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That’s really helpful, thank you! I appreciate it; I still have a long way to go.
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Dec 15, 2018 18:55
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Can anyone recommend me an introductory text on Pure Land Buddhism?
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Jan 19, 2019 20:59
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heart of the shin buddhist path is a really good book for jodo shinshu, though shigaraki is a bit unorthodox at times. taitetsu unno has written a bunch of books about jodo shinshu designed as more spiritual instead of systematic. kinda trying to be the jodo shinshu d t suzuki, which he failed at but what can you do, not even d t suzuki was able to be the d t suzuki of jodo shinshu. taitetsu unno also translated the tannisho, which is a collection of jodo shinshu’s founder, shinran shonin’s, sayings. it has a really in depth commentary that explains a lot of jodo shinshu’s teachings. there’s also a bunch of translations of rennyo (a reformer figure in jodo shinshu who revitalized jodo shinshu thought during the muromachi period) and his letters, which i can’t say i have any favorites. also read takagi kenmyo’s “my socialism” for an idea of jodo shinshu’s political implications, both progressive and regressive if you mean chinese pure land, my old buddhism professor, charles jones, has at least one article about chinese pure land practice as separate from jodo shinshu, or something like that. i read it a while ago. for tibetan pure land practice you’d have to ask paramemetic
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Jan 19, 2019 22:25
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Tibetan Pure Land isn't a thing as such, in that there isn't an idea that we can't possibly attain enlightenment in this world with an aspiration to be reborn into Sukhavati with that being our only hope. However, the Aspiration of Sukhavati is a thing, usually practiced as either a merit-building exercise or a kind of parachute technique. That is, we want to strive to attain enlightenment in this lifetime, and aspiring to be reborn in Sukhavati with the purpose of benefiting sentient beings by attaining enlightenment is a meritorious aspiration that is beneficial to us on the path and can help us attain in this lifetime. Beyond that, if we die and other methods of liberation practice don't work (for example if we get confused at the time of death and so fail to successfully achieve Phowa, if we don't have a strong enough connection to the guru to be reborn in his or her pure land, or so on, then it's a good failsafe. Within Phowa practice it's even considered one of the possible results. But in and of itself as a tradition where one focuses entirely on the aspiration of being reborn in Dewachen, pure land practice doesn't really exist in Tibet as such. It's just one of many potential outcomes that Tibetans acknowledge as possible and will practice to use as a potential option, but more generally which Tibetans will use to generate merit towards liberation in this lifetime.
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Jan 22, 2019 05:07
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Hi again buddhathread! I'm a part of indigenous/pagan religion, but I've found myself suddenly thrust into a Vajrayana lineage! I have a 12 step sponsor who I specifically chose for his high level and knowledge of meditation, and he's set me on a daily practice of "somatic meditation", a set up practiced by Dr. Reginald Ray, himself a student of Trungpa Rinpoche, a colourful figure and tulku of one of the Tibetan buddhist lineages. While the discipline and practice is managable (30 minutes of meditation a day, give or take), he also encourages me to learn about and understand the "internal lineage", which he calls meditation and spirituality divorced from formal religion. This makes sense in a general sense, but apart from the books of Ray, I'm unsure of how to proceed in this learning. What are good introductory sources on Vajrayana meditation or Tibetan buddhism?
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Jan 29, 2019 10:24
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Can anyone recommend me an introductory text on Pure Land Buddhism? Probably the most informative book for me was "All is Change" by Lawrence Sutin, though this is not specifically about Pure Land theologies. It does have a lot of great jokes and takes a few moments to reduce Heidegger to his component atoms, though.
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Jan 29, 2019 22:28
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A double post for a different topic: Does anyone have much information or familiarity with Shingon Buddhism? I had been reading some historical stuff and it was interesting to see that it seems to be the other Vajrayana branch that didn't get wiped out in some Chinese political purge hundreds of years ago.
