Bandar Utama Buddhist Society » Articles Of Interest

The Appeal of Buddhism

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 04:00:08 +0000

The Appeal of Buddhism

by Lee Yu Ban

Interest in Buddhism is growing steadily worldwide, especially from people seeking answers in this current global age of clashing ideologies, fanatical strife and senseless violence. The number of its adherents is growing at a phenomenal rate in many parts of the world particularly Australia, the US and many countries in Europe. In many countries in Asia where it was once forcibly displaced by Communism, it is making a remarkable comeback.

Why is this interest growing so quickly? Perhaps it is because more and more people are now recognizing these facts about Buddhism. It is :

A religion of true peace that has never advocated any violence in its name.

Buddhism is one of the oldest religions of the world. Yet, it has the distinguished honour as the only religion that has never had a holy war. No army has gone to war with the purpose of vanquishing unbelievers or to convert others to Buddhism. Even among different Buddhist sects, there is remarkable friendliness and cooperation.

A religion that emphasizes compassion, acceptance and kindness.

Instead, Buddhism has been a great civilizing force. It tamed the nomadic and violent hordes of Asia and brought art, culture and civilization. Buddhists are known for their kind, accepting and non-judgmental ways. Today, as Buddhism spreads to new lands, it is not brought by aggressive missionaries intent on converting others but is typically established by the initiative of local people who invite teachers to share the teachings.

A religion that provides a clear path for spiritual and personal development.

Buddhism is not a collection of myths and stories that test our rationality. It does not present itself as a mystery that can only be understood by priests or certain preferred people. Instead, Buddhism presents itself as a clear and credible path that anyone can undertake according to his own understanding and ability. It is a method that can be applied giving results that can be experienced immediately.

A religion that teaches us to take full responsibility for our actions.

Buddhism does not attempt to explain the problems in the world as part of a mysterious plan of a deity. It does not blame fate or any divine being for whatever good or bad we experience in life. Instead, it teaches that we are accountable for the results of our past actions and that we are the masters of our own destiny. Buddhism insists that mankind takes responsibility for its own actions.

A religion that has no room for blind faith or unthinking worship.

Many religions present a set of dogma and then insist that people believe them, even when such dogmas appear strange or have been explained by science to be false or without basis. Buddhism has no place for such doctrines. It does not require blind faith but actually suggests its adherents to think, to question and to develop acceptance based on understanding.

A religion that welcomes questions and investigations into its own teachings.

Being totally self-confident, Buddhism opens itself to query and scrutiny. There is no concept of blasphemy in Buddhism. You can expect your questions on Buddhism to be answered with rationality, respect and honesty.

A religion that says sincere followers of other beliefs are also rewarded in the afterlife.

Buddhism is not like a football team or a political party. You don’t join it for the purpose of condemning others. Buddhism teaches that what we do now determines what happens to us in the future. This is a natural law in accordance with scientific principles and applies to everyone regardless of their religious label.

As scientific knowledge progresses it continues to undermine the foundation of many religions, despite the attempts of religious leaders to hinder and deny scientific knowledge and misinform their adherents. On the other hand, there is no scientific fact that contradicts Buddhism. Buddhism is the only religion that does not attempt to bend the facts to suit its faith. Indeed, much of modern science, particularly in the fields of psychology and physics supports the tenets of Buddhism.

The Economy of Gifts

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:00:07 +0000

by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

According to the Buddhist monastic code, monks and nuns are not allowed to accept money or even to engage in barter or trade with lay people. They live entirely in an economy of gifts. Lay supporters provide gifts of material requisites for the monastics, while the monastics provide their supporters with the gift of the teaching. Ideally — and to a great extent in actual practice — this is an exchange that comes from the heart, something totally voluntary. There are many stories in the texts that emphasize the point that returns in this economy — it might also be called an economy of merit — depend not on the material value of the object given, but on the purity of heart of the donor and recipient. You give what is appropriate to the occasion and to your means, when and wherever your heart feels inspired. For the monastics, this means that you teach, out of compassion, what should be taught, regardless of whether it will sell. For the laity, this means that you give what you have to spare and feel inclined to share. There is no price for the teachings, nor even a “suggested donation.” Anyone who regards the act of teaching or the act of giving requisites as a repayment for a particular favor is ridiculed as mercenary. Instead, you give because giving is good for the heart and because the survival of the Dhamma as a living principle depends on daily acts of generosity.

The primary symbol of this economy is the alms bowl. If you are a monastic, it represents your dependence on others, your need to accept generosity no matter what form it takes. You may not get what you want in the bowl, but you realize that you always get what you need, even if it’s a hard-earned lesson in doing without. One of my students in Thailand once went to the mountains in the northern part of the country to practice in solitude. His hillside shack was an ideal place to meditate, but he had to depend on a nearby hilltribe village for alms, and the diet was mostly plain rice with some occasional boiled vegetables. After two months on this diet, his meditation theme became the conflict in his mind over whether he should go or stay. One rainy morning, as he was on his alms round, he came to a shack just as the morning rice was ready. The wife of the house called out, asking him to wait while she got some rice from the pot. As he was waiting there in the pouring rain, he couldn’t help grumbling inwardly about the fact that there would be nothing to go with the rice. It so happened that the woman had an infant son who was sitting near the kitchen fire, crying from hunger. So as she scooped some rice out of the pot, she stuck a small lump of rice in his mouth. Immediately, the boy stopped crying and began to grin. My student saw this, and it was like a light bulb turning on in his head. “Here you are, complaining about what people are giving you for free,” he told himself. “You’re no match for a little kid. If he can be happy with just a lump of rice, why can’t you?” As a result, the lesson that came with his scoop of rice that day gave my student the strength he needed to stay on in the mountains for another three years.

