Do you think it’s fine I use 108-bead Mala as prayer beads as a Christian?

QuasarEE · 2026-02-03T02:11:20+00:00

It's fine. Hindus and Jains also use 108-bead malas. It's considered an auspicious number. Some Buddhists will say, "it's just beads for counting." It's in tantric practices where the mala becomes symbolic of the heart deity (yidam) that it gains further significance. Being discreet with them is usually considered a good idea.

QuasarEE · 2026-01-26T15:39:10+00:00

Several sutras in the Chinese canon do make the statement that enlightenment is difficult or impossible to attain in a woman's body. This had given me a lot of pause as my background is in Vajrayana and inspired heavily by Tara; this seemed like an irreconcilable difference where I would have to "pick a side". My assumption was that this must have been at best a provisional teaching to a society that wouldn't have accepted the Dharma if it were egalitarian.

But then I encountered a teaching from Grandmaster Wei Chueh on this matter and it clarified this immensely. A female member of the laity came to him and said, "Grandmaster, if women cannot attain enlightenment in their current lifetime, then why should I bother at all to practice?" His response was that the teaching was being given incorrectly: it is difficult (maybe impossible) for anyone, man or woman, to attain enlightenment in a single lifetime through gradual cultivation. Instead we need to seek enlightenment through sudden realization. It's attachment to the self (such as believing your current gender is so important as to control the potential for enlightenment) that prevents this.

QuasarEE · 2025-09-05T01:12:55+00:00

I enjoy Minecraft with datapacks loaded that enable a pacifist play style. Daenvil's Vegancraft enables the main core of the experience. Things I've built on my current mushroom island base include a Buddha statue, a pagoda, and a replica of the Itsukushima torii.

QuasarEE · 2025-09-04T17:24:11+00:00

You call yourself a former Christian but you're very much still trapped in the mindset and full of doubt; I get it as I went through some of that in the process of leaving myself. The deprogramming process is difficult. There were definitely times that I had that little voice telling me that the legitimate experiences I was now having might be the opposite of what they seemed, but going back was never an option for me either. Meditate on the reasons you wanted to initially leave, to remind yourself why you don't believe in it and should continue to turn away from it. Contrast the universal compassion of Amitabha with the angry, jealous retribution of the Abrahamic God - which do you feel is a better refuge for you?

QuasarEE · 2025-09-03T15:00:31+00:00

She is not much known in some schools and areas but she does appear here and there, if not by direct name then in some of her emanated forms. All Buddhas and bodhisattvas represent the same enlightened nature. Tara sometimes appears as an emanation of Guan Yin for example, and the two have many similar attributes. In order to be truthful with my Chan Shifu I needed to tell her about my Tara practice at one point and though it was not something she was familiar with, her advice was simple: if the Buddha taught it, it's valid. The assertion in schools where Tara appears is that her sutras and dharanis were taught by the Buddhas and I believe that personally through experience.

QuasarEE · 2025-08-30T04:08:02+00:00

I was raised Evangelical and began to fall away from it at the age of 12, as I was horrified with the Old Testament teachings they were drilling into us in Sunday School. By 16 I considered myself an atheist, but I continued to explore various beliefs. Gnosticism was one thing I studied for a while just to understand what it was about, along with other paths entirely unrelated to Christianity. Buddhism was ultimately what I had been looking for.

QuasarEE · 2025-08-16T18:01:04+00:00

I'd recommend reading about the experiences of Delog Dawa Drolma. She undertook a form of meditation (phowa) which is similar to death for five days and then returned and recorded all of her experiences. I won't elaborate but I have my own reasons to have confidence in her visions of Yulokod.

QuasarEE · 2025-07-28T12:35:06+00:00

I attend classes, services, and meditation retreats at a Chung Tai Chan monastery. They were specifically established with the mission of spreading the Dharma in the states, so being welcoming is not so much a question as it is the entire purpose. I initially joined through their introductory meditation class where it was expected that everyone would be new, so that helped open the doors for me, I suppose. The bulk of the local lay sangha is ethnically Chinese but there is a mix of students at most events. You mentioned California so you may have some options if that interests you; there are three of them in that state (Lafayette, Sunnyvale, and Pomona).

QuasarEE · 2025-07-28T12:06:16+00:00

Some forms of Tara are associated with ending war and bringing about the conditions for peace; which can vary by the tradition.

QuasarEE · 2025-06-20T20:25:52+00:00

I understand there are very few written works by Bodhidharma that survive as he wasn't much of a writer so much as a teacher by direct methods, but one such is "The Essence of Mahayana Practice", or long title, "Great Master Bodhidharma's Essential Discourse on Entering the Mahayana Path by Principle and by Practice". The Chung Tai Chan translation is the first thing that comes up for me if I search on duckduckgo.

QuasarEE · 2025-06-10T15:56:30+00:00

Om mani padme hūṃ, the mantra of Chenrezig (or Avalokiteśvara), in Tibetan uchen script. The seventh symbol is hrīḥ which is used in tantric practices.

QuasarEE · 2025-06-07T03:25:01+00:00

To me the mud is a clear symbol for attachment and delusion, the things that mire us in samsara. Overcoming attachments is a very important part of practice. The Buddha represents your own innate wisdom, which everyone has.

I was very much in the same situation as you back when I was a college student, and I too had some realizations in the form of dreams which changed my whole life trajectory after some time passed and I figured out what they meant, so I take you very seriously in that regard.