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Jan 29, 2019 22:40
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I recently found out that I work near a Jōdo Shinshū temple in New York City. While I've primarily been studying Tibetan Buddhism in nyc, (Thanks to The Dark Wind!!) I've been curious to check it out bc of this thread. I don't know much about Pure Land Buddhism, but it looks like now is a good time to check it out! Thanks everyone, I'll look into the referred materials above during Gutor. e: if anyone is in the downtown nyc area this coming week, please feel free to stop by Yeshe Nyingpo. It is a heart center of the Dudjom Tersar Lineage. Here's a link with more information: http://www.tersar.org/gutor-and-losar-schedule-february-2nd-7th-2019/ Derised fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Feb 1, 2019 |
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Feb 1, 2019 17:22
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Nessus posted:A double post for a different topic: Does anyone have much information or familiarity with Shingon Buddhism? I had been reading some historical stuff and it was interesting to see that it seems to be the other Vajrayana branch that didn't get wiped out in some Chinese political purge hundreds of years ago. Afraid I have no personal affiliation with any Buddhist sect but this forum is one I like to go on to get the views of Buddhists of all persuasions and there is a section on Shingon https://dharmawheel.net/
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Feb 2, 2019 02:27
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Hey guys sorry for this dumb question, I just wanted to know how you guys feel about Dharma Centers. While I was planning to join the Fo Guang Shan its really hard to join when there is no group anywhere near you to join, so I decided to just not join it. However after moving to North Carolina now I am feeling a bit confused about all the different groups of Buddhism, and there isn't a really much in my area.
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Mar 11, 2019 02:52
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I don't know anything aside what googling tells me, and from there I gather there's been a lot of controversy about them ordaining people into a very sectarian tibetan worldview, where they show up to harass other buddhists when the Dalai Lama speaks. It seems pretty hard to penetrate, but I'm sure others in the thread can tell you more.
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Mar 11, 2019 11:17
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Tias posted:I don't know anything aside what googling tells me, and from there I gather there's been a lot of controversy about them ordaining people into a very sectarian tibetan worldview, where they show up to harass other buddhists when the Dalai Lama speaks. It seems pretty hard to penetrate, but I'm sure others in the thread can tell you more. This one seems non-sectarian, it takes place inside of a christian center. Also I wrote Center but I meant community, auto correct decided I meant center. https://www.wsdharmacommunity.org/
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Mar 11, 2019 12:17
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Oh man okay that clarifies some stuff. I was like "but Dharma center is just a generic term for non-monastic centers for laypersons to do Dharma stuff what" but this is a specific thing. I don't see anything on that website that would put me off but because it's community centric it's hard to research if it's any good because it's going to depend heavily on who is in attendance.
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Mar 11, 2019 12:34
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Paramemetic posted:Oh man okay that clarifies some stuff. I was like "but Dharma center is just a generic term for non-monastic centers for laypersons to do Dharma stuff what" but this is a specific thing. Sorry, my bad, I am just needing to find a community and there is not much that I know about here in the NC Triad.
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Mar 11, 2019 14:13
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All the usual disclaimers about Tibetan Buddhism apply, but Urban Dharma is a center in the Drikung Kagyu lineage in Asheville and its core is a pretty good group of people.
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Mar 11, 2019 14:19
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Paramemetic posted:All the usual disclaimers about Tibetan Buddhism apply, but Urban Dharma is a center in the Drikung Kagyu lineage in Asheville and its core is a pretty good group of people. Ashville is a pretty far distance from me, I found this place in Greensboro called Chua Ngan Phat, do you know anything about it l? https://www.chuanganphat.org
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Mar 11, 2019 15:05
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There's also the Kadampa Center in Cary, which is Gelug-affiliated. Despite their name, they thankfully have nothing to do with the New Kadampa Tradition. But I only visited a couple of times, so I can't really speak to what the community is like.
