I am afraid Western Buddhism is just a watered down version

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

size=150 Writes:

“Should I study Buddhism in the East, as I am afraid the Western Buddhism is just a watered version of real Buddhism?”

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Real Buddhism???

Buddhism has and will always evolve.

It evolves from the egos of men.

99.9% of the Buddhists are just ‘playing at Buddhism’ and are so far off the road to classical Buddhism that their practice holds little or no resemblance to what the Buddha taught.

After all, what do monks have to do other than beg, eat, sleep, excrete, think, not think (meditate) and write.

It is through this constant need to ‘think and write’ that the Pali canon grew to 20,000+ pages and nearly 30,000 pages in China.

The canon contains nothing the Buddha wrote down.

It contains a small amount of recitation from his butler Amanda, but nothing original from the Buddha.

The rest is all from the egos of monks.

So it is natural that Buddhism has evolved into a watered down version of itself that the Buddha himself would hardly recognize.

When this classical Buddhism became too hard - Mahayana Buddhism was invented.

When Mahayana Buddhism became too hard - Pure Land Buddhism was invented

When Pure Land Buddhism became too hard - Won Buddhism was invented. (just to name a few)

But for the average folks…meaning 99.9% of the Buddhists. Pain is decreased in proportion to your efforts at perfecting the eightfold path.

I believe the traditional views of Buddhist beliefs of escaping samsara are dead as far as practical application for the most part of society. To escape rebirth is impractical for the vast, vast majority of Buddhists.

I’ll give you an example you can all relate to.

If you are reading this you have no chance of escaping rebirth…you are too full of passion to escape anything.

What you ‘should’ be doing as a self proclaimed ‘serious Buddhist practitioner’ is; instead of reading and writing on the computer you would be meditating on the three liberation’s.

By meditating on emptiness, formlessness and passionlessness, this will allow you, with a few lifetimes of diligent practice, to recognize the three liberation’s of the ego and the dharma as being empty, the dharma as formless and this eventually the recognition of living is an unworthy desire as our existence is characterized by suffering.

What is the path of classical Buddhism as the Buddha taught?

From our best efforts and deciphering the jumbled mess that was handed down to us it was:

To become a renunciate and practice the 4 noble truths

4truths.com/

and through the perfection of the eightfold path

thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html

to free oneself from the 10 fetters that bind a person to cyclic existence

buddhism.about.com/od/keyconcepts/a/Fetters.htm

and thus become an arhat and enlightened

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arhat

and through a few lifetimes of such practice to extinguish reincarnation, leave the cycle of samsara

accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth … msara.html

and reach nirvana.

acay.com.au/~silkroad/buddha/p_nirvana.htm

…that is how the pain of life ceases. (finally, as the story goes)

Personally, I draw from many spiritual traditions myself, including monotheism, Buddhism, Taoism as well as atheism. (secular humanism)

See:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … ?topic=4.0

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=504.0

My main focus of my Buddhist practice is concentrated on the 3 pillars of Buddhism that are common to all schools of Buddhist practice: I’ve settled on the essence of Buddhism and that is what I work on and find much peace with this type of simplified practice.

3 Pillars of Buddhism

1- Practicing mindfulness and meditation to develop peace and self awareness of our own true nature.

2- Accepting the liberating wisdom of impermanence and practicing non-clinging and a lessening of craving and desires.

3- The development of compassion for others.

Buddhists are not required to believe or not believe in god, so anyone can make use of this philosophy irrespective of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. Buddha was not a god and just a man, so not need to worship him unless you are a ‘Pure Land Buddhist.’

In addition to the 3 pillars, we can use the eightfold path to guide us.

The Eightfold Path

  1. Right View
  2. Right Intention
  3. Right Speech
  4. Right Action
  5. Right Livelihood
  6. Right Effort
  7. Right Mindfulness
  8. Right Concentration

How can you differentiate right from wrong?

By peace.

You learn what destroys your peace and the peace of others as well as what promotes you inner peace and the inner peace of others.

Do you need a teacher for that?

Or the Pope to tell you?

Or just listen to peace as the best teacher?

The 5 precepts are the ‘commandments’ more or less for Buddhists. Although you are not commanded to do a thing. If you wish to live at peace, then proceed the best you can - but it is your choice.

No one to boss you other than you…you alone are in control of your inner peace.

The Five Precepts

  1. Refrain from Killing:
  2. Refrain from Stealing:
  3. Refrain from Sexual Misconduct:
  4. Refrain from False Speech:
  5. Refrain from the Use of Intoxicants:

Buddhism provides this tool, which is just one out of the many tools I use for peace development. For once we have found a contentment within and with all and are at peace - we are progressing on the road to enlightenment.

You can also tell when you have “arrived” by your practice telling you so. Does your practice revolve around actually practicing what you have learned to generate peace within or are you on a never ending journey of always looking and never finding?

Once I am at peace, I can share with others about finding peace for themselves, which is the secondary reason I practice.

I have no interest in practicing Buddhism for extinguishing reincarnation.

These “fear based” reasons for being a Buddhist are not authentic or natural - the persons actions are based on fear or negative consequences otherwise they would not do them.

My actions are based on inner peace and if I stray - there goes my peace - it is my choice.

I enjoy life and realize that due to natural law, suffering comes about as part of the process.

