premjan

Secular Elation: the religion or philosophy you adopt immediately has an effect upon your attitudes, the way you deal with rather minute things in your daily life. You can of course come up with your own philosophy, uniquely suited to your own physical and mental tendencies. Such a philosophy can also be a trap, in that it exaggerates your own negative (and positive) tendencies. Here are some of the different ways you can look at life:

1) Life is full of suffering and change. We need to achieve a mental plane of stability. This is the outlook of Buddhism. The importance is given to mental calm: your mind should take up the character of an unruffled pool, or be artistically arranged like a Japanese rock garden. This is a good view for hard-headed folk.

2) Life is battle of good and evil. This is George Bush's (Christian) view. Evidently it leads him to search for a fight from time to time. It can prove to be an embarassment in some situations, and in other situations, a great force for good. This is a good view for combative and heroic folk.

3) Life contains within it the ineffable mystery of existence. We should give oneself to the romance of the search for one's own true identity as the World itself. This sort of rather sentimental and romantic picture characterizes Hinduism. Good for poets and musicians and other creative artists, probably.

4) Life a continuous struggle for the sake of God. Guess what, this is a Muslim view. Good for those of really dogged spirit.

5) God made the world and it was good. We must appreciate the things we have. This is, I think, a Jewish view.

6) Life is a search for scientific truth. This is a modern scientific or existentialist view.

Anyway, you have to decide which is the governing factor in your case.

lenrek

The Chinese word here is term as "wu-hsin". There is no actual Chinese words for me to verify what they actually meant, but from the sound of it, I think, I know what are the words that is in used here.

The word "wu" means no or none. "hsin" means mind. However, generally, when we are to understand the mind that is still uncultivated, its thinking in Buddhism carry rather negative meaning. Which are, undirected thoughts or mental proliferation. Basically, it means the activity of the mind that is due to restlessness. Another typical term is called mental volition.

A more positive kind of thinking is known as contemplation. Here, the mind act with direction, clarity and purposeful. Some actually call our meditation as contemplation in mindfulness. If one understand this word that is in accordance with Buddhism, he will not find anything weird about it. In fact, it is actually quite compatible with the original teachings of the Buddha.

Thus, the translation as "no-mind" is not the common understanding within the Buddhist circle. Which is why, from the definition, it has completely not within the scope in Buddhist understanding. However, one should also notice, this definition used double quote ("), it imply added meaning that is not in conventional sense.

If one, who is truly sincere in knowing a particular religion. He should, within his capacity, search the appropriate sources, which will lead him into better understanding. He should:

1) Attempt to understand its objective.
2) Attempt to understand the reasons or purpose of this objective.
3) Attempt to understand the methods in achieving this objective.

After he get some idea of it, he should attempt, in looking at the life of the people who live under this religion. Here, he should start by learning the lives of the founder of the religion. The founder is first, and will act in accordance to its religion to the most original form. After that, he should attempt to understand the very teaching that was taught by this founder, as this teaching will also be the most original.

For anyone who is sincere in the interest of knowing Buddhism, he should find sources or information regarding the life of Buddha. His original teachings as well as how he taught his follower.

If one were to read the life of the Buddha and read the suttas, he will realize, there were many lay persons becomes his follower during his time. These people include merchants, wealthy men and kings. It was never the requirement that they need to give up their fortune, land or kingdom in order to become his lay follower. There was never a requirement for them to give up their wives or families in order to becomes his lay follower. There were many among them achieved in entering the stream of Enlightenment, when there are still as lay persons.

The Buddha's teaching is all about mental cultivation and purification. Thus, please honestly ask yourself:

1) Who is more insane? Those who craze for their idol, running around screaming and shouting whenever seeing their idol? Those who have let their emotion (that root in craving or greed) overrun their mind? Or, those who profess in their mental cultivation which result in moderation (rooted in non-greed) of their emotion towards their idol?

2) Who is more insane? Those who fanatic about their belief and religion, which reject all those who does not believe in their religion, which result in terrorizing, killing and raping of those who does not share their belief? Those who allowed their mind to be overrun by emotion (that rooted in hatred)? Or, those who practice moderation (rooted in non-hatred) which result in tolerance, forgiving and friendly?

3) Who is more insane? Those who blindly believe or follow the advice of someone, without understanding and no interest in knowing (that is rooted in ignorant)? Or, those who interested in knowing (that is rooted in non-delusion)?

4) Who is more insane? Those who allow their greed to manifest as lust or as craving, which cause them in raping, stealing, or robbing? Or, those who practice in reducing their greed, which result in kindness, gentleness, and sharing?

5) Who is more insane? Those who allow their hatred to manifest as anger, hate or fear, which cause them in killing, hurting, or lamenting? Or those who practice in reducing their hatred, which result in compassion, caring and sympathy?