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Mar 11, 2019 16:49
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Laocius posted:There's also the Kadampa Center in Cary, which is Gelug-affiliated. Despite their name, they thankfully have nothing to do with the New Kadampa Tradition. But I only visited a couple of times, so I can't really speak to what the community is like. IIRC the formal name of the Gelugpas is "The New Kadampa School", because Je Tsongkhapa reformed the Kadam school of Atisha. The NKT obviously took the name because it makes them sound legitimate, and its very close to the English names of a lot of orthodox Gelug schools.
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Mar 13, 2019 19:17
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Paramemetic posted:All the usual disclaimers about Tibetan Buddhism apply, but Urban Dharma is a center in the Drikung Kagyu lineage in Asheville and its core is a pretty good group of people. What disclaimers are those 
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Mar 13, 2019 21:45
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Tias posted:What disclaimers are those
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Mar 13, 2019 23:10
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I think the general understanding is that Tibetan Buddhism has a lot of practices that are considered somewhat dangerous, and there are rules about who can teach them and to whom. But not all western schools abide by these rules. There's also a bunch of sectarian conflict been different strains of Tibetan Buddhism, to the point that some of them consider others illegitimate. Is that about right?
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Mar 13, 2019 23:17
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the only illegitimate form of buddhism is nichiren
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Mar 14, 2019 00:29
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Senju Kannon posted:the only illegitimate form of buddhism is nichiren Honorable mention
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Mar 14, 2019 00:52
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E: /\ I feel like that's a good encapsulation of the danger of fully secularizing buddhist practices Tibetan Buddhism is loving weird as all hell from a western, christian perspective and you don't meaningfully bump into the really out there stuff until you've been around it for a while. Also because of the unusually rigid hierarchy (even relative to other Buddhist student-teacher relationships) that guru practice kind of necessitates, there's an exceptional potential for abuse/misuse of power. I wouldn't say either of those are bad exactly, just things to be aware of. Well the 2nd one is definitely dangerous at worst or potentially problematic at best.
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Mar 14, 2019 00:56
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Herstory Begins Now posted:E: /\ I feel like that's a good encapsulation of the danger of fully secularizing buddhist practices The guru / disciple relationship is at the heart of the Vajrayana, and has massive potential for abuse. The Rigpa and Shambhala scandals demonstrate what can happen if the guru is bad. Too often gurus like Sogyal Lakhar and The Sakyong will fall back on the idea of "Crazy Wisdom", which is in most cases an excuse to act like a loving monster under the pretence that your helping disciples "wake up". There is a reason why Patrul Rinpoche said to examine the gurus qualities for 12 years before making the decision to take them as a guru or not.
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Mar 14, 2019 01:13
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how dare you take my joke about the sectarian conflict between jodo shinshu and nichiren and use it to point out the actually bad dark enlightenment buddhism with its randian philosophy
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Mar 14, 2019 01:16
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Yeah, the disclaimers here in particular are that Tibetan Buddhism has a very esoteric approach that is very focused on lineage and living teachers and this can be bewildering and off-putting if one's exposure to Buddhism is limited to philosophy from Wikipedia and very sterilized Western conceptions of Zen. Like, you go in thinking you're going to get some nice relaxing meditation and next thing you know someone is banging a drum and ringing bells and cymbals and then a guy comes out in a cloud of smoke and tells you that if you gently caress up you'll go to a hell realm and then you visualize a giant dude with fangs chopping up bodies with a sword and you're kinda left wondering how the hell you ended up in this weird cult because you don't remember any of it from the Jack Kornfield books. I'm a Tibetan Buddhist and it works really well for me and I think it's a very good tradition but my first time at a service at the center I'm now the president of was extremely confusing because there was a statue of the Buddha but we spent 2 hours doing a ritual for some guy named Jigten Sumgon. All that said, I know the people at the Ashville center and they are extremely chill and good and they tend to make things very accessible. But yeah if I'm recommending a center to someone who isn't specifically looking for a Tibetan Buddhist center there are gonna be some disclaimers like "you're gonna see a lot of skulls and bright colors and chanting and smoke and just roll with it" because it can be a huge difference from what someone is thinking of when they think "Buddhist meditation center" and I would hate for someone to be turned off of the Buddhadharma because they went to a center and got stared down by a Mahakala while they were just looking for a Manjushri.
