Buddhism

**Spooky** · 14th December 2010 05:22 PM

I've been on a journey I arrived at this place, I call it now. I was always here and it has always been different than it is now.

Buddhism replaces the convenient model of the world we all refer to with something that at first seems implausible, but when it begins to be understood becomes very comforting.

My first love is christianity but had to give it up. Recently I have been involved in some high level discussions with a Christian / Buddhist discussion group. They are inviolved in finding dialogue between the two religious systems of thought.

Most of the people involved are at the phd level in their experience. So I get the benefit of a lot of esoteric insights into the traditions of both faiths. Now the Christians involved are mainly from the Catholic mystical tradition.

As a result of reading these things I really began to get a feeling of wholeness as I was able to take the essence of each and combine them without harming either one.

The concept of emptiness is a tool for the mind to use to expand itself and it is the heart of Buddhism that provides a truly sublime approach to analyzing existence and being.

A video depicting the Heart Sutra

I'm not a scholar by any means but I appreciate the the tantalizing insights I get from applying these heady concepts into a coherent personal faith.

Quite frankly as far as I can see organized religion is an impediment to man finding his place in the universe. The time for a one size fits all faith to have relevance is spent. Today human individuals desperately need to find a personal connection with the ground of being and all aspects of society seem dead set against him doing that.

Their governments are innoculating them with mass insanity while convincing them it is ultimate reality. Their governments have created a hell disguised as the road to paradise. Organized religion is geared to keep that system in place. It aids by encouraging masses of people to believe totally unrelistic things, making them easy pray for other sophistries. The United States is one nation under God, which makes it a theocracy by definition. The point we are now is where organized religion has helped lead us.

Most people if left to their own plans would not choose to do the things they have been given to choose to do.

**freecell** · 14th December 2010 05:42 PM

Well you just missed another member that was a Buddhist.

**Spooky** · 14th December 2010 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by freecell

Well you just missed another member that was a Buddhist.

Don't matter. I do not claim to be a buddhist. I do have to tell you this, my girl friend just became a great grandmother today.

I do not want to believe anything. Beliefs start off like a good idea but they rapidly become prisons. They do that because the nature of experience and thus reality is constant change. However beliefs do not allow change unless they are very peculiar beliefs. Generally beliefs state specifically what the paramaters of reality are. I have a hard time pointing to anything I believed was true once that is still true today. So why did I believe what I believed all along in the first place? For the most part it was because some authority figure had mandated that kind of reality be believed in. Church and state combined to form a wonderful tool to convince me of the genuineness of their specific interpretation of existence.

But I eventually caught on so I try to keep my self from believing or taking anything too seriously at all even if I get heated up on the topic.

Living and dying is good enough.

**Feslin** · 15th December 2010 05:03 PM

They do that because the nature of experience and thus reality is constant
change

The fact that reality changes doesn't mean that beliefs shouldn't be held.

For instance, you and I both believe that reality changes, no?

**Spooky** · 15th December 2010 11:04 PM

Originally Posted by Feslin

The fact that reality changes doesn't mean that beliefs shouldn't be held.

For instance, you and I both believe that reality changes, no?

That is exactly right. I understand it this way. We are presented with a constant variety of things to do. Some of them can be related to routinely like when you drive and think about what you were doing the week before while on vacation. Other things cannot be related to routinely. Like that municipal shooting in Fla. Now security personell should have related to that routinely. But you and I would be taken by surprise. We would have no routine to repeat. What is needed is immediate direct action that is appropriate.

What belief is to be held that aids you in reacting in a situation for which you have no routine such as jumping from log to log on logs floating down a river. The belief you need is that you are master of the present situation which is not a cockiness but which allows you to act with the complete grace and freedom of say Ray Robinson when he was beating the hell out of Jake lamotta. Both men taken to the end of human endurance haveng entered a zone in which they had transcended their humanity and Robinson's hands landing with a fluid quickness, speed and rapidity that years later a young Momhamad Ali sat with his mouth open and speechless as he watched Robinsons performance.

We need to operate on the basis of the rule that govern the ongoing flux we encounter and there are no rules because it is all uncharted. A traditional belief would be useless because it must of necessity only apply to something that happened in the past. It is the goal of meditation to aid the practioner to reach states where he is actively engaged in the ongoing experience rather than rehashing the past by following a routine.