Bruce

Bruce, congratulations on making the downshift happen, and rediscovering the 'uncarved wood'. *applause* NW

Thanks NW. I'm still working on it.

Not Taoist - just my opinion. There's nothing wrong with wealth. It's what one does with it that matters and where their mind is while they are doing it.

A personal story in a nutshell: I used to be one of those 6 figure earners. By some people's standards we had wealth. We had a lot of stuff. The more stuff we got the more stuff we wanted. It was all about the stuff.

A huge change in lifestyle latter and some would consider us poor. It took me quite awhile to realize just how tied to that stuff I was. It wasn't the stuff though. It was how I thought of the stuff in relation to me and everyone else and their stuff. My identity, despite all the Buddhist practice, including being a renunciate at one point, was tied up in my stuff. I'm using stuff in a very broad sense here.

So, here I am now. Not nearly as much stuff and I'm just starting to find me. It wasn't the fault of the stuff, but not having the stuff forced me to look at me minus the stuff. Good 'ol naked me.

Power and wealth may corrupt, but it's not the power and wealth doing the corrupting. It's the person believing that they themselves are the power and wealth.

I can relate with your doubts. My doubts about rebirth in particular made me question the validity of the entire religion for awhile, because several key points are directly or indirectly tied to the notion. I eventually let my doubt drive me away from a practice that had proved beneficial to me for years.

The problem was that I was caught up in the religion of Buddhism and forgot the practical aspects of practice that were benefiting my life. That's like throwing the baby out with the bath water, to use an old cliche. You don't have to believe anything you don't want to believe. Btw, there are plenty of practicing Buddhists who don't believe in rebirth in the classical sense. Just google something like zen and rebirth.

The practice of meditation is not religious, nor is mindfulness, unless you put a religious wrapper around it. Learning to have some mastery over your thoughts is not religious, and has an immediate positive impact on your life. You don't have to believe anything about Buddhism to practice most basic forms of meditation. I do think that understanding some of the basic concepts are useful to put your experience in perspective, but the basics aren't religious either.

I've come to terms with my doubts. I'm not going to let them ruin a good thing. Practice for now. Practice for what it can do for your life. If it isn't doing it for you then fine, but if it is don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Btw, I'm not defending Buddhism. The practice I do works for me so I do it. I've learned a lot from Buddhist study and practice and continue to learn. If I ever stop learning I'll do something else, but I rather doubt that will happen.

You liked the answer that guy gave about the tree knowing its nature. Do you know your nature? I would only suggest that you stop looking for answers outside of yourself. The tree looks nowhere else.

A therapist isnt supposed to cure you. They are only a tool, an option, a helpline. You have to put in the effort and you have to work on you when you're not in a therapy session. All they can do is try to help figure out what the root cause of your problems are. You still have to the roadwork.

Yep. That too is very true.

We could facilitate interfaith harmony by defining those things/ideas which we hold in common. I realize this seems very liberal and wishy-washy but I am simply trying to answer the question.

Not wishy washy at all. It seems to be the only common sense approach, IMO.

As someone who was once a ladder climbing, success oriented yuppie ,

these are a couple of my favourite verses from the Tao Te Ching:

Success is as dangerous as failure.

Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?

Whether you go up the ladder or down it,

you position is shaky.

When you stand with your two feet on the ground,

you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?

Hope and fear are both phantoms

that arise from thinking of the self.

When we don't see the self as self,

what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.

Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self;

then you can care for all things.

and this bit,

Stop thinking, and end your problems.

What difference between yes and no?

What difference between success and failure?

Must you value what others value,

avoid what others avoid?

How ridiculous!

To be really effective, you need to understand what these words mean. Like Goldisheavy said, "Do you know why? Have you observed the psychodynamic that causes these reactions and behaviors you described?". When you look deeply and understand this question, you will truely understand these words from the Tao.

I too feel for you. There are probably some very good therapists out there. My limited experience with them, however has not been so good. They believe in their "outer science", which includes the drugs, and seem to be doubtful, if not afraid of "inner science" like meditation. That's not at all surprising, really, but it doesn't make it right.

