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Post by Brandybuck on Nov 1, 2005 19:18:42 GMT -5
~SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA'S MEDITATION AND VISUALIZATION`
This wonderful fifteen minute meditation can be practiced each morning(or whenever). Sitting cross-legged, ideally in the lotus position, the back is held straight. The mind is calm and thoughts turn to contemplation. The purpose of the meditation is considered: to embark on the spiritual path that will lead to awakening wisdom. The breath is rythumic and steady.
Now, a beautiful bright blue sky is visualized, stretching into the beyond just at the edge of consciousness. A sense of the cosmos pervades the mind, body and spirit.
An awareness is brought to the level of the forehead; a large golden throne, beautifully adorned with all kinds of precious gemstones and jewels, is visualized. At each corner is a pair of snow lions, signifying the fearlessness of the buddhs. On the top of the throne is a fully opened lotus, signifying the Buddha's holy mind. On the lotus are a sun disk and a moon disk. The sun signifies wisdom, and the moon, method. Together they represent the unification of no more learning (the ultimate acheivement: buddhahood). Seated upon them is the historical buddha Shakyamuni, who signifies the attainment of this unification. The lotus, sun and moon also symbolize the principle aspects of the path to enlightenment.
As this image is held in the mind, one thinks how Shakyamuni Buddha, who took rebirth in the human realm, manifested the attainment of perfect realization--enlightenment--and then left the world the legacy of his teachings. As the ultimate teacher, the guru, he is therefore inseperable from one's own "root guru".
Buddha's golden body and aura radiate infinite compassion. He wears the saffron robes of a monk. His face is beautiful and his eyes are all-seeing. His gaze is peaceful, and his mind is free of all critical thoughts. He fully accepts everyone.
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Post by Laurasia on Nov 2, 2005 0:08:08 GMT -5
Hi Artanaro. I had a couple of questions regarding your post a few posts back. And I realize that there are many different schools of thought in the Buddhist tradition, so if this happens to be one that you personally don't follow I understand. This sentence blew my mind. I had always thought of Buddhism being synonymous with a belief in reincarnation. So to see this seem paradoxical. How can one believe in reincarnation, yet not believe in the soul. I'm thinking that I'm incorrect with my assumption reagrding Buddhism & reincarnation. Same problem as above. In fact this sounds much like my atheistic father talking. "There is nothing after you die. You just cease to be. You only live now & only what you do in this life matters because once your dead, your done." Sincerely, Laurasia
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 2, 2005 0:31:00 GMT -5
the soul has no seperate existence in and of itself ...it depends on everything else...its the idea of dependent origination...There is no soul because all is One ....There is reincarnation but at the same time there isnt....
a Zen master once remarked
There is no God and He created you..
The point of Buddhism is to concentrate on the present moment and therein lies reality. It doesnt really concern itself too much with what lies beyond death (this is the Zen perspective). The commentary of brad warner is buddhism stripped down to its very core.
Hope this helps ...let me know if this makes sense Namarie Artanaro
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Post by Laurasia on Nov 2, 2005 0:52:32 GMT -5
Hi Artanaro. Thank you, it does help to some degree. It just sounds so... oh I don't know...nihilistic, rather than spiritual. It doesn't sound...uplifting, but rather depressing. Almost as if it were saying that being hedonistic is the ideal, because only now matters. In the end there is nothing else but what is going on now. It's just a very different feeling from everything else that I've considered to be "Buddhist". For example, (I'm not sure if you've ever listened to our heard the work of this band) Incubus' music seems very Buddhist to me & I truly love the messages that Brandon Boyd portrays with many of his lyrics. I hope that I'm not offending you with any of this, as that's not my intention at all. I'm just a bit confused & not really sure about how to articulate it right now. Sincerely, Laurasia
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 2, 2005 1:22:14 GMT -5
check this out The Doctrine of “No Soul” in Buddhism gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dbragg1/buddhism.htmThis article I think sums it up.... I am not offended by the way....Gautama Buddha teaches us to question even him...question everything.... Its also quite hard to put into words.... Namarie Artanaro
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Post by Brandybuck on Nov 2, 2005 1:31:44 GMT -5
Brandon Boyd is indeed a Buddhist..he has been a practitioner for the past 9 years. A lot of his song lyrics do in fact reflect his learning. If I had the link i would post it, but it was so long ago that I do not even know if the story would still be up. That is basically what the interview was regarding though. Laurasia, like I have said..take what you can get out of any religion/belief system that can improve your life in a positive way and disregard the rest. There are things that I have read about Buddhism that I do not feel within my heart will aid me on my quest to be a better individual. The same I can say about my Wicca path...I have read some things on the Wiccan religionn that make me cringe. I think the same can be applied to any religion..I cannot think of one person that I know that follows every single detail of a religion down to its core. I certainly cannot..and I am very spiritually satisfied. A few negative things that you may see about Buddhism..remember..it is just interpreted from a percentage of the populus as such, and can have no bearing whatsoever on your own personal belief system. I think that you are doing great. *wink*
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 2, 2005 1:40:04 GMT -5
well said Brandybuck.... We put forth the teachings...you decide what you want to do with them...