The Taoists have a saying for this, “fleas come with the dog.”

So, I accept there are growth pains as a fair trade off for the privilege of living and I would enjoy any reincarnation if given the chance.

Buddhism helps makes this trade off of life and pain more in my favor by lending me support to live a life at peace. I do not practice Buddhism to earn merit for the next life - I practice Buddhism for my own peace generation in THIS LIFE.

I’d like to point out that my views are not the orthodox or traditional views on these subjects as I am an Agnostic Freethinker.

Also see:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … ?topic=9.0

mystery.vox.com/library/post/esa … reaks.html[/size][/size]

2

Actually, in my experience Western Buddhism has more involvement than a lot of Eastern Buddhisms. Throughout much of Asia, as a friend once put it to me, you are Buddhist when you are born, get married, and die.

Whereas most American Buddhists, in order to compete with the native Christianity, have adopted things like Sunday services and a variety of practices normally reserved for those who have taken vows. While I am not aware of a sect that practices a ‘universal monkhood of all members’, most American Buddhists sects work a little bit along those lines. I have often observed that Americans don’t do things by halves, and in religion they are no different.

3

Meditation isn’t the state of not thinking. Quite the opposite; it’s the state of disciplined thinking.

4

Then it’s not Buddhist meditation.

5

Depends.

The idea is detachment. I’ve had respected dharma teachers tell me that my thoughts can wander as long as I don’t dwell on them during meditation.

The idea isn’t necessarily not to think, but rather not to dwell on any particular thoughts.

Now, ideally, you eventually transcend that type of meditation, but to demand that people jump to it immediately is to demand that most people are Awake at the onset.

6

That’s not the idea. Attention is not ‘thinking’.

You don’t teach someone how to quiet his mind by giving him instructions that are contrary to reducing the noise.

7

Depends on who you talk to, I guess.

8

Meditation means to simply become the watcher. It isn’t thinking or not-thinking. Stilling the mind is to let go of the words - including these.

9

I was talking process, not concept. In fact, the vexed mind must be taught about ‘not thinking’ before it can realize that it has something to let go of. Including these words. :slight_smile:

10

Buddhists believe that the Buddha’s whole life was a meditation, after he’d reached enlightenment. It would be absurd to consider that to mean he didn’t think. I would suggest, rather, that meditation is a state of awareness and mental discipline.

11

No one said he didn’t think.

12

Ingenium,

OK. One must start with methodology, but one must also beware the trap of grasping the method instead of the practice. The term meditation is much abused in popular culture with far too many books of “instruction” that substitutes process for practice. Sitting on a pillow in lotus position reciting a mantra may lead to meditation, but it may become the opposite. The biggest obstacle to meditation is it’s simplicity.

13

The biggest obstacle to meditation is having an idea of what it is. So I refer to process in terms of ‘doing’ – or ‘practice’ if you wish – that’s all.

14

Ingenium,

I think we’re on the same page… :slight_smile:

15

If you consider meditation to be a state of non-thought, and also believe the Buddha’s whole life after enlightenment to be a meditation, then you suggest that the Buddha stopped thinking when he became enlightened. Which, of course, is rediculous. I however don’t know if you hold the latter belief. If you are Buddhist, you probably do.

16

My question is, why are you trying to sell this to us?

Oppressive as they may be to their fellow man (for example in Thailand’s restive south), Buddhists never struck me much as proselytizers.

Or is this your Western version of Buddhism?

17

Western Buddhism is fairly proselytizing. That is because it is trying to get a foothold in the Western world. It doesn’t really need to proselytize in the East because, errr, it already did that job fairly convincingly.

And if you look, there is a long history of Buddhist proselytizing. They just normally dealt with the royal court because the monks were interested in getting their lifestyle financed by royal coffers. The conversion of the populace happened more gradually. Or, in some cases (like the Mongol one) incredibly quickly with violent enforcement.

18

I don’t maintain belief about what the Buddha’s life was. I’ve already stated that characterizing what ‘the state of meditation’ is or is not is a fruitless avenue of inquiry, as is considering whether or not the Buddha thought about things. The practice of meditation is to quiet the mind, which means that you learn to slow down its movement; e.g., thought. This practice opens one to direct experience, which can’t be adequately described through language. So I don’t try.

19

I can’t speak for the Asian traditions, including those that have transplanted to the west and are primarily practiced here by people of Asian descent. But I know of only one Buddhist sect in the U.S. that would be considered ‘western’ and has been known to proseltyze, and it’s considered by ‘mainstream’ Buddhism (if there can yet be such a thing in the west) as somewhat marginal. There may be others, but I’ve neither heard nor read of them.

20

It is a different tactic than Christians adopt, but I don’t have too much of a problem calling a spade a spade.

Check out the literature in the ‘spirituality’ section of any bookstore. Plenty of different varieties of ‘Buddhism for dummies’ that lead to conversion and practice. Couple that with the hangover from the hippie movement’s exotification of Buddhism, and famous real Buddhists (such as Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, D.T. Suzuki) and famous people who happen to be Buddhists, such as Hollywood stars, touring the West and popularizing the faith. I think that is fair to call it proselytizing.

They aren’t handing out pamphlets or singing on street corners, but the overall feeling is the same, IMHO.