6) Who is more insane? The people who allow their greed, hatred or ignorant to overwhelm them? Or those who attempt in reducing or eradicating their greed, hatred or ignorant?

Who is more insane?

We, as human, have inherited with many nature. Some nature leads to destruction and suffering. Some nature leads to grow and prosperity. It is this nature that lead to prosperity that Buddhism encourage. It is nature that lead to prosperity will lead to Enlightenment.

premjan

this is a very nice and organized description, to my mind. there are those who experience craziness in the search for religion: this characterizes a lot of pagan idol worship, especially in India. shivalinga's quote about the worship of Jagannath in Puri is a good example. People experience ecstasy in pulling the chariot of the Lord and may not even realize that they slipped under the wheels of the chariot and died. this is a little insane. sometimes to experience your own humanity fully, you need to be a little insane. within limits.

terrorizing, raping and killing others for religion: this has its uses. whom should you value more? your children or the children of your neighbor. The buddhist may have a hard time to answer this one. but the Muslim will answer it: if my neighbor is an infidel, he and his children must convert or die. The mongol will think nothing of looting and pillaging to show his own excellence. The christian will answer it: if my neighbor is evil, he must seek God's forgiveness or die. The ability to answer aggression with aggression: this is actually quite important in life. Buddhism would not answer traditionally this question in as satisfactory a manner as Christianity or Islam. Self-preservation is important in some cases.

Is lust and craving bad? When well-channeled, greed creates prosperity also. Could man create wealth without some greed? probably not

Is it good to lament? No. Is it good to be ignorant? no.

Anyway, the answers to some of these questions are partly conditional.

Yeshi

Well as Answerer very nicely put it, the core problem is that the words cannot describe the experience. That is also the reason why ZEN school mostly rejects books and texts as means to the insight.

You cannot understand what all these people are talking about (zen & buddhist scolars) if you do not devote some time to practice of meditation and/or buddhism. How are you going to relate to terms like : calm abiding, samadhi, clear light, bliss, non-dual contemplation - without having made the experience of these mental states?

It is like describing a painting to a blind man.

That is why ZEN says: do practice and do not talk.
(actually they say:
"Those that talk do not know. Those that know, are silent.")
But it is little bit hard then to spread the teaching, which can definitely help a lot of people out there. So they do write books. And then the term like no-mind (btw. Mu-Shin in Japanese) come to be.

My take nowadays (after studying old school tibetan buddhism awhile) is that no-mind refers directly to that what is left when the mind (samsaric mind) is taken out of the picture: only your true nature or buddha mind remains.

There, more mumbo-jumbo that does not help :P

sarvamangalam

premjan

The Tao that can be spoken is not the real Tao.

lenrek

I just realize I did not complete some portion of the previous post... So, here is the re-post, with the italic portion that indicate what was missed out...

----
The Chinese word here is term as "wu-hsin". There is no actual Chinese words for me to verify what they actually meant, but from the sound of it, I think, I know what are the words that is in used here.

The word "wu" means no or none. "hsin" means mind. However, generally, when we are to understand the mind that is still uncultivated, its thinking in Buddhism carry rather negative meaning. Which are, undirected thoughts or mental proliferation. Basically, it means the activity of the mind that is due to restlessness. Another typical term is called mental volition. These mental movement are mostly influence by unwholesome states, since their clarity are weak.

Thus, conventionally, under Buddhism, we are striving for ending such mental volition. However, there are positive kind of mental movement. A more positive kind of thinking is known as contemplation. Here, the mind act with direction, clarity and purposeful. If one studies the lives of those Zen master, we would notice, they are also striving of wakefulness and mindfulness. They bring such practice into their daily lives. To say, they strive for "no-mind" is really cannot be reflected on how they live...

Some actually call our meditation as contemplation in mindfulness. If one understand this word that is in accordance with Buddhism, he will not find anything weird about it. In fact, it is actually quite compatible with the original teachings of the Buddha.

Thus, the translation as "no-mind" is not the common understanding within the Buddhist circle. It should be interpreted as stopping mental volition and be focus. Which is why, this definition, it has completely not within the scope in Buddhist understanding. However, one should also notice, this definition used double quote ("), it imply added meaning that is not in conventional sense.

PS: I think our dear friend Secular Elation has left the thread... Oh well...

gurugeorge

These are very good questions. I look at it this way. Gotama Siddhartha was a king's son. Now, in those days in that area, for "king" think "tribal leader" living in more or less a hovel, but a bigger hovel than the rest of the tribe. Wealth certainly shelters one from some of the vicissitudes of life (though not old age, sickness and death), and we have no reason to doubt that his father took extra care to shelter him in some sense - though the details of his father's efforts may have been exaggerated in the telling, and are unlikely, on the face of it, to have been all that successful.

