Christianity, Islam Buddist

Originally posted by vistesd
First, I take the statement that you practiced (some form of) Buddhism for 10 years as a simple reference to the fact that you have some background authority from which to speak on the matter. And I acknowledge that.

I have practiced (lived) some form of Zen for about 30 years now—Zen Buddhism as well as Zen expressed in other religious paradigms ...[text shortened]... t of present undercurrents in my life. Words, too, can remind one to keep rooted in clear mind.

So do you think the world would be a better place if 100% of us were Buddhist? It sounds like a better 'religion' than the death religions of Islam and Christianity. That is, focused on death and what supposedly happens after than living in the here and now. Some of those people have their collective heads so far up their asssh they can't smell the roses. I for one cannot imagine using the bible or christ to kill 'witches' as in Salem or Islamics killing women for adultery when the men get a slap on the wrist, they are only being men, women should know better, etc., or killing those who, having been Muslim, chose another path. There is an analogy here: think Mafia. I could rant on but I think you get the gist of what I say.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So do you think the world would be a better place if 100% of us were Buddhist? It sounds like a better 'religion' than the death religions of Islam and Christianity. That is, focused on death and what supposedly happens after than living in the here and now. Some of those people have their collective heads so far up their asssh they can't smell the roses. I ...[text shortened]... s an analogy here: think Mafia. I could rant on but I think you get the gist of what I say.

Hey sonhouse,

Naybe the world will become better when everybody becomes better, not when everybody is identical to everybody else; Buddhism is not a religion, however the Buddhists are free to practice their system through religions too; all those so many gods of Hinduism are just different expressions of the same entity; some Buddhist systems are associated with supernatural axioms, some are not; Zen Buddhism is non dualistic, as vistesd quoted allright; meaningless to seek stricktly for the black or the white ignoring every other colour: the religions that are based on the myth of the sinful man are devastating.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So do you think the world would be a better place if 100% of us were Buddhist? It sounds like a better 'religion' than the death religions of Islam and Christianity. That is, focused on death and what supposedly happens after than living in the here and now. Some of those people have their collective heads so far up their asssh they can't smell the roses. I ...[text shortened]... s an analogy here: think Mafia. I could rant on but I think you get the gist of what I say.

I’ll take black beetle’s answer.

Originally posted by vistesd
First, I take the statement that you practiced (some form of) Buddhism for 10 years as a simple reference to the fact that you have some background authority from which to speak on the matter. And I acknowledge that.

I have practiced (lived) some form of Zen for about 30 years now—Zen Buddhism as well as Zen expressed in other religious paradigms ...[text shortened]... t of present undercurrents in my life. Words, too, can remind one to keep rooted in clear mind.

I agree that Zen is non dualistic.
Most Buddhist are Hinayana (small wheel Buddhist), As cultures incorporated Buddhism into there societies, there local "superstitions" were inevitably intertwined. There is no edict in Buddhism against belief in deity, but rather belief or disbelief is irrelevant to enlightenment

I was a Nicheren Shoshu Buddhist

Originally posted by pabrits
are you sure of the vast emptyness? prove it as in sience?

When I



type these wo rds

what you li kely fo








cus




on

is these dark letter marks against a blank (empty) white screen-page. That is the background—or just the ground. You have likely learned to focus, without even noticing it, on where you expect the message to be: on the letter-word-marks. They are the figures which you can only see because they stand out from the ground. If you shift your attention, the white screen may become the figure whose general shape is demarcated by these strange black markings...

The same is true for perception generally: our attention shifts from what we perceive as this figure (or figure-complex) to this one and this one and then that one. But each new figure was a moment ago just part of the whole ground.

This screen-page has a border. What are the borders of your everyday perception? How vast is the ground? What lies beyond the Whole? Can there be another besides the All?

Withoutthegrounditisdamnablydiffculttoidentifyanyofthefigures. Sometimes, it seems that our thinking, concept-making mind works so fast overlaying thoughts onto perceptions that we can become confused between the two. Sometimes, our attention seems to shift fromfiguretofiguresoquicklythatwe forget

there is a ground in which those figures arise to our attention.

The ground is “empty” because it lacks the figure/form definition provided by your attention. It is also “full” because it contains all that you are not attending to.

The Heart Sutra says: “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.” I hope this analog of dark marks against a white screen-page (itself a figure among other pages, etc.) gives some idea of what is meant.

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“Holiness” is a concept, an idea, a word-thought about—well, either about what is real before all our word-thoughts about it, or just about other word-thoughts, other concepts or notions about . . .

In the context of the story from which black beetle quoted, Bodhidharma (the first patriarch of Zen) was being asked to affirm certain religious notions—holiness among them. Bodhidharma refused, instead pointing with his enigmatic speech to the ground against which we overlay such concepts and notions.

Whatever we focus our attention on (including ourselves) becomes figure lifted out of the vast emptiness/fullness/wholeness of the ground in our consciousness. Likewise, when we attend to our thoughts-about, our concepts and ideas-about—they become notional figures against the ground on which we overlay them, just as these marks I am typing are overlaid on the screen-page. This includes all our “I-thoughts”.

All our words are words-about; but they can also be used as gestures to point to the reality that precedes them.* All talking is just a way of talking. “Holiness” is just a way of talking; “God” is just a way of talking; “vast emptiness” is just a way of talking—it is a kind of Zen koan intended to point beyond its own conceptual content.

Nevertheless—

“No holiness; vast emptiness.”

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* And also includes them, since it also includes us with our thinking minds—but that is another loop...