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Mar 14, 2019 06:16
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Tibetan Buddhism tends to be kind of reminiscent of Catholicism. I notice a lot of former Catholics gravitate to it, myself included. I suspect it's the familiarity of the bells and incense and high ritual approach. One major problem in the Western approach to Tibetan Buddhism has been that Tibetan Buddhist teachers don't have a script for laypeople who actually want to learn Dharma but not within monastic institutions. It is still a point of tension. So what happens is we have lots of laypeople studying The Real poo poo but without the support and structures that monasticism provides. Contrast this to Tibetan or Ladakhi laypeople who say the mantras they're told to say, go to the empowerments to get blessings, make daily offerings and call that good. We're in a fortunate time when there are now a lot of very good Lamas in the West who understand Westerners and are beginning to teach in ways that work for us but without compromising their own values. There have been major struggles especially because Tibetan culture does not really accept innovation in teaching. It's considered arrogant and so only high Lamas can do it and it's pretty rare that they do. For all the negative some people have said, Trungpa Rinpoche really did make an effort to adopt Tibetan Buddhism to the West. There's a lot to unpack though with him, Sogyal, and others however and that unpacking kind of has to come from the people involved with them directly. The system tends to emphasize finding a Lama, testing that Lama, and then relying on him or her completely for one's spiritual development. This can get extremely hosed up because the cultural rules and boundaries differ. Additionally, predation can happen when you have those kinds of power systems in play. Adding to this, Westerners don't always check the bona fides well, and it can be embarrassing for everyone involved to ask the bona fides of some kind of well known Lama. But it's really something we need to do. It's not a problem in the Gelug or Kagyu lineages because they are very structured and checking someone's credentials is pretty easy. It's a bigger problem in the Nyingmapa world because Ngakpas aren't within the monastic institutions and so it's much harder to check if someone is legit. As a general rule, if your Lama is pressuring you into things you don't want to do, that's bad, unless you're at that point. And nobody has been banging people into enlightenment since Drukpa Kunley. One of the most complicated problems Tibetan Buddhism faces today is the problem of abuse and how it's discussed. It happens in the monasteries even, with the young Kalu Rinpoche talking about his own sexual abuse at the hands of older monks. Part of this problem is that criticizing someone's Lama is extremely not a done thing. The Lama is the living connection to the Buddha's teachings and so the disciple should see the Lama as a Buddha (and so receive the blessings of a Buddha, rather than of some normal guy) even if it's basically understood the Lama isn't a Buddha. Seeing them in that way is very important. Because of that, criticizing someone's Lama could shake their faith and hurt their practices, and hurting someone's faith in the Dharma is a very bad thing. So unfortunately Tibetan Buddhism as a whole is struggling to sort this out at all levels. It's probably not a new problem, because any such power systems lend themselves to abuse, but exposure to the West and to changing cultural standards of what is acceptable is challenging it quite a bit. It's a tough thing but it needs to be done. After all, Buddhism is a religion of and for people, not Buddhas. Buddhas have this poo poo figured out, but we, practitioners and teachers alike, have to sort these things out on the path. If I had a single criticism of Tibetan Buddhists in the West, it would be being far too quick to put on rose tinted glasses when looking at Dharma generally. The institutions are human institutions and have human errors. Politics exist. Abuse exists. It's not about those things, but I feel like by leaving them unacknowledged people set themselves up for eventual fallings out. Tibetans. Ladakhis, and so on will absolutely acknowledge it and take the piss in their own ways, rarely calling out superiors but definitely calling out the systems themselves in jokes and so on, just as pretty much everyone will take the piss out of their own cultures and governments and so on. We do ourselves a disservice by seeing Tibetan Buddhism as more pure than even the Tibetans do. Okay as usual I've said way too many words and not answered anything in particular but I felt like I should be real about the abuse problems in my religion so hopefully that was helpful in some way without making Tibetan Buddhism look bad because it's really a great religion and an incredible body of traditions.
