From the beginning of my meditation practice in 1971, I was very moved by a sense of the Buddha as an integrated being. Most of us can easily experience our lives as somehow fragmented, split apart. We might feel perfectly filled with complete lovingkindness, strongly in touch with the radiant essence of our being when we're alone, but as soon as we're with people, it's very difficult. Or we might feel fine when we're with other people, but feel terrified when we are alone. We might feel one way at work, a different way in the context of our families. Our lives can easily be experienced as split up into these little bundles, whereas for a being like the Buddha, it is seamless. There are no parts, there's no division, there's no fragmentation. His life is of one piece with threads of wisdom and compassion guiding his actions whether he's alone or with others, whether he's wandering through India or being still; whether he is teaching or meditating, it is at the root of his being. It is all of one piece. I found that tremendously inspiring. I felt so fragmented. I knew that integration was exactly what I wanted.
The Buddha said, "From time to time, the enlightened one is born into the world an arahat, fully awakened, abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy, with knowledge of the worlds unsurpassed as a guide to those willing to be taught, a blessed one, a Buddha. By themselves they thoroughly understand. They make this knowledge known to others. They proclaim the truth, both in the letter and in the spirit, "lovely in the beginning, lovely in the middle, lovely in the end," abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy. What a wonderful sense of a possibility!
This Buddha, our Buddha you might say, arose in India in this world around 563 BC. He sat under a tree in Northern India and became enlightened. He came to birth as a human being, just as each of us has. This was perhaps accentuated for me by being in northern India, the land of the Buddha. I could take a short walk and be at the spot where, as bodhisattva, a being aspiring to enlightenment, the Buddha had the milk rice that fortified his body after so much extreme self-denial. And of course, day or night, I could go to the tree. The presence of the Buddha was intimate and everywhere, as though visiting the land of one's ancestors.
As a human being, the Buddha's questions, his very compelling questions, were about the nature of life. It's as though he were asking, "What does it mean to be born into this human body, to be so vulnerable and dependent as an infant, to grow up, to grow older whether we like it or not, to die, unbelievably enough, even as we see all others die around us?" and "What does it mean to have this human mind which seems to veer constantly from one extreme to the other, always changing, so that we might wake up in the morning delighted to be alive, full of faith, really happy, and by the afternoon we're freaked out, we're frightened, we're angry, we feel guilty, we question our very right to be happy. It seems incomprehensible to us. And then at night it's something different again."
What does it mean as a human being to look for happiness, peace, joy, that is not confined within the body, within that changing mind? Is there a quality of happiness, is there a kind of peace that is not a compounded thing subject to change, to destruction, as conditions change? He had questions in effect that are very similar to our own. As he phrased the call to awakening for himself, he said, "Why should I who am subject to birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, and suffering, seeing the danger in these things, why should I take refuge in that which is also subject to change, to death, to sorrow, to suffering? Let me find that which is changeless, which is deathless, which is without sorrow, which is unborn and undying, that is a true refuge." And in fact this is what he found. He found a true refuge.
We say a human being sat under a tree 2600 years ago, motivated by compassion, brought there, moved there on a wave of moral force. There was no other place he could be. Throughout the night as he sat there, which was a full moon night, the full moon in May, he saw the conditioned nature of suffering, sorrow, grief, loss, and death. He traced it back. He traced it back until he came to ignorance. He saw his own and others' countless past lives stretching back over many ages and eons of the world. He saw in effect the spectacle of the whole universe, beings being born and dying in accordance with the laws of nature. He saw the cyclic path of all beings, the unfortunate and the illustrious and the rich and the poor, all beings tossed about on these waves of birth and old age, sickness and death. As the night went on, he saw the means of liberation. He saw suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering. At the first light of dawn, just as the star Venus broke in the morning sky, he saw through the very last trace of ignorance in himself and was completely enlightened.
And, it is taught, we too can be enlightened, every one of us. We can be completely freed from the bonds of limitation and conditioned confusion through our own endeavor, inspiration, effort and development. There is a path, and we can traverse it.
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Joe Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D.: Reliable Methods: The Future of Self-Transcendence
True Refuge | Live. Love. Awaken.
I am an atheist in search of the Buddas path. To put one foot on it for one second or to walk it for a lifetime makes no difference. To experience the eternal in life is all, whether for 1 second or years matters not, time does not exist in eternity, just as eternity does not exist in time.
The middle is the path, finding it is the goal.
Now, given that the fundamentals are about 90% identical with a 10% variation in terms of methodology and ontology (which leads to minor variations in many other statements made by the Buddha), we can confidently say that these traditions are from the same historical being. The practice of Mahayana leads one directly through the path of liberation, as set down by the Buddha in the first turn of the wheel. Mahayana does not bypass liberation for the sake of others, we must engage in the 8-fold path just like anyone else.
