Buddhism

Zen Keys is great also since it compares Zen and Dzogchen.

Quick story. I was traveling through Europe back to the US a week after Richard Reed, the shoe bomber. I was coming back from a very rough journey, in which I gave away all of my clothes and shoes except for what I had on. So here I am, unshaved, unwashed, wearing hiking boots, and my last stop was India. I stopped in to buy the latest Thich Nhat Hanh book, I think called "Anger," which just has that title on it, and a picture of a lit match.

Needless to say, when I got to customs the guy looked at me like I was about to bomb a plane. Luckily, no cavity searches were involved.

Hmm. That story isn't very good in print... o well!

Just for kicks, how do you think he compares to Noah Levine, the other Buddha punk? I'd say "Dharma Punx" has a more attractive cover than "Hardcore Zen." Noah likes to talk about anger in a sort of helpful way, too, and has made a nice line of dharma punk-wear for kids. He flips the bird less and all-around seems more of a positive guy (for a guy who makes a living out of "rage turned inward"). So, I'd say Noah is "more Buddhist."

Dharma Punx didn't really do anything for me as far as encouraging me to practice, so Warner's my guy.

i actually sorta like that meditate and destroy t-shirt

'defy the lie' and 'against the stream' smack too much of the 'be extreme for jesus!' form of christianity i once adhered to.

yeah also what do those slogans have to do w/anything

ha otm.

i like the sanskrit font

i do kinda like the 'meditate and destroy' one, but i'm not giving noah levine $20 for it.

i generally don't pay for t-shirts as a rule

best thing is to narrow the field to those whore linage-approved who've at least had proper training.
-- jhøshea,

Tell us more about this dharma whore lineage, jhøshea.

Hey guys, this isn't quite the same as heading to your local Center and sitting with a teacher, but this guy Jundo Cohen has committed to "sit zazen online for the next 9 years." He gives a short lecture (at the moment he's slowly working through Dogen's Fukanzazengi), then sits for about 20 minutes. It's become a regular part of my lunch hour, thought I'd pass it along for those here that don't have access to a local Center.

http://treeleafzen.blogspot.com/

That little kid is so cute! "When you play hopscotch, you jump." Then, he grabs his mom's face while she's meditating. The only reason I watched that far is because I knew he was going to fuck with them once they started meditating. "Poppy, what are you doing?"

http://photos1.blogger.com/photoInclude/blogger/7867/2425/1600/mani-lake.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/photoInclude/blogger/7867/2425/1600/mani-lake.jpg

What is that?

Big frozen lake with the mantra om mani padme hung that Google-map/satellite caught.

Wow. So the mantra...miraculously appeared on the ice? Or presumably it was carved by monks or something?

carved, I'm sure! which is nice, I think.

I keep wanting to revive this thread cause I like dharma chatter, but I'm not sure what to talk about.

{blinks very calmly}

I've had about 30 cdr's of Alan Watts lectures in storage for years and I just got them back, SWEET. For the past several nights I've been listening to them as I go to sleep. Can't think of much to discuss now, though. If this lecture series is difficult to find (I've tried searching them online and p2p and didn't see anything) I'll ysi em if ya want.

{sneezes violently, wipes his nose on his sleeve, blinks calmly again}

Watts relates this helpful Zen tale:

A monk said to Master Bodhidharma, "Master, I can't find peace of mind. Please help me."

Bodhidharma said, "Place your mind before me and I'll pacify it."

The monk said, "When I look for my mind, I cannot find it."

Bodhidharma said, "There, I've pacified it for you."

Well, Amazon finally got round to sending me Brad Warner's new book that I ordered back in May*, and I read through it in a couple of hours:

The plus points:

- it's an engaging read
- I like his emphasis on the 'here and now' rather than some future enlightenment

The minus points:

- once you understand his take on zen, there's quite a bit of repetition between chapters
- sometimes his jokes and anecdotes come over as a bit of sales patter to get across a point, but he does it well so on the whole it doesn't irritate too much.

Two personal prejudices:

- I didn't like the chapter on athiesm/God and why he's not an atheist. I don't really see what's gained by calling the universe 'God'. What does that add?

- I don't much like his emphasis on regular zazen. I prefer buddhism as a philosphy to a way of effort or hard labour.

*still waiting on the Sandy Denny biog that I ordered at the same time. Thye're going down hill.

What does that add?

Not a lot. It confuses the Christians, who will then want to muddle up Buddhism with pantheism, as they so often do. It does distance you from the militantly anti-religious atheists, which is not a bad thing. It makes you vaguely more acceptable to people who practise god-centered worship. But just vaguely so. They still mostly want to pity you as a wrong-headed apostate, or vilify you as a heretic. Better they ignore you entirely than that.

As I see it, God and any specific notions about God, are mostly just extraneous and misleading, and don't really belong to Buddha's teachings or with enlightenment in general. There is no reason even to address the issue.

