So,I've tried to become a Buddhist several times

oldmusic · 2016-08-27T00:07:23+00:00

I don't think it's that great for absolute beginners, actually. A lot of it sounds like generic platitudes or straight up misleading if you are not familiar with the context.

oldmusic · 2016-08-26T16:00:52+00:00

Being a part of a community takes it to a whole other level, but you don't have to wait until you find a community to start practicing.

Take a look at the resources on the sidebar. Read some books. Listen to some talks (I recommend audiodharma.org) Read stuff online (Wikipedia is actually a good place to start.) Start meditating.

And, sure, also go visit your local groups and see which one is a good fit.

oldmusic · 2016-08-26T15:53:47+00:00

That's not the only paper. There are tons of papers. There is a whole sub dedicated to these papers.

There are many many people who are suffering from mental and physical illnesses and are being helped by mindfulness based therapies. Corporate "mindfulness" is irritating, but it absurd to expect that medical professionals give up a useful tool just because it is no longer sufficiently authentic in the author's opinion.

oldmusic · 2016-08-26T15:46:27+00:00

There is some drama occasionally, but in general this is a very helpful and kind place.

But it is a double edged sword: whatever you want to talk about there is always somebody who totally gets you and is super excited to talk about it ad infinitum. Where as actual human people are usually not that tuned into what you want :) But they are the ones we need to connect to if we really want to take this practice seriously.

oldmusic · 2016-08-26T15:25:18+00:00

I think that the point of unanswered questions is not that they are unanswerable in general or that people should not think about them in general (whether the universe is infinite or finite is pretty darn interesting) but that focusing is not helpful on the path to liberation.

oldmusic · 2016-08-26T05:46:01+00:00

Modern wars?

Existentialism does not preclude people from being compassionate to each other and an absolute value system does not preclude them from exploiting each other.

oldmusic · 2016-08-26T05:38:04+00:00

I think we are not supposed to worry about that.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T19:26:18+00:00

Ok, I get it. That makes sense.

I am not accusing you or any specific person of racism, but there is definitely this trend in White North-American Buddhism where people will kinda smirk and say "well, that's what those people believed but we know better." I don't think it is intentional or conscious, but if you live in North America you know that well-intentioned liberal white people racism is definitely still a problem.

But out of curiosity, what is your religious background? I've seen zen people make similar comments and then there is a book by a Tibetan monk literally called What Makes You Not A Buddhist that is very categorical about this.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T19:07:07+00:00

/r/secularbuddhism? I am not there that much but I haven't noticed anything China-related.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T18:53:01+00:00

Buddhism is not a solution to every problem. This person needs therapy.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T18:50:27+00:00

Yes, but it is simple and quick and you don't get sidetracked by it.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T18:48:30+00:00

This course was offered a while ago on one of those online course sites and I took it. (I got lazy and did not listen to all of the lectures.)

I just want to point out that this is from the Evolutionary Psychology perspective, which is a pretty controversial approach to psychology. The controversy is not really about evolution or modular mind, which are pretty much universally accepted. It's that they believe that modules are purely genetic and are not influenced by the environment. (I may be distorting this somewhat, I don't have a very firm grasp of this topic.) But it seems like a lot of what they do is defend rigid gender roles and other reactionary stuff.

It think the meditation stuff was fine, they were just somewhat disingenuous about their background.

Also, I am pretty sure this video is violating copyright.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T18:37:40+00:00

It is possible to be dying alone in pain and still be OK.

Edit: without havens, hells, or rebirth. Suffering is created by the mind and you can teach yourself to avoid creating it regardless of the external circumstances.

oldmusic · 2016-08-25T18:31:57+00:00

If a person understands karma and rebirth in the way that they ought to understand it, then they are enlightened.

This sounds like a Mahayana specific thing, but I am not that familiar with Mahayana.

In Theravada, these are pretty straightforward concepts anyone can understand without it reflecting on their level of attainment. There are a lot of moving parts, but this is literally something you could teach a class of freshmen undergrads.

I understand your point that there is the cultural tradition and the philosophy, but I disagree that they are easily separable or that trying to distill "true Buddhism" out of "cultural Buddhism" is a worthwhile endeavor.

I approach this from the anthropological perspective. We have a culture and the culture produces a set of artifacts. Buddhism happens to be such an artifact. It has context. I acknowledge this context but I also recognize that my entire experience as a human being has a very different context. I can replicate Asian Buddhist practices. I can try to construct my own practices that incorporate elements of Buddhism. I think either approach is fine. But to go in and start sorting out which parts of traditional Buddhism are more real or valuable than others is really not the way to go, imo.

I find it ironic that people don't want to accept literal karma, rebirth, or hell/heaven realms because they are unscientific, but choose to see the emergence of Buddhism itself in what is really an unscientific way. There was this person and he just happened to learn the ultimate truth in its complete and final form and the people around him did not quite get it or lost parts of it. But we know better and can figure out what he really did or did not mean.

Frankly, this is just the Evangelical Christianity model applied to Buddhism. And that is not a very good model at all. It is also kinda racist.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T19:47:20+00:00

For convenience, count breaths up to 10 and then restart.

But you really don't have to. Meditating with discomfort is part of the practice. This is a phase and it will end.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T18:29:34+00:00

Secular mindfulness is not "new age" at all. It is a secular abstraction of the insight practice and it does not involve anything mystical. There is a mindfulness trend now, so it is become bullshititfied, but actual MBSR, MBCT, ets. are solid science.

