Maddie

My girlfriend between the two of us is the more skeptical pragmatic one. Often I will be talking about something the Buddha said or taught and she will say "but how do you know that it is true" or "how do you know the Buddha was correct". About half the time I will respond by saying that what ever it was he said that we were talking about makes sense and seems logical, but the other half of the time I often have to admit that "I don't know". It makes sense that if there was confusion about these things even in the time the Buddha was alive that 2,500 years later it would be even more so.

Mainly the differences between Mahayana and Theravada. I found your premise that the division begin early interesting just wanting to know what the early differences of understanding what the differences of doctrine were.

I find this thread very interesting. One question that I do have though is when did doctrinal differences based on the sutras begin and what was the cause of this?

I've also noticed as coming from a Buddhist point of view, but recently learning more about Hinduism that there are a lot of similarities and not everything that I thought was an original Buddhist concept is actually originally Buddhist. Though I do think that in addition to dependent origination that non-self is also distinctly Buddhist.

To me Yaweh and Brahma are quite different in several ways. Brahma I believe is not really a personality but more of an impersonal force which to me sounds more like the Tao than Yaweh. Also being that Brahma isn't really a personality it would not get jealous or angry, but Yaweh does which would put him more on par with the lower tier gods of Hinduism like Indra and such, or Zeus or Thor of other pantheons.

I don't think he was implying that sex for monks was ok, rather I think he placed not killing and celibacy in the category of serious things, and making noise with your mouth while eating as minor stuff. I find this topic very interesting as it is something I have been pondering quite a bit as well. Aside from the Pali Vinaya another place it can be found where the Buddha said that the minor rules could be dropped was in the Pali Mahaparinabbana Sutta. The first time I read this sutta I was left wondering why so many of the minor rules that really don't seem to make much sense or be relevant were kept. I am not an Arahat and I feel pretty confident that rules that prohibit carrying salt or garlic are not really all that vital to the path of Nirvana. I also feel bad for Ananda that he received so much grief for wanting to include women into the Sanga. This would appear to make the Sanga of the Buddha's time appear a little more human than they came to be portrayed in latter Buddhist mythology. It brings to mind the excommunication of Ajahan Braham from his monastery in Thailand for fully ordaining nuns.

Has anyone else noticed that doing this mantra "too much" digs up a lot of suppressed stuff and can be a bit uncomfortable?

I wish to discuss mantra as a practice more so than any one specific mantra. I have recently returned to mantra as my primary practice and can say from personal experience that nothing has given me the results that I get from mantra. I realize this is my personal experience and that other people's experiences will vary but I am interested in hearing about other people's experiences with mantras as well as how other people find the practice of mantra for them compares to other practices. For those who do incorporate mantra as a practice I would be interested to know which mantra(s) you use, and what your experiences with them have been, good, bad, or neither. I would also be interested in experiences with other forms of chanting and prayer as well.

We don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.

As an acupuncturist in the west I am often asked by patients to explain to me how acupuncture works in a modern scientific point of view without the explanation of qi or meridians. I have tried my best to come up with good answers but in the end I find that it is pretty much impossible to thoroughly explain systems that are designed to move qi without explaining the qi. In the end its the qi that differentiates qigong from calisthenics or exercise. I teach qigong to patients and what I always tell them is if you do not incorporate the breath into the movements, and do the movements with intention then we are not doing qigong but simply exercise. It's the qi and meridian aspect that makes arm movements build up and transport qi into the core of the body to heal and strengthen the inner organs. This is why yoga is so effective as well, its the same concept for in yoga the breath leads the movements as well. So though I'd like to be able to totally explain how qigong or yoga work from a purely western scientific point of view (and I have tried) I have found that ultimately it can not be satisfactorily.

