Attended a Buddhist lecture/meditation session

[JemyM]

Like any other religion, Buddhism fails to fully accept life as it is, and will teach a replacement framework to how to interpret life events. The obsession with certain symbols, rituals and traditions will make people too preoccupied to have time to search for solutions to global issues, most of them will be so preoccupied that they never even had the chance to learn about them. As a result they function as they have no say in how life is going to be tomorrow and they might even believe they are doing something when doing nothing.

 

[Prime Junta]

A reasonable goal, and I know there's wisdom in acceptance.
I guess this is what I, as a somewhat emotional person, distrust about the concept of practicing non-attachment. I always feel as if it lessens the ties between us as humans to want to discount them because they hold such potential for grief and loss. It seems like a flinching away. Perhaps you'll be able to help me to a better understanding here as you have with so many other complicated concepts over the years.

I'll be glad to help as soon as I figure it out myself. At this point, I don't; all I have are a few ideas. For what it's worth, here they are, more or less.

In Buddhist thought, terms like "attachment," "love," and "compassion" have rather precise meanings that are not quite the same as they are in normal usage. The idea being that "attachment" is selfish -- i.e., it gives rise to feelings of anxiety, fear, and grief over losing whatever it is you're attached to -- whereas love and compassion are selfless.

This leads to a lot of confusion, and the perception that Buddhism seeks to purge all emotion. Not so, as far as I can tell: it's more about learning to *accept* emotion, without dwelling on it or trying to control it, like the story about the master who lost his child. If a loved one leaves you, you feel grief. If you get stuck in that grief, it turns to self-pity, and does you a great deal of damage. If you grieve, accept the grief, and let it pass through you once it's done, it'll leave you a better person.

Buddhist thought says a quite a bit about the ultimate goals of being a human -- becoming a perfectly enlightened being -- and frankly not a lot of it makes sense to me at this point. That includes the idea that a perfectly enlightened being cannot experience any negative emotion, because he is perfectly free from attachment (and, having transcended his ego, doesn't have anything to experience it with anyway, which, I understand, amounts to the same thing).

From where I'm at, it looks a lot like an abstraction rather than a concrete state of being. I don't even know if it's an attainable, or even desirable goal, and I'd be extremely surprised if it's within *my* reach ("within this lifetime," a Buddhist would add), and even if it is, it sure as hell isn't within my reach the next time I sit down to meditate. So I don't really worry about it much.

However, the *process* of working toward that abstraction is clearly beneficial. I'm insanely attached to all kinds of pointless things, and this attachment gives me a lot of completely unnecessary grief. If I can stop fretting about having to do unpleasant projects with people I don't like at work, or exceeding the budget of our home improvement project by a factor of two, or having a pain in the knee for the past two months, or not being able to properly digest porcini mushrooms, which I really like, etc. etc., then I'll already be a much happier, calmer, and generally nicer person. I figure that's likely to keep me busy for a quite a while. By then, with any luck, I'll also have figured out some of the tougher stuff, including the possible downsides of becoming less attached to people I love.

 

[Prime Junta]

Like any other religion, Buddhism fails to fully accept life as it is, and will teach a replacement framework to how to interpret life events.

Ya think? Because one of Buddhism's stated goals is precisely to learn to experience and accept life as it is, without the distortion and filtering caused by ego and negative emotions. The core and center of the thing is the practice of "mindfulness," you know.

The obsession with certain symbols, rituals and traditions will make people too preoccupied to have time to search for solutions to global issues, most of them will be so preoccupied that they never even had the chance to learn about them. As a result they function as they have no say in how life is going to be tomorrow and they might even believe they are doing something when doing nothing.

Could you elaborate on this a bit, JemyM? Any particular symbols, rituals, or traditions you're thinking of? Do you see the quest for self-improvement as somehow necessarily excluding the search for solutions to global issues? 'Cuz I don't: there are examples of people who did both, on very concrete levels. Gandhi, for example, was very big on both self-improvement and solutions to global issues, and I very much doubt he would've been as successful at the latter if he hadn't pursued the former with the same determination.

