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Josef bugman posted:This sounds very similar to what happened in the medieval era Europe where people gave vast amounts of land and money to monks until the monasteries became state actors in themselves and started having armies. Usually they also became somewhat corrupt (not in the way that Henry VII or the various different Whig Historians liked to make out ofc) and it meant that eventually people started giving more land/money to the poorer monastaries, thus creating the cycle again. This was also common in Japan from about the 10th-17th centuries. Some temples became very powerful financially, even having their own independent military. Warlords would sometimes try and buy them off or recruit them to fight their neighbors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dhei Also, please read about Benkei. A famous(ly ugly) gigantic warrior monk who reportedly died holding a bridge in the most badass way possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benkei Yorkshire Pudding fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Feb 17, 2020 |
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Feb 17, 2020 19:34
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Paramemetic posted:I spent a lot of time in the last thread, in fact, defending the mental perspective on rebirth, and arguing that I don't really care if someone accepts literal rebirth or thinks it's a metaphor so long as they are practicing compassion. Not trying to open a can of worms, but how could one not accept rebirth but still accept the dharma, samsara, and nirvana? That feels a bit like saying “I believe Christ is our Lord and Savior and he forgave of us of all ours Sins, but I don’t actually believe in God or Heaven”? I get that in the end you’re saying that as long as people are practicing compassion that’s a big net gain, but it seems odd to be able to pick apart one of the big foundations of impermanence.
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Feb 18, 2020 15:58
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As someone who has meditated and identified as Buddhist for around 15 years, but never practiced in a sangha, how do I go about finding one? There's a few different temples and backgrounds in my area, but they all come from different backgrounds and sects.Given that I don't really know anything about the lineages or the differences among them, should I just go shop around and find one that I like?
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Feb 21, 2020 20:53
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I'm in the Kansas City area, and there's a few around here I've looked at (but haven't visited). https://www.rimecenter.org/ Seems to be sort of nondenominational but with general Tibetan focus. http://www.templebuddhistcenter.com/ claims to be a "Western Buddhist Temple" which kind of puts me off a bit. https://kansascitybuddhistcenter.wildapricot.org/ Kansas City Buddhist Center also seems to be a mix of backgrounds https://kansaszencenter.org/ Looks to be the local Zen temple
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Feb 21, 2020 21:21
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I will check it out then. It’s got some times that work well for me too. I’ll report back in a few weeks.
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Feb 21, 2020 23:02
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New question: I have really inflexible hips and knees, so even sitting basic cross-legged for me is hard. I basically have to be sitting against a wall or something, which tells me my posture isn’t good. I bought a meditation bench to sit seiza style, but my issue is that I can feel a lot of stress in my shoulders and neck from my hands having nowhere to sit. My lower back always feels fairly tense, but that may just be me getting used to sitting upright like this. And recommendations?
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Feb 22, 2020 02:04
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Currently switching my priorities to attain just enough bad karma to be reborn as a Fire Eagle.
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Feb 29, 2020 09:21
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I'm about finished with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and I am not thrilled with it. Most of my knowledge of Zen comes from works by Miyamoto Musashi, and I found these little snippets by Suzuki to be not all that interesting. The whole theme of "Don't try to hard, but your posture and breathing is super important, also everything is zen" didn't really land with me. I've never really had a specific transmission I've followed, but Suzuki has made me think Zen isn't my cup of tea. My previous read was Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings, which I thought was an excellent overview of general Buddhist belief. I have The Book of Living and Dying next, which I started but never finished some time ago. I also ordered Walking an Uncommon Path as Paramemetic recommended, but it won't be here for a few weeks. Thanks for listening to my book report.
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Mar 9, 2020 01:58
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Hey thread, hope everyone is getting along okay. I’ve been doing a lot more meditating lately, but one of my biggest problems is still my absolutely wretched hips and knees. I’m really tall and long limbed, and I have terrible flexibility in my lower half. I can barely sit cross legged for more than a few minutes without pain. I bought a zafu and a zabuton, and those have helped enough that I can basically sit for 20 minutes pain free if I have a wall to lean on. Lately I’ve been doing yoga in the morning, mostly with a focus of improving my flexibility to improve my sitting posture. My eventual goal is to be able to sit lotus style. Let me once again stress how inflexible I am. I cannot even begin to get one foot on its opposite hip before things start straining, painfully. Does anyone have a recommendation for a YouTube video or guide I could start doing daily to improve my flexibility for the specific purpose of better sitting posture?
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Apr 6, 2020 23:19
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For the record when I talk about my goal being lotus position, I’m talking like “it would be good if in 5 years I can sit comfortably on the lotus position”. I get that it’s not requisite for anything, I just want to start moving toward it gradually.
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Apr 7, 2020 04:21
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Thanks for the excellent write up, Rodney! I’ll check out those resources. for the near future I think I’ll stick with some basic yoga and just focus on getting some basic flexibility down. I’ve got plenty of time to work towards more advanced stuff.