Artanaro
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 2, 2005 10:45:49 GMT -5
Keep in mind that these teachings that I am putting forth are those of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism and are just one way of looking at things.... on with the show....
The Three Worlds
The three worlds are the past, present, and future. This a common Buddhist expression that seems to throw a lot of people. They think its some kind of reference to Other Realms or higher states of consciousness or some such crap. The past and the future - even the present- are just inventions by the conscious mind for deal with reality in an organized way. Theyre symbolic representations. And representations arent reality. We'll never find the past and the future no matter where we look. Nor will we find the present- but lets put that one aside for a couple of minutes. On my desk is a picture of my nephew when he was five dressed up as Gammera, the famous fire breathing giant turtle. Hes twelve now and no longer dresses up as Gammera. That five year old in the picture can never be found. In one sense the past exists since the state of our own bodies and minds is the accumulation of past actions. But even this past exists only now. We usually believe that the past creates memory. Real events occured in the real past and we remember them- but in fact that only half of the truth. The other half, every bit as important is that memory creates the past. We are actively constructing our own past right now every bit as much as we create our own future. We can look at dramatic examples, but its true in mundane ways as well. Was Thomas Jefferson a brave champion of human freedom or an exploitative slave owner who enjoyed a bit on the side with his female property? History is rewritten constantly- and the "past" changes. Stalin reshaped the past by erasing his enemies from official photographs and we are constantly revising our own pasts in more subtle, but ultimately quite similar ways. Furthermore, our perceptions of events at the time they are happening is always flawed and incomplete and then we reshape those flawed perceptions every time we revisit those memories. The past exists only in our minds and our minds are easily changeable and so the past itself becomes malleable as well. Theres another Buddhist sutra called the Diamond Sutra - diamond because its wisdom cuts through anything. The Diamond Sutra says " The mind of the past is unknowable, the mind of the future is unknowable, themind of the present is unknowable." The mind of the past is unknowable because the past is not where you are. EVer. You cannot find your past no matter where you search. Ultimately that concept we call the "past" is little more than a clever fiction to explain how things got the way they are now - and sometimes this fiction doesnt even explain things all that well. We may long to revisit the past, but we really never can. And all those idyllic memories we have, well, we know deep down things probably werent quite as rosy as we like to remember them (or as wholly and utterly bad, if that the way our memories tend to go). The mind of the future is unknowable. As a guy who collects a lot of weird stuff, I run up against this one a lot. I'll sometimes see a certain old monster book or something at a price that just a little bit too steep. So I'll sit there and wonder ," will I regret it later if I dont buy this now?" Of course, you cant answer that question. People stress themselves out all the time over variations of the same question. If I sign this contract, will it make my company big money? If I ask her our for a date, will she say yes? And if she says yes, will I end up enjoying the date or regretting it? You dont know what the future will be. You might take on an awful job in order to make a lot of money "for the future" but what if you drop dead before then? You never know. Of course, you need to think about the future to some extent. I wouldnt write a book without imagining a future time when it might be read. But dont get too hung up on the future. The futures our of your control. Enjoy whats happening right now. Do what is appropriate , what is right, in the present moment and let the future be the future. So what about that present moment? The Diamond Sutra tells us that mind of the present moment is unknowable. Whats that mean? We think we know the mind of the present - after all, here it is! But we dont really know it. We cant really see it. Wholly in the midst of something , you cant possible see it. As I write this my eyes look at the keyboard (if I'd learned to type correctly , theyd be watching the screen) but I cant see my own eyes anymore that I can bite my teeth. I can only see their reflection and experience their effects. Trying