C T

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

@Kaihe I am sorry this thread did take a nasty turn for you.

Appreciate clarification on the nuances of above statement, assuming you are seeing the bigger picture here.

How about directing more urgency to empathize with potentially vulnerable members who, if not for the timely interjections from seasoned cultivators, could've fallen for this pitch? 

2 hours ago, Kaihe said:

You-people-are-out-of-your-mind.......... You start a smear campaign on someone you dont know, whose books you didnt read, whose teaching you never study, try or understand, and say lunatic things about prey & manipulation..... do you believe everything you read from internet????

thank you!!!! i see none of that here. i will never enter this place again.

Three things, the Buddha said, that cannot be hidden for long: The sun, the moon,  and the truth. 

Courtesy of Thubten Kway 

50 minutes ago, Miffymog said:

 

God sees everything.

.

.

(but is this still slightly intrusive, what about all the sexual bits?)

 

 

He probably has a couple of pairs of raybans at hand. Or maybe just squint now and again. 

8 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

 

and reality?

just two shakes of a dog's tail
and bob's your uncle

and bob's your uncle 

he does a mean fried ramen 

with all the trimmings 

38 minutes ago, ChiDragon said:

I see that the bums are more interested in Idian and Tibetan Buddhism. IMO I think the Chinese Buddhism is fading out in the western society. This is only my gut feeling and thoughts.

Honing a mental framework which is geared towards assimilation of the various teachings from a diverse pool is infinitely more nurturing. And less stressful. 

Dharma, after all, is not just about gathering and retaining knowledge - its to enable the innate wisdom mind to be polished so that gradually its clarity becomes apparent. Teachings, in essence, are expedients... tools that are useful, only up to a point. Knowing when to discard them is just as vital. Otherwise one ends up lugging a weighty boat even after crossing the river. 

We don't want to be mesmerised with the finger pointing at the moon. "How to awaken" is one such finger. When we lose the habit of being enthralled by the various fingers we will inadvertently see as we cultivate sharper discernment, we can begin the proper path to authentic freedom. 

Is this a recruitment ad? 

9 hours ago, steve said:

 

sniffing Valentines

a risky proposition

one just might get slapped!

one just might get slapped! 

a timely belt now and then 

sure to keep one real 

5 hours ago, Maddie said:

 

I've noticed the Theravada tend to call him Gautama more often, and the Mahayana call him Siddhartha more often. 

Thanks. I'd always assumed the Mahayanists often refer to the historical Buddha as Shakyamuni. 

nothing left to say 

time to pay the bill and scoot

Saint Valentine style 

Basically, the more we believe in and therefore cherish (or abhor, or indifferent to) a self that over time assumes an identity merely from habitual reactions to sensory inputs, the more painful it is whenever our perceived comfort zone gets knocked. 

The self is not the real issue. Its more the assumptions around it that bring about stress. 

13 hours ago, Tom Beckett said:

So what kind of meditation breathing would I have to do to achieve this feeling?

The specific practice is known as Tonglen. Plenty of information, including video teachings, on the subject. 

4 hours ago, Cobie said:

Interesting that ‘Gotama’ means ‘bright light-darkness’.

 

Fwiw, Buddha's birth name was Siddhartha - "One who has attained the goal" is one translation of Siddhartha. 

Gotama/Gautama/Gautam identifies the clan and religious lineage his family belonged to. 

Breathe in the world's suffering and breathe out your merit & virtues in exchange. Eventually you'll come to disentangle from habitual clinging and grasping to what is generally but mistakenly thought of as "me, mine, myself, and I". No greater freedom than this. Freedom from fear of loss, for one. 

Then pain will no longer have ownership. It'll still be there, of course, but no longer exclusive. 

14 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

those owls sure can sing

"who cooks for you", in five keys

they fly--not a sound

they fly--not a sound

across the fields and meadows
under the moonlight

under the moonlight 

jukebox belting Neil Young's number

coincidence much 

A simple explanation to those familiar with the Mahayana ideal. 

Quote

 

The path of realization based on the Mahayana conception of genuine wisdom was elaborated as the career of the bodhisattva. As described in Mahayana sutras, it begins with the profound awakening of the mind aspiring for enlightenment (bodhicitta), the determination to become a buddha whatever hardships one may encounter over the course of many lifetimes of endeavor. This unshakable resolution is declared in the presence of a buddha in formal vows, and typically, the bodhisattva receives from the buddha a prophesy foretelling eventual fulfillment of those vows. A standard element of such individual vows is the establishment, through their vast accumulation of merit through praxis, of a buddha land or field of influence (buddhakṣetra), which is understood as giving concrete manifestation both to the splendor of their attainment and to their activity to bring beings to enlightenment.

 

The bodhisattva then embarks upon the practices and disciplines, to be continued through countless lifetimes, that will finally result in fulfillment. It is said that vast aeons—“three great innumerable kalpas”—are required for the completion of a bodhisattva’s practices (the inconceivable stretches of time may be understood as expressing the depths of a being’s evil karma to be eradicated and the preciousness of enlightenment). The process of practice has been formulated in a scheme of ten stages, in which the most crucial is the stage of nonretrogression, the first (or in some formats, the seventh). While prior to reaching this stage, they will fall back into samsaric existence if they discontinue their practice, once they have attained nonretrogression through stilling their discriminative thought and seeing suchness, they will never regress but steadily advance in their practice to supreme awakening.