For a monastic the bowl also represents the opportunity you give others to practice the Dhamma in accordance with their means. In Thailand, this is reflected in one of the idioms used to describe going for alms: proad sat, doing a favor for living beings. There were times on my alms round in rural Thailand when, as I walked past a tiny grass shack, someone would come running out to put rice in my bowl. Years earlier, as lay person, my reaction on seeing such a bare, tiny shack would have been to want to give monetary help to them. But now I was on the receiving end of their generosity. In my new position I may have been doing less for them in material terms than I could have done as a lay person, but at least I was giving them the opportunity to have the dignity that comes with being a donor.

For the donors, the monk’s alms bowl becomes a symbol of the good they have done. On several occasions in Thailand people would tell me that they had dreamed of a monk standing before them, opening the lid to his bowl. The details would differ as to what the dreamer saw in the bowl, but in each case the interpretation of the dream was the same: the dreamer’s merit was about to bear fruit in an especially positive way.

The alms round itself is also a gift that goes both ways. On the one hand, daily contact with lay donors reminds the monastics that their practice is not just an individual matter, but a concern of the entire community. They are indebted to others for the right and opportunity to practice, and should do their best to practice diligently as a way of repaying that debt. At the same time, the opportunity to walk through a village early in the morning, passing by the houses of the rich and poor, the happy and unhappy, gives plenty of opportunities to reflect on the human condition and the need to find a way out of the grinding cycle of death and rebirth.

For the donors, the alms round is a reminder that the monetary economy is not the only way to happiness. It helps to keep a society sane when there are monastics infiltrating the towns every morning, embodying an ethos very different from the dominant monetary economy. The gently subversive quality of this custom helps people to keep their values straight.

Above all, the economy of gifts symbolized by the alms bowl and the alms round allows for specialization, a division of labor, from which both sides benefit. Those who are willing can give up many of the privileges of home life and in return receive the free time, the basic support, and the communal training needed to devote themselves fully to Dhamma practice. Those who stay at home can benefit from having full-time Dhamma practitioners around on a daily basis. I have always found it ironic that the modern world honors specialization in almost every area — even in things like running, jumping, and throwing a ball — but not in the Dhamma, where it is denounced as “dualism,” “elitism,” or worse. The Buddha began the monastic order on the first day of his teaching career because he saw the benefits that come with specialization. Without it, the practice tends to become limited and diluted, negotiated into the demands of the monetary economy. The Dhamma becomes limited to what will sell and what will fit into a schedule dictated by the demands of family and job. In this sort of situation, everyone ends up poorer in things of the heart.

The fact that tangible goods run only one way in the economy of gifts means that the exchange is open to all sorts of abuses. This is why there are so many rules in the monastic code to keep the monastics from taking unfair advantage of the generosity of lay donors. There are rules against asking for donations in inappropriate circumstances, from making claims as to one’s spiritual attainments, and even from covering up the good foods in one’s bowl with rice, in hopes that donors will then feel inclined to provide something more substantial. Most of the rules, in fact, were instituted at the request of lay supporters or in response to their complaints. They had made their investment in the merit economy and were interested in protecting their investment. This observation applies not only to ancient India, but also to the modern-day West. On their first contact with the Sangha, most people tend to see little reason for the disciplinary rules, and regard them as quaint holdovers from ancient Indian prejudices. When, however, they come to see the rules in the context of the economy of gifts and begin to participate in that economy themselves, they also tend to become avid advocates of the rules and active protectors of “their” monastics. The arrangement may limit the freedom of the monastics in certain ways, but it means that the lay supporters take an active interest not only in what the monastic teaches, but also in how the monastic lives — a useful safeguard to make sure that teachers walk their talk. This, again, insures that the practice remains a communal concern. As the Buddha said,

Monks, householders are very helpful to you, as they provide you with the requisites of robes, almsfood, lodgings, and medicine. And you, monks, are very helpful to householders, as you teach them the Dhamma admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, and admirable in the end, as you expound the holy life both in its particulars and in its essence, entirely complete, surpassingly pure. In this way the holy life is lived in mutual dependence, for the purpose of crossing over the flood, for making a right end to suffering and stress.

— Iti 107

Periodically, throughout the history of Buddhism, the economy of gifts has broken down, usually when one side or the other gets fixated on the tangible side of the exchange and forgets the qualities of the heart that are its reason for being. And periodically it has been revived when people are sensitive to its rewards in terms of the living Dhamma. By its very nature, the economy of gifts is something of a hothouse creation that requires careful nurture and a sensitive discernment of its benefits. I find it amazing that such an economy has lasted for more than 2,600 years. It will never be more than an alternative to the dominant monetary economy, largely because its rewards are so intangible and require so much patience, trust, and discipline in order to be appreciated. Those who demand immediate return for specific services and goods will always require a monetary system. Sincere Buddhist lay people, however, have the chance to play an amphibious role, engaging in the monetary economy in order to maintain their livelihood, and contributing to the economy of gifts whenever they feel so inclined. In this way they can maintain direct contact with teachers, insuring the best possible instruction for their own practice, in an atmosphere where mutual compassion and concern are the medium of exchange; and purity of heart, the bottom line.

The Buddha-rupas of Uttama Bodhi Vihara

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:46:11 +0000

by Lee Yu Ban

Buddha rupas or images of the Buddha, where they are used for veneration, are considered sacred. They are symbolic of the Three Jewels and each rupa in UBV carries a special significance.

Buddhacetiya Hall

The main object of worship in UBV is the Rupa in the Buddhacetiya (Buddha shrine) hall. It was carved in China from a block of white jade. The hands of the rupa are in the Dhammacakka mudra or gesture of Turning the Wheel of Dhamma. This mudra represents the Buddha teaching the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths forms the core of the Dhamma and its first proclamation by the Buddha at Sarnath, India sets forth the Wheel of Dhamma rolling in the world.

