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A particularly good Alan Watts talk…
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
Sometimes I listen to Alan Watts or Ram Dass talks, I just find them insightful and amazingly erudite. So I just wanted to recommend this one, where Alan begins, “it has been well said that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export” and goes on to explain that Hinduism is a way of life while Buddhism is more a religion.
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Comments
Watts was able to present Buddhism, Buddhist concepts, in an understandable form. He was presenting predominately from a Zen perspective. This was the school which had the primary interest of the English and Americans of the time.
I should listen to his points on the matter. Without having listened though and responding to your summary.
First question, is export to where? Buddhism is also native to India. I suppose he means the versions of Buddhism that have migrated out, rather than Buddhism proper.
Second, I'd say that way of life vs religion might have more to do with the way it is used than something inherent in the beliefs? Hinduism in practice had more to do with the society and the people in it, while Buddhism stayed fairly monastic in practice.
I guess I'm saying I think its more about context than essence.
Zen.....
Tame to Same. Spirit of the religious letters.
Train to Sane. Tech-u-nique to use.
See is Free;and free is Be(e). Happy flowering
Hindu,DDD.....
Shakti(tantra)--->Dao
Child(nurture)--->I.S
Free,(Moksha)___->Dance with grace/happy accidents
Listened to it. How is he defining religion vs way of life? I always hear people in the west talking about how Buddhism is a practice rather than a set of beliefs. And if you're practicing Hinduism as a set of rituals and beliefs on how to operate in the world, that sounds more like how most of us think of religion.
It also feels kind of demeaning to the insights discovered/developed by Buddhism to say its Hinduism packaged for export. I've heard it taught by Buddhist teachers that the realizations and insights achieved in Hinduism at best lead to long lived blissful states and eventual entry back to the world. So, it has also been well said that Hinduism is a less than fully realized Buddhism.
I wonder if my perception differing from his has to do with where we've each contacted Buddhism. He mostly connected with traditional Buddhism, I've mostly connected with those practicing and teaching in the west.
Erudite. adj.
having or showing great knowledge or learning.
"Ken could turn any conversation into an erudite discussion"
Vocab word of the day! I never heard it before.
Just so you know, coz someone told youse
“Before the arrival of the Xerox scientists and the Homebrew hobbyists, the technologies underlying personal computing were being pursued at two government-funded research laboratories located on opposite sides of Stanford University. The two labs had been founded during the sixties, based on fundamentally different philosophies: Douglas Engelbart's Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at Stanford Research Institute was dedicated to the concept that powerful computing machines would be able to substantially increase the power of the human mind. In contrast, John McCarthy's Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory began with the goal of creating a simulated human intelligence.
One group worked to augment the human mind; the other to replace it.”
Excerpt From
What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer
John Markoff
Yes Buddhism has its foundations in Hinduism.
Here's my thoughts in a nut/seed shell...
Buddhism can be seen as a tree that grew from the seed of Hinduism,
(The Buddha, born into a Hindu family, was initially exposed to the Hindu worldview, including the belief in a creator god, and the caste system, which was justified by the doctrine of karma and rebirth)
This tree was cultivated and shaped by the Buddha’s insights. (when he encountered the inherent existence of suffering -old age, sickness, and death, this led him to seek a way to overcome suffering.) The Buddha's nurturing and selective pruning ( the removal of a creator god and the permanently abiding self/soul) led to a tradition that shares some common roots with Hinduism but has its own unique characteristics and teachings.
Thanks to the Buddha's insightful pruning techniques, the branches of this tree reach far and wide, touching many parts of the world.
When it comes to a way of life, this way of life often consists of habitual patterns. These patterns, in some cases, are adopted through spiritual practice (such as Dharma practice) by followers of a spiritual path.
For example, I (and no doubt many others on the Buddhist Path) have started to adopt these beneficial habit patterns through mind taming and training. Practices like mind exploration, aka meditation, utilise the Dharma tools provided by the Buddha's insights to cultivate wisdom and compassion. The more one engages in these practices, the more one realises the beneficial elements found on this Path.
The wings of Wisdom & Compassion
Nice, @Shoshin1 that seems a pretty good way of looking at things.
Hinduism is itself not one belief, but a number of schools I have heard. They all fit together, but the beliefs of Advaita Vedanta are not necessarily held by all.
But Buddhism also evolved as it entered different locales of the East, notably as Ch’an and Zen in China and Japan, which these days is far overtaken in popularity by the Pure Land tradition.