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Mar 14, 2019 06:54
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and yet despite bca's trappings being taken almost entirely from protestantism, jodo shinshu still remains one of the least popular sects of buddhism for american converts. like seriously my temple has tai chi and meditation nights cause it's hard to get butts in the pews with the nembutsu and there's bills to pay there's just something about how catholicism imprints its aesthetic that even if you completely fall out of its theology, you still feel a need to find something like it, so it makes sense that tibetan buddhism would attract converts from catholicism. i'd feel bad for people who converted cause of the child molestation crisis, though, cause it sounds like there's some analogs between the two concerning abuse by lamas and gurus. i'm not really surprised the same isn't true for protestants. there's not really a "protestant aesthetic," more like a lack of aesthetic, and if you're converting from it you're not going to want to see more of the same. still, it's disappointing that when you're talking about "american buddhism" only scholars are going to talk about bca and the honpa hongwanji mission of hawaii since they're one of the oldest buddhist institutions in the united states. but not even d t suzuki could be the d t suzuki for jodo shinshu.
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Mar 14, 2019 11:42
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Since y'all know a lot about the pitfalls of tibetan stuff, what is your opinion of Reggie Ray? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Ray My teacher is a follower of him, and by extension, of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who seems to have been quite a character.
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Mar 14, 2019 12:15
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Tias posted:Since y'all know a lot about the pitfalls of tibetan stuff, what is your opinion of Reggie Ray? Nude Hoxha Cameo posted:Reggie Ray was the teacher of Shadowstar, who wrote the OP of the old thread. I don't think he's posted in this one in some time (if ever), but I assume he'd be (if willing) an excellent source of information on Reggie Ray for anyone who might be interested.
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Mar 14, 2019 13:25
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Tias posted:Since y'all know a lot about the pitfalls of tibetan stuff, what is your opinion of Reggie Ray? His two books Indestructible Truth and The Secret of the Vajra World are the most accessible introductions to the Tibetan strain of Mahayana and Vajrayana for Westerner's in my opinion. I'm not aware of any controversies about him in particular, beyond the connection to Trungpa. His podcast is pretty good as well.
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Mar 14, 2019 13:46
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Thank you! The buddha's compassion go with you  e: 
Tias fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Mar 14, 2019 |
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Mar 14, 2019 14:13
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Paramemetic posted:Yeah, the disclaimers here in particular are that Tibetan Buddhism has a very esoteric approach that is very focused on lineage and living teachers and this can be bewildering and off-putting if one's exposure to Buddhism is limited to philosophy from Wikipedia and very sterilized Western conceptions of Zen. Like, you go in thinking you're going to get some nice relaxing meditation and next thing you know someone is banging a drum and ringing bells and cymbals and then a guy comes out in a cloud of smoke and tells you that if you gently caress up you'll go to a hell realm and then you visualize a giant dude with fangs chopping up bodies with a sword and you're kinda left wondering how the hell you ended up in this weird cult because you don't remember any of it from the Jack Kornfield books. Btw I was not meaning any offense by calling vajrayana weird. Before I first formally interacted with a nyingma center a friend pulled me aside and just said 'hey be aware, they do some very weird stuff, like some of it really is pretty out there and you'll probably have some strong feelings about it' and tbh I think it was helpful to have that acknowledged in advance: some part of it is going to seem very strange to almost anyone of any background. Regardless of tradition, people always seem to have a strong reaction to some aspect of ritual/practice (like all the people who are wildly creeped out by chanting, for instance). Ironically, someone showing up to a zen center is going to have a not-dissimilar experience though there will at least be some