Bhavana Hall

The Rupa in the Bhavana (Meditation) Hall was acquired from Sri Lanka and is made from fiberglass. The hands are in the Samadhi mudra, or the gesture of Meditative Concentration, which is the position traditionally adopted by Buddhists when practicing meditation. This mudra is perhaps the most popular depiction of the Buddha in the present time.

Bodhi Park

The Buddha in the Bodhi Park is of a form traditionally found in Thailand and first popularized during the 13^th century Sukhothai period. The Walking Buddha, with one foot raised and the other firmly on the ground, is unique as most other rupas are depicted sitting, standing or lying down. The left hand of the Walking Buddha is raised in the Abhaya mudra or the gesture of Giving Safety or Fearlessness. This rupa symbolises the compassion and dynamism of the Buddha who, after his Enlightenment, spent the next 45 years walking all over north India actively teaching and liberating all beings.

Behind the walking Buddha is the Bodhi tree, a species of the fig tree named Ficus Religiosa. This tree, which was brought over as a sapling from Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka is called a Bodhi Tree because it is a descendant of the original Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya, India, under which the Buddha attained Enlightenment. Bodhi Trees are sacred and are objects of veneration.

The Walking Buddha here in front of the Bodhi Tree recalls to mind the great event after the Buddha’s Enlightenment when he decided to proclaim the Dhamma. “An unsurpassed teacher am I; alone am I the All-Enlightened. Cool and appeased am I. To establish the wheel of Dhamma, to the city of Kasi I go. In this blind world I shall beat the drum of deathlessness. ~ Ariyapariyesana Sutta”

The Baby Siddhartha

The rupa of baby Siddhartha is an image popular in East Asia. Siddhartha was born to Mayadevi in Lumbini garden within the borders of modern day Nepal. Based on legends described in the Commentaries, the image of baby Siddhartha is depicted soon after his birth when, rising to his feet, he takes his first few steps into the world, an event celebrated with wondrous signs in the heavens.

All the Buddha rupas in UBV were purchased from funds donated by devotees towards the Building Fund.

How not to be a victim of your emotions

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:34:33 +0000

by Dr Peter Strong PhD, Psychology Today Blog, December 3, 2009

Mindfulness can stop you being a victim of your emotions

New York, USA — When you really look closely at anxiety, depression, fear, anger or stress, you will almost always find recurring patterns of negative thoughts, traumatic memories and habitual emotional reactions. They are our tormentors, the pesky biting insects that annoy us throughout the day.

They ambush our consciousness, pull us down and cause stress and emotional suffering. They come uninvited, cause havoc, and we wish that they would go away. If only we could control them, we would certainly have a better chance of controlling our mental state. So how do we do this? The practice of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation can provide a path forward.

The first step of mindfulness practice, and one that can make all the difference, is to fully and completely understand that YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. Thoughts, emotions, in fact any mental content that arises are simply products of conditioning; YOU are much more than this. It is like the ocean and the fish that swim in the ocean. The ocean is not the same as the fish that live in it, and cannot be equated with the contents. The essence of the ocean is as the space that contains these things, not its contents. The same applies to the mind.

The essence of the mind is as a container of experience, the ground in which mental objects, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, perceptions and memories can exist. When you realize this, that you are so much more than your thoughts and emotions, then you are well on the way to gaining your freedom and independence from the pesky flies that cause so much stress and suffering. At the end of the day you have a simple choice to make: Do you want to be the ocean in all its vastness and glory, or do you want to be a fish, flapping around in a state of agitation and fear? Learning to be the ocean is a wise choice, and this is something that can be achieved through the practice of mindfulness.

The trick is to learn to see mental objects as just that, objects, not you, that arise, do their dance and then pass away. Anxiety arises, and what is our usual response? We are ambushed by the emotion and we become the emotion. We become an anxiety-fish! Fear arises and we are seduced into becoming afraid, a fear-fish. Anger arises and we become angry-fish. No choice, no freedom, lots of suffering.

With the practice of mindfulness, we begin to get wise, and become more engaged with what is going on in our minds. Mindfulness helps us tune in to this cycle of habitual emotional reactivity. Instead of blindly accepting our impulses to become anxious, to become afraid, to become fish, we learn to actively engage with these reactions. When anxiety thoughts arise, we respond with, “I see you, anxious thought. I welcome you, I will make a space for you to do your dance, I will listen to you with care and attention…but I will NOT become you.” You can learn to mindfully greet each emotion, each negative thought, as a visitor who has come to stay for a while, just like visitors in your home. Invite them in, offer them tea and sit with them for a while. You may not like your visitors, but you know the importance of being kind, courteous and hospitable.

You cannot get rid of your negative emotions, your depression and fear by force, which is our usual reaction. We don’t want to feel our anger or fear; we want to fix them so they won’t bother us. But, here’s the thing. You can’t. Why not? Because you created them. Its like asking a wolf to guard the farmer’s chickens. A system that is broken cannot fix itself.

What is needed is something altogether more creative, and this is the second step of the practice of mindfulness: Actively turn towards your suffering and work on creating a safe relationship with your fish. When you are mindful, you are by definition not being reactive. The effect of this is to create a space around the emotion. The more mindful you are, the greater the space. The more space there is, the more freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from the grip of the negative emotion, thought or belief. There is a Zen proverb: What is the best way to control a mad bull? Answer: Place it in a very large field. If there is plenty of space, then the mad bull, or your anxiety, hurt, trauma or depression cannot harm you. Also, what is equally important is that the mad bull can’t hurt itself. This is very important, because both of you need the space in which to heal.

Mindfulness creates therapeutic space in which emotional knots can move, unwind, unfold, soften and become workable. And, what is most remarkable, if you create lots of space around your suffering, the suffering has a chance to transform and heal itself. Its not what you do that matters so much as creating this transformational therapeutic space and allowing emotions to change themselves from the inside out.