 

[JemyM]

Ya think? Because one of Buddhism's stated goals is precisely to learn to experience and accept life as it is, without the distortion and filtering caused by ego and negative emotions. The core and center of the thing is the practice of "mindfulness," you know.

That's a scientist. Buddhism claims to already have several ultimate truths that like other religions are taught on the premise that "they cannot be disproven".
These truths give a framework for how to experience life, influenced by what Buddhism think is the right way. Like most religious frameworks, this can be very crippling of the individuals potential, wasting a huge part of their lives. The rules a monk must follow for example, pretty much take that person out of both the genepool and the betterment of mankind. The rituals that children have to go through are pretty much a waste of their lifetime, teaching them more about OCD than encouraging them to use their potential. Escaping suffering is the goal of Buddhism, while the potential to contribute to the ease of suffering is forgotten in the process.

Could you elaborate on this a bit, JemyM? Any particular symbols, rituals, or traditions you're thinking of? Do you see the quest for self-improvement as somehow necessarily excluding the search for solutions to global issues? 'Cuz I don't: there are examples of people who did both, on very concrete levels. Gandhi, for example, was very big on both self-improvement and solutions to global issues, and I very much doubt he would've been as successful at the latter if he hadn't pursued the former with the same determination.

I am talking about the temples, rituals and traditions. Buddhism have a lot of rituals, things you as a Buddhist is encouraged to do, like other religions. But every hour you spend praying, sacrificing flowers, lightning candles, visiting stupas/pagods, walking your daily round asking for rice etc is an hour you won't do anything useful to anyone. Buddhists take up a huge amount of time doing this. Image if they put the same amount of hours studying and researching advanced science.

Listen to the common prayer ("puja?";
"I take my escape to Buddha
I take my escape to the teachings
I take my escape to the community"

This is all about focusing the mind on the creed, a daily reminder what you should spend your taughts on; a person, often outdated writings and your gated community. If you spend every day focusing your mind like this, you will every day be at least temporary lead away from focusing on the world, on humanity's collected writings, and humanity in general.

The stuff that was useful in Buddhism have already been absorbed in cognitive psychology. Buddhism have thus contributed what it could to mankind, where as Buddhism today is little more than a waste.

 

[Prime Junta]

Thanks for your thoughts, JemyM. I would encourage you to study up a bit more about Buddhism, though, since you have several clear misconceptions and extremely broad generalizations in this post of yours (and you admitted yourself that you don't know all that much about it).

I won't bother attempting to correct them for you, since you've shown a remarkable capacity to correct such things on your own, by studying things. (Also, I don't rate my chances of getting through to you very highly.)

Edit: nevertheless, I can't resist quoting a bit of scripture at you, simply because it's so apposite. This is from the Kalama Sutta:

Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it . . . or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings--that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.

Edit edit: I will point out one flaw in your reasoning, though. You argue that religion -- including Buddhism -- is bad because whatever time and attention people spend on it could be spent to greater social benefit elsewhere.

However, this argument applies to *everything.* Yet here you are, posting stuff on RPGWatch. Presumably you also play the occasional computer role-playing game. Hell, you might even have sex for pleasure, socialize, enjoy an ice cream, or sleep late every once in a while. Yet you could have spent all that time helping other people, or studying advanced science, or whatever.

In other words, you're presenting a false choice here: "practice religion/do stuff that benefits all of humanity." The actual choice is "practice religion/do something else you enjoy."

 

[magerette]

There's also another flaw--practising the rituals as described may actually keep people occupied harmlessly (or beneficially to themselves) and lessen their likelihood of taking up an alternate route that does something harmful, self-destructive or destructive to society.