When my first marriage broke up I was clinically depressed, and had been through a period of drinking way too much. I was even suffering from some pretty strong anxiety attacks. I did the therapist thing and took the anti depressants. I'm smart enough, or maybe dumb enough, that I eventually told the therapist what she wanted to hear. The anti depressants made me feel like I had a hangover all the time.

I had been very athletic all my life as well, so I do believe that exercise is quite helpful. The problem is when the endorphins stop flowing, you're right back where you were. That's when and why I decided to check out meditation.

I can honestly say that I struggled to sit still for 10 minutes, for quite some time. It was a gradual process of settling and learning to just be with the emotions. Eventually you experience for yourself that the emotions have no power unless you follow them out. They're just thoughts like any other.

The suggestion for breath following meditation was spot on, in my opinion. Keep it simple and stay away from esoteric practices until you are very stable. I also found that mantra practice really helped me settle the chaos in my head. I still use it from time to time, but now for different reasons. The key point is simplicity. There's enough chaos anyway so why add to it. What you're trying to learn to do is to see through it; to see that it doesn't have to have power over you.

Best of luck to you,

Bruce

My practice is mainly meditation so my experience will be different from those who practice a moving art, I guess. I don't do conscious energy practices - well, not usually. My practice is pretty much basic zazen.

Apart from the obvious, spontaneos movement - a little jerk now and then, the feeling I get of qi is that of unity when my zazen is right, and that of, well, dis-unity (if that's a word) when it's not. Not really sure how else to describe it.

I like this post very much.

Sorry to dredge this thread up again.

I've been studying the Shurangama Sutra again. This section is relavant to the discussion.

Shurangama Sutra section

The Buddha is answering a question (which is repeated in the commentary here). The answer details the arisal of ignorance which leads to the arisal of the world as we see it. You might want to read a bit before and a bit after. The commentary is essential here.

Decide for yourself whether it answers your questions.

Enjoy,

Bruce

I love that story, Cameron! It really nails the message of Zen Buddhism for me.

As ThisLife said, there are so many people who readily give of themselves in this world, yet seemingly have no real interest in this spirituality thing. Just minutes ago, I stepped out of the front door to walk up the hill and drop a letter in the post box. A neighhour just happened to be walking by, moving slowly in her "older age". She said, "I'm going that way. I'll take it for you." It was nothing really, yet it was everything. A smile, a selfless gesture, and from someone who has a much harder time walking up the hill than I do. And like ThisLife, I often see much more of that "selflessness" in public, in our little village even, than I ever did within the religious organizations I've been a part of, where many only put on the face of spirituality.

Maybe the Buddhas and Boddhisatvas are everywhere, ready to teach, if only we will open our eyes enough to see them. Maybe the Buddha fields are right here in front of us, and when we stop looking for our lost heads and realize they were always here we will see them.

Thank you everyone for your stories,

Bruce

Limitless potential and the impermanence that liberates.

Yes!

Fullness. Because everything is empty, everything is full. That's interdependence or interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh says.

Hello my friend,

You make some very good points here. I'm going to have to take some time to reflect on it all and see if I did indeed talk around in a circle. That wouldn't be untypical for me as I tend to think "outloud" and the thought evolves as I go.

I do know that I wasn't trying to get at anything "deep". It was more observational, and probably based on myself. My only point was questioning what we base our faith on, or rather that we should question what our faith is based on in order to see if it holds up to reason. I also believe that the questioning should be ongoing as our understanding evolves.

More on this tomorrow, or later today as it were.

Thanks again Hugo! I appreciate it.

Xuesheng - I hear ya mate. There's so much more I would like to say, in agreement, but it would likely just piss people off. It would take a lot to get me back into organized religion of any sort. I'll study the teachings and do the practice, but I'm no longer going to be "religious". Those of us here understand that, I think. I'll go sit with the yogis.

I second Thich Nhat Hanh's commentaries on the Diamond Sutra. Commentary is extremely beneficial, if not crucial to understanding it, and then you're going to have to really contemplate it (unless you're really ripe for understanding).