In my work as a psychotherapist, I never cease to be amazed at how effective mindfulness can be when used correctly. The moment when a client stops running away and turns towards his or her suffering with kindness, full attention and engaged presence, things start to change in a beneficial direction. The healing comes from the quality of the relationship that we have with our pain. It’s not about trying to fix things, trying to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts – it’s all about presence. With this quality of listening, based on genuine openness and gentleness, the relationship of mindfulness, solutions appear quite naturally.

***************

Peter Strong, PhD is a scientist and Buddhist Psychotherapist, based in Boulder, Colorado, who specializes in the study of mindfulness and its application in Mindfulness Psychotherapy. He uses Mindfulness-based Psychotherapy in combination with NLP to help individuals overcome the root causes of anxiety, depression, phobias, grief and post-traumatic stress (PTSD). He also teaches mindfulness techniques to couples to help them overcome habitual patterns of reactivity and interpersonal conflict.

An open letter to a Christian friend

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:57:19 +0000

By Evelyn Ruut, The Buddhist Channel, Dec 5, 2009

After a conversation in which I was challenged rather vehemently to give accounting of the reasons behind the choice I made 16 years ago to begin to study Buddhism, and having left my Christian background and prior belief system behind, I determined that it might be OK if I sat down and wrote the reasons down on a one to one, personal level to try to help my friend and others to understand why I have chosen the spiritual path which has become such a big part of my life.

I realize that you are confused by my choice, and that is mostly because you know nothing at all about Buddhism, (excepting perhaps that there was once a man named Buddha who founded a religion). Well, of course it is a lot more than that, and it is a deeply satisfying, deeply spiritual, loving and compassionate faith which is extremely all encompassing.

We have no godlike super being who decides to send beings to hell, nor do we exclude anyone, even the worst of sinners can become enlightened. Christians believe that everyone is born in original sin, and that all are in need of salvation and cleansing. Buddhists believe that all living beings have buddha nature within them, but through conflicting emotions and indulging in the 5 poisons, anger, greed, jealousy, hate, and ignorance, and thus perpetuating our suffering have forgotten how to allow that stainless perfection to be evident and foremost in our lives. But we all have it. Christians believe that we are all sinners in need of redemption, Buddhists believe that we are all Buddha’s who have forgotten it for the moment. Christians believe that someone died for your sins. Buddhists believe that no matter what anyone does, you are irrevocably responsible for your own actions, and that all actions have consequences, good or bad correspondingly.

Christians believe in Heaven and Hell, as distinct places, where humans only go after a single human life, depending only on ones status in accord with Christian beliefs. Buddhists believe that “heaven” and “hell” are states of being which can occur as the results of negative actions as well, but we believe that these places can be here as well as the beyond. You can be in hell even if you are a millionaire, in a palace, with everything riches can buy at your command, but if you are mentally ill, or physically in great pain, you can still be in a hell. If you are penniless, live in the streets, but are healthy and loved and happy, and possess wisdom and compassion and love for all other beings, you can be at times in a heavenly state. The most blissful state a Buddhist can wish to be in is the state of Nirvana, a state of heightened and total awareness, devoid of all preconceived ideas, all desires, all conflicting emotions, yet in full dazzling consciousness and awareness of the whole universe. There are varying levels of consciousness on the way to this state, Satori is one, and these are achieved through various mental technologies, using visualizations, meditations, prayers or ritual type meditations, koans, chanting. Depending upon the particular Buddhist tradition one adheres to, the methods may vary, but the basic philosophy and the purpose is the same. Spiritual development, self realization, enlightenment.

Christians believe that your fortune or lack of one, your talents, appearance, parents, circumstances, health are all at the whim or will of God in that one lifetime. If you are born retarded and lay in a crib drooling, unable to recognize anyone, until the day you die, that is your luck of the draw, and God’s will for you. Buddhists believe that your fortune or lack thereof, your luck, your appearance, your talents, all are the result of past actions, good or bad. If you were a good person you will be born into good circumstances, if you have harmed others or created difficulties for others and thus have a great karmic debt, you might be born with handicaps or difficulties. It is commonly believed that the particular kind of difficulty you experience in life is directly related to the type of troubles you may have created in your past life or lives.

Christians believe in one lifetime per soul and an afterlife of either Heaven or Hell. Buddhists believe in lifetime, followed by lifetime, etc. etc etc. Each lifetime is like a grade of school to us. No lifetime is ever wasted. The ones you have loved in past lifetimes, will be present for us to love and care for again in the future. Likewise, the difficulties, your enemies and those whom you have harmed will present themselves to you again and again. Over and over, each lifetime bringing its own particular wisdom and its own experiences to your inner soul. Each incarnation is precious, and even if you were born in a horrible condition, dying almost immediately, it may have the benefit of teaching you how precious a human life is, but there is no wasted anything. No vast furnace of souls in untold agony for eons, only instead, like nature, nothing wasted, everything recycled and renewed. That is the way of the universe and it is also the way of the soul. This gives infinite hope for all beings.

The teaching of the Buddha was broken down into 4 noble truths, They are so simple and yet so vast. The first truth is that of Suffering. Life is suffering. It hurts to be born, it hurts to die. We suffer when we lose that which we want, and we suffer when we want what we can’t have. There are innumerable kinds of suffering, many levels from the physical to the psychological, but its fact is a certainty. The second noble truth is that there is a cause to this suffering. Our desire, our craving which can never be satisfied is the cause. The third truth is that there is an antidote to suffering. The fourth noble truth is the path, the method, which ends the suffering.

If you have all eternity and innumerable lifetimes to be born again and again, this also has a dark side. We are essentially powerless on our own to offset the pain and misery of life. The only way out is to put an end to the suffering by ceasing to produce negative karma, working to help other living beings in any way we can, ceasing to cause hurt or pain to others. This is not so easy. It may seem easy with those who love you, but your worst enemy may present him or herself again and again in your lifetimes in sometimes very significant positions in relation to you until you are able to find a way to forgive and negate the bad energy and overcome it with love and kindness and compassion. We believe there is a reason why people incarnate near each other, usually to help each other. Even if that seems very painful at times, it is nonetheless, exactly what you deserve, and exactly what you need to learn, if only you choose to recognize it.

