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Good posts today bhikgoonsPollyanna posted:
What I think is important to do is to try to break the chain of thoughts. Sitting practice makes this easier and a moment of mindfulness when you catch yourself in negative fan fiction about yourself can help. You should also guard against condemning yourself for imperfection, it’s a process. As for doubt, take a pragmatic view. You can’t know without a test. And learning can be like a landslide. Very little then all at once.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:22
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Your brain is very stupid and cannot tel the difference between fake thoughts and real ones. You feel like the thoughts are fake because you aren’t used to them just like someone who thinks an exotic cuisine is disgusting because they aren’t used to it. Keep forcing yourself to think the good thoughts even though they feel fake and eventually they will become real.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:25
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A Tendai priest was giving a talk on emptiness and showed this clip. At 1:05, when the buzzard looks down, he paused it and said, "This is the realization of emptiness." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UG2xVExfu8
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Nov 3, 2022 20:33
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Emptiness can sound really impenetrable and mystical until you stop and ask, "Empty of what?". The answer is "Empty of svabhava". Which is a sanskrit term that is often translated as essence. In a western context, buddhist emptiness is like anti-platonism. The chair has no chair-essence. And the chair parts have no part-essence. Everything is contingent, and so is emptiness. Emptiness is also empty of essence, and it therefore not some sort of nihilistic cosmic foundation. And the biggest reason it comes off as a hard concept is just that most translations leave out the svabhava. The Mulamadhyamakakarika is the most technical breakdown of this, but it is a lot like reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Which is not for everyone. And Buddhist notions of emptiness should leave you with a feeling of vertigo. You are up in a tree, sawing off the branch you are sitting on. The bodhisattvas do this without fear, because they know there is no ground to hit. It's emptiness all the way down. So just enjoy floating around in free fall.
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Nov 4, 2022 05:35
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Thirteen Orphans posted:A Tendai priest was giving a talk on emptiness and showed this clip. At 1:05, when the buzzard looks down, he paused it and said, "This is the realization of emptiness." Is the talk online somewhere? Beowulfs_Ghost posted:Emptiness can sound really impenetrable and mystical until you stop and ask, "Empty of what?".
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Nov 4, 2022 06:26
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Nessus posted:I think a lot of problems with communicating the dharma end up coming down to weird nuances here, we had an entire derail in the other religion thread which in large part turned on different definitions of "suffering," which I know is itself not a perfect translation of "dukkha." Some of this talking past each other, in terms of Buddhism verse western thought, has very deep and hard to see roots. There is a lot of assumed Platonism and Aristotelian metaphysics in many western traditions. Things like abstract concepts having a one true essential meaning. Universals being real and meaningful. Or classical logic being a thing that exists independent of human minds. Buddhism on the other hand believes essences are self contradictory, universals are not real, nothing is permanent, uses a very different system of logic, and has had several schools devoted to smashing metaphysical systems. Some of these issues can be laid at the feet of Buddhists though. With so many writings and commentaries, sometimes they do just leave stuff out, assuming the reader can fill in the blanks. The Heart Sutra is very popular, and does exactly that. It assumes the person chanting it knows what goes in the middles of some of those lists.
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Nov 4, 2022 08:51
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Yeah my first interpretation of empty was “mutable”, or “variable”. If something is empty it can hold something, anything, so it could refer to anything and just sorta doesn’t mean anything in its own except what is assigned to it. The word “empty” is also empty. (Obviously influenced by a mixture of computer programming and Laozi, the latter of which I’m more familiar with than Buddhist lit.) I don’t think I like the word empty to describe what we’re talking about here, but I am not confident in any alternatives. Beowulfs_Ghost posted:And Buddhist notions of emptiness should leave you with a feeling of vertigo. You are up in a tree, sawing off the branch you are sitting on. The bodhisattvas do this without fear, because they know there is no ground to hit. It's emptiness all the way down. So just enjoy floating around in free fall. Haven’t exactly gotten the full force of it, but I’ve peered over the edge a number of times before. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Nov 4, 2022 |
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Nov 4, 2022 14:29
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I suppose I also have another relatively uninformed question. What is the difference between nonself and emptiness?
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Nov 4, 2022 18:44
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Nessus posted:Is the talk online somewhere? Unfortunately it’s not. This was over a decade ago at my university, so not much of a streaming culture yet.