silent sitting which they probably mostly accurately pictured before hand, albeit even that is wildly different in a group setting. Zen hits you very hard in the face with a ton of overt and subtle ritual basically from day one. If someone never goes to a sufficiently established (enough to have all the bells and whistles, literally) zen practice place they're going to have a very sterilized idea of what zen practice entails. That said, zen similarly kind of lacks historical, practical examples of serious lay practice. Paramemetic posted:One of the most complicated problems Tibetan Buddhism faces today is the problem of abuse and how it's discussed. It happens in the monasteries even, with the young Kalu Rinpoche talking about his own sexual abuse at the hands of older monks. Part of this problem is that criticizing someone's Lama is extremely not a done thing. The Lama is the living connection to the Buddha's teachings and so the disciple should see the Lama as a Buddha (and so receive the blessings of a Buddha, rather than of some normal guy) even if it's basically understood the Lama isn't a Buddha. Seeing them in that way is very important. Because of that, criticizing someone's Lama could shake their faith and hurt their practices, and hurting someone's faith in the Dharma is a very bad thing. So unfortunately Tibetan Buddhism as a whole is struggling to sort this out at all levels. It's probably not a new problem, because any such power systems lend themselves to abuse, but exposure to the West and to changing cultural standards of what is acceptable is challenging it quite a bit. It's a tough thing but it needs to be done. After all, Buddhism is a religion of and for people, not Buddhas. Buddhas have this poo poo figured out, but we, practitioners and teachers alike, have to sort these things out on the path. I've pulled back from Buddhism a number of times in my life because this convo ends up eclipsing a lot of more practice related stuff and it is personally draining to engage with too consistently, yet too important to refuse to engage with. Afaik every major tradition is wrestling with it right now. To a real extent that question of how to engage in a very human institution and how to show reverence (and even to aspire to that kind of idealized level of reverence for a teacher that you read about), yet not the kind of blind reverence that leads to abuse of any kind is itself ~the practice~. On some level it's probably why sangha is specifically included as a pillar: there just isn't a way to engage with the other aspects of buddhism without dealing with all the attendant human, social and group dynamics. On some level it sucks, but it's also good preparation for having to deal with the same kind of stuff in essentially every other human group context. While abusing power is essentially a side-effect of hierarchical organizations, there's a type of skepticism towards religious institutions and teachers that develops parallel to them that simply hasn't really had a time to fully propagate in the US to the same depth and degree. Part of it is vitally serious, eg kickstarting the question of 'how do we best deal with abuses as they are brought up to ensure they can't happen again and that abusers face real consequences' and imo there's another half of that which is just learning to have more of a sense of humor towards and kind of playful relationship with anything revered. There's this peculiar type of credulous earnestness in a lot of people who wrap themselves in the title of 'seeker' who you can tell are ready to charge headlong into a dangerous situation. idk, I saw some of the aftermath of a couple scandals as well as some of the aftermath of the SFZC/Dick Baker shitshow firsthand and have talked to the people involved at considerable length about just wtf lessons can be taken from it all and the biggest takeaway seemed to be the above: institute best practices but also stop taking religion so drat seriously all the time. If you meet the buddha on the road, make fun of him I'm rambling a bit because there isn't really a simple answer to any of this outside of expecting everyone to learn the signs of abuse and learning to speak up against authority. I'll shutup now, but I want to share an Islamic folk story about their trickster mullah Nasruddin that always sticks with me quote:One day, a neighbor whom Mullah Nasruddin didn't like came to see him. The neighbor asked Nasruddin, "May I borrow your donkey?" Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Mar 14, 2019 |
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Mar 14, 2019 22:05