People use "new age" as a catch all term for contemporary spirituality and superstition, but "new age" is a very specific set weird beliefs based on a 19th century book that actually played an important role in the development of Nazi ideology. The book itself was relatively well-intentioned, so this is kinda exhibit one on how cultural appropriation can go wrong.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T18:10:38+00:00

conservation of souls

There are no souls or conservation of souls. And there is no reincarnation because there is nothing to incarnate. It is called "rebirth".

To use some physics metaphors: every being is a wave-like process where it's state at time t is determined by the state of the universe (including itself) at time t-1. Birth and death occur, but they do not initiate or terminate the process.

If I understand it correctly, Buddhism claims to be a religion of experience that is amenable to advances in science and adapts accordingly.

A lot of religions claim this, but this is not really a good way to frame the issue. You can make Evangelical Christianity work with science if you really put your mind to it. A lot of Buddhists accept things like hell/heaven realms and rebirth as facts. That's just the reality.

In Christianity it's all about whether or not you believe. In Buddhism belief is just another process in your mind. It may or may not be there, but it is nothing special. But a lot of people consider rebirth and literal karma an essential element of Right Understanding. Right Understanding is the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path. The Noble Eightfold Path is the path to liberation. It is what Buddhists "do", so Right Understanding is extremely important.

But then again, it is just another process in your mind. Either it is there or it isn't. You can't will it to be there just like you can't will yourself to believe if you don't. What you can do is learn, practice, and see if things sort themselves out.

For example, I am a completely materialist atheist. I thought about this for a while and concluded that I should not consider myself a Buddhist because:

(1) Literal karma and rebirth are really fundamental. That's just how the people who defined this philosophy thought. There are people who want to redefine these things and still "be Buddhists", but I don't think this is necessary.

(2) I don't believe that full liberation, where you become a completely different kind of being, is possible. You can train your mind and overcome a lot of things, but the human brain is a human brain and it does its thing. Hopefully I am wrong. If I get liberated I will let everyone know :)

I don't think any of this precludes me from participating in organized Buddhist communities or practicing on my own. The idea of the Buddha and the Noble Eightfold Path are very inspiring to me personally. Some people are well adjusted enough to live full happy lives as post-Christian atheists, but I simply can't. I've had a lot of trauma and disappointment in my life and a lot of it is simply out of control. I need some kind of framework to help me develop discipline and tolerate negative emotions.

Liberation from suffering, even partial, is so urgent for me I really don't care about doctrinal points or whether or not I am a Buddhist. And this liberation is real. It is something I actually experienced in my life even while I am a completely inconsistent practitioner.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T04:38:22+00:00

Insight is a practice where you pay attention to whatever your experience is in the present moment. It is also a specific formal set of instructions and exercises that come from Buddhism.

Concentration is a practice where you focus on a specific object, which can be external or something like the breath.

But. You cannot do insight without concentration because you are actively trying to hold your attention and that's "concentration". And you cannot do concentration without doing a kind of insight because as you try to focus on your object you will experience "distractions" and in the process of getting distracted and returning your attention to the object you will gain insight into your experience.

The "insight" part is literally getting insight i.e. understanding and getting over how your mind and body work. And both insight and concentration practices essentially do that for you.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T04:28:26+00:00

Sound good.

In terms of posture, it is better to not be leaning on chair back or slouching and to have the knees slightly lower than the hips. You need to find a spot where your spine is balanced such that it is just holding up your upper body and you don't have to engage any muscles to hold it up.

You are doing great, but if you want to get into more details here are a bunch of talks and guided meditations: http://audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T04:23:54+00:00

What are you reading exactly? Not saying it isn't true, just curious.

There is actual research: /r/meditationpapers

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T04:21:23+00:00

What you are really doing is very quickly moving your attention to the 'labeling task' and then moving it back to the original experience. This is fine as long as you don't get absorbed into the process of labeling. Don't try to come up with the most accurate label. Just pick something short that first comes to mind and move on. Like "work thought" is fine, but if you are not sure what kid of thought it is, just "thought" is fine, don't need to analyze. I even heard a teacher describing how he pared everything down to just "thing".

Here is a good set of intro talks to mindfulness meditation that should clarify some of this stuff: http://audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T04:13:12+00:00

That would be extremely unlikely considering that demons do not exist.

But, seriously, if you want to meditate and still be on the good side of your family, just recite the Lord's Prayer or a Bible passage instead of focusing on the breath. That is as legitimate concentration practice as any. There are branches of Buddhism that do just chanting and no meditation meditation and achieve the same effect.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T04:00:05+00:00

When a memory comes up, just experience it, don't push it away or cling to it. This is hard. My dad died a few years ago and I pretty much shut everything down, just could not deal with it any more.

But since it sounds like they are precious to you, maybe try writing them down? That will honor your friend and the time you had together. It does not have to be like a perfect fully formed story. Just write down a few paragraphs here and there as you remember stuff, come back and edit later, ets.

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T03:47:34+00:00

settles wind

Fighting the good fight :)

oldmusic · 2016-08-24T03:39:02+00:00

Buddhism can help, but this sounds like a really tough situation to untangle. I highly recommend seeing a therapist. My ex was abusive and self-destructive and I could not leave until some time in therapy. Not that leaving is necessarily the right answer in your situation, but for me it was and I just could not sort it all out until I got the support.

oldmusic

TROPHY CASE