Ok so I wanted to give a better explanation about the dream and about what it meant to me. I remember it involved a very long hallway in a school that went on for as far as I could tell. When I woke up I told my gf about the dream and she googled a dream interpretation website and it said that the hallway tends to symbolize transition and the school the ego. This seemed to fit exactly how the dream felt. I feel like a lot of the insights I gained from the dream and other insights I feel that have been flooding me lately after restarting the Zhunti mantra are beyond words to describe but I can give some general explanation and I hope I don't loose the essence of the insights while doing so. So like I said in my earlier post the hallway is transition and the school is the ego. I had started doing the Zhunti mantra several years ago in order to improve my karma and life in general. It was at this time that I also began to realize a lot of things about myself, and gain insight into my mind. A little while later I became acquainted on youtube and in my local area some western Theravada monks who had a very rationalist view of life and rejected anything deemed "superstitious" or "magic". This obviously included the powers of mantras. Being that they were monks and I saw them as the "experts" I gave up my mantra practice and most other practices deemed "superstitious" and took up the rationalist vipassana insight meditation approach. It didn't take long for me to notice that this practice did not make me feel very good, but I was told that was normal at the beginning and to keep at it and things would improve. The thing is, that things did not improve but this practice continued to make me feel bad. Although I can say it was effective for letting go, as a great many things were let go of, but it felt like crawling across broken glass in order to let go, effective but painful. Needless to say after doing this a few years and never getting past the "beginners hard part" I started to grow weary of this practice. I remembered back to when my primary practice was mantra and how well it had seemed to work in spite of what the western monks claimed about it. So I began to practice mantra again initially as an experiment to see if it was indeed as helpful as I had remembered it being in the past. I had only chanted the Zhunti mantra a few times (including in my head at bedtime) before I had this dream. The transition part seemed obvious enough as I was going back to a practice that I had given up a while back, but I was also giving things that could not be rationally explained another try as well. The school/ego part made sense to me as well, as the aspect of doing it myself and not relying on a mantra or Bodhisattva appealed to my ego, and the idea of having these things help me annoyed my ego. The odd thing is, is the western monks told me that the only way to gain insight was through rational meditation methods, but since restarting mantra as my practice I have been getting insight after insight which I must admit makes my ego feel awkward lol, but I am happy it's working nevertheless.

You know this might sound weird, but I can't remember most of it now, yet I feel the impact it had on me was profound. The most I still remember is this really long hallway that seemed to go on infinitely. I had the feeling that the hallway was symbolic of transition. Sorry I can't offer more. *added later- I think some of the transition is coming back to a greater interest in Mahayana again after having had a very Theravada centered point of view for the last few years.

Hey a little off topic but related, isn't some calligraphy used for magic?

I reverted back to this Mantra along with some others since I'm taking a break from meditation. I had done this Mantra a lot in the past so I guess cumulatively I had a lot built up but I know I heard in the description that you reach a certain point and it gives you an auspicious dreams. I can't say I had experienced this when I did in the past but picking it up again now I had a very insightful dream last night that answered a lot of questions and I have been doing this Mantra right before I went to sleep so I thought that was pretty cool :-).

How are these goals achieved in this system?

I'm sure the things that have been said are relevant, but I think a lot of what it is, is dredging up a lot of suppressed stuff from a very abusive childhood.

Thank you for the information. Is there an end goal in this? Like in Hinduism in becoming one with Brahma, or does the Pantheon in Chinese folk religion have a different frame work?

You could give this a try. Just listening is good, chanting along is better. Hope it helps.

Sometimes I'd go for a couple hours, that wasn't the problem. It was afterwards, often for days feeling emotionally awful.

I do admit that while I'm doing it I find meditation generally enjoyable and tend to do it quite a bit especially when I have lots of free time it can be several hours a day. So I agree with what you said about slowing down and going too far too fast. Again it seems to be confirmed by taking a break causing me to feel better. In the meantime there's always study and reading of the texts which I had been neglecting with an emphasis more on meditation practice but which are very useful in and of themselves.

Thanks... I've actually taken a few days off from meditation to see what happens, and this has been my observation. The feelings have become less intense, I'm still aware of them but they are not so acute. I'm sure to some degree I probably identify with the feelings but I don't think that is the main issue. Its like I got my leg stuck in a bear trap, I don't think the bear trap is me, but it still hurts like hell lol.

I was wondering if anyone else has ever felt that after doing either meditation that even if they feel good while doing it, a little while later they feel bad (mentally/emotionally)? I think I am starting to notice this pattern, and this is over the space of several years.

Anyway the reason I brought up this topic and the reason I posted in the Hindu section is as follows.... For several years now my primary practice has been Buddhist meditation. While doing it I enjoy it though after repeated observation over a length of time I began to notice that a little after doing Buddhist meditation I would feel anxious or agitated or unpleasant in some other way. I don't think this is the case with most people but it does seem to be the case with me. I did experience a lot of childhood trauma so I don't know if that is a factor or not. I'm actually quite disappointed that this seems to be the pattern as I have enjoyed Buddhist meditation. The reason for posting this in the Hindu section is that I found that first of all Hindu mantras seem to help me deal with the unpleasant side effects after meditation and when I do mantras as a stand alone practice for what ever reason I don't seem to experience the after effects as I do from meditation. I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this.