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Btw I was not meaning any offense by calling vajrayana weird. None taken! It is weird to us. There are two things working against it. First, it's esoteric stuff at its face. If we want to call a spade a spade, Vajrayana is about using magical rituals and occult methods to accelerate the goals of the Mahayana. "I want to achieve liberation for all sentient beings, and I want to do it sooner rather than later, so I'm going to harness my body energies and use invocations to assume the deity's nature." That is wild unless someone's coming from a magic-accepting culture, and it's only in the past 10 or 20 years that there has been anything resembling a Counter-Disenchantment. Then, on top of that, the symbols and methods and so on are foreign to us. Even Western magical stuff is less weird because it uses symbols we're used to seeing. A pentagram on an altar is like "oh, this is occult stuff." But we have all these foreign things like dorjes and bells and hell, even the texts are printed in a different format in the traditional pecha. It's weird stuff. Straight up not a problem. quote:I've pulled back from Buddhism a number of times in my life because this convo ends up eclipsing a lot of more practice related stuff and it is personally draining to engage with too consistently, yet too important to refuse to engage with. This is unfortunate; not that you have had to engage with it but that it's eclipsed practice and caused you to pull back. And it's a legitimate concern. We're on a razor's edge essentially: ignore the problem and we lend our tacit consent and approval, focus too much on the problem and we poison ourselves to the practices that actually are meant to benefit us. There's the parallel problem of using the practice to address the problem. "So your guru raped you, you should be with that and accept things you cannot change and recognize impermanence and the non-existence of self..." But at the same time, those are solutions that work, that's why we're practicing Buddhism in the first place. I wasn't sure about addressing it, but since it came up up thread I wanted to give it a proper treatment. Not giving it any treatment at all could have been seen, after all, as ignoring the situation; and that's something I've gotten enough of in the past because it's a very common attack against not only Buddhism but all religion at this point. With Tibetan Buddhism in particular, Lama abuse and "the Dalai Lama hates gays" are the two standard tacks and as a center's public face I have to navigate that sometimes. Anyhow, yeah, it is absolutely a thing that we should be doing, and the Sangha refuge is there to help that. But it's important to remember that there are little-s and big-S sanghas. There is the dharma community, which we should associate ourselves with because they should help, or at least not actively interfere in our practice; and the capital-S Sangha of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. And it's really important that we recognize that nobody in the little-s sangha is a Buddha or Bodhisattva and so we have to check their ideas with ours. One of the greatest elements of Buddhism is that Buddha taught that we should test things for ourselves. If someone tells you something that you think will make you miserable or will be dangerous or so on, you absolutely can and should go "hey, wait a second." Naropa famously jumped off the roof of a building because he overheard Tilopa say "if I had a true disciple, he would jump off the building." But Tilopa was also able to mend Naropa's broken body with a touch! If you have that kind of faith and that kind of guru, knock yourself out; but we shouldn't compare our situations to others. Sort of the whole point in many ways.
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Mar 15, 2019 14:54
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Hello again thread! I went to my first buddhist meeting tonight with a local chapter of "Soka Gakki International" after a friend invited me to join. It seems to be a very different buddhism than I expected, especially considering that my friend was always someone very logic oriented. I think the biggest hump for me to get over is the chanting, and having to chant often. One of the chants goes "nam-myoho-renge-kyo" and that's just sorta repeated for minutes at a time. They put a significant amount of emphasis on the importance of chanting, and they explained the origin and importance of each word. I can't really bring myself to buy into it though? How is it different from simply meditating/mindfulness exercises in the more or less cognitive-behavioral-therapy way? I sorta showed up with no notice and they all kindly adjusted the scope of the hour meeting to accommodate a new person.They had answered some questions I had, and were very hospitable an honest, so I saved these questions for here so I wouldn't potentially come off as rude or anything in person. I'd like to hear your input on this. Thank you!