to see ones present is just like that. I can only see the reflection of my mind in the universe or in my own past. The present moment is the razor's edge of time slicing through both future and past like a red-hot machete through a stick of I-Cant-Believe-Its-Not-Butter. Buddhist writings sometimes refer to mind moments, the conceptually shortest possible division of time. Its said that there are sixty four mind moments in a finger snap. I couldnt care less whether this has any scientific value in modern times - its just a poetic attempt to illustrate the fleetingness of the present moment. In the present moment there isnt even time to complete a single thought, no matter how simple. In the present moment not even perception has time to occur. Action alone exists. And yet this fleeting teeny-weeny present moment is the only time in which you are free to act. The reality of the unknowable past is set. Done and gone. Our ability to mentally manipulate it is an illusion. Yet in this moment, our past actions affect our life here and now. Within the confines in which our past action has placed us, we are absolutely free right now. That an important point - make sure you see it. The future is not here. Completely unattainable. Yet in this moment, the action we take affects our and the universe's future circumstances infinitely and unknowably. here and now we can do something real. Everything exists in this moment. This moment is the basis of all creation. The universe wasnt created the Biblical six thousand years ago or even in the scientific fifteen billion. The universe is created right now and right now it disappears. Before you even have time to recognize its existence its gone forever. Yet the present moment penetrates all of time and space. In Dogens words "What is happening here and now is obstructed by happening itself;it has sprung free from the brains of happening" In other words, we cant know the present in the usual sense because the present is obscured by the present itself and by the act of perceiving it and conceiving of it. Form meets emptiness here and now and all of creation blossoms into being. by Brad Warner
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 2, 2005 10:55:02 GMT -5
Nirvana
Betcha thnk I'm gonna make some reference to Kurt Cobain's band. That not the real Nirvana. The real Nirvana was a two man band from England who put out some great psychedelic LPs in the '60s. But that not what the Heart sutra is talking about. In the West, nirvana is often misunderstood as some kind of Buddhist heaven , or, since nirvana literally means "cessation" or "extinction", a lot of people have a seriously mistaken tendency to equate the idea with nihilism. Others equate nirvana with some kind of everlasting spiritual bliss. Nirvana isnt about bliss. If you want bliss, youd be better off smokin a falr 'ol doobie, dude. Just brace yourself for a stiff dose of reality again when youve used up yer stash. If you must, you can understand nirvana as a kind of goal of Buddhist practice. Now, any good Buddhist teacher will tell you its the path that important in Buddhistm and not the goal. Its like shooting are a target with a bow. You just aim as well as you can and let the sucker fly. Maybe you hit, maybe you dont. Either way you don what this moment calls for. And this one. And this one. In Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, our old Indian buddy Nagarjuna says that nirvana is not reality. I agree but I'll add that nirvana is also ultimate reality. Buddhism's chock full of contradictions. Doncha love it? And heres something that'll really get your panties in a bunch : Maybe your concept of ultimate reality has no counterpart in ultimate reality. by Brad Warner
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Post by Laurasia on Nov 2, 2005 16:36:04 GMT -5
Hi Artanaro. Thank you for the link. Tes, that helped quite a bit. I think that I understand the concept a bit better now. Hi Brandybuck. Yes, I know. And that is what I do with various spiritualities. I was merely trying to understand what was being expressed, as it seemed so different from what I had previously heard. Sincerely, Laurasia
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Post by Brandybuck on Nov 2, 2005 17:25:51 GMT -5
Ok. That is what happens when there are so many different interpretations of one man's teachings. The Buddha left so much open to interpretation, and so many people see his teachings in so many different lights that some are even polar opposites of the others it seems. In my personal opinion, a person can feel free to believe in whatever he chooses. I may not agree with certain philosophies, but it may make perfect sense to someone else. I like to respect what other's find betters their lives.