I'm tired of hearing the same straw man arguments about the Mahayana over and over again. Go study under a realized master of the subject. The same intensity of awareness and training exists in both traditions. Who cares about the advanced theoretical aspects of practice when you can't even stop your mind from wandering? Who cares about the use of various meditation objects when you can't stop yourself from lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc? We should be working together - as human beings - to support each-others fundamental practices.
The Dharma Jewel is sometimes visualised as a Metaphysical Crystal with 84,000 different facets, representing all the teachings of the Buddha. Depending on our viewpoint, one or a few of these facets will reflect brightly in our direction.
When we first meet the Dharma, we are attracted to the most brilliantly reflecting facets - those aspects of the teachings that are particularly relevant to us and our problems. Most of the other facets will appear dull or oblique, or not appear to us at all, being completely hidden round the other side of the Crystal.
But other people may be attracted to those facets of the Jewel that appear bright to them but dull or hidden to us. We must be very careful before making any comparisons, because the appearance of the Jewel to our mind is entirely a result of our karma. http://seanrobsville.blogspot.com/2009/11/doctor-buddha.html
F&F
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http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1105032286593.13882.1850351082&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=2203900757618&set=a.1105032286593.13882.1850351082&type=3&theater
wonderful.
It is sometimes stated that Buddha remained silent on the question of the Ultimate Reality. I will post some quotes from Buddhist scripture to show otherwise.
Buddha himself said,"There is an unborn, an unoriginated, an unmade, an uncompounded; were there not, O mendicants, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the unoriginated, the made and the compounded" (Udana 8.3).
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Kevaddha Sutta: About Kevaddha (Digha Nikaya 11.85/i.223)
Buddha: '...He prostrated himself before me, then sat down to one side, and said:"Lord, where do the four great elements - the earth element, the water element, the fire element and the air element - cease without reminder?"
Buddha replied:"....Monk, you should not ask this question this way .... 'Where do earth, water, fire and air not find footing? Where are long and short, small and great, fair and foul - where are "name and form" wholly destroyed?'
And the answer is:
'Where consciousness is signless, boundless, all-luminous, that's where earth, water, fire and air find no footing, here both long and short, small and great, fair and foul - here "name-and-form" are wholly destroyed.""
Mahjima Nikaya Brahmanimantanika Sutta 49.25/i.330 says,
"Consciousness non-manifesting, boundless, luminous all-round"
The translator (Bodhi) acknowledges that these lines have been a perennial challenge to Buddhist scholarship.
But then rewriting history is much more fun, otherwise it would become boring for some. :)
But there is no contradiction. "God" is an incredibly vague notion, and Buddhism is concerned to dismiss the importance of only a samsaric conception of the divine. It does not by any stretch of the imagination dismiss the notion of the transcendent altogether. Instead, Buddhism is extremely aware of the difficulties in giving expression to this notion, and the way our deep tendency toward reification makes almost any verbal statement about these matters potentially misleading.
To me, the idea that Buddhism is essentially "naturalistic" (see, e.g., Owen Flanagan's new book) could not be more off-base. The more general conflation of naturalism and atheism seems like a still more pervasive confusion, but that's a long story.
Your application of the term "placebo effect," adds another level of understanding to the phenomenon of obtaining solace from a dogmatic idea.
In that same way that understanding relativity and quantum mechanics is not necessary for developing the physical techniques involved in being a gymnast, the cosmological beliefs - karma, rebirth, cosmic deities, etc - are completely unnecessary for the systematic attainment of an abiding state of real happiness. On the other hand, the human truths about how to properly relate with a teacher, how to be a good student, the preciousness of being a human being, the brevity of life, the need to take hold of this short life and do something meaningful, the deep recognition that no external circumstance can create internal stability (renunciation), the fact that nothing which is caused can be permanent, the fact that no phenomenon has an internal characteristic which predetermines what it is before being perceived, etc.. Probably are necessary to the process of gaining an unconditional state of internal peace (a cessation of mental activity that is - for lack of a better term - obstructing the natural state of the mind).
You must endure the unfortunate contradiction of being starkly aware, blissfully, while enduring a cessation of mental activity to gain unconditional internal peace through cessation of mental activity.
I can only empathize and wish you well with your contradictions from hell.
Taking refuge and finding comfort in sayings of dead people and idols are worthless and empty endeavors.
King David had it right when he said at psalm 18:2:
The true God (Psalm 83:18) is my crag and my stronghold and the Provider of escape for me. My God is my rock. I shall take refuge in him, My Shield and my horn of salvation, my secure height."
the strength of the psychotic delusion (both mentally and physically) is well documented.
I ran across this poem not long ago, called "Before You Know What Kindness Really Is." I think you'd appreciate it:
http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=735
In Metta,
Tricia.
F&F.