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Nov 4, 2022 19:10
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Pollyanna posted:Yeah my first interpretation of empty was “mutable”, or “variable”. If something is empty it can hold something, anything, so it could refer to anything and just sorta doesn’t mean anything in its own except what is assigned to it. The word “empty” is also empty. Sort of. Part of the insistence on emptiness is to make clear that it is not a place holder for something else. The argument is that a thing's essence is to be without essence. This then turns it back on the observer, to make one ponder why they are trying to pour essence into something that is totally incapable of holding an essence. And that much of our suffering stems from all these essence post-it-notes constantly slipping off things as fast as we can stick them back on. How often have you found yourself upset at a thing because it isn't living up to some expectation that you have placed on it? Pollyanna posted:I suppose I also have another relatively uninformed question. What is the difference between nonself and emptiness? Not much. Nonself is just to realize you are empty of an essential self. There is no Platonic Pollyanna soul that inhabits your body. Your purpose in life is not to fully actualize the authentic Pollyanna. Not-self (anatman in sanskrit) came before all the talk of everything being empty (sunyata). Part of the reason emptiness got such a central role was that Buddhist philosophers would accept that a person may be empty, but then settle on some other thing having an essential nature. Then other Buddhists would come along and explain that those new essential things are also empty, and to stop playing games with metaphysics.
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Nov 4, 2022 20:03
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Pollyanna posted:Yeah my first interpretation of empty was “mutable”, or “variable”. If something is empty it can hold something, anything, so it could refer to anything and just sorta doesn’t mean anything in its own except what is assigned to it. The word “empty” is also empty. I feel like it's not always easy to get a direct grasp on certain concepts by way of direct explanation. Sometimes it's easier to just see how other folks talk about it until it clicks. So here are a couple little bits of wisdom for you: Seung Sahn talks about understanding emptiness as being similar to the hands of a clock, starting at 12 o'clock, traveling around the clock and eventually coming back to 12. But even though midnight and noon are both 12, that doesn't mean they are the same thing. (These are not his exact words but are pretty close:) quote:The layperson says: A bird is a bird, a flower is a flower. Basho's lovely poem is also about emptiness. quote:The temple bell stops I wholeheartedly recommend the compilation of Seung Sahn's teachings, "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha," as a great form of insight into zen buddhism. It really cracked open the idea and purpose of koans for me. Cephas fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 15:43
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In his masterwork the Gong Chig, Jigten Sumgon writes the Incomparable Drikung Kyabgon Jigten Sumgon posted:It is generally accepted that realizations that come from hearing, contemplating, and Basically, you figure out enlightenment and attain realization by working the path and not really by reading or thinking about it a whole lot. If you think about it too much you won't actually engage with it properly. Use those things as tools to get there but don't get too caught up in trying to figure anything out. Just practice the path with confidence that it necessarily results in enlightenment. Much like capitalists won't sell us the rope to hang them with, we can't conceptually reason our way to freedom from conceptuality. We can (and must) use these tools to get started, but the result comes from following the path rather than reading about it. You can have a really good understanding of emptiness as a concept but no realization, but it's much better to have experience of emptiness without being able to say a lot of pretty words about it. the same dude posted:Although many accept that view, meditation, and conduct are three distinct [aspects Edit to add: that's not to say you shouldn't contemplate and wrestle with and think about this stuff. This is not antischolarship. This is recognizing that all that stuff is preliminary or perhaps incidental to actually reaching realization. It helps, but you can't attain the result without actually engaging the path. This conversation can still be fruitful but really only insomuch as it gets you moving on the path, because emptiness will only be a conceptual elaboration until you get the glimpse, and the glimpse isn't worth much until it's stabilized, and once it's stabilized you don't need all this academic stuff, and it's left behind like a boat on the shore. Paramemetic fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 19:05
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Hi thread. I'm depressed, heavily medicated and feel hopeless that all the medication and therapy just isn't helping. I'm just stuck with feelings that nothing I do is ever good enough and there's no point in trying. This hasn't helped me keep down a job and I'm just drifting through life. I guess I'm posting here because I've studied Buddhism on and off for years now and at some level I've come to just accept a lot of what it says as true. Maybe not the finer points of Buddhist cosmology but rebirth is rebirth and it's as rational as any other idea of what happens when we die. Karma affects us regardless of whether we understand how or whether we think it's even fair. The thing is that bothers because I realize how impossibly fortunate this life is and yet here I am depressed as gently caress and not even trying progress or even just accumulate merit. Everything feels like another chore that I'm not completing or I'm just half-assing. I'm headed for an unfortunate rebirth because of my apathy. I realize I'm just turning Buddhism into another avenue to criticize myself but I feel powerless to DO anything about that. How do I cultivate compassion for myself when I'm self-critical about everything including attempts at lovingkindness towards myself? It's like this impossible trap to get out of.