Thanks for your explanation of my concerns posted above, Prime J. Even at the beginning of your exploration of Buddhist thought you're able to clarify for me things I've always wondered about, so it can only get better.

And that porcini mushroom thing? It's part of the aging process to have foods come and go in digestibility. For years my husband enjoyed sauerkraut, then in his thirties it started to seriously upset his whole digestive system. Then in his forties (and currently) he could suddenly eat it again with no ill effect. I've had other allergies inexplicably come and go away as well. The body doesn't seem to be a static machine. The knee thing you'd probably best just get used to, though.

 

[ffbj]

There is the parable mustard seed briefly paraphrased below:

'A woman whose child had died continued to carry him on her hip though he was dead and others told her to bury him. Finally she went to the Buddha who told her to bring him a mustard seed from a house where no death had occurred, and he would cure the child of his ailment. She was overjoyed and traveled to many houses, always getting the same answer. Death, oh there have been many deaths here. At every house she got the same answer and was able to understand that death is just a fact of life, there is no escape from death. Then she was able to let her son go.

Another one is about a master who was on his death bed as death approached he cried out continuously..
'Oh this is so horrible, the pain is unbearable'.
In the midst of his cries a monk said:
'Master when you were publicly tortured by the prefect of the district you never cried out so, why now do you do so?'
The master sat bolt upright in bed grabbed the monk and asked:
'Tell me, when was I wrong?'

 

[JemyM]

PJ, we are free to quote random scripture out of any tradition as long as it makes sense to us. I can do that with Jesus, Muhammed and Confusius if I like, even Marx, Mill or Nietzsche. That's one of the benefits of not belonging to one certain religion or ideology. You have a level of education and philosophic knowledge that youngsters do not have prior to Buddhist training. That training focuses very strongly on teaching a framework for life according to Buddhist tradition, no effort is made to encourage the study and pondering about foreign philosophy. Ponder on what you know based on your experience, that people who been Buddhists throughout their entire lives are never exposed to, due to being locked to that tradition alone.

For many westerners it's easy to develop romantic ideas about Buddhism. We are so far away that whatever shines penetrate the darkness and reach our eyes, but we are too far away to see the problems. What you do is to defend a whole system by lifting forth some golden eggs and ignore the rotten ones, and I am almost expecting you to pull a "no true scotsman" soon. My philosophy is about keeping the golden eggs out of each tradition, while throwing the junk.

It was while studying Buddhism that I realized just how much of Buddhism is bound to meaningless rituals, commandments and unfounded/uncorrected beliefs that gladly continue to challenge modern progress in favor to tradition, despite what scripture say. You are free to shake that off, after all, you do not live in the tradition and you are most likely to be exposed to very adapted flavors to fit your taste. But for every good quote I found in Buddhist scripture, I found a bad one next to it, sometimes I had to browse through several quotes to found something that wasn't covered in mytholic symbolism Buddhist style. Karma, reincarnation and Mara is still in there, and when you begin to get used to how that culture actually express itself you will begin to find the same rhetoric you find around any woo-woo artist. They are not that eager to agree that their miracles are the result of psychology, but will defend the idea that their miracles are genuine where as others religions are wrong, miracles including divine seeing, seeing past lives, telepathy, levitation etc.

You compare using a religion with that of free time leisure. This ignore my core criticism. Personal hobbies or part-time interests is not similar to the culture who encourages you to live according to a certain framework, while limiting itself to one single body of ancient/undeveloping philosophy. RPG Watch doesn't encourage me to play Mass Effect or WoW as it was the most important part of my life. I can have as much sex as my body could take and still have time to read a random book out of the global library. My hobbies and leisure is part-time, my life is still centered on my education. At worst you would suggest to me to brush my teeth and eat breakfast for a good cause, but you wouldn't tell a child that they should walk around the neighbourhood every morning asking for rice since it's wrong to own your own.

 

[Prime Junta]

I'm sorry, JemyM, but I really have no inclination to get into a debate with you on this topic -- going by past experience, I find it unlikely that either of us would come out any the wiser.