Christianity recognizes only human lives. Buddhism recognizes the lives of animals, plants, and various types of spirit beings, some of low and some of higher order. Buddhism feels that you can incarnate in almost any form depending on what level mentality you are living on. Have you known in your life some people who thought just like jungle creatures, predatory and selfish, and also people who are so loving and gentle and selfless that they seemed almost to be higher than ordinary humans? Look at Mother Teresa, a woman so good that she has dedicated her entire life to the care of others. What particular religion she is, what sect, all becomes secondary to the wonderful work she does. She is respected by all. There is room in my Buddhist philosophy for her, whereas a fundamentalist Christian might say she is going to hell because she is a Catholic.

Back here on earth, the enormous diversity of human existence and experience has left me personally, completely unable to accept the one lifetime theory. This belief in one lifetime and then heaven or hell, is so very limiting, that to a Buddhist it almost seems insulting to try to limit God, the whole experience of being, and all the various forms of being into such a small space. I am not a teacher, nor am I especially good at explaining concepts, but I must tell you from the bottom of my heart, I truly cannot accept Christianity intellectually in the face of all I see and have seen. I am sorry if this is not to anyone’s liking, but it is nonetheless, true. There have been however, Christians who have actually achieved enlightenment according to some Buddhist teachers. Some especially who have lived within the contemplative traditions, meditating for many years. I see no problem with any one else being a christian, and I applaud them if they were completely lacking beforehand in any spiritual practice. For example a heroin addict or murderer or thief who becomes a Christian is definitely on an up-trend. Also, as long as it works for you, stick with it. When it doesn’t anymore, stop beating yourself up for not being a good enough Christian and find what resonates of truth in your own mind. This is a particularly difficult aspect of Christianity I have noted as a trait indigenous only to religious practices; In no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure. Christians never tend to see the flaws in the system, but due to the belief in original sin, see themselves as the fault. If something is not working for you, perhaps it is time for a change.

For myself, I have major problems with certain other basic concepts of Christianity. For instance, I dislike very much the sacrificial principle. I find it unnecessary, irrelevant, and downright cruel for the countless little animals which were sacrificed of old, and even more unconscionable the later concept of any one person dying for anyone else’s sins, as being especially meaningful to either party. I see enormous hypocrisy in all the Christian holidays, not having basis in real history, but founded in ancient pagan ritual and symbolism and given a new name. What good can possibly come of lying to ones children about a mythical person who brings them toys at winter solstice, a person who drives a sled in the sky with flying reindeer (who don’t really fly), and having no basis in the history of the religion. The same for cutting down various varieties of pine and decorating it indoors with bric a brac. Other than being fun, and pretty, which is reason enough I suppose, it really has no relation to historical Jesus. No ones knows actually historically speaking when Christ was born. It was just convenient to connect it to the solstice, since people celebrated then anyway. What can rabbits and eggs have to do with the purported resurrection? Nothing. They are fertility symbols of pagan origin and connect to all the rites of spring fertility celebrations in many cultures. They just have no meaning at all to historic Christianity, and this is how Christians celebrate their holidays. I am all for the use of the pagan rituals however, since they have more historic validity than most of the Christian religion itself.

I see Christianity as ignoring all the other living beings both human and otherwise who have lived from time immemorial, all the sincere pagans, Jains, Hindus, Native Americans, Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists, and countless other religions too many to name, and consigning them all to a nasty hell, regardless of age, sincerity, culture, goodness or lack thereof. This narrow view, coupled with the one life concept, leaves a very cruel universe as the creation of this God. There is very little redemption, very little compassion and no real hope in this religion which claims to redeem, but only enslaves its own. It claims to give hope, but only to Christians, and everyone else should go to hell.

Buddhists believe that even if you are a horrible person and die as such, you will come back again and again, and having suffered the results of your bad karmic past, with each new circumstance and each new life, you may get the chance to learn to trust again, and learn not to be unkind, but grow in wisdom and learn to love and help others instead of harm them. You may get to live ten thousand years as a tapeworm or a series of poisonous snakes if you are a really bad guy, but ultimately there is hope for all. We are taught that all living beings have at one time been our mothers, our lovers, our children. We should love all beings with that same kind of love and protection and care like a mother cat gives its kittens, a mother bird gives its chicks, etc. Not just other Buddhists. To a Buddhist, all beings are not divided into denominations, or into saved and not saved, or into species and sub species. All beings are all beings. All living things are sacred. This sacred view of life is very purifying, very holy, very wonderful. It includes bugs, birds, deer etc. etc. etc.

To a Buddhist, you have no choice but to forgive all those who have harmed you. You could be that person’s child or parent or significant other in your next life. We all have to take care of each other. Chronological age is irrelevant. You have seen old people who are very ignorant, and children who are very wise. That old fool could be a younger soul, that little child could be a wise old being who has come to take care of its foolish young parent. This concept is hard for Christians to understand, which is hard for me to understand since Christianity is supposed to be a loving and forgiving religion, yet I have seen more angry Christians who cannot forgive than Buddhists, and more intolerance in the name of Christianity than anywhere else.

An anecdote about forgiveness; When I asked my Teacher about someone who made my life miserable, I was told to dedicate all my practice to that person! To pray daily for their wisdom and their benefit and make offerings of incense and water and food to them symbolically every day on my shrine! Think about that. You can’t stay angry long doing that. My teacher tells me that the greatest cure for anger and hatred is compassion. You cannot stay angry with someone for whom you feel compassion. They are the product of where they came from, and if they are unpleasant and you are not, it is because you have greater wisdom, and they have less. Thinking like this should help one to feel compassion and neutralize ones anger. By the way, Buddhists believe that anger is almost the worst kind of sin. The very worst is harming others, but anger gives rise to all sorts of misery in the world. We feel that anger is almost a mental disease to be worked against with most diligent effort. Look at the Dalai Lama. Such kindness, wisdom, gentleness. No anger.