I used to own a copy of the Lotus Sutra with commentary, but no longer have it and couldn't tell you which one. A year or so ago I spent some time with an internet version and accompanying commentary. Again, the commentary is pretty crucial.

The Diamond Sutra really gets at the non-dual nature of things, and Nhat Hanh is wonderful at explaining the dialectics of prajnaparamita, which can be mind boggling without explaination. I'll let you make your own judgements about the Lotus Sutra. I need to read it again, and probably again.

Cheers Hugo,

Yes, it's that "God stuff in the soul" that I'm interested in! I've not been a practicing Christian since I was a kid, and once I was old enough to give it some real thought, I only went to church because my parents made me. Like I said earlier, I grew up in a very fundamentalist church. The older my parents got the more fundamentalist, to the extreme, they became and the more turned off by it all I got.

So now I'm 52 and have been a practicing Buddhist for probably longer than I was a practicing Christian. My idea of God is more that of the idea of Buddha nature: pure wisdom and compassion, all pervading, unborn and undying, in and of everything; which I believe is pretty consistent with the Vedic idea of God/Brahman, and from what I've recently read, pretty consistent with the Orthodox Christian idea of God. Of course none of these ideas are exactly the same, but similar enough that one might draw comparisons. Being all pervading then, God resides in us and is accessable by us, even to be "known" directly if pure enough of mind (that being the catch for most of us). All of this is very different from the fundamentalist's hellfire and brimstone judging God.

This probably isn't the thread to have this discussion, and I wouldn't even know what sort of thread/subject to start it under. Maybe it isn't even appropriate for this forum.

Do you see where my mental blocks with this may be? So much seems shrouded in secrecy in the Bible, leaving way to much to man to sort out through religion, through the church, setting doctrine that we're all supposed to sign up to. That's why I'm drawn to practices that seek God in one's self through prayer, contemplation, and meditation where teachers lead rather than preach. Does that make sense?

I'm not putting down believers of Christ. I have respect for the faithful, no matter the religion or philosophy. It's such a personal thing. It was stated by someone in this thread that the Christians are always put down. Well, this is a Taoist forum, open to all of course but certainly with Eastern philosophical leanings. Outside of places like this, however, I feel it's the other way around as our western society is primarily Christian. I'm only looking for commonality where it lies, and hoping we all have respect for one another.

Peace,

Bruce

What about the Old Testament dudes like Moses, Elijah, Abraham, Enoch, etc?

Yeah, I wonder that myself. I also wonder why only these interactions that take place in secret. For instance, why did Jesus only reveal himself to a few believers after the resurrection? Why not to those who killed him? Now that would've caused some belief as to who he was, I would think. Instead, we're left with the words of only a few who happened to witness the events. Leaves one scratching their head asking, why.

I would appreciate it if someone could help me out of some possible confusion here. I've been doing some more reading on Christianity. While the Orthodox doctrine, at first, seemed easier for me to accept, in the end I am bumping up against the same walls as I always have.

There are several of these walls, but this one is probably the biggest (from the King James Version).

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Here's how I take this: the only way to "know" God is through Jesus. We can debate the word "know", but I'm also led to believe by some Christian writers that man can never directly "know" God. So I get from this that in Christianity, Jesus is the required step to God, and this is because Jesus is the son of God without who's grace God would be unreachable by man.

Here's the wall I hit. First one has to believe that Jesus is the son of God, and the only evidence of this is that it says so in the Bible, infered via prophesy and maybe directly stated by apostles. Did Jesus ever directly say he was the son of God? I'm asking because I don't know. I've heard yes and no.

So, the only way to God is via Jesus and the only way to Jesus is via baptism and the only way to baptism is via the church which controls the doctrine, and defines God for us humans who can't possible "know" God without them.

Is this the correct Christian view?

I have a lot more questions, but this is my biggest stumbling block; and try as I may to believe, because Christianity is the religion of my culture, I just can't get past these things. I hope this question doesn't generate a lot of angry reactions from the Christians out there. I'm trying to understand your views.