^

Bodhisattva Bush

this thread is interesting. i have a weird relationship to buddhism -- zen in particular -- because my parents were/are zen practitioners and i absorbed a fair amount of i guess what you'd call zen ethos growing up, but only in a generalized way. and since there was no real youth-indoctrination program (as practiced, say, by most christian churches) i can't even fake my way through a learned discussion. but i still feel a connection to it, i kind of intuit what it's about, it certainly informs the way i conceive of existence, without ever really seeming like something i wanted to pursue at a deeper level.

one thing i definitely feel about my quasi-buddhist worldview is that i'm sort of inherently comfortable with a lot of things that my christian-raised friends still sort of struggle with (the absence of "god" for one big obvious thing). my head is cluttered with buddhist aphorisms picked up here and there, but one that has stuck with me for whatever reason (and i'm sure i'm misquoting a mistranslation or whatever) is, "everything is exactly what it seems, and behind it is nothing." the whole buddhist idea of "nothing," the void or what have you, i really find interesting and valuable. when i took a college class in existentialism i partly felt like a lot of those guys were really struggling and wrestling with that idea, the "nothingness," where in buddhism it seemed to be accepted, not as a condition of horror or alienation, exactly, but as just the way things are. without despair or hope, because neither of those are really useful responses, just, this is as it is.

i don't know. like i said, my ideas about all of it are more felt than understood. and i certainly don't identify myself as buddhist. but i feel simpatico with it, i think it contains things of real import and significance.

I don't much like his emphasis on regular zazen. I prefer buddhism as a philosphy to a way of effort or hard labour

But your issue here would be with Zen rather than Warner. You can't make music by talking about it.

I just got back from worldwide Padmasambavah transmission from Chogyam Namkhai Norbu rinpoche.

i partly felt like a lot of those guys were really struggling and wrestling with that idea, the "nothingness," where in buddhism it seemed to be accepted, not as a condition of horror or alienation, exactly, but as just the way things are.

This is actually a key reason I came back to Buddhism (and revived this thread back in May). A formerly pretty devoted existentialist, I suddenly found myself wondering why I needed to confront "nothingness" with despair and gnashing of teeth. Sisyphus and the "tragically noble" existentialist characters in literature started to seem like a bunch of silly melodrama to me. Sure, there's nothing behind it all, but why does that have to be a source of anguish?

That's when I started thinking "hey, this is starting to sound familiar..."

BBC doc on the life of Buddhaavailable online.

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/8953/dscn1585xt8.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/5765/dscn1587hn9.jpg

It's good beer.

I'm not one for alienation myself. I'm more all, "Life is good and enjoy it well." (Easy to say when one is living comfortably, though.)

I'm finally getting around to watching the abovementioned BBC doc on the Buddha's life. There's all this talk about these archaeologists that "may now have evidence" of Buddha as a historical figure, etc.

I can't help but think that the discussion about the historical personage of Siddartha is sort of besides the point. We have this collection of teachings called the Dharma. What does it really matter whether these teachings came from a particular personage whose life corresponds to the Siddartha story and the subsequent sutras, or if they were developed over time by a number of insightful people?

I suppose this is another possible meaning of "Kill the Buddha!"

I just got back from worldwide Padmasambavah transmission from Chogyam Namkhai Norbu rinpoche.

-- dean ge, Monday, July 23, 2007 10:13 PM (1 week ago)

should have stayed there, nude spock

r.i.p.

Though surely, if he's been here "since the first day of ILX" like he says, he'll be back.

That's some foreboding shit.

he has many incarnations

ha

hey guys should i make this bag at cafe press y/n

http://img02.picoodle.com/img/img02/9/8/12/f_buddhabagm_4cafe6d.png

I'm more all, "Life is good and enjoy it well."

Ned, I see, is an acolylte of Epicurus. This makes perfect sense and suits my idea of his personality down to the last jot and tittle.

So I just downloaded Dogen's 1200 page Shobogenzo in .pdf form in under 5 minutes.

God I love the internet.

If anybody else is into Zen or Dogen or you just want a fascinating, illuminating and beautiful read, here's the link.

I got into Dogen a few years ago and read some stuff. There's no-one like him. Great use of mind-bafflingly obtuse metaphors('The wolf howl in the dead tree stump' etc). Not renowned for his sense of humour, but hey, he was a serious guy.

My teacher's teacher broke his translation up into 4 volumes, so I don't blame anybody for not wanting to go after the whole thing in one go. I def haven't read anywhere near the whole thing, though I know a couple of guys who are trying for it.

Might I recommend, though, Bendowa and the Genjo Koan.

does a big hoos believe in the crazy magical buddhism with karma and nirvana and shit or the other boring kind

karma in a boring way & pretty much "the other boring kind" down the line

i mean i am the universe and you are me and all that shit, but jim jones still sucks.