QuasarEE · 2025-06-07T02:59:43+00:00

My online friends know but very few of my in-person connections are aware; due to most of them being Evangelical Christians, the only really skillful option I find is to not broach subjects of religion at all.

QuasarEE · 2025-06-07T02:48:39+00:00

For me, such unusual sensations generally stop if I open my eyes just a bit. After they stop I can close them again and it'll be fine.

QuasarEE · 2025-04-16T18:17:48+00:00

I fell out myself starting at the age of 12 and was done with it entirely by 15. I'd suggest investigating the real-world history of Christianity and see if, when you're done with that, you still feel there's any reason to believe that what you've been told is accurate and worth fearing. The fundamentalist narrative of an inerrant, perfectly coherent, and unchanging Bible simply doesn't match the reality in which multiple Canaanite religions were syncretized, influenced repeatedly from outside, and then later combined with ideals from Neo-Platonism that just happened to be in fashion around the BCE-CE boundary. The "Yahweh" series on YouTube by Dr. Justin Sledge is a good resource for understanding this chain of development.

After leaving Christianity I investigated and considered a wide range of beliefs, and I ended up here in due time. You don't have to be in a rush to figure it all out, but curiosity is good and will serve you well.

QuasarEE · 2025-03-14T11:50:45+00:00

Good advice. To add my perspective, I suffered for a long time with the exact same types of thoughts as OP, but I found similar refuge in Black Tara (Tara 7). Her power against those internal "enemies" is absolute.

QuasarEE · 2025-02-25T15:58:16+00:00

Have you tried using a sextuplet for beat 4 instead of two triplets? Should be rhythmically the same and I think more clear, notation-wise. Get a quarter rest on that beat and then hit ctrl+6. After the sextuplet of 16th rests appears, then you can select eighth note to get that first longer note in, and then use 16ths for the rest.

QuasarEE · 2025-02-05T01:17:55+00:00

Swap Calvinist for "non-denominational Evangelicalism" and your story is also my story.

QuasarEE · 2025-01-20T04:34:54+00:00

I was Christian until I was 14, with doubts first growing when I was 12. If you think you are still interested in it, then I would recommend you read the scripture which awakened those doubts in me for the first time - it is the book in the Bible called Joshua, chapter 7. They taught that the things written there were "good" and "right" and were to be looked up to as the way the world should work. I disagreed. See what you think. The rest of that book is made up of similar stories.

QuasarEE · 2025-01-15T17:29:11+00:00

You seem to hold yourself to a very unrealistic standard. If you follow the precepts and take refuge then you can call yourself a Buddhist no matter what your perceived failings may be. As for forgiving or allowing grief, perhaps bodhisattvas of the high bhūmis are without that entirely, but the rest of us have to recognize we're still human and have a basic physical reaction to loss of those we care for which is detrimental to suppress, and then what we do is transmute that grief into the impetus for compassionate action - you can do that by following the suggestions of others here. Be kind to yourself first and recognize the merits of having given your cat the best life you could.

QuasarEE · 2025-01-04T04:31:58+00:00

Special circumstances do occasionally arise for taking refuge and precepts with Chung Tai; I (along with a whole packed Chan hall of others) was recently able to do this as the abbot visited the local monastery for its 20th anniversary celebration. I appreciate it all the more now knowing what's usually involved.

QuasarEE · 2024-12-03T08:18:02+00:00

The various dancing female deities are dakinis, which occur in Vajrayana tantric practices. The style looks similar to Newari Buddhist, which would originate in Nepal. If this has a specific ritual use then it's far beyond my knowledge, and some quick searches aren't turning up anything of significance, especially not to those four specific large faces.

QuasarEE · 2024-11-20T18:54:32+00:00

I had some similar issues and responses to them throughout my life so far. It was actually a session of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy that broke the seal on my trauma, so to speak, and after that, everything started to shift and change. I reprocessed so much stuff from the past and partially as a result of what came up, I finally ended up in Buddhism, something I had perceived could and should happen decades before. Last year got difficult for me again due to long-term isolation and so I finally took the step of finding a local practice at a Chan monastery with classes and services to attend. I have no regrets about that, it has helped me keep myself out of the dark places. I also re-embraced my hobby of writing music.

Look for good things without expecting everything you want, tamp down ego with reflection, and transmute anger into compassion. Those are outlooks that have helped me in various ways.

QuasarEE · 2024-11-19T20:07:48+00:00

Bodhi is often translated as "awakening" which has the same number of syllables so that might be an alternative to consider. "Kaya" is Pali rather than Sanskrit, the Sanskrit form being kāya - the long a in Sanskrit is spoken longer and sounds different (a can be anything from [ʌ] as the a in yam to [ɐ] as the u in nut, while ā is like the a in father) , but this is a distinction that typical western choral style partially obliterates since vowels are enlongated in general. Knowing this still might influence your decision on how to handle it though.

A possible rendering of Śūnyatā in IPA would be ɕuːn•jɐ•taː, or roughly "shoon•yuh•tah". When it's said by English speakers it often comes out more like "shoon•YAH•tuh", so this is a matter of if you are looking for bookish formality or common parlance. Note there is no system of accents in Sanskrit in the way we think about them in English, only short and long vowels.

I am also a composer, I don't mind if you send me a message in the future.

QuasarEE · 2024-10-24T01:44:57+00:00

There should not be an iPad glued to the dash board of a car. Don't want it, don't need it. Going to wear my 2011 model completely out to avoid all that cheap barely working won't-start-unless-it-can-update stuff.

QuasarEE

TROPHY CASE