Peace,

Bruce

What a great idea for a thread! Man, I'm thinking of a lot of things here, and wonder if I can boil it down to a few. I have a 4 year old and I've been a stay at home dad for the past 3 years. I don't think I've always done well. Parenting is the hardest thing I've ever done, but I feel that if I can just approach everything I do with love it'll all work out. I do feel that my failings, at least when I feel that I've failed or not done as well as I could've, likely come from a combination of how I was raised and whatever mental state I'm in at the time. That's one of the reasons that meditation is doubly important to me now. My mental states tend to not fluctuate as much and I tend to handle the tougher situations with more calm. I do still screw up, or so it feels, and it's one of the worst feelings ever.

The feelings of a child are so tender - so easily damaged, and that damage can last a lifetime. I can still remember times when my dad went off on me, and I know some of those experiences shaped my life in negative ways.

I don't know what answers to give really. Love, patience, EXTREME patience, lol! It's all a tricky business, isn't it. I just try to show my son that I love him and because I love him I also show him when he's been wrong. He seems to understand. I try to teach him respect, but not in the sense that it's this way because I said so (although sometimes you do have to resort to that). He is learning to respect others feelings and "things".

It's just a one day at a time - even one minute at a time thing. I just try to be there for him, encourage him, and listen to him, even when he's rambling on about nothing.

Faith : (1) trust or confidence (2) belief in the statement of another

This is an interesting question, and it's why I said we should critically examine where our faith comes from.

(1) often follows (2) here. We have trust or confidence because we believe the statement of another who we consider trustworthy. The question we have to ask ourselves is, how do we arrive at this conclusion. Why do we consider the other trustworthy? Is it by demonstration or word alone? Is it based soley on history and the fact that millions before us believed? Not that basing trust and confidence in what others before us has done is bad. We would probably all be afraid to get on an airplane or drive a car or do any number of things if it wasn't or the experience of others, but in those case we have demonstration as proof.

When it comes to the matters we're discussing here, that proof gets fuzzy. It seems that we examine what evidence is available, think for ourselves about the reasonability of it, then decide whether or not we want to try. Given the dictionary definition of faith above, it seems to me that the first step on the path is more the willingness to try, withholding belief, trust and confidence until such time as we feel it's deserved. Maybe that's just me, though.

I just wanted to thank Altiora again for entering this discussion. I've been continuing my reading of orthodox doctrine, and while I've not even scratched the surface, Christianity is becoming believable to me for the first time in my life. I really look forward to continued study from the orthodox doctrine (which I'm going to go back to now).

Even as a practicing Buddhist, I've never totally lost my belief in God. I just wasn't able to accept the idea of God I had been raised with. What I've been reading, however, is significantly much more in line with what I've always felt, deep within, to be true.

So, I will continue to study and I will continue to live by the precepts as best I can. I don't believe them to be any different than what Jesus would've wanted us to do anyway. I will also continue to sit in zazen as my practice, along with prayer. Once, some years ago when confronted with one of those dark nights of the soul, I consulted with a Zen monk. He told me to ask my zazen. I shall do the same now.

Peace,

Bruce

You're welcome. But I'm nothing but a tongue-tied novice when it comes to some Orthodox theologians and the sheer beauty of their vision. Be wary that Orthodoxy has its own Fundies: the sort that believe that anything written after the 4 th century AD is suspect and degraded, if not Satanic.

 

The fundametalist menatlity is a blight to all religions -- look at what death and carnage so called vegetarian "Hindus" and "Buddhists" extremists in Indian and Sri Lanka cause to the Muslim and Christian minorities.

 

Be wary also that Orthodoxy has been snuffed out of the Western culture -- it's only now establishing itself here with the increasing numbers of new converts and the established communities integrating into their countries. A lot of Orthodoxy reflects the particular country to which it is originally affiliated e.g. Russia, Greece etc so often reflects the culture with all its baggage. This can be a culture shock to westerners and you can find yourself hearing some rather interesting "views" about the world. But as I always say, you accept my warts and I'll accept yours.