Thought I'd share my favorite version of the Maha Mantra

It's generally believed by modern anthropology that our human species has existed in its present form on earth for about 200,000 years, with "modern" civilization existing for about the last 10,000 to 5,000 years. The earliest evidence of religion and/or spirituality dates back to about 100,000 years ago with the evidence of ceremonial burial with the bodies having gifts placed in the grave and the bodies themselves covered with red ochre. The practice of burial is significant as it denotes the first time that either our species or our close ancestors thought in terms of some form of existence beyond the animation of the physical body. The gifts suggest that what ever non-physical essence of the deceased existed that it needed the assistance of the living. The red ochre has not adequately been explained yet as far as I am aware but it most likely also had a ceremonial function relating to the afterlife. This was the earliest beginnings of human spirituality and religion which we eventually came to label as Shamanism, or Animism. This was the predominate and likely only type of religion for the vast majority of our evolutionary history as a species in which we were hunter gatherers, so for approximately 95,000 to 90,000 thousand years. At this time spirituality was relatively simple and the physical world and the physical world were seen as being interconnected and as affecting each other. Typically each community of hunter gatherers had a shaman or medicine man or woman whom specialized in contacting the spirit world, but it was not only the domain of the professional as hunters would invoke the spirit world for a hunt, or the women for a birth and all sorts of things relevant to day to day life and survival. The shamans would enter altered states of consciousness either through ritual, meditation, or the taking of sacred substances in which they would access the spiritual world. From observing the spirit world they came to understand the various beings within the spirit world some higher some lower. The higher ones came to be known as the gods and goddesses and the lower a variety of names that every culture has its own version of such as elves, faeries, nagas, spirit animals and so on and so forth. Also in the spirit world of prime importance was contacting and honoring one's ancestors. This was basically the general state of most human beings on the earth for the majority of our history regardless of where they were located on the planet. As time went by about 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates valley the first known evidence of agriculture began with the planting of early forms of wheat. With the beginnings of agriculture came a shift in a lifestyle of nomadic hunter gathering to sedentary agriculture which gave rise to the first villages, towns and cities. This shift also brought other changes as well. With the establishment of agriculture and towns the first surpluses of food began to occur and thus the storage and protection of these surpluses from other groups of humans. The production of agriculture and the protection of agricultural surpluses gave rise to vocational specialization which had not occurred in the times of the hunter gatherers. Now there was a need not only for agricultural production which gave rise to the farmers, but the need for protection which gave rise to the rulers. Also with the increase in free time due to agricultural production and surplus the role of the shaman went from a part time position to the full time position of the priest. The priest was now the go between for humans and the spirit world but now it was an official paid position, paid for and by the ruling class. This patronage by the ruling class led to the priest class to not only interact with the spirit world but also to support the ruling class as ruling by divine right. Thus now motives other than spirit had entered into the mix, there was now additionally the factor of ego as well. This factor of ego now meant that religion had the dual role of interacting with the spirit world and supporting the ruling class that buttered the bread of the priest class. Now began the earliest divide between religion and spirituality. This divide was not the same everywhere though as some rulers had a sincere reverence and respect for the spiritual while others were more driven by ego and saw religion as more of a means of control over the people. Also in some places the priests were sincere about contacting and learning from the spirit world, and in other places they were also more concerned about their position and personal status. In places where the ruler and priests were more concerned about spiritual truth the religion of the land focused more on spiritual truth which transcended the ruler, priests, and even in some cases the gods themselves. In other places where the emphasis was more upon control and power there was a rise of commandments, rules, regulations, punishments and judgments for violating the rules and commandments. Yet even within the religions where there was more ego infused into the system underneath was still the original foundation of seeking the divine and seeking ultimate reality and truth, which is why even in the midst of these religious systems from time to time great mystics and spiritual teachers would rise up, often to be brutally opposed, but they would rise up nevertheless. Though even in the systems that did not have such ego based means of control simply due to the factors of language and culture the means of expression and explanation of the divine and of the spiritual came to be explained with various terminology understood by that culture and language. This is why two different religions may be speaking of the same thing but use different terms of expression and have on the surface various conceptual ideas, and differing methods of cultivating these things. Yet once one translates the underlying idea of what was being conveyed it can be seen that the same concept was being spoken about even if the terminology is different. This I believe is the confusion of the varying religions and yet also the unified underlying theme they share as well. This also explains how the egoic mind tends to only see the differences, but the mind that sees beyond ego sees the commonalities.