Some people are presenting what is very common among beginners:
the inability to distinguish between a discussion, and a request for personal instruction.
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Is Buddhism a religion?
- Thread starter Pineal
- Start date
Some people are presenting what is very common among beginners:
the inability to distinguish between a discussion, and a request for personal instruction.
I cannot speak for all Buddhists everywhere, only for myself.
-Do Buddhists refuse jury duty?
No, as a citizen of the USA I get benefits. Participating in the jury system is part of the payment I must give in return. If I want my Buddhist perspective to count in decisions when I am present than I must put it out there. It is not reasonable in my opinion to shirk a responsibility or foist it off onto others.
-Do they never have to hire a babysitter for their kids?
I did not. A child is with his/her parents for a very short time before they go off into the wide world. It is logical to maximize your time with them when they are small so as to do the job of parenting most effectively. When we went "out" we took our son with us.
-Choose a partner?
I did.
-Walk by a homeless person asking for money with booze on his breath?
This does not happen to me so I cannot answer that. I urge everyone to live a healthy, sober lifestyle. I advise those who wish to get drunk or stoned to do so in the relative safety of their own home so as to minimize hazard to themselves and others. I give to charity.
-Confide in anyone?
Yes, my wife and my best friend.
-Hire or fire an employee?
I have hired and laid off employees, never had to fire anyone, but then I have never hired someone who did me harm.
-Was judgment of another Buddhist the reason you became one? Their person or writings or values or lifestyle?
No. I became a Buddhist after reading much on the subject, meeting and speaking with Buddhists. It seemed rational and promised a degree of self - improvement that other disciplines did not. It has delivered on that promise very well for me. My practice has grown with me through the decades and still benefits me daily.
The Middle Path is that of moderation. It avoids extremes. This is a major lesson to be obtained from Buddhist practice. It cautions us against the "all or nothing", "my way or the high way", "always or never" type of decisions. This is the lesson of the Prince turned Pauper sitting under the fig tree contemplating his growling stomach.
I do a lot of borrowing from buddhism...and I give homeless people food and water. Either a bit of what I happen to be carrying if I'm coming from the store, or I go buy them food.
Especially in the summer around here, I worry for their hydration...I've thought about stashing army MRE's and gatorade in my car, along with sunblock, bug repellent, and deodorant, so I'd just have something good to hand out...but it's one of those-get-around-to-it things...
Feeding people makes me feel good. Not caring for them in some way tends to leave me with a guilty feeling, but feeding the addiction they often have doesn't make me feel very good.
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I think that it's true that Buddhists are often less judgemental than Christians and Muslims. If pushed to extremes, that kind of degenerates into 'anything goes', which is attractive to a certain kind of alienated Westerner and perhaps is overemphasized by some Buddhists here in the States.
Buddhism might not be as well-defined as highly scriptural Christianity or Islam. For some Buddhists (the Theravada) the canon of inspired writings was finally closed some 400 years after the Buddha's decease and the canon's contents rather piously (if unhistorically) attributed to the historical Buddha himself. But other Buddhists (the Mahayana) never closed their canon and continued to produce what purportedly were inspired sutras for many more centuries. (Of course, inspiration doesn't mean the same thing in Buddhism as it does in Christianity or Islam.)
The result of this is that while there are fundamental Buddhist themes that all Buddhists honor to a greater or lesser degree, there's also tremendous variation and improvisation around those themes. Different Buddhists might interpret things in very different ways.
A way to imagine it is like a tree, with time the vertical dimension. There are lots of branches up on top, but they all can claim to be continuous with the original trunk down below. They are just different ways of expressing and interpreting it. (Christianity is really not much different when seen as a historial phenomenon.)
In other words, the various ways of being Buddhist all have histories. They are traditions. And since Buddhism has never had a church or a doctrinal authority on top defining their official catechisms for them, Buddhists place great emphasis on lineage and tradition in judging whether individual teachings are authentically Buddhist or not.
The Buddhist monastic sangha, the order of monks, is remarkable in that regard. The Buddha ordained the first monks, they formed quorums and ordained more monks, and on and on down to today in a continuous unbroken chain. When you see a Buddhist monk, you see a representative of a continuity that extends back, person to person to person, all the way to the historical Buddha himself. It's not unlike Christianity's apostolic succession of bishops, I guess.
What we see in Buddhism is typically a big-tent attitude towards Buddhism as a whole, towards what is and isn't Buddhist, at least in some abstract sense. But most Buddhists nevertheless do have ideas about what the best form of Buddhism is, at least for them personally. Some Buddhists might perceive a lot of what other Buddhists believe in as historical accretion that's unrelated to the Buddha's actual teachings, as pointless speculation or whatnot. Most Buddhists probably see a few ostensibly Buddhist practices (tantric sexual practices for example) as positively harmful. Some Buddhists dismiss other Buddhists' beliefs and practices as lower forms of Buddhism fit only for less spiritually evolved people. (Tibetans have sometimes looked at Theravada that way.)
