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Most Mahayana traditions treat the return to society/the world/the marketplace as one of the later stages of practice. It ranges from fully formalized and deeply ritualized to just a strong encouragement to find a way of living according to the values and precepts one finds meaningful. At least in mahayana the concept of returning to society to not try to live separately is pervasive. The 10 oxherding pictures are a particularly good example of this. Also there's some zen commentary that described malnourished overly-austere ~seekers~ showing up all sad and earnestly misguided, and then when they're finally ready to go you can tell because they're fat, drunk, a bit stupid, and laughing more. IIRC Jack Kornfield (I think?) wrote a decent book on the subject called 'After the Ecstasy the Laundry,' At the end of the day, spending a lifetime secluded in solitary practice is probably a waste of time at best and a physically and mentally dangerous indulgence at worse for the vast majority of people. Turning away from the distractions of society is a tool to make practice easier, not the end goal. Besides, people already struggle to integrate multiyear retreats and with reintegration afterwards. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Nov 6, 2019 |
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Nov 6, 2019 10:13
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 14:13 |
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Keret, I'm glad you decided to go and thanks for writing your experience up. Sounds like you had about as good of an experience all around as possible and on top of that came away with some good cud to ruminate upon. I hope to have a minute to respond in a little more length laterKeret posted:Thanks, that's very kind of you to say so. Afaik this is precisely the case, yes. Also has a long, practical history of serving to weed out some of the less committed at times that zen became particularly fashionable or trendy. quote:Interestingly, it seems that most monks only stay at Eihei-ji for 1-3 years, then go back to their family temple to inherit it from their father (as far as I know, in Japan most temples are passed down hereditarily from father to son, not sure when that practice started though). Yeah Zen writ large is quite emphatic about specifically codifying the return to society or 'the marketplace' as a stage along the path of zen practice and idk it always struck me as a useful reminder to stay aware of and not to neglect the rest of the world.
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Jan 15, 2020 11:24
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Achmed, allow me to suggest the ''''highly regarded''''' practice of 'manis in the shower' At least my dog is accumulating merit. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jan 16, 2020 |
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Jan 16, 2020 00:21
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Caufman posted:In the Plum Village Tradition, they don't talk about enlightenment as especially unobtainable when you have the right volition, whether one is lay or monastic. Enlightenment is always talked about as enlightenment of something. In this case, if we are talking about attaining the insight of impermanence, non-self, and no-birth-and-no-death, this is doable, and many dharma-doors can take you there. I suspect this is partly enlightenment and realization being used largely interchangeably. For practical purposes, aspiration towards realization is good and fairly hard to go too wrong with. Aspiration towards enlightenment however ends up being something of a three letter word and kind of a dangerous concept for people to strive too hard towards because there's so much cultural and personal baggage typically heaped upon the word. Personally I hate the word and think that a ton of people waste a crazy amount of time seeking that instead of doing the basic, important, but more boring 'be a good, dependable person, and work towards some charitable duty that benefits society' steps. That said, at a certain point, full, unbounded enlightenment definitely becomes a useful aspirational goal, or at least there must be some reason why nearly (probably all of them, tbh) every Buddhist tradition includes something about the pursuit of full enlightenment in their liturgy/full formal daily practice.
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Jan 16, 2020 04:01
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It is 1000% possible to appropriate buddhist culture and practices in bad ways. Buddhist teachings are, in theory somewhat a-cultural and are certainly meant to be more or less freely offered to all who won't be hurt by them, but in all of their recorded or repeated forms I don't think I've seen one that lacked a cultural context so it is hard to fully separate them. I want to say that to some extent it's alright to take them and see what fits with your life, but also taking something and using it purely for your own purposes is generally the exact definition of appropriation. The more nuanced response is probably 'if you find them helpful or useful, please keep it up, but do make an earnest effort to understand what you are engaging in at some point' There's a sense in which dharma is just 'anything which holds true' or is useful (and that isn't really possible to appropriate, but I dont' think that sense of dharma or practice are what most people trying to do the secular thing are encountering.
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Jan 19, 2020 14:35
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Yeah just go with that, that's good
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Jan 20, 2020 06:48
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There is an accepted body of things that constitute buddhist scripture, the tripitaka, (that afaik seems to be more or less consistent between both theravadin and mahayana traditions) and it's a lot more varied (and a lot more interesting imo) than just sutras and some stray lineage texts. That said for how much americans love to read about buddhism, running into people who have read their way through any meaningful variety of buddhist scripture is pretty unusual. I was trying to find a good short list, but I'll just link the whole article since it explains some of the less immediately clear ones in more detail. It's rigpawiki which is primarily tibetan buddhist, but this stuff was basically taken directly out of indian buddhism so it's still the same list. https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Twelve_branches_of_the_excellent_teaching Of note, the buddha's account of their past lives are entertaining (sort of an Indian aesop's fables crossed with nasruddin stories), as are the generally heavily hagiographic accounts of saint's lives, which probably require some serious suspension of disbelief for most people. Also they sound unsexy, but commentaries are particularly worth reading and often you'll find ones that are a commentary with a second commentary on the commentary included and if you're reading ones pertinent to a practice or tradition you're involved with, they'll be extremely informative. I'm at a loss for explaining precisely why commentaries are so good, but they are often some of the core teaching texts. Basically, sutras are good, but there's a ton of other interesting stuff to read and engage with. Nude Hoxha Cameo posted:This is so very true of zen. As a means of maintaining interest it's good, but I think a lot of people interested in zen would do well to read a much wider variety of material. It's also a remarkably expedient way to clear up any misconceptions about whether zen is utterly grounded in an extremely communally conscious ethical perspective or not. Which does seem to be an important thing to grasp quickly. -------- Anyways I'm tired, I hope this came out clearly, if not, feel free to correct anything I got wrong. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Feb 5, 2020 |
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Feb 5, 2020 15:30
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