A great problem I have with Christianity is guilt and blame. There is so much of it throughout all of Christianity. It seems to be a religion which glorifies pain, guilt, suffering, and remorse. These may have a small redeeming value in that one must feel remorse for past actions in order to remediate, but Christianity fosters remorse when you haven’t even done anything. You just had to be born in sin to feel guilty. This is not constructive psychologically. I rather prefer the imagery that Buddhism provides of the gentle man who gave up all his riches and went into the forest to find a way to end all suffering on earth. To advance and evolve the human mind to its greatest potential. To teach all beings to love one another and achieve full realization, enlightenment.

Historically Buddhism is about 530 years older than Christianity, it is better documented as to dates and persons. According to the 1997 World Almanac, there are 1 billion Christians on earth, (about 80% of which are Roman Catholic) about 800 million Muslims, 500 million Hindus, and although there are only 350 million Buddhists, and they are much more tolerant. Buddhists do not make war. No person in the history of Buddhism has ever been converted by force. This is a fact! Buddha did not claim to be God. We do not particularly care if you have a God or not. All of our so called deities are people who actually lived, who accomplished great things with their minds. We honor them by using visualizations and prayers and meditations to advance our own minds with wisdom and compassion in search of enlightenment and supreme realization and to bring all beings to enlightenment. We have a vow we take called the Bodhisattva vow, in which we promise never to accept enlightenment until all living beings have been enlightened and thus freed from the cycle of Samsara, the wheel of life, after life, after life, and thus also freed from suffering. Buddhists are very spiritual and selfless people.

In Buddhism, all people, men and women are equal spiritually. In some ways one can achieve more in a certain lifetime as a man, and the same is true sometimes as a woman. The major Christian churches are still wrangling over whether or not a woman can be a minister or priest or whatever. I bid a most happy farewell to those attitudes a long time ago. Read St. Paul if you want to hear some real woman hating nonsense. He really seemed to believe women to be inferior beings. Not to mention his unrealistic views on divorce, marriage, gays. In today’s society he would be considered a most narrow minded man.

Most of all I love the hope and the joy of Buddhism. It is a religion filled with great optimism and happiness and expansiveness. I believe that I will see my grandmother again in the eyes of perhaps a grandchild not yet born. I believe that when my parents die and I die, that sometime in the unseen future, we will be born together again with new chances. The roles may be reversed, or not, but those whom I have loved I will love and have again in my life. We are old souls in new lives, again and again.

It is a belief of great hope and joy. The world is a sorrowful place, and it is also a joyful place. Souls leave and rest and come back again. The world you pollute now, will haunt you in your next life, so take care of the earth and the animals and the plants. Give love. Forgive. Reach out. Be generous. Cultivate wisdom, not money. All children are your children, all people are your family. Make no enemies. Make peace wherever you can. Radiate Love for all beings. Visualize universal love and kindness, world peace, whatever you want. We Buddhists believe that these kinds of thoughts have power and can effect real change in the world.

A religion is only a tool to that end. Ultimately it can be described so simply as to say that Christianity saves some and damns others; Buddhism saves all!

This is good, very very good. And that is why I am a Buddhist. I hope it has helped you to understand a little about my religion, and I also must apologize if there has been anything I said here that offended. This was not my intent, but merely to convey what I was feeling when I made the change. Lest you think it was overnight, believe me it was a gradual process, like falling in love. Eventually I one day just realized that I was more Buddhist than anything else, and made it official. The one thing I pray most is that in all my lifetimes yet to come, that I will have access to this precious teaching. To me it is the key to the cosmos.

I wrote something a couple of years ago called “Why I am not a Christian” it goes further into the issues which I found unacceptable to live with when I was making my decisions. I can provide a copy for you if you are interested, as a matter of curiosity. Since then my attitudes have mellowed greatly, as you may see with this letter which I have written today. But since you asked me why, I feel that it is important for you to have some understanding of the thought processes I went through. I hope you will realize that none of this was meant in any way as a personal criticism. If it works for you, it ain’t broke, so don’t fix it. It didn’t work for me and this is why I felt the need to change my religion. I have never regretted it, ever.

Edited. Source: http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1/guest_columnx3.htm

Meditation gives brain a charge, says study

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:17:06 +0000

By Marc Kaufman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A05

Brain research is beginning to produce concrete evidence for something that Buddhist practitioners of meditation have maintained for centuries: Mental discipline and meditative practice can change the workings of the brain and allow people to achieve different levels of awareness.Those transformed states have traditionally been understood in transcendent terms, as something outside the world of physical measurement and objective evaluation. But over the past few years, researchers at the University of Wisconsin working with Tibetan monks have been able to translate those mental experiences into the scientific language of high-frequency gamma waves and brain synchrony, or coordination. And they have pinpointed the left prefrontal cortex, an area just behind the left forehead, as the place where brain activity associated with meditation is especially intense.

“What we found is that the longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before,” said Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the university’s new $10 million W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior. “Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance.” It demonstrates, he said, that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine.

Scientists used to believe the opposite — that connections among brain nerve cells were fixed early in life and did not change in adulthood. But that assumption was disproved over the past decade with the help of advances in brain imaging and other techniques, and in its place, scientists have embraced the concept of ongoing brain development and “neuroplasticity.”

Davidson says his newest results from the meditation study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November, take the concept of neuroplasticity a step further by showing that mental training through meditation (and presumably other disciplines) can itself change the inner workings and circuitry of the brain.

