Hey guys,

I usually am in the micro stakes forums but recently have been thinking a lot about buddism. I've read a few articles but would like speak to someone who is a buddist.

Thanks,
Thomas

They're all meditating now... check back in a few

"Buddist", is that like people who worship Bud/Marijuana?

Only buddhist poster I can think of is Ron Burgundy.
Epic thread (about being asexual, but he mentions being a buddhist too. Or maybe just has an interest in buddhist philosophy).

Max H claimed to be a Buddhist.

Maybe you should just ask your questions about Buddhism. Perhaps there are non-Buddhists here who know enough about Buddhism to point you in the right direction.

I am here. Feel free to pm.

Why PM? I think many of us are interested in Buddhism. Do you object to posting publicly?

I have a question on reincarnation that I've brought up before, but probably in the wrong thread. I know there are different thoughts on it, so perhaps before I ask my question I'd ask what your take on reincarnation is.

Since you didn't ask me, I'll give you my take.

It's a metaphor that has to do with how we recreate ourselves and all of our dispositions and habits in each moment. There is a momentum to the past; we tend to keep doing things in the same ways with an almost blind automaticity. We carry with us from moment to moment a story of who we are, that can actually be kind of limiting. And in that sense we continue to be reborn. Birth, life, and death, all happen right now.

But if you "wake up" to the present moment, you recognize that you really have the choice to recreate those habits in each moment or not, to carry that momentum forward or to cast it off. Acting anew out of each instant is a tremendous freedom. In this way one steps off the wheel of rebirth and transcends their selfhood -- aka nirvana/samsara. You can see how our sense of time comes from stitching together the subsequent moments into a narrative, so this state of mind is also a transcendence of time.

There's an old parable about how an experienced tracker looking at the buddha's footprints was unable to tell where he was heading, because each step told a different story.

There are about as many flavors of buddhist as there are christians as your question suggests. So, a rattlesnake handling fundamentalist in West Virginia is going to have differences in opinion from some cafeteria catholic in Italy. So it is with me and say Tibetan buddhist. I am not so sure reincarnation makes much sense in anything other than a purely pale form related to the law of conservation of energy. The take of many is that there is a never-ending cycle of lives until we achieve freedom from the cycle. This is one reason they don't eat meat, because in this infinite cycle that whatever animal you eat... that animal at some point was once your mother. Hope that helps.

I am just a little ambivalent about responding to a thread down here in RGT as I am decidedly not religious. The philosophy of buddha requires no faith in anything. It is entirely reason based and even in formal Tibetan rules...if there is hard science that contradicts what is proclaimed as an article of faith...they will literally cut it out of the text. That is a pretty interesting feature in my humble opinion.

In that case, science can neither be used to prove or disprove rebirth at the moment. So, I will buy it when we can. : )

This is why I couldn't pull the trigger on becoming a Buddhist myself. I just couldn't fully buy into the concepts of either reincarnation or rebirth. And if those aren't true, then I don't see much point in the belief system since your suffering ends when you die anyway.

As a philosophy it obv works. Since the field of Happiness Science has been born, it seems clear that this is a very legitimate strategy for having a better time in THIS life. The basic strategy is best understood in the analogy that to keep your feet from being poked by rocks you can either cover the world in leather or simply cover your feet with it. Thus, we can either change the whole world to fit our every want, or we can accept things as they really are and have the equanimity to remain unchanged by the vagaries of circumstance.

When you gauge the success in fMRI machines it obv works well. Since you can do all kinds of torture to Mattieu Ricard and he is STILL as happy as I would be if I were gently and lovingly taken by a band of horny Victoria's Secret models...I think it is a valuable area of study.

This is a good book for those who are interested in learning more about it from the perspective of best science versus belief system:

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Awar...9765594&sr=8-5

the audiobook version is the stones as it features Richard Gere as the voice of the Dalai Lama in the conversations...and he does what has to be one of the most amazingly bad acting jobs (which is paired with amazingly bad editing) and lends great great comedy imo to the very engaging discussion
plus, you can listen to it while working out or playing or whatever : )

Thanks Kentucky (and Vb). I'm slowly learning about buddhism and must say that I like most of what I see. My biggest problem, as with STBP is concepts like rebirth. As I understand it, buddhism does not have any deities. But if we are to accept reincarnation in the sense of going from one body to the next, well, there must be some sort of coordination of that, right? Doesn't that imply some deity-like figure? Or do these "souls" (for want of a better term - there probably is a buddhist term) just float around until they happen to bump into a pregnant lady?

