Buddhism in a nutshell.

[shaberon]

Posted by petra (here)
He spent most of his life studying various religions and eventually settled on Buddhism.

That's how it is for most of us.

I found that nothing else I looked into would "stick", leaving this one thing that wouldn't stop.

I tend to argue it is not a religion. A religion is like something that belts out 641 Mosaic laws and tells you everything is peachy when you do that.

In Buddhism, there is heavy regulation on monks, which is a different thing compared to the ordinary person.

He always hated Christianity and is very happy to hear that I am no longer a Christian

I don't like the religion, but the fact is that Christianity is Orthodoxy, which doesn't really exist west of Serbia. But even this is based on some rather fantastic beliefs I cannot take part in.

From the recordings of just the person, Jesus, almost everything he said is a close copy of Buddhist tenets. There is a good chance it was spread around Egypt and the Middle East at the time. And, in any case, on basic teachings of morality, Buddhism and most everything else is not very different. After that it may be quite different. Very intensely personally focused and all about transforming body and mind as-they-are into something else. A religion is more like a binary switch telling you if you are in a state of grace or not. This is not deep enough to get my attention. Everything we have will force you to find out for yourself.

[petra]

Posted by shaberon (here)

Posted by petra (here)
He spent most of his life studying various religions and eventually settled on Buddhism.

That's how it is for most of us.

I found that nothing else I looked into would "stick", leaving this one thing that wouldn't stop.

I tend to argue it is not a religion. A religion is like something that belts out 641 Mosaic laws and tells you everything is peachy when you do that.

In Buddhism, there is heavy regulation on monks, which is a different thing compared to the ordinary person.

He always hated Christianity and is very happy to hear that I am no longer a Christian

I don't like the religion, but the fact is that Christianity is Orthodoxy, which doesn't really exist west of Serbia. But even this is based on some rather fantastic beliefs I cannot take part in.

From the recordings of just the person, Jesus, almost everything he said is a close copy of Buddhist tenets. There is a good chance it was spread around Egypt and the Middle East at the time. And, in any case, on basic teachings of morality, Buddhism and most everything else is not very different. After that it may be quite different. Very intensely personally focused and all about transforming body and mind as-they-are into something else. A religion is more like a binary switch telling you if you are in a state of grace or not. This is not deep enough to get my attention. Everything we have will force you to find out for yourself.

I like the way you think. When I was a kid I used to say I was not religious and I would like to go back to that. I don't know a lot about Buddhism but have plenty of time to learn. This site is such a weath of info but more than anything I appreciate the personal reply.

I feel like I should be wearing a cross sometimes, but I just don't. I guess I still trust Jesus I trust Allah too.. he means well.

[shaberon]

Posted by petra (here)
When I was a kid I used to say I was not religious and I would like to go back to that. I don't know a lot about Buddhism but have plenty of time to learn.

That's it exactly.

It's what I saw from early childhood, and was not given any language to express it.

Instead, when I entered school, and found kids learning their "special" religion in Sunday school, I was intimidated, and thought it was the most false and horrifying thing to ever spill from the mind of man.

And it is the same for Buddha himself. Not satisfied by the yoga teachings that were passed to him, he turned a corner by realizing the missing ingredient was a spontaneous joy experienced during childhood for no reason.

There is nothing higher in Buddhism than the Four Noble Truths, there are only further details and practices.


Existence is filled with sorrow and Suffering.

Suffering has its reasons and causes.

Suffering can be stopped.

Suffering has been stopped.


The first two are, I suppose, educational, whereas the third is personal practice, and the final result is the state of a Buddha.

That's why we have many thousands of texts, because beings are at different levels of understanding. The difference in practices is because some will only be able to slowly apply concepts, and take a lot of time and effort to work on a single principle or quality; whereas advanced yoga is incredibly more powerful and millions of times faster.

Because I came to this through yoga and martial arts, my personal responses are going to sound a little different from the Elder Monks or the Emptiness schools, and I would just say those are a little different; I can't say they're not Buddhists, just that Buddhist Yoga is its own specialized course of development. And that may seem a little odd because it doesn't refer very much to the historical Buddha, but has more to do with the limitations of language and there was "no one to understand it" in early times.

You are probably fully aware that Suffering is not simply material problems like hunger, but, is an ongoing, continuously-present mental factor, and so it is this inner kind that forms the majority of the work.