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Maddie
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Everything posted by Maddie
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“Christianity institulionalised guilt as a virtue.” - Alan Watts
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Growing up with a rather religious mom and going to church I always just thought "fear of god" meant obey the rules or else.
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To be honest I think it would be interesting if you shared more. I'd like to learn more about Orthodoxy.
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Noticed something weird today regarding Amitofu chanting. Last night I found this very long Amitofu chant on YouTube and played it in low volume all night while I slept. This morning I felt for lack of a better term this bubble going up through my solar plexus area into my chest. Just a little while ago I was doing Amitofu in my head and started feeling chest pain that was radiating into my head, I got clammy and light headed. I stopped Amitofu and began chanting medicine Buddha in my head and it went away quickly. This was very weird and of all the weird things I've experienced this was me. Any idea what that might have been?
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I'm confused, does Christianity work or not work for you?
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I'm glad it works for you, but have no not considered that Christianity has a "Buddha" (one who has transcended) a "dhamma" (teachings) and a "sangha" (church/community)?
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Oh I see. I find it impressive as an elementary school age child you were reading the Bhagavad Gita. 😌
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Not that I'm very knowledgeable about Hinduism but I think this is one of the main points of the Gita. If interested I would suggest reading it.
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That is a good point. I've always found it curious that when the Buddha is defining the things that count as "wrong livelihood" he does not mention being a soldier.
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You are correct, technically I should have specified "bodily actions"
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Since karma is created by volitional acts, killing that involves no volition would have no karma. For example, if you are walking down the sidewalk and you accidentally step on a bug and kill it but you have no idea that you even did it or were about to do it, then there would be no karma created in such a situation.
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The middle way that the Buddha taught was against practices of self-harm.
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The Buddha taught that there are basically three kinds of karma and they are all the results of intentional action. There is the karma of actions, the karma of speech, and the karma of thoughts. Each one is progressively more subtle. The grossest karma is the karma of actions. So if you kill someone or steal something for example this would be the karma of actions and is the most weighty. Then there is the karma of speech. This is more subtle than the karma of actions. For example, the Buddha said the karma of killing someone is to have a shorter life span, or the karma of harming others is to have bad health. The karma of saying disrespectful things on the other hand is to not have much respect or influence. Still a serious matter but not as gross as life span or health. The most subtle form of karma of all is the karma of thoughts. Thoughts such as greed or envy poison the mind and increase delusion thus making liberation more difficult, but don't have the effect of shortening the life span or reducing one's influence unless of course one acts on such thoughts in a more obvious way.
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Yes, I would agree that the Buddha's approach was very scientific, but I don't understand how that translates into it being a guide to understand shamanism. The closest thing that I can think of that would kind of sort of be related is that from time to time the Brahmins would approach the Buddha to ask advice about certain aspects of their own religion which to me is highly suspect. I assume that these so-called examples of the Brahmins asking what they would consider a lower caste non-Brahmin Samana are later additions by monks after the time of the Buddha to give the Buddha dharma more prestige because in the context of the time it just does not make sense.
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I think as I continue to practice I fear the outside world very little, but my own mind becomes more scary.
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Long ago I was in the military, there seems to be lots of that sort of humor there. I guess it helps one to cope with people trying to kill you.
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I knew what you meant, I couldn't help making a joke
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Yeah I suppose after someone gets shot with a shotgun they are not going to flinch very much after that.... jk lol
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This is very interesting as I have often wondered what karma someone makes that causes them to become an Asura, but to me this would seem to be one way to do so.
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I don't know if this is really on topic but these stories caused me to remember one of my own road rage stories. One time I was driving down the road minding my own, and this guy pulls up next to me and decides that we wants to communicate with sign language. So I look over and he is giving me the bird and yelling something that I can't make out as both of our windows are up, and for what ever reason it just seemed like this was part of this cosmic joke and I couldn't help myself but started to get this huge grin on my face because the situation just seemed hilarious. I guess he was not expecting this, and suddenly he had the most unusual expression on his face and then just sort of drove off.
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It like "resurrecting" old posts about Jesus I think one thing that can not be denied is that not matter what you think about Jesus, he has had a major impact on world history.
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I've often wondered why the cultivation techniques from the East IMO seem to be more advanced and effective than what we have from the West? The cultivation techniques that have come out of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism seem to be more detailed, elaborate, and specific than anything that I know of from the West. Granted the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, European pagans, ect might have had advanced cultivation techniques that have been lost. The Orthodox and Catholic's seem to have some techniques that mainly the mystics practice such as the Jesus prayer, writings of St. John of the Cross, and things like that, but generally less than the East. The Muslims have the Sufis, and the Jew's have Kabbala. Then when you get into Protestantism there seems to be almost no real cultivation methods besides some merit making. I wonder why is this? Sure it can be said the Roman Emperors wanted to manipulate religion to consolidate power, but China and India had their fair share of power hungry leaders as well, so why didn't they replace cultivation methods with dogmas more suited to power as well? Maybe there are very effective methods from the West that I am unfamiliar with, but in the sixties when people in the West began to desire better cultivation methods they generally turned towards the East. So why do the methods from the East generally seem superior?
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As far as what to actually do about it I've always found mindfulness to be one of the most effective techniques. Observe, explore. Where do you feel the fear? When you find where, what does the feeling actually feel like? Observe the feeling and separate it from what you consider to be "yourself" and think of it as just a feeling, as just a type of energy. Pay attention to "what is this, what is it?"
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I have often pondered the same question, and this is so far the best I have come up with. The Buddha said that there are basically two driving forces within the mind, desire and aversion which is just anti-desire. Desire is to get the things we want. Aversion is to not have the things we don't want. Fear is a derivative of aversion. It is ultimately and basically someone we don't want, and it is usually the type of aversion that is averse to something bad happening to us. Anger on the other hand is the type of aversion usually of having a plan not go our way or feeling an attack on our perceived notion of our "self" Fear is the aversion to bad things happening to us. We perceive someone might hurt us or take what belongs to us and we "fear" this. We don't want the self to be hurt or suffer loss and this aversion to these events is what we call fear. One of the titles of the Buddha is called the "fearless" one, as he had overcome all notions and attachments to a false self.
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I would say that those first two days of monkey mind were not as unproductive as you might think. Good meditation isn't sitting there and making your mind quiet. It's just sitting there and letting whatever happens happen even if it happens to be monkeys 🐵. Still it would be interesting to know what it was that you read.
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