At any rate, what does a king's son know of honest toil? Of the joy of setting goals and attaining them? Nothing. In fact, if a king's son is at all sensitive, like the scions of the rich these days, he's likely to feel a bit guilty about his unearned wealth, especially if it's clear his comfort is attained off the backs of others.

So there's this whole area of life that's not really part of his experience, and wasn't, in fact, part of most peoples' experience, and has only become part of some peoples' experience in a few limited times and places - Europe and the US since the 18th century, say. Most of the time, most people throughout history have been unable to dream and build their own lives, have been unable to accumulate property honestly, etc.

But that to the side, given the parameters of his life, the Buddha was definitely on to something, and was evidently a very clever man with an engineer's brain. The texts that seem to represent him most authentically, the Pali canon, show a very practical mind, a very comprehensive mind.

What is this early Buddhism about? The Buddha represented his teaching as "medicine". He didn't say that "all is suffering", or that "life is suffering." What he said was, all conditioned life is suffering. All life where you feel yourself to be the effect of things, pushed around, whether by your own impulses, by circumstances, or by other people - but his main concern was your own impulses, your own habits.

His position reflects a great divide in ways of dealing with the world between two broad points of view, both of which are present in both East and West, but one of which is more emphasised than the other in each culture. If there's a problem, if something's bothering you, you have two choices:-

1) Fix it. This is the Western way.

2) Just don't be bothered by it. This is the Eastern way.

Obviously these are broad generalisations: engineering ability isn't unknown in the East, and Stoicism is a venerable philosophy in the West.

But you have these two options.

Now, if you're bothered by life, if life is getting you down, if it's stressful, what Buddhism offers is an immensely rich tapestry of techniques to do 2).

And, at the higher levels, this "medicine" becomes, for those who have taken it, something that develops into a kind of art-for-art's-sake, the goal of which is to become as supremely un-bothered by things as possible. A byproduct of this process is what has been called enlightenment. Buddha means "awake" in Sanskrit. The awakeness that's meant is a peculiar kind of experience that can come in glimpses and flashes to gradually transform one, or (with suitable long, and rather dull preparation) all-at-once to totally and irrevocably transform one.

Now, later forms of Buddhism take this art-for-art's-sake approach to occasionally airy-fairy extremes, and sometimes rather lose sight of the earthiness and immediacy of the early "medicinal" Buddhist message. And sometimes Buddhism gets mixed in with other teachings (such as Daoism). However, there's one thread that runs through all Buddhism that keeps it more or less focussed: the Vinaya, the code that monks live by. This was and is a very strict code, pretty much the same throughout the Buddhist world, and no matter how far the metaphysics or epistemology may depart from the rather pragmatic original, the Vinaya keeps Buddhism alive, keeps its practitioners "on their toes" so to speak: also, it keeps Buddhism tied to experience.

Ramen

How do you equate thinking with knowing? Is the concept of something ever equivalent to the experience of something? And, you are mistaken about throwing away feelings - says who?

So in essence you are saying that it's natural to believe in something? Why is it natural to believe in something? Isn't it more natural to not believe in something?

Secular Elation,

I would have given up on Buddhism if it weren't for the books written by Pema Chodron. She really lets you see how you can practically apply the teachings of Buddhism to your life.

Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron

cheers,

NP

premjan

lenrek, I think western listeners appreciate concrete metaphors more: like before enlightenment chop wood, after enlightenment chop wood. et cetera. jargon is less likely to be attractive to them.

princes even in those days would have lived fairly well; not clear that Buddha did not live a relatively luxurious life (well, no electricity and no air conditioning) before becoming a monk. If you look at early settlements in India like the Indus Valley, they had sewage and drainage 2800 years before Rome (and then lost them, perhaps in an Aryan invasion, or climatologically forced regress). Also Nepal is a spectacular place to live, then or now. The climate is one of the best in the subcontinent, unlike the sweltering plains.

Anyway, what is the evidence regarding real details of Siddhartha's life? Has someone posted it before?

The fix-it aspects of Western civilization relate mainly to recent times: the industrial revolution and beyond. In ancient times, in the west or the east, it was easier to cope with things than to change them.

gurugeorge

I think the "Harappa" or "Indus valley" civilisation was indeed highly advanced for the time, but it doesn't seem to have had much to do with what came after (despite the urgings of various Hindu nationalist academics ). By Buddha's time, things were pretty basic, IIRC.

I did read this up a long time ago, but I can't remember chapter and verse. The main point is, the reality of Gotama Siddhartha's life probably wasn't as grand as it's painted in the lore of Buddhism, or as the logic of the legend would require to make its point colourfully.