that they no longer see merit in them. I try not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Many of Jesus's teachings still resound with me. My advice is to remain open to all learning and remain compassionate. If your parents are rigid about these things it is probably out of concern for your well being. Be patient as there will come a time when you can explore more freely.
I hope this helps and wish you all the best.
Lots of good stuff here. There are numerous books that you parents could approve of, in particular you might like to look for Fr. Anthony de Mello's Sadhana: he was a Jesuit, so (marginally) OK with most Catholics. Read Thomas Merton too. You have a golden opportunity, in a practising family, to study and understand how the spiritually-directed life works. The Net (and, possibly, these boards) can help you with purely Buddhist stuff.
Many Catholic parishes have informal groups for contemplative (i.e. silent ) prayer. I have found them a great resource for meditation in community. There are genuine resources for spiritual growth which will not necessarily upset the family apple cart.