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Nov 7, 2022 12:14
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I feel much the same way. The thing that helps me is to recognize the Bodhisattva's vow: to save all beings. To save all beings means to also save yourself. I find comfort and power in knowing that, to save all beings, I have to also save myself. In other words, you have just as much worth as everyone else in the universe. Your struggle is a real struggle, and all beings cannot be saved unless you are saved as well. Therefore, as a Buddhist with loving compassion toward all beings--as a Bodhisattva with a desire to save all beings--you have to do everything you can to save yourself. The only way to love all beings is to also love yourself. If you recognize and accept the dharma, then this is life's mandate. Learn to love yourself, learn to care for yourself, learn to save yourself. If you could save one person's life, would you say your life was worth living? In that case, even if all you do in your whole life is manage to save yourself, you'll have lived a meaningful life. I truly believe this.
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Nov 8, 2022 03:48
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who was it that said it was a kind of vanity to consider yourself below others, just like it is vanity to consider yourself above them? i think it was a Buddhist text, but i have read a bunch of those over the past couple months so that could tint my memories anyways, perhaps more importantly, i have been pretty good about regular practice a couple times a day! writing this post is my last action before a 30 minute session, and then sleep  oh that reminds me, any best practices when it comes to stuff like that? i recall reading that it can be counterproductive to train yourself to associate meditation with sleep
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Nov 8, 2022 04:35
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1337JiveTurkey posted:Hi thread. I'm just some rear end in a top hat but you might try to cultivate stillness when you feel the inner voice telling you you're lazy and lovely. Like the Johnny Cash song says, one piece at a time.
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Nov 8, 2022 04:35
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Thanks for the helpful words! If I'm completely honest, I was super full of myself like a typical "gifted" teenager when I was younger and most of my later life has been a reaction against that. Now that I'm older I've swung the opposite direction in that I'm not special and really sort of anti-special. Just talking about it it's like I'm grasping super hard at being just a loser now. Maybe I need to understand better what's going on when I do that.
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Nov 8, 2022 07:33
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A worldly question. I’ve got some blank walls. I wanna fill them up with some art and messages and stuff. Something I wanna do is regularly remind myself of then core concepts: the Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Five Remembrances, the Turnings of the Wheel, etc. Things to make this stick in my mind, since my brain takes well to repetition and consistent exposure and reflection. So, I wanna hang these chants/mantras/verses on my walls. And other important things to reflect on! Any recommendations? Any out-of-the-box items I can get?
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Nov 8, 2022 16:36
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Pollyanna posted:A worldly question. You can find scrolls of the Heart Sutra, my sister used to have a lovely one hanging in her room with an image of Guan Yin.
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Nov 8, 2022 17:14
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Pollyanna posted:A worldly question.
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Nov 8, 2022 20:13
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Double-posting: My practice has a huge challenge here as the monkey brain wants me to doomscroll the American election. The thing is, whatever the outcome, I can do literally nothing about it, and whatever suffering or negative fruits will come from any of the possible outcomes is completely outside of what I can do! Detaching from this is terribly hard and I would welcome any short-term or long-term advice on aligning practice regarding it.
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Nov 8, 2022 20:23
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Nessus posted:It's difficult to say what would be good but there's definitely a range of stuff, even if you want to pick through some of the bullshido. Are you involved in a particular branch? Do you have a particular teaching or sutra that's important to you? I mean there's a ton of stuff just looking on Amazon, even if you may want to make sure you're getting actual money to actual Buddhists and poo poo. Just the basics. I’m not part of any branch. Theravada is the best matching school of thought for me. I have yet to find specific sutras I am attached to, the Heart sutra is a good one though. There are basic teachings and concepts I need to internalize and continually remind myself of. The wheel, the truths, the remembrances, views and practices that we’re recommended to learn. Consistent visibility is the basis of familiarity. I forget the parts of the eightfold path and the remembrances, and prolly a lot more. Ways to remember helps. Also my walls are bare and that’s sad and I wanna fill them with stuff important to me. This is part of that.
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Nov 8, 2022 20:41
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Things that jump to mind 9 Steps of Mental Development  6 Realms of Existence, 12 Links of Dependent Origination, Samsara etc Tibetan Buddhism would have your lineage tree,  Turning the Wheel at the Deer Park All of those would be found very easily and the first two are standard issue and very easy to find in numerous beautiful variation to meet any requirement and, depending on your level of orthodoxy, aren't requiring of any protocol or in any way irreverent to use as decoration.
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Nov 8, 2022 21:23
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1337JiveTurkey posted:
This is me. I wonder if I have adhd maybe. anyway coming to grips with realising you're a loser and not special kinda sucks. not saying you are, I don't know you, but it's true about myself lol.
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Nov 8, 2022 22:55
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1337JiveTurkey posted:
Start your Metta meditation/thoughts far away from yourself and then work inward. Focus on the good (well, all but we'll get there) beings and animals that are emotionally and physically distant from you first, then gradually decrees the radius of your Metta field (whatever that means) to those closer to you and ultimately then include yourself.