The new findings are the result of a long, if unlikely, collaboration between Davidson and Tibet’s Dalai Lama, the world’s best-known practitioner of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama first invited Davidson to his home in Dharamsala, India, in 1992 after learning about Davidson’s innovative research into the neuroscience of emotions. The Tibetans have a centuries-old tradition of intensive meditation and, from the start, the Dalai Lama was interested in having Davidson scientifically explore the workings of his monks’ meditating minds. Three years ago, the Dalai Lama spent two days visiting Davidson’s lab.

The Dalai Lama ultimately dispatched eight of his most accomplished practitioners to Davidson’s lab to have them hooked up for electroencephalograph (EEG) testing and brain scanning. The Buddhist practitioners in the experiment had undergone training in the Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa traditions of meditation for an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 hours, over time periods of 15 to 40 years. As a control, 10 student volunteers with no previous meditation experience were also tested after one week of training.

The monks and volunteers were fitted with a net of 256 electrical sensors and asked to meditate for short periods. Thinking and other mental activity are known to produce slight, but detectable, bursts of electrical activity as large groupings of neurons send messages to each other, and that’s what the sensors picked up. Davidson was especially interested in measuring gamma waves, some of the highest-frequency and most important electrical brain impulses.

Both groups were asked to meditate, specifically on unconditional compassion. Buddhist teaching describes that state, which is at the heart of the Dalai Lama’s teaching, as the “unrestricted readiness and availability to help living beings.” The researchers chose that focus because it does not require concentrating on particular objects, memories or images, and cultivates instead a transformed state of being.

Davidson said that the results unambiguously showed that meditation activated the trained minds of the monks in significantly different ways from those of the volunteers. Most important, the electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the movement of the waves through the brain was far better organized and coordinated than in the students. The meditation novices showed only a slight increase in gamma wave activity while meditating, but some of the monks produced gamma wave activity more powerful than any previously reported in a healthy person, Davidson said.

The monks who had spent the most years meditating had the highest levels of gamma waves, he added. This “dose response” — where higher levels of a drug or activity have greater effect than lower levels — is what researchers look for to assess cause and effect.

In previous studies, mental activities such as focus, memory, learning and consciousness were associated with the kind of enhanced neural coordination found in the monks. The intense gamma waves found in the monks have also been associated with knitting together disparate brain circuits, and so are connected to higher mental activity and heightened awareness, as well.

Davidson’s research is consistent with his earlier work that pinpointed the left prefrontal cortex as a brain region associated with happiness and positive thoughts and emotions. Using functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) on the meditating monks, Davidson found that their brain activity — as measured by the EEG — was especially high in this area.

Davidson concludes from the research that meditation not only changes the workings of the brain in the short term, but also quite possibly produces permanent changes. That finding, he said, is based on the fact that the monks had considerably more gamma wave activity than the control group even before they started meditating. A researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Jon Kabat-Zinn, came to a similar conclusion several years ago.

Researchers at Harvard and Princeton universities are now testing some of the same monks on different aspects of their meditation practice: their ability to visualize images and control their thinking. Davidson is also planning further research.

“What we found is that the trained mind, or brain, is physically different from the untrained one,” he said. In time, “we’ll be able to better understand the potential importance of this kind of mental training and increase the likelihood that it will be taken seriously.”

Buddhists really do know secret of happiness

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:55:02 +0000

By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent, Times Online

BUDDHISTS who claim their religion holds the secret of happiness may have been proved right by science: brain scans of the devout have found exceptional activity in the lobes that promote serenity and joy.
American research has shown that the brain’s “happiness centre” is constantly alive with electrical signals in experienced Buddhists, offering an explanation for their calm and contented demeanour.

Neuroscientists think the preliminary findings could provide the first proof that religious training can change the way the brain responds to certain environmental triggers.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison study team scanned the brains of people who had been practising Buddhists for several years, looking particularly at areas important for emotion, mood and temperament. They found that the left side — the “happiness centre” — was consistently highly active in Buddhists.

“We can now hypothesise with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala (the Dalai Lama’s home) really are happy,” Professor Owen Flanagan of Duke University, North Carolina, writes in New Scientist.

The positive effects were seen all the time, not only during meditation, which suggests that the Buddhist way of life may affect the way their brains work. Other research has also suggested that Buddhists have lower than usual activity in the part of the brain that processes fear and anxiety. These findings may eventually allow researchers to develop meditation techniques as treatments for depressive illnesses.

Steve James, founder of the London Buddhist Centre, said the findings offered evidence of what Buddhism can do to improve happiness, and Paul Seto, director of the Buddhist Society, said: “Lots of people are excited about this, but we’ve known it all along. Buddhism hasn’t been waiting for scientific proof. We know it works.”

Buddhists ‘are truly happy’

by SARAH GETTY, Metro

Buddhist spend their lives seeking enlightenment through deep meditation.

Now scientists have used followers of the religion to discover the secret of happiness.

New research suggests joy lies just behind the forehead, in the brain’s left prefrontal lobes.

This part of the brain is associated with positive emotions and good mood. In experienced Buddhists, it is consistently active.

Prof Richard Davidson, who is leading the research at the University of Wisconsin, called the results tantalising.

“We can now hypothesise with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala, India – the Dalai Lama’s home – really are happy,’ he told New Scientist magazine.

“Behind those calm exteriors lie persistently frisky left prefrontal lobes.”

It was unlikely that Tibetan Buddhists were born with a happiness gene that activated their left prefrontal lobes, added Mr Davidson.

It was more probable that something about Buddhist practice produced happiness.

Separate research found experienced meditators did not get as flustered, shocked or surprised as ordinary people. This suggested they could control the amygdala – part of the brain which makes a person feel fear and anxiety.

“No antidepressant makes a person happy,” concluded Mr Davidson.

“On the other hand, Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, which were developed 2,500 years before Prozac, can lead to profound happiness.”

“Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the hostile. Amidst hostile men we dwell free from hatred. ~ Dhammapada 197″

What is Buddhism?