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Apr 8, 2020 04:56
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Qurantine Book Report: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I just finished this book after picking it up more than a year ago and bouncing off it the first time. While the sections that actually talked about practical advice for dying and helping people who are dying were quite good, the rest of it was a side of Buddhism I very much disliked. Sogyal Rinpoche is a good writer, and it is obvious that he is learned, but if this is Tibetan Buddhism/Vajrayana I am very much not into it. Having just come off of The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings, which was great, this book felt like the Buddhist equivalent of a "Book of Witchcraft Spells". I've always practiced my Buddhism in what is I guess a very 'Western' style, in that I don't get too much into the cosmology or any that. So maybe that's why it's so jarring to see a renowned master spend pages talking about how your body will turn into a rainbow when you die if you practice enough, and how if you stick a needle in a recently deceased person then you might actually suck their "spirit" through the hole and then they can't depart through the top of the head and achieve enlightenment. I'm also very, very wary of religion in general, and what initially drew me to Buddhism in my teens was the whole "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" philosophy. So to see such a huge focus on "Ah you must have a Master from a verified lineage and this Master is even more important than the Buddha" is pretty discomforting. I understand the importance of having a teacher and a Sangha, but this style really feels more cultish with it's secret esoteric practices. Especially when you hear those practices just written down, it feels like that South Park episode where you learn that Scientologists believe that Xenu dropped souls out of a 747 into volcanos and that why people get sad. I was actually looking forward to reading Walking an Uncommon Path, but I waited 5 weeks for it to be delivered before being told "sorry we must have forgot to deliver it", so that won't happen soon. I've also had huge trouble meditating recently also, maybe because of everything that's going on. It's been about 10 days since I've had a session that I felt was good, and I can barely sit down for more than 5 minutes without thinking "Okay this isn't working I should quit". Sorry for the overly negative post. Hope everyone else is doing okay out there.
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Apr 15, 2020 18:24
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If SA goes down unexpectedly, it has been a pleasure sharing and learning of the Dharma with all of you.
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Jun 25, 2020 16:09
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Nessus posted:This is the link, as a skillful means to facilitate favorable posting rebirth. I’m going to be posting from the hungry ghost realm
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Jun 26, 2020 07:14
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I’ve found this book to be really helpful: On a serious note, maybe there are some aspects of your life that aren’t meshing well? If this is a consistent partner you could have a conversation about it, but if you’re with different people every night that may be an issue.
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Sep 24, 2020 20:08
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SomethingAwful is a sacred place.
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Oct 26, 2020 04:52
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Can someone relate to me the quote that’s something like “if I had 1000 eyes to see the worlds pain and 1000 hands to help”? I need a mantra to remind me to not go out and do things that could spread a deadly pandemic when I see every person around me not giving a poo poo and am struggling to do what is right despite knowing it’s not helping.
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Dec 5, 2020 01:15
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A Typical Goon posted:Has anyone is this thread read Siddhartha? Personally I loved it but I’m curious what people that are actual Buddhists think, particularly cause the novel seems to point towards a path of personal individual enlightenment as opposed to finding enlightenment through the noble eightfold path I’ve read it, I remember enjoying it. It’s been a while, but the whole premise is that it’s the path of the original Buddha, right? So the noble eightfold path had not been codified yet, and it would have “come to” Siddhartha after he reached enlightenment looking into the river. Edit: I just had a funny memory. I read that in high school for an English class, and it was really serendipitous because we read it just a few months after I left Christianity (having been raised and confirmed as a Lutheran since birth) and had just taken my first steps on the Eightfold Path. I got really annoyed because after we read that all my friends were like “ooh are you Buddhist now because we read Siddhartha?” Yorkshire Pudding fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 16:44
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I tried to order “Walking an Uncommon Path” before covid hit and it never showed up. I’d still like to check it out. Local libraries don’t have it either. Anyone know of an online retailer that has it in stock?
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Jan 12, 2021 01:20
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You’re right, it’s on Google Play. Thank you!
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Jan 12, 2021 21:37
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Girlfriend brought up an interesting question when she was asking about rebirth. She asked if she could be reborn in the past. Do any Buddhist dialogues discuss the nature of time, and whether it is linear or something else. Is it just another composite thing?
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May 10, 2021 04:52
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zhar posted:As we both know in the Buddhist view the mind from previous life conjoins with sperm and egg probably sometime after conception (I don’t think it’s clear exactly when) Is this a generally accepted view of rebirth?
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Aug 5, 2021 02:12
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I thought of a joke. Please tell me if it is funny. What city is Mara from? Buddhapest.
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Aug 19, 2021 01:44
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New Pali canon being written right here on the SomethingAwful forums.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:01
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https://youtu.be/xlIrI80og8c
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Aug 19, 2021 20:39
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Achmed Jones posted:taoism with the magic, or nah? i don't know much about it either way - just curious 
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Aug 31, 2021 18:07
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I may be the outlier here, and I’m certainly not a monk or very good at Buddhism, but I would be cautious about going down this path as a result of going through hard times. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, and it’s like a year long process to get in specifically because it tends to attract people who are in a situation like “I lost my job, my dog died, and my partner left so why not give up everything to go do some good”. Some of those people end up getting in, and in my time there I saw almost all of them burn out and hop on a plane back home in the middle of the night. Then again, I’ve never been staring down the barrel of homelessness and starvation, so if you think it’s the right path you probably know better than I.
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Sep 16, 2021 22:09
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:The first one plus usual Buddhist holiday stuff of refraining from meat, observing there five precepts, some traditions think karmas more potent on these days so good deeds get you more I lived in a village in Mongolia with one of the oldest Buddhist temples in the country. It’s really not all that old but the Russians burned down most of them. I knew some of the lama’s and I remember going to one of the holy days, watching them chant, then going to one’s home. They were scarfing down on some horse and I tried to inquire about eating meat as a Buddhist monk. The answer I got was basically “lol what are we supposed to eat I’m the middle of the desert where nothing grows”. I was also friends with a guy who was kind of a lay-monk or something? Would wear the robes occasionally but was a full time herder and was gone a lot. Every time he had to do the long chanting stuff he was always playing candy crush on his phone under the table.
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Feb 15, 2022 22:41
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Aug 7, 2022 23:18
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 16:14 |
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What did the Enlightened One say about non- fungible tokens depicting alcoholic monks? https://alkiemonkdrinking.club/Home.html
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Oct 27, 2022 16:10
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