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Nov 8, 2022 23:03
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Paramemetic posted:Things that jump to mind I’m a big fan of the bhavachakra’s mnemonic nature (also it slaps). I am spoiled for choice on it too! Ultimately, the philosophy is my main focus as opposed to the theology. I’m most interested in art and diagrams that serve as explanations and reminders of theory and practice. The dharma wheel is a great visual metaphor, but it looks like it was never used to communicate the eightfold path in art to the extent that the cycle of rebirth was. Maybe I should just get used to trying to remember all the practices whenever I see it. I had hoped to avoid sticking text all over my walls Pepe Silvia style, but maybe it’s just that what I’m looking for is best communicated through text. Heart sutra’s not a bad idea, and I might make my own display of the remembrances cuz I have an idea. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 9, 2022 00:40
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Pollyanna posted:I had hoped to avoid sticking text all over my walls Pepe Silvia style, but maybe it’s just that what I’m looking for is best communicated through text. Heart sutra’s not a bad idea, and I might make my own display of the remembrances cuz I have an idea. 
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Nov 9, 2022 22:58
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Tag yourself. I’m Corps Decomposition
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Nov 9, 2022 23:08
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This may be a stupid question, is this based off a preexisting mandala where the words are just what the images are representing? If so do you know which one?
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Nov 9, 2022 23:08
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Thirteen Orphans posted:This may be a stupid question, is this based off a preexisting mandala where the words are just what the images are representing? If so do you know which one? I don’t know, found it here along with some other interesting ones: https://www.dhammacharts.org/
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Nov 10, 2022 00:17
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Those aren’t very appealing or well-designed, unfortunately.
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Nov 10, 2022 13:17
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I think they look pretty cool, but if you had a giant one decorating your room I would absolutely think you were a neon genesis evangelion villain
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Nov 10, 2022 15:36
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Makes my head hurt. A mandala as a way to summarize and communicate practices and concepts is not a bad idea. I just don’t understand this all well enough to translate it into an accurate geometric diagram. I can try tho, since I don’t have to be perfect and it’ll all change anyway.
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Nov 10, 2022 16:16
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Yeah the idea is cool but a certain level of info density just collapses into crazy man diagrams.
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Nov 10, 2022 17:11
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Buddhists are well known for their love of cross referenced lists. As for something to just hang on your wall, the Heart Sutra is hard to beat as a reference to core Buddhist concepts. It mentions; the 5 skandhas 6 sense gates, objects, and consciousnesses 12 links of dependent origination 4 noble truths And studying any of those will get you other lists, like the 3 marks of existence, the 3 poisons, the 8 fold path, and so on. But if you want a guided tour through the core concpets of Buddhism, just make an effort to go through the Heart Sutra line by line, with the goal of understanding what each line is and why it is in the sutra, and why the sutra seems to be negating it. Nessus posted:Yeah the idea is cool but a certain level of info density just collapses into crazy man diagrams. I have the hardback of Mahasi Sayadaw's Manual of Insight, and on the back cover is a pouch with a big fold thing full of spreadsheet looking stuff that is like tables from a dungeon master's guidebook. found it online https://wisdomexperience.org/academy/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/07/Manual-of-Insight-for-Course.pdf jump to page 711 The book itself is pretty good though, and would definitely recommend the first 5 chapters to anyone who wants to do intense meditation.
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Nov 10, 2022 19:43
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You are waylaid by the five aggregates and must use your Buddha eyes to become Kamen Householder
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Nov 10, 2022 19:49
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Yeah the wall art thing is low priority compared to theory and praxis.
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Nov 10, 2022 23:22
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So, I don't know how to talk about what I've experienced in my life through zen and daoism. I keep tripping up if I try to eloquently explain anything, like my tongue is tied or it all seems like nonsense. The closest I can come to is the koan of the monk who spends years studying the scriptures and finally attains enlightenment, and immediately burns his scriptures. I had a moment where things sort of did a magic eye trick to me, I don't know what it was exactly or how to put it into words (mostly because the map is not the territory) and now I'm just living my life with a perspective change? I spent years looking for enlightenment, thinking about what it would be like, chasing it. And then something hit me and life is so ordinary lmao
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Nov 13, 2022 13:49
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There's a zen (I think?) quote which speaks to that experience. Before enlightenment, carry water and cut wood. After enlightenment, carry water and cut wood.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:30
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My understanding of Theravada is that it’s the currently extant school most closely related to the original philosophy and teachings of the historical Buddha. As someone interested in Being Okay, I wanted to start with the very basics without having to yet think about ancillary or advanced discourse, discrepancies in thoughts and views, and rhetorical or theological baggage accumulated over centuries. The very core of the teachings, as it were. I often see Theravada referred to as one of the more conservative schools, in contrast to Mahayana. I don’t actually understand what this means. Why is Theravada considered conservative and Mahayana not, and how does that meaningfully impact readers and questioners?
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Nov 21, 2022 16:09
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