Thursday, August 5, 2010

Buddhism



The purpose of Buddhism
佛教終旨


first attain Enlightenment,
上求菩提


then instruct all creatures.
下化衆生

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posted by Wonji Dharma at August 05, 2010

1 Comments:

Blogger Harry said...

Hi Paul,

"I believe that we can help bridge the lack of understanding through open discussion."

That's a noble aspiration methinks. What would you like to discuss?

Here's something that springs to my mind:

As much as I'd like to avoid it at times, I can't get away from that old one liner "religion is poison". It really does seem to be a mostly poisoned chalice. Sometimes it seems to me as if zazen is not the height of religion, but is the antidote to it.

I accept of course that this is my very subjective take on things today, but really, I look around the world, and I look at the nonsense, the futile hope, the striving, the delusion, and my own complicity it in, my own religious bullshit, and I wonder how I ever got this far (to have established a daily practice... it has been a bumpy ride!)

I look at some of the preposterous institutions and structures that have sprung up around something as simple as a human being sitting down to uncoil herself from the world of pointless pursuit for a time and I wonder where it all went wrong? I must add that I partake of the hope delusions as a consumer like everyone else; I want to impress the teacher as much as the next bozo, I want to seem as 'Zen' and know all the obscure literary references etc etc etc.

I was reading the Vimalakirti Sutra today and, Jesus, it was hard to get to the good stuff behind all the religious Mahayana special effects (Disney/Pixar would have a tough job rendering it on the silver screen methinks)... maybe that's what got me going on this one.

Regards to you,

Harry.

August 5, 2010 at 4:30 PM  

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