 

[JemyM]

You are blowing smoke now. You pass apologetics 101 like "I would encourage you to study up a bit more about <insert ideology>, though, since you have several clear misconceptions and extremely broad generalizations", like I was the one who fail to bring facts to the table. If you seriously didn't know about what a traditional Buddhist have to do on a daily basis I would encourage you to study up a bit more about Buddhism.

 

[Prime Junta]

Thanks for the recommendation, JemyM -- I will certainly follow it. I do have some idea about it, but am quite interested to find out more, and intend to try some of it out myself.

 

[GothicGothicness]

There is nothing preventing us from taking out the good parts from different things I mean like most none reglious people could agree to some of the commandments such as "Thy shall not steal", and some none buddhist people could enjoy an occasional meditation and some none muslim may not want to eat during the day.... etc etc, if you do not believe in god , you are free to pick the candy out of the cake from rituals which has taken thousands of years to perfect, without any obligations!

 

[JemyM]

If I would give you any advice, it would be to not fall into the illusion that Buddhism is a single tradition. In your recent posts you have spoken about "Buddhism's stated goals", given one definition of "Buddhist thought" etc. Imagine going to a Christian church in the south American countryside or going to one in Manhattan, and ask each one what Christianity is. Or imagine visiting a Mosque in Iran compared to visiting one in Turkey, asking them what Islam is.

Buddhism like other religions is a diverse expression of many people, and the diversity of Buddhism is extreme. It's a tradition that include a lot of writings and cultures, spanning a vast area. There are at least three major branches, not to mention cultural differences from country to country. There's almost not a single document that is used by all Buddhists, a central document in one group might considered wrong in another.

These differences are best known before taking a swandive into it, and you might want to begin with a scholar such as Malcolm David Eckel that can present you with the diversity, rather than a Buddhist who can only give you their own point of view. They are as human as you are.

I criticize some expressions of Buddhism, just as I criticize the idea that Buddhism is one unified system. In particular I criticize the monks and the commandments/prohibitations they live with. That's just as much an expression of Buddhism as the stuff you quoted.

 

[Prime Junta]

If I would give you any advice, it would be to not fall into the illusion that Buddhism is a single tradition. In your recent posts you have spoken about "Buddhism's stated goals", given one definition of "Buddhist thought" etc. Imagine going to a Christian church in the south American countryside or going to one in Manhattan, and ask each one what Christianity is. Or imagine visiting a Mosque in Iran compared to visiting one in Turkey, asking them what Islam is.

LOL! Thanks, that's actually rather amusing, as I thought of accusing you of the same thing. Funny how we talk past each other at times, no?

I snipped the rest, because I *really* don't want to get involved in a debate about Buddhism -- or religion in general -- with you; we've already been there, and I see no reason to believe it would go any better this time around.

OTOH if you're interested to find out what I, personally, think about Buddhism, or what in it appeals to me, or how I make sense of the various concepts, or how I perceive the various traditions I've encountered directly or indirectly, or how the various Buddhist and non-Buddhist authors I've read see them, I'll be all too happy to answer any questions you might want to make about them.

 

[txa1265]

If I would give you any advice, it would be to not fall into the illusion that Buddhism is a single tradition. In your recent posts you have spoken about "Buddhism's stated goals", given one definition of "Buddhist thought" etc. Imagine going to a Christian church in the south American countryside or going to one in Manhattan, and ask each one what Christianity is. Or imagine visiting a Mosque in Iran compared to visiting one in Turkey, asking them what Islam is..

That is true with everything - imagine hitting the local beer joint in southern Alabama and a cafe in Boston and trying to come up with a singular 'this is an American'. Dito for 'this is a European' or 'this is China' and so on. Narrow typing is largely wrong.