I agree that buddhism can be taken pretty-well in tact without accepting such concepts, but I'm still trying to figure out how its supposed to work. I haven't been able to find a good explanation of the theory behind it.

I sort of backburnered it, but I have Buddhism without Belief, that I'm trying to make my way through. While I doubt I would necessarily become a self-styled buddhist, I do want to take certain aspects from the philosophy and adopt them into my life. Meditation most of all. It's something that at least once a week I tell myself I'm going to sit down and do - and yet I just don't do it! But I think its great!

You guys should stick around and discuss these things with RGT. Several of the atheists here (and some theists) have a soft spot for buddhism and I think we can all benefit from knowing more about it!

You are more than welcome sir!

Well some flavors sort of do have deities. And, there is a developed mythology in some flavors as to how reincarnation takes place. It is odd stuff and looks as kooky as any other mythology.

I am of the position that I have so so so so very far to go to fix myself in this life I have no time to bother about any other incarnations that may or may not take place. : )

I only show up here really to laugh at the images for athiests thread. So, if you want me for anything feel free to pm me to either chat about something that way or tell me there is something here in which I might have something germane to say. hahahha

What about optimism and happiness? From what I read Buddist try to maintain a constant state of balance, uneffected by pain or happiness. So we should never feel happiness? Please understand I mean no disrespect just very curious

Also thanks for the pm, at work atm but I will skype you sometime soon.

Actually this is the biggest misconception about buddhist thought/meditation. : )

The goal is not to be like a robot, a zombie, or like Spock or Data from Star Trek. The perspective is one of loving-kindness for all, to include oneself, as well as to be perfectly realistic in the view of circumstances. This is often misunderstood for good reason. We should want to experience joy and do (as evidenced by the fMRI studies...nobody does it better) but when minor things go wrong like getting cut off in traffic, or having someone scream at us about wearing a t-shirt that supports a local sports team, taking a bad beat (or twenty), or the millions of trivial shocks we get in life we should see those things as they really are. Even when things are serious, we should not be traumatized by things we can change...because being stressed out will logically only encumber us from doing as well as we can to modify the situation, and we should not get stressed out about the things we can't change, because what would be the point of that? So, what should be try to be?

We should see things that happen in life as like a deep lake, when winds whip there may be turmoil on the surface but that is just superficial, and the vast majority of the depths are unchanged. That is what we should strive for.

The truth at the depths of our emotional lake is that we are all one essentially, anger is useless (with a couple of exceptions), and loving-kindness for all things makes us happy and is the most wise and realistic approach to dealing with things.

Pain is often a useful thing since it warns us before we do damage to ourselves, but when it is just discomfort that we need not worry about, we can learn to acknowledge that we are uncomfortable give our full attention to that fact and we can learn to more and more quickly move our thoughts to other things and not dwell on merely annoying things. Some are better at this than others obviously, what we aspire to be is like world champions of equanimity like the story of a couple of Tibetan guys that were held hostage and tortured for 30 years. When they were released they were given an audience with the Dalai Lama and one mentioned that he was in danger at least twice in those three decades. The Dalai Lama was curious and asked him what he meant since it was his understanding that they were often tortured and unspeakably horribly treated...and the man confirmed that this was true but that he had not understood the man's meaning....but that twice in the thirty years he was in danger of hating the guards that had been torturing him. That is the goal that most of us repeatedly fall well short.

By repeatedly gently, lovingly, and kindly pulling our thoughts back in line with what we know to be realistic, wise, and joy-inducing we can use every single annoyance to get closer and closer to that goal.

nice post.

So what is the goal when you meditate? Just to center yourself and gain some perspective on the importance (or lack thereof) of things we experience?

Thanks!

Well to start out you want to just work on observing. Not judging not doing anything but focusing on your breath lying down and going through your body starting with your left foot and moving up your leg to your other foot etc...noticing what you feel and noticing what you think and lovingly and gently bringing yourself back to being completely absolutely in the moment.

There is a technique where you try to chew up and eat three raisins without letting your mind wander to anything past or future. Let me say that I wish you every good luck making it through just one...lol. : P

When you get better awareness of the emotional state you are in, you can meditate on antidotes to it. If your problem is some sort of improper lust for example it can be helpful to meditate on the fact that the object of your infatuation is merely flesh, and meditate on the physiology of the animal that they are...that they must eat and go to the bathroom for example.