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Apr 4, 2019 07:37
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soka gakai is nichiren buddhism and should be condemned as heretical just joshing you, little bit of friendly jodo shinshu/nichren humor for you there. anyway, it's not a secular buddhism, it's very mahayanna. they recite the lotus sutra (and by "recite the lotus sutra" they mean "repeat the title of the lotus sutra over and over again," which makes it incredibly accessible for common people and why jodo shinshu has a bit of a rivalry with them). as for why and to what purpose; iunno. i would assume the goal is buddhahood, as is the goal of all mahayanna buddhism, but as for the mechanics and buddhology i've got nothing i can talk about jodo shinshu tho
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Apr 4, 2019 08:05
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buglord posted:They put a significant amount of emphasis on the importance of chanting, and they explained the origin and importance of each word. I can't really bring myself to buy into it though? How is it different from simply meditating/mindfulness exercises in the more or less cognitive-behavioral-therapy way? So this is an explanation from outside of nichiren Buddhism per se from academic Buddhism trying to explain what you’re seeing in terms of the praxis of the chanting of the lotus sutras name. I’ll try to be brief. First off it’s important to know that despite the rhetoric you see now about Mahāyāna vs Hinayana and their exegetical emphases, what we know about the emergence of Mahāyāna is that it seems to be a reaction towards the institutional Buddhism of its time (around the turn of the common era, centered in and around Gandhara, modern day Afghanistan). For that period, one of the main drives of monastic Buddhists was the support of the stupa cult and the usage of stupa worship by the laity to both legitimate and support the monastic communities. A common practice and formula you see dictated in Vinaya texts (meant to organize monastic law and life) is that by building a stupa you generate so much merit and this will usually be juxtaposed with other merit generating practices. The innovation you start to see in the Mahayana texts is a decentering of stupa culture and a centering of texts as the centripetal force of the sangha. You see a cooption of then contemporary main stream practices regarding the generation of merit and you see the Mahāyāna text placed at the top. Academically this is referred to as a Cult of the Book. Practices said to generate the most merit would be reciting the Mahāyāna sutra. Even more so writing it down and propagating it. This discourse is embedded in several of the oldest Mahāyāna texts, of maximum merit being generated by the propagation of not even Mahāyāna doctrine per se but explicitly the text. Now there is about ~1900 years between early Mahāyāna and Nichiren (a very late form of Buddhism) and there have been many shifts in rhetorical emphases and doctrinal innovations emerging in the interim. A common theme you see in the development of Japanese Buddhisms are periodic crises in exegesis and understanding of the core tenets of Buddhism. It can be easy to understand why, as by the time it was catching on in Japan it was already dead in India and only seen as through a glass darkly in the Buddhism that had developed in China. One consequence of that you see is that there are strong anti-intellectual and anti-textual strains in forms of Japanese Buddhism and a recentering of concentration and meditation practices which place less emphasis on doctrine and text (which early Mahāyāna v much cared about) in lieu of practices which depend less on what would be difficult for any but a few monastic elites to understand (if at all, given issues of transmission and translation). So what you’re seeing in Nichiren Buddhism is a sort of rediscovery and recentering of a foundational and very early tenet of Mahāyāna Buddhism. That the path to generating the most merit and the path towards obtaining a better rebirth is best obtained through the spread and propagation of the Mahāyāna text (not even the understanding, just the recitation/writing/spread thereof), in this case the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren Buddhism essentializes this practice one step further by saying you don’t even need to spread or say the whole lotus sutra, merely the name. And you see this bear out in the rest of Nichiren Buddhism’s posture towards the world, which is very much in the missionary mode. Only time I’ve ever had a Buddhist walk up to me out of nowhere (in the states) and talk to me about the Buddha and the dharma was a Nichiren Buddhist handing me a card with nyam mojo renge kyon on it, shaking my hand then heading off the other direction. Didn’t even want to go too deep into it like Christian missionaries that occasionally want to talk in book stores. Drop the nembutsu and deuces. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 16:15
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It's worth mentioning that Nichiren is a lot more exclusivist and evangelistic (for lack of a better term) than most forms of Mahayana Buddhism, which might be even more true for Soka Gakkai. SG also has a more holistic approach to lifestyle, as well as an explicit political platform, which isn't very common in East Asian Buddhism. They're actually affiliated with a pretty powerful Japanese political party called Komeito. This isn't meant to necessarily dissuade you from joining, but I think it's important to know up front.
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Apr 4, 2019 19:58
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komeito? aren't they, like, super conservative? upon googling; yeah, they are. what a bunch of neo-liberal, ldp coalition forming, privatization focused a holes
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Apr 4, 2019 21:52
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