 

[JemyM]

OTOH if you're interested to find out what I, personally, think about Buddhism, or what in it appeals to me, or how I make sense of the various concepts, or how I perceive the various traditions I've encountered directly or indirectly, or how the various Buddhist and non-Buddhist authors I've read see them, I'll be all too happy to answer any questions you might want to make about them.

I believe I have articulated my appreciation of some ideas that came from people within that culture, and I wouldn't be too surprised if the concepts you appreciate is similar to mine. A few years back I tried the idea that unhappiness comes from attachment, and one solution to this is to want less. That idea that have improved my life ever since.

But you seem miss the point that it's a difference between Buddhism and ideas by people who claim to be Buddhists. If you are going to deny that the former includes reincarnation, the idea that unfortunate comes from crimes in former lives, and the idea that not sleeping in a proper bed is a good thing, then we are going to have a problem, because you are going to ignore what many people who call themselves Buddhists associate with the word. I criticize Buddhism as a whole, not ideas of Buddhists.

 

[Prime Junta]

But you seem miss the point that it's a difference between Buddhism and ideas by people who claim to be Buddhists.

Again, rather amusing, as I thought of accusing you of the very same thing.

Out of curiosity: you've been trying to draw me into a debate about the topic for about a half-dozen posts now. Why?

I am honestly interested in hearing your thoughts about Buddhism, since you also appear to have done some studying of it. In case you're interested in listening, I'd also be delighted to share mine.

However, I am *not* interested in defending my positions, religion in general, Buddhism or some particular tradition thereof in particular, nor attacking yours. Therefore, if you really want to talk about this subject with me, you will have to change both your tone and your approach, because I simply will not enter into the kind of debate you have been trying to get me into. I'm just not interested.

 

[Rithrandil]

That is true with everything - imagine hitting the local beer joint in southern Alabama and a cafe in Boston and trying to come up with a singular 'this is an American'. Dito for 'this is a European' or 'this is China' and so on. Narrow typing is largely wrong.

What! What type of commie pinko hippie are you! The real 'murica only drinks Beer! 'MURICAN beer! Not any of that sissy pansy ass foreign crap with the fancy spanish on the labels! And what the heck is a cafe! You mean a bar, son! An' not one of these Eurotrash things with the lights and the boopity beeps that the kids listen to these days! A real bar, with a spittoon, and good ol' country music!

Sorry. Feel free to continue on with the actual discussion now.

 

[JemyM]

That is true with everything - imagine hitting the local beer joint in southern Alabama and a cafe in Boston and trying to come up with a singular 'this is an American'. Dito for 'this is a European' or 'this is China' and so on. Narrow typing is largely wrong.

Yeah, but two comments... There are a difference between an ideology and an area. There are certain ideas that have strong associations with the region of Alabama, but it's not necessary to have them because you happen to be born or live there. An ideology however is bound to it's ideas. If you claim to be a member, you claim to support to the ideas that you believe the ideology of choice have. Of course, the ideas that you associate with the ideology might be very personal.

Also, it might be equally wrong to deny certain themes as it is to agree to them. If I say that Swedes are racists, then I am wrong. But I am also wrong if I claim that no Swedes are racists. In fact, I could even be accused for covering up a problem for claiming so.

 

[JemyM]

Out of curiosity: you've been trying to draw me into a debate about the topic for about a half-dozen posts now. Why?

I voiced my criticism on Buddhism, you replied, I replied, you replied, I replied etc. I wasn't really looking for a debate.

I am honestly interested in hearing your thoughts about Buddhism, since you also appear to have done some studying of it. In case you're interested in listening, I'd also be delighted to share mine.

If I had to pick a religion, it would probably be Buddhism. Out of all religions, the Buddhist "commandments", if you can call them that, makes the most sense to me, and I believe they actually get closer to what's widely held as good behavior nowadays. On top of that, like I said, the idea that craving equals suffering is rather important. If you are satisfied with what you got already you will be a happier person that if you aren't.