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 3, 2005 10:53:29 GMT -5
Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi This means "complete,unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment". Notice, though, that the sutra first says the bodhisattva has nothing to attain and that, because of having nothing to attain , he attains complete liberation. YOu cant attain liberation the way you can attain a 1968 Camaro or a D-plus on a math test. You can only attain liberation by clearly seeing there is nothing to attain. Complete liberation sounds like a big deal. And it is. Its the biggest deal around. But dont make too much of it-because its also absolutely nothing at all. I love the covers of those New Age books that show some Enlightened Saint with blue haloes around his body, shining pure white light from his head and fingertips. Its pure crap. A real enlightened being doesnt look any different from anyone else. Theyre just ordinary people like you. That other stuff's just special effects. Annutara-samyak-sambodhi is you. Enlightenment is realilty itself. And reality is you - naked, sticky and phony as all get-out. Reality doesnt know a damned thing. Reality has doubts and insecurities. Reality gets horny sometimes and sometimes reality likes to read the funny papers. Reality is an old guy in Cleveland heights complaining that his grandkids have stolen his dentures again. Reality is five guys trying to tune three guitars and a Farfisa compact organ to the same pitch and failing miserably. Reality is the source of every star, every planet, every galaxy; every dust mote, every atom;every klepton, lepton,and slepton. Reality is the basis of every booger up your nose, every pit-stain in your dad's T-shirts, and every dingleberry on your butt ((I laughed when i read that part )) Reality is this moment. by Brad Warner Namarie Artanaro
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Post by Lomelindo on Nov 3, 2005 11:37:06 GMT -5
The Great Transcendent Mantra
The last section is really different from the rest and seems to be encouraging us to chant that little line at the end, "Gate, gate,paragate,parasamgate. Bodhi!Svaha!". This basically means "Gone, gone, all the way gone to the other shore. Enlightenment! Hot da**!" Its not really meant to be chanted. Its just an expression of joy in response to realization. Someone asked Kobun Chino, who was another student of Nishijima's teacher, what the line meant, and Kobun replied, "I dont know, that just Indian stuff." A lot of Buddhism is wrapped up with Indian spiritual traditions. But thats not the important part. Woody Allen often exclaims "Jesus!" in his movies but that doesnt mean hes Christian. The mantra at the end of the piece is just a motif that was common in the culture at the time it was written. "The other shore" is enlightenment but enlightenment is also this shore, where we are right now. Does that irk ya? No? Read it again until it does....If Zen Buddhism were only the understanding that what we are right now is fine and dandy why do we bother practicing zazen and reading books and listening to teachers? Its an important question. This was the burning question that our man Dogen - the founder of Japanese Soto Zen and one of the coolest Zen guys ever- took up when he began pursuing Buddhism in earnest: If were already perfect as we are, why should we study Buddhism and practice Zen? No one could answer Dogen's question for him and so Dogen had to find the truth for himself. In a sense, Dogen's entire multivolume Shobogenzo was his attempt to answer this one simpel sounding question. But thats his answer. Whats yours? There are people who think of the spiritual life as a journy. Buddhism isnt like that. We may use the word path, but were not trying to get anywhere. Were trying to fully experience the wonder and perfectness of being right here. Some of those other paths might claim to whisk you off to some magical place- and maybe theyll really do it. But when you get there youll be just a baffled as you are right now.
Buddhism wont give you the answer. Buddhism might help you find your own right question, but youve gotta supply your own answers. Sorry. No one else's answer will ever satisfy you - nor should it. But the real magic is that once you have your own true answer, youll find youre not alone. As unique as your own true answer is - the one you find after questioning and questioning and questioning- it will be absolutely in tune with the answer Gautama Buddha found all those centuries ago, the answer Nagarjuna expounded upon, the answer Bodhidharma brought to China, and the one that Dogen wrote about in Japan. And that answer will announce itself like thunder from the sky overhead and an earthquake from the ground beneath your feet. And it will be just like nothing at all. by Brad Warner
Thus ends the commentary on the heart sutra.... Laurasia, You may find that the actual teachings of the Buddha differ somewhat from the pop interpretation of Buddhism which seems to think that Hindu reincarnational theory and Karma theories are the same in Buddhism, but hopefully my posts have shown that they are related but take you to quite a different place i think.
I will end with a few quotes that I think may be relevant: 1. The brahman Dona saw the Buddha sitting under a tree and was impressed by his peaceful air of alertness and his good looks. He asked the Buddha: "Are you a god?" "No brahman , I am not a god." "Then an angel?" "No, indeed, brahman." "A spirit, then?" "No, I am not a spirit" "Then what are you?" "I am awake." from Anguttara Nikaya
2.Sakka asked the Buddha: "Do different religious teachers head for the same goal or practice the same disciplines or aspire to the same thing? "No, Sakka, they do not. And why? This world is made up of myriad different states of being and people adhere to one or another of these states and become tenaciously possessive of them, saying, 'This alone is true, everything else is false." It is like a territory that they believe is theirs. So all religious teachers do not teach the same goal or the same discipline, not do they aspire to the same thing." "But if you find truth in any religion or philosophy, then accept that truth without prejudice." from Digha Nikaya
3. Accept my words only when you have examines them for yourselves; do not accept them simply because of the reverence you have for me. Those who only have faith in me and affection for me will not find the final freedom. But those who have faith in the truth and are determined on the path, they will find awakening. Gautama Buddha from Majjhima Nikaya
enjoy Namarie Artanaro
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Post by Laurasia on Nov 3, 2005 18:05:33 GMT -5
Hi Artanaro. Yes, it seems as though I did have the two "inter-meshed" too much. I understand the difference between the two philosophies now. Thank you very much for putting up with my constant questions. Sincerely, Laurasia
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Post by Brandybuck on Nov 3, 2005 19:51:49 GMT -5
Artanaro, Thank you once again for contributing so much to this thread.
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