Buddhism doesn't have morality in quite the same way that Christians or Muslims imagine it. There isn't any supernatural law code. I guess that in a way there is, in the shape of karma, but Buddhists have never seen their task as preaching karma. Karma is a law of nature and takes care of itself.
In Buddhism, morality is psychologized. What's of primary concern to Buddhists are one's motivations. Buddhists are less concerned with what's 'right' or 'wrong' than with what's 'skillful' or 'unskillful'. That depends on whether motivational states (and the acts they motivate) tend towards suffering, or towards the elimination of suffering.
Buddhists (ideally) refrain from killing, stealing and lying, but not because those things are outlawed in some number of divine commandments, but rather because they cause suffering and reinforce future disfunctional behaviors.
So it's not that Buddhists don't judge. They do. They just judge a little differently. They think of wrong-doers perhaps a little less as being 'bad' or 'evil' than as 'damaged' or 'disfunctional'. There's tremendous emphasis in Buddhism on gradually eliminating what are called 'klesas' or 'defilements', which are disfunctional psychological states conducive to suffering and dukkha in one's self and in others.
You could perhaps say that's what Buddhism is all about.
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One needn't (currently) identify oneself as a Buddhist to discuss Buddhism.
I do a lot of borrowing from buddhism...and I give homeless people food and water. Either a bit of what I happen to be carrying if I'm coming from the store, or I go buy them food.
Especially in the summer around here, I worry for their hydration...I've thought about stashing army MRE's and gatorade in my car, along with sunblock, bug repellent, and deodorant, so I'd just have something good to hand out...but it's one of those-get-around-to-it things...
Feeding people makes me feel good. Not caring for them in some way tends to leave me with a guilty feeling, but feeding the addiction they often have doesn't make me feel very good.
Yes, but the homeless guy wants money. Does a judgement call as to what he would do with cash come into your decision to offer food and water?
(I've seen homeless leave food sit untouched)
Thank you for taking the time for that response, but i am still not sure if your "judgement" of another came into play when you Chose your partner, or chose Buddhism. Since you have a child- If you had to hire a babysitter would you not judge that person before handing over your child?
I have to judge every day. Does your "radar" never go up telling you to not trust this person, even that you may be in danger?
Again, there are too many situations we all experience daily to list. I guess maybe each has their own definition of "judging others"? BB
I also thank you, Yazata, for post 124. It appears clear, informative and insightful to these old eyes. :itold:
I know myself fairly well, and I knew before I chose my wife what kind of personal attributes would work well with my personality. She fit those criteria, agreed with my analysis and we found each other attractive besides that.
I avoided the babysitter situation by doing that myself as my wife and I had planned, thus avoiding the need to consider it further. If I had been in that situation, I would indeed have found out as much as I could about a hypothetical babysitter before using them, and I would treat them in a manner similar to my business dealings. I would look them in the eye when speaking with them, shake their hand when meeting them, check out their references and surreptitiously check up on them if I hired them.
I live in Detroit. There are some very dangerous people around here. I have been a Taekwon Do practitioner for 39 years and hold advanced rank. My "radar" is exquisitely well - tuned to detect potential threats and I am very well trained to avoid such things completely if at all possible. I do that pretty well. Yes, some persons make my neck hair stand on end. I back away from them and leave immediately. I avoid being in places that I consider hazardous. When I must be in dangerous places, I dress way down to fit in well enough not to get attention. I do not look or act like a victim so I am not one.
While I possess sufficient skill to kill with one blow, I do not ever need to resort to violence. In the very worst case I have experienced thus far I found myself backing up deflecting punch after punch while asking the gentleman to stop before he hurt himself.
He did, finally, and went away. I filed a police report on him but did not press charges. He had an emotional problem of some kind or perhaps was high on a stimulant like cocaine. Either way he was so out of control that I really felt sorry for him as he came at me. He had no idea how very dangerous a situation he had placed himself in.
I know myself fairly well, and I knew before I chose my wife what kind of personal attributes would work well with my personality. She fit those criteria, agreed with my analysis and we found each other attractive besides that.
I avoided the babysitter situation by doing that myself as my wife and I had planned, thus avoiding the need to consider it further. If I had been in that situation, I would indeed have found out as much as I could about a hypothetical babysitter before using them, and I would treat them in a manner similar to my business dealings. I would look them in the eye when speaking with them, shake their hand when meeting them, check out their references and surreptitiously check up on them if I hired them.
I live in Detroit.
There are some very dangerous people around here. I have been a Taekwon Do practitioner for 39 years and hold advanced rank. My "radar" is exquisitely well - tuned to detect potential threats and I am very well trained to avoid such things completely if at all possible. I do that pretty well. Yes, some persons make my neck hair stand on end. I back away from them and leave immediately. I avoid being in places that I consider hazardous. When I must be in dangerous places, I dress way down to fit in well enough not to get attention. I do not look or act like a victim so I am not one.While I possess sufficient skill to kill with one blow, I do not ever need to resort to violence. In the very worst case I have experienced thus far I found myself backing up deflecting punch after punch while asking the gentleman to stop before he hurt himself.
