Maddie

yes for this reason I am paying a lot of attention lately to experience. Trying to see what actually works as opposed to just what sounds good in theory.

I usually wake up around 7 give or take and after some coffee and breakfast spend most of my morning either doing mantra practice or meditating, reading or studying history. Around noon I wake up my daughter we eat and I help her with online school. After she's finished with school we usually watch something together. After that I might do some more reading or mantra or walking meditation to get some movement in. Then it's dinner time and we watch something else. Then we either kill some more time doing the things I mentioned before or watching another show and then I go to bed.

I should probably clarifying even with some mantras I have to use them sparingly like the Zhunti mantra. With that and with regular meditation the reaction with me is just too much karma release too soon.

For spiritual attack For mental health

I think upon reflecting on the essence of this post a little more if I was going to streamline the issue for myself personally I would say the main difference for me is methods of practice that is mostly meditation-based or a mantra practice. I found that the more meditation based practice made me feel worse in the mantra based practice made me feel better. I think in the end for me that's what it ultimately came down to.

From my understanding The Vedic culture being Indo-European from the Aryans had much more in common with the Greco-Roman and Viking religions than the original Dravidic religions of India.

Maybe proto-Hindu would be an adequate term? The point about the Buddha learning advanced meditation from those teachers and then him deciding that it wasn't enough really resonates with me. I was pretty much mediating every day, usually several hours, some days practically all day and while I could at times get into some pretty deep meditative states, it just wasn't "doing it for me". This would explain my current interest in mantras and the study of wisdom.

I suppose that's always a possibility but on the other hand it seems like if you created some sutras later on in the timeline and you wanted to try to make them sound legitimate this would be a line that would be used for this purpose. Actually what baffles me more is the efficacy of nam-myoho-renge-kyo what does chanting the title of the lotus sutra and yet text Jewel scholarship has shown it to be written much later and buy several different authors. So it seems very doubtful it was actually said by the Buddha yet chanting is title seems to be very effective. To me the shows that later innovation isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've even heard said by some scholars that attributing later Mahayana texts to quoting the Buddha wasn't meant to be taken literally but it was a literary device that was taken for granted.

The earliest mention of mantras that I'm aware of is in the Pali Canon but it's talking about The Vedic mantras that the brahmins used. But I think to keep with the spirit of your comment it does make me wonder what was happening the cause mantras to be introduced or as they hadn't been into Buddhism earlier? Effects of the Kali Yuga? The age of Dharma decline? Something else?

This to me is exactly what's causing me to question things about Theravada. It makes so much sense on one hand yet on the other hand I felt like it just wasn't working for me. I felt like for the most part the more I meditated the worse I felt.

I think the mantra that caused me to begin questioning was Manjushri. It seems to have the effect of pulling one out of their preconceived assumptions, and leads to questioning.

Cheerful lol

I've read a lot about calvinist theology and if you follow their reasoning it does make sense based on the sovereignty of God but then once you're done following their reasoning it still makes God seem pretty cruel in the end.

That's a very interesting perspective. From my Protestant upbringing the basic view is that if you're born you're just the worst and your wicked and evil and there's nothing good about you whatsoever, and since you're the most horrible creature in the universe the only way it was possible for God to even look on you without barfing was to sacrifice his son to himself to somehow make him happy about the whole situation.

Of course arguing for and against eternal damnation presupposes the Christian assumption that by default we are Damned, and therefore in need of a savior. To me it seems like creating a problem in order to market your solution.

Although the argument that St Thomas Aquinas makes is that the things of God can be known through reason.

Unless Mount Meru is a metaphor for some aspect of the mind or as I've often wondered if the seeming inaccurate Buddhist geography of the time was actually meant to be understood on more of a galactic since than terrestrial. Like are the continents planets? Solar systems? Galaxies?

I agree I am currently reading Steven bachelor's book "After Buddhism" and I do like his explanation of the Pali words and some of the cultural context for sure. It's just I don't understand how you can read and understand dependent origination without a view of rebirth I feel like you have to deliberately ignore that. it does strike me though how he seems to really be enamored with the Buddha and his genius but then I think that the Buddha was intelligent enough to separate his thoughts from the cultural acceptance of karma and rebirth at the same time. Although I can't say that I do not have a certain amount of skepticism of my own or I probably wouldn't remain Christian.

On the other hand to balance that out and to be fair one of the primary reasons that I left Christianity was because I did not feel that it lined up with the science. the primary reason was because of textual inconsistencies but nevertheless the lack of scientific evidence or the contradiction with science was a factor.

Stephen batchelor seems to love everything that the Buddha says and thinks he's a genius until it sounds superstitious and then he claims that it was just a cultural thing that the Buddha didn't really know any better about.

I also noticed on a personal experience a level that the more I spent time at the Theravada monastery and learn from them that I began to feel about as happy as a Puritan as well. I feel like there's a lot of the same attitude that while this might be tough and it might not be fun but it's worth it in the end if we're saved. 😑

I continue to be struck by how often when I read the Pali Canon how different it is then what I'm told about Theravada. Clearly large parts of it are the same or similar to what I've been taught of Theravada, but other parts are very different than what I was told.

Duly noted. I will adjust the dial on my time machine to make sure that the proper executions take place. 🤭

I think I have heard that before as well. That would very much line up with the Protestant view that the original teachings of the church were corrupted by the Catholics and they were going back to the original purity. Since I had become acquainted with Taoism before Buddhism when I initially heard about the new practices introduced in Mahayana I thought of it as a positive thing like innovation and progress and not as a negative thing like a loss of purity.

Yeah they almost seemed to me to be what Puritans were to Christianity. I think because of my encounter with them I went through several years of misery Buddhism. They told me that the things that had been working for me weren't legitimate so I stopped them and they seemed most interested in talking about being a monk and insisting that I now to them frequently. The things that they did tell me to do only seemed to make me miserable but they told me to persist because in the big picture it was beneficial.