 

Although Pure Land Buddhism is sometimes understood to teach a paradisial afterlife, in fact it developed as a method for achieving nonretrogression, one that provided an alternative to the arduous endeavor through numerous lifetimes required for reaching this stage in the earlier formulations of the bodhisattva path. As practitioners found themselves without enlightened guidance in a world increasingly distant from the benign influence of a buddha’s presence, the obstacles to successful practice loomed ever larger and practitioners came to seek a practicable way to advance. The possibility of entrance into an environment that would support one’s efforts in bodhisattva practices emerged, and on the basis of the Pure Land sutras, the concepts of the bodhisattva path were recast to render a new understanding of the nature of practice. - D. Hirota, Stanford U

On 07/02/2023 at 9:47 PM, Taomeow said:

 

Mongolia seems fine.

They have "The Hu," who do sing

better than "The Who." 

 

 

better than "The Who"

sounds like the call of an owl 

on a hot tin roof 

The topic is "Vegetarianism" 

It's a huge spectrum. 

Except for one or two posts, the rest have been pretty much on topic, no?

I've known a few vegans over the years. Even lived with one for a decade or so. Most of the others I'd befriended when living in Buddhist communes and retreat centres. We get along amicably, and I deeply enjoy vegan meals when dining out with my ex. 

Some of the fellow vegan members of the communities I spent time in do full time solitary retreats, meaning they live isolated from the rest, doing their respective practices from like 4am to about 9pm daily. Some of them unfortunately get quite ill at times, mainly because they picked up hepatitis while on pilgrimages, mostly to India and the general Himalayan regions. 

Somehow, whenever their illnesses recur, their existing vegan diet could never provide sufficient nutrients to aid recovery. For most, only a period (daily intake over a week or two) consuming bone broth and liver helps in regaining some colour in their cheeks. 

They never consider it as a moral dilemma. It is what it is, they say. They add the issue arises mostly if we dwell on it and something festers, leading to a dukkha of subject/object split. This is an infinitely more problematic struggle than any dietary stance one chooses to adopt. Or naught. 

8 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

and then -- "no smoking"
no more offerings with pipes

rain in the Bad Lands

rain in the Bad Lands

while the earth quakes in Turkey 

Mongolia seems fine 

25 minutes ago, Shadow_self said:

 

Actually what I am saying is a life is a life

 

Whether a cow dies so you can eat meat, or an insect dies so you can eat a bowl of oatmeal, something still dies so you can live

 

Whether something is raised to be murdered, or you just outright murder it, murder is still murder. 

 

The endpoint is the same,

 

Focusing on the in-between often ends up being little more than a diversionary tactic to support ones own biases if one is going to ignore that glaring fact.

 

Acknowledgment of this fact means that if we understand the above endpoint and recognize it, then we can talk about the in-between and working there to change the endpoint

This

1 hour ago, Barnaby said:

 

It's an interesting point.

 

But again, I'm curious to know by what means you're saying these insect lives are being lost. Chemical, or physical, or both?

 

Because off the top of my head, I'd assume an orders-of-magnitude difference between pesticides and tilling the land...?

 

In some Buddhist monastic communities where farming is practiced, the soil is meticulously tilled using small hand utensils just so they will avoid killing any earthworms and other soil-bound critters. But the thing is, they still purchase flour, rice, some seeds and maybe buckwheat from commercial suppliers who in turn source their products from big agri. 

I suppose the closest one can hope to practice the pure precept of not killing is to wholly rely on foraging wild non-meat foods for sustenance. Dont think many vegans will find this amenable or realistic. 

29 minutes ago, Barnaby said:

 

I'm curious: are you referring to pesticides, or the physical process of cultivating the land (ploughing etc)?

 

The whole gamut of fruit & veg farming, from domestic to commercial enterprises. 

Then there is this whole irritating business of having to pay premium prices for 'organic' veg & fruit produce... questionable ethics perhaps.... but this isn't topic-related, so we don't need to go there. 

Back on topic. 

In India and elsewhere, most if not all Brahmins are strict vegans/vegetarians. As a group of people, I'd say they are not different from any other community in terms of values, ethics, humanity, compassion, philosophy and so on, although I'm sure some Brahmins will argue to the contrary. 

51 minutes ago, Barnaby said:

Having now read the essay posted by Refuge, I’d respond that I’m not sure this is simply about karma.

 

Karma clearly is related to intention.

 

But this issue seems to have as much to do with ethics and unmeasurable compassion. Slightly different, no?

 

Bearing in mind countless insects' lives are lost in the process of farming non-meat produce, how certain are we that sustaining such a choice, that is, abstinence from killing and also adopting a seemingly gentler vegetarian path, is truly ethical, in a complete sense, and not a subtle game of self deception?