He did, finally, and went away. I filed a police report on him but did not press charges. He had an emotional problem of some kind or perhaps was high on a stimulant like cocaine. Either way he was so out of control that I really felt sorry for him as he came at me. He had no idea how very dangerous a situation he had placed himself in.
So far...had food turned down once. Been giving food for years.
And yes, I don't really want to feed a person's addictions, if they have them. I used to not give them anything at all, but that bothered me.
I remember one buddhist author talking about "helping skillfully," and I do not want to not help at all...but I don't want to feed addictions that may be a part of what's keeping them homeless (far from always though, I know).
So it's a bit patronizing, I'll give it that...but homelessness itself is hardly a problem I am equipped to solve; it's systemic.
And...I guess it's also nice to have people give a crap about you...:shrug:
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To me it comes back to...
does it make sense for someone to leave a religion and decide to be Buddhist because Buddhism does what they would have wanted the previous religion to do? I think the answer in many cases of conversion is yes.
I also think it works the other way. That moving from Buddhism to another religion is a process of seeking what one was seeking in the former and feeling one has found it in the latter.
That Buddhism fits functionally in a category with other religions.
does it make sense for someone to leave a religion and decide to be Buddhist because Buddhism does what they would have wanted the previous religion to do? I think the answer in many cases of conversion is yes.
I also think it works the other way. That moving from Buddhism to another religion is a process of seeking what one was seeking in the former and feeling one has found it in the latter.
That Buddhism fits functionally in a category with other religions.
Good lord, are people still beanplating this question?
Of course Buddhism is a religion. If that isn't immediately obvious to anyone, that person needs to double-check their definition of "religion" and knowledge of Buddhism.
Of course Buddhism is a religion. If that isn't immediately obvious to anyone, that person needs to double-check their definition of "religion" and knowledge of Buddhism.
I like that verb, 'beanplating', though I can only guess via context, vaguely, at its meaning. I agree with your conclusion, but of course people are still beanplating, we are beanplaters. And language, given the vagaries of semantics and it's use by humans and their vagaries and distinct intentions and experiences, sets up a tremendous proclivity towards beanplating.
To deny this is only to invite more beanplating.
(now that was fun.)
I would tend to agree with this statement, as Buddhism indeed fulfills the purpose of a religion for many/most practitioners, at least in my experience.
There are likely more practical reasons for conversion as well. I have a friend who converted to Christianity from Buddhism because he was an orphan and raised in a Buddhist orphanage in the Philippines. The monks beat him and the other orphans frequently, he felt they were cruel and callous, so he changed religions when he was old enough to live on his own.
I am sure that the converse often occurs as well, as we students were beaten regularly by the nuns in a Christian school I attended when I was a child.
Tell me according to what I read Buddhism in order to penetrate into China they had to introduce a saint or whatever is called " Mother from heaven "
so how Buddhist adapted them selves to this idea ?
Apparently monks correct their children like every religion monks with belts,
Beanplating...yeah, that one goes on my list of verbs too...
I did consider myself a Buddhist at one point...a Pagan with lots of Buddhism tacked on now...whatever I find and can use, really.
I find Buddhist philosophy and meditation really useful.
As I recall, the Chinese emperor asked the Buddhists in India to send him a teacher. It took many years (like hundreds) for them to do so, they sent Bodhidharma to Shaolin first. He then melded his Indian Buddhism and traditional yoga with a group of practices (the animal forms) and teachings (Confucianism and the Tao) that were being taught in the temple there already.
Thank you all for your replies to my posts on "judging others". I guess we all have to judge (in one way or another) people and situations to live in this world.
I have been reading that book by the Thai Buddhist monk and he claims Buddhism is multifaceted: He describes Buddhism as: Religion. Psychology. Culture. Art (art of living). Philosophy. Truth.
"Of all these various aspects the one a real Buddhist ought to take most interest in is Buddhism as religion. We ought to look at Buddhism as a direct practical method for gaining knowledge of the true nature of things, knowledge which makes it possible to give up every form of grasping and clinging, of stupidity and infatuation, and become completely independent of things.To do this is to penetrate to the essence of Buddhism."
Here is part of his definition of Buddhism as Religion:
"Buddhism as religion is Buddhism as a system of practice based on morality, concentration and insight, and culminating in liberating insight; a system that when practiced to completion enables one to break free from suffering."
I have been reading that book by the Thai Buddhist monk and he claims Buddhism is multifaceted: He describes Buddhism as: Religion. Psychology. Culture. Art (art of living). Philosophy. Truth.
"Of all these various aspects the one a real Buddhist ought to take most interest in is Buddhism as religion. We ought to look at Buddhism as a direct practical method for gaining knowledge of the true nature of things, knowledge which makes it possible to give up every form of grasping and clinging, of stupidity and infatuation, and become completely independent of things.To do this is to penetrate to the essence of Buddhism."
Here is part of his definition of Buddhism as Religion:
"Buddhism as religion is Buddhism as a system of practice based on morality, concentration and insight, and culminating in liberating insight; a system that when practiced to completion enables one to break free from suffering."