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:57:41 +0000

Buddhism is a religion which originated in India over 2,500 years ago with the enlightenment of Siddhattha under the Bodhi Tree. Henceforth he was known as the Buddha. His enlightenment consisted of the most profound and all embracing insight into the meaning of life, the very nature of mind and universe. This enlightenment was not a revelation from some divine being, but a discovery made by himself and based on the deepest level of meditation and the clearest experience of mind. It meant that he was no longer subject to craving, anger and delusion, and that he had attained the complete ending of all forms of personal suffering.
Having realized Perfect Enlightenment himself, the Buddha spent the next 45 years teaching a Path which, when followed, will take anyone, man or woman, to that same Enlightenment. The Teachings about this Path are called the Dhamma. In essence, the Dhamma consists of the Four Noble Truths; The Noble Truth of SUFFERING, the CAUSE of this suffering, the END of this suffering and the WAY leading to the complete ending of suffering. The Dhamma, the Teachings of the Buddha, extends to many, many volumes.

The Buddhist way is a gradual training in virtue, meditation (calmness of mind), wisdom and compassion. Belief has a place, but only at the beginning and it is always to be questioned, challenged and investigated until this makeshift and uncertain belief becomes transformed into a Truth directly seen in one’s own immediate experience.

Questioning and clear thinking, study and practice, and honest reflection on one’s personal experience are thus all encouraged in Buddhism.

From such intelligent use of the mind, a Buddhist develops virtue. For most Buddhists, this virtue consists of practicing generosity and compassion and keeping the five moral precepts; refraining from killing, stealing, adultery, lying and the use of intoxicants such as alcohol or illegal drugs. Based on this virtue, one develops the mind in silence, mindfulness, clarity and purity – which is the practice of Buddhist meditation. Then from such pure, clear and powerful states of mind, clear insight arises, a great wisdom which brings with it the ultimate peace and unlimited compassion. This then is the origin, the way, and the goal of Buddhism.

What is Theravada?
Theravada, the “Doctrine of the Elders,” is the school of Buddhism that draws its scriptural inspiration from the texts of the Pali Canon, or Tipitaka, which scholars generally accept as containing the oldest surviving record of the Buddha’s teachings. For many centuries, Theravada has been the predominant religion of Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand; today Theravada Buddhists number over 100 million worldwide. In recent decades Theravada has begun to take root in the West.

The Buddha called the religion he founded Dhamma-vinaya, “the doctrine and discipline”. To provide a social structure supportive of the full-time practice of Dhamma, and to preserve these teachings for posterity, the Buddha established the order of bhikkhus (monks) and bhikkhunis (nuns) — the Sangha — who continue to this day to pass his teachings on to subsequent generations. Two centuries after the Buddha’s passing, as the Dhamma spread across much of India, several different interpretations of some of the Buddha’s original teachings arose, leading to the emergence of as many as eighteen distinct sects of Buddhism. One of these sects (the Mahasanghika) eventually gave rise to a reform movement that called itself Mahayana (the “Greater Vehicle).What we call Theravada today is the sole surviving school of those early non-Mahayana schools.

Pali: The Language of Theravada Buddhism
The language of the Theravada canonical texts is known as Pali , which is based on a dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan that was probably spoken in central India during the Buddha’s time. Most of the sermons (suttas) the Buddha delivered were memorized by Ven. Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin and close personal attendant; those sermons at which Ananda was not present are said to have been repeated to him later on. Shortly after the Buddha’s death (ca. 480 BCE), five hundred of the most senior monks — including Ananda — convened to recite and verify all the sermons they had heard during the Buddha’s forty-five year teaching career. Most of these sermons therefore begin with the disclaimer, Evam me sutam — “Thus have I heard.”

The teachings were passed down orally within the monastic community, in keeping with an oral tradition that long predated the Buddha. By 250 BCE the Buddha’s teachings had been systematically arranged and organized into three basic divisions: the Vinaya Pitaka (the “basket of discipline”; the texts concerning the rules and customs of the Sangha), the Sutta Pitaka (the “basket of discourses”; the sermons and utterances by the Buddha and his close disciples), and the Abhidhamma Pitaka (the “basket of higher [or special] doctrine”; a detailed philosophical and psychological analysis of the Dhamma). Taken together these three are known as the Tipitaka — the “three baskets”. In the third century BCE Sri Lankan monks began compiling a series of detailed commentaries to the Tipitaka that were finally translated into Pali in the fifth century CE. The Tipitaka and the commentaries together constitute the complete body of classical Theravada texts.

Since Pali is an oral language, it has no alphabet of its own. It wasn’t until about 100 BCE that the Tipitaka was first fixed in writing, by Sri Lankan scribe-monks writing the Pali phonetically in their own Sinhalese alphabet. Since then the Tipitaka has been transliterated into many different scripts (Devanagari, Thai, Burmese, and Roman, to name a few). Although translations of the most popular Tipitaka texts abound, many students of Theravada find that learning the Pali language — even just a little bit here and there — greatly deepens their understanding and appreciation of the of the Buddha’s teachings.

Of course, no one can prove that the Tipitaka contains any of the actual words uttered by the historical Buddha. But practicing Buddhists have never found this problematic. Unlike the scriptures of many of the world’s other great religions, the Tipitaka is not meant to be taken as gospel, containing unassailable statements of divine truth, revealed by a prophet, to be accepted purely on faith. Instead, its teachings are meant to be assessed firsthand, to be put into practice in one’s life so that one can find out for oneself if they do, in fact, yield the promised results. It is the truth towards which the words in the Tipitaka point that ultimately matters, not the words themselves. Although scholars will undoubtedly continue to speculate about the authorship of passages from the Tipitaka for years to come (and thus miss the point of these teachings entirely), the Tipitaka will quietly continue to serve — as it has for centuries — as an indispensable guide for millions of followers in their quest for Awakening.