It takes a while to cure oneself completely of the delusion of the "I" that we exist in an of ourselves separate and apart from our parts. To begin with as I said one can just focus on slow, quiet, deep, and regular breaths. It can help to imagine a white light inside your heart, and when you breathe in you suck in all the bitterness and negativity around you and it is cleaned by the filter of that light in your heart and you breathe out purified air both that you pulled in from the outside and that you have cleaned from throughout your body. Again, you can imagine you are breathing air into and out of specific areas of your body. You can achieve remarkable results with only thirty hours of practice doing things not much more sophisticated than that (Kabat-Zinn 1981).

The practical results are that you can be far less stressed and have far more equanimity, and thus make better decisions, be healthier, and be happier to boot. And that is a pretty valuable thing. : )

Nice posts, keep them coming please.

Ive been reading on buddhism and zen and one thing I admire most is that it can teach you what spirituality feels like without believing in nonsense. That is to say, it doesn't stand in the way what science teaches us.

What is your recommendation for someone who thinks that the only way to really understand it is to experience it? Just take an introduction course at the nearest dojo?

He he....I've been thinking lately when Christ comes back to Earth the Buddhists will be the very first people to line up as converts.

The Buddha did say "If there was a God you'd have to obey him absolutely" and he lived about 500 years ahead of Christ so he never got to see him.

Interestingly enough the Jews with their Messiah, the Muslims with their 12th Imam, the Christians with their Second Coming and the Buddhists with their Maitreya are all expecting a visitation.

Please no derail from this post. If you want to discuss this then start another thread.

lol

Well the way to start is to be present in the moment and focus on your breathing. You don't need any "dojo" or "sensei" to help you as you have all you need to do it yourself with just that amount of information although it could speed things along and enhance the experience you could get by trying a program or training aid of some kind.

These could speed things up:
This biofeedback device
http://www.heartmathstore.com/item/6...tress-reliever
for the tolerant of super duper loads of hippie stuff
there is a program called wilddivine that has all kinds of biofeedback programs that instruct and monitor you through your computer, the relaxing rhythms programs is the least granola eating tree hugger one of them there fwiw
http://www.wilddivine.com/

This book and this cd are very good:
http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrop...9889611&sr=1-1


http://www.amazon.com/Guided-Mindful...ref=pd_sim_b_1

that book and cd constitute the program from University of Massachusetts on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction with amazing results

this would the the way for you as it has the absolute min of what you might perceive to be crunch hippie crap

If you can tolerate just some hippie crap just look up Mattieu Ricard, and Eckhart Tolle's lectures on you tube or google author for free as well!

: ) all the best sir!

These knees will not bend and this tongue shall not confess. I would far and away rather go to hell than have anything to do with the god in the bible. I am certainly not waiting for any gods to show up of any kind. I have no plan to derail, but if you did not want to discuss it, why make the comment here? If you truly think a discussion of your comments could not be had here, why not start your own thread for that tangent? I don't mean to be abrasive, just highlighting the difference in my feeling and what you said and was truly curious about the "derail" comment.

Every good thing sir! : )

The comment was irresistible but I have to have some respect for the Buddhists so I said don't derail it by arguing.

I think you may be more an atheist than a Buddhist. There are some Buddhists most likely Nhich That Hanh who would agree with my statement. He wrote "Living Buddha/Living Christ". Take a look at the Buddhist wheel of life some time. There's a being spinning the wheel.

That makes sense, but again that is sort of like the that there are as many flavors of buddhism as there are of christianity. Like I said I think of it as a philosophical perspective, much as the Nicomacchean Ethics are as well. I certainly agree I could and should be called an atheist. A goodly plurality of those who identify with buddhist thought should certainly not be defined as religious.

You are correct that there is mythology related to buddhism as well...but I don't think it makes anyone less a bone fide buddhist not to buy into it. : )

Well people tend to think in very frozen snapshot ways about concepts but we're all really on a sliding spectrum of beliefs whatever your label is: atheist, Jew, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, etc.

It might be why I entertain reincarnation seriously. You can have old souls and new souls and God working through the clay across lifetimes until you're perfected in Christ's final work. Just my current opinion. I'm not too much into denominationalism. God eventually plans to unify the world imo but it could be veiled to us in our current state.