 

I'd recommend an Englishman Kallistos Ware's book "The Orthodox Way" and "Philokalia: the Bible of Orthodox Spirituality" by Anthony Coniaris as the best introductions around. They discuss Orthodoxy in a way approachable, but still challenging, to westerners.

 

You're right: ultimately it is about faith. At one stage we reach the limits of our rational mind and must make a leap of faith. I've always been amazed at some western Buddhist adherents will say "how ridiculous" Christianity is with its Resurrection, Virgin Birth etc, yet see no problem accepting every word of an equally "colourful" Buddhist scripture as absolute and literal truth. At the end of the day it's all faith. If that's what you want to believe that's fine. I don't necessarily agree but I won't denigrate you for it.

 

One thing I've never got clear about Buddhism is whether Lord Buddha saw a role for a creator Deity in the form that the Judaeo-Christian would recognise. I've received two answers when I've asked teachers of this tradition: the first, Buddha didn't say one way or another, as it wasn't important to his teachings and, further, what point is there concerning oneself with such things when you're not happy here and now; and second, no he didn't, Mind is everything.

 

Now the Japanese Pure Land school then saw an apparent flaw: if the whole purpose is to escape the fetters of ego, isn't attempting to attain enlightnment inherently contradictory with this. And if so, don't we then require a Higher Power to overcome the strictures of the Self-Power. As someone pointed out, the Japanese Pure Land school came extraordinary close to Martin Luther's teachings of Justification by Faith alone.

 

Researched this matter myself but gave up because there was so little material out there -- so as you can see these musings are very "beginner's mind" stuff.

Thank you again,

I'll check out the books you recommend. I have to agree with you on all counts. As much as some Buddhists (me included at times) like to say that faith isn't involved, it is if one is honest. How can it not be? At the very least one is accepting on faith that Buddha was who and what scripture says he was. After all, it was all written down after he was gone, and some of it long after. It's then been interpreted and argued over the centuries by various sects. As for the creation thing, you'll probably get a different answer depending on who you ask in Buddhism, but to my understanding none of the answers would correspond with the Judeo/Christian view.

I've been digging around on OrtodoxWiki this morning as a start. It's interesting reading. My mind is open. I know nothing about anything.

All the best with respect,

Bruce

Thank you very much. Beautifully stated, may I add!

I would love to look into the orthodox teaching more. See, I'm one of those who was raised in a very fundamentalist and literally interpreting church. From an early age I began to see the hypocracy. Not many were walking the talk if you know what I mean.

I've long felt that the Bible couldn't always be taken literally, but it's hard to find, what seem to me, sound resources for studying this. I've read some books by scholars, but well, they're scholars. I think all they did was reinforce my disbelief.

Just to be fair, I keep bumping up against a lot of the same in Buddhism. A lot of myth and symbolism starts to crop up in Mahayana and then jumps to an even higher plane in the Vajrayana. Things get as unbelievable as what a lot of us have criticized in Christianity. I accepted it all on faith for awhile, until I realized that I was being the very fundamentalist that I despised in Christianity. Man did that ever make me feel like a hypocrite! I began to ask what happened to the man Shakyamuni. He suddenly seems to be elevated to the Christian idea of Jesus. That particularly seemed the case in the Lotus Sutra.

Anyway, I realize that some has to be taken as symbolism. There are some things in Christianity, though, that I feel I would have to accept on faith, that I have a difficult time with. I'm still interested enough to question and study, but I'm totally turned off by evangelicals. Man if you want me to shut down just get in my face and tell me I'm doing some devil worship by meditating and if I don't believe all this stuff in the Bible I'm going to hell. Not sure why they think direct confrontation is a good sales technique.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I'll do some digging around on orthodox doctrine and see what I can find.

Cheers,

Bruce

Hi altiora,

You mentioned that the orthodox church doesn't take such literal interpretations. How is the resurrection viewed in the orthodox church? I'm genuinely interested.

Peace