partridge

Hello all I'm a gardener by trade and live in England. I'm basically where I'm at thanks to watching Bill Hicks in the early 90s... '...all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration...that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather...' I've spent the last 6 years investigating a number of buddhisms- bouncing from Therevada, Soto Zen, a brush with a certain Tibetan-based controversial group, until ending up reading a lot of Shinran's work and modern books on his writings. Unfortunately I just can't readily buy into the concepts of Anatman and Dependent Origination after all that time. The last 5 months I've really struggled with these to the point where something just went 'pop!' and I know it's time to move on. I have got a lot out of Buddhadharma but if you really struggle with these 2 cornerstones of the philosophy I think it's time to admit you're wired up more for advaita-stylee. Prior to that I'd been initially impressed and then massively nonplussed by a number of fairly well-known modern Non-Dualists, to the point of going on weekend retreats, lectures, etc that for the most part seemed a bit of a swizz to me. I've also been re-reading some Dao books I bought years ago too... they seem to have more resonance now, either because I'm older and/or thanks to the Buddhist immersion. I'm currently looking at some 'traditional' advaita books and websites and am finding the work of Dennis Waite refreshing and hugely beneficial. I've been not-very-good at zazen, vipassana and other meditation techniques that I've tried and I'm deliberating on whether or not to pursue TM. (Looks like over here you can get quite a big £ discount if you book a course with a letter from your Doctor). I found 'naturally 'zoning out'' in gardens, parklands, woods and even watching the clothes go round in the washing machine more beneficial to any structured form of meditation I've tried so far. Yes, I'm probably an idiot but I'm enjoying the ride!

Thank you all for the warm welcomes! Look at me going on forums in work time- fight the machine! All you folks have really cheered me up. mjjbecker - have you checked out some of Les's books? Dirt cheap on amazon uk. I've not so far been tempted to read his 'serious' novel, heard I will either think it's mental genius or just shite. Polarised opinions or what? konchog uma - often before I get embroiled in stuff i stop and ponder 'what would Bill think?' Looking forward to reading all your posts Peace, love & massive respect

This gives me something to ponder Marblehead I have wondered recently (possibly to stop myself getting pissed off about potentially wasting time & effort) if there have been benefits to looking/trying to understand Things through various Buddhistic lenses this last half-decade... Perhaps it at least gave me some beneficial structures to actually assess and observe my direct experiences, whereas before it was simply just scrambled gobbledygook and frustration compounded by other peoples scrambled Pick 'n' Mix gobbledygook? I'm led to believe (and sorry I can't give links to specifics- it'd take me weeks) that the bits of Mahayana that actually resonated with me were the bits that were influenced by Non-Dualist/Daoist thought and these were often considered 'heretical' by other Buddhist clubs. The 'just sitting' bit of Soto Zen I found to be of the greatest benefit of all the Buddhist meditation techniques I tried and was fairly rubbish at, but even so this was all still quite fairly ritualistic and not quite on par with my just pootling about woodlands and sitting down, with my back against some tree, and just letting the whole Nature/Universe Oneness Thing completely envelope me. And I don't think any professional Buddhists would be too impressed with my Zanussi Aquacycle 1200 Sutra. 'Thus have I heard, the Blessed One had a large load of whites to double rinse...' Ha ha! I'm very fortunate- I have lots of Maggot family members in my life. It's taken me years to finally realise this. I think I was a lot more 'with it' when I was ten...

I'll look forward to your posts Jove

Hello! Good here isn't it

Hello!

Hi msml I'm new too liked the quote a lot

Thanks Flofloil and Apech Been enjoying mooching about various posts