XPost: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, alt.buddhism, alt.religion   
   buddhism.theravada   
   From: robert_smrdelj@gmx.de   
      
   Am 03.12.2011 21:30, schrieb Leo Rivers:   
   > ³The Buddha is a man²   
      
   Yes   
      
   >   
   >   
   >   
   > There is a great and paralyzing inhibition to talking about some things.   
   >   
   > My fellow Sangha members have evolved great powers of   
   > passive-aggressively letting me know their disinclination to talk to me   
   > about the things that cloy at my Reason.   
   >   
   > For instance.   
   >   
   > The Buddha is a man.   
   >   
   > 2400 years ago, (give or take a score of years), an 80-year-old man   
   > died of food poisoning. Within a score and a century the great unifier   
   > of his country, Ashoka, put up stone pillars ratifying the teachings of   
   > that man who in his echoes was called ³the Buddha².   
   >   
   >  From the oldest literature of this sect we read that Siddhartha Gautama   
   > obtained liberation halfway to his life. He accomplished this   
   > liberation by a meditation which revealed the non-self of the person.   
   > His sect went on to compose collections of writings called the Nikayas   
   > which purport to report his teachings and those teachings are usually   
   > placed in settings with a cast of characters and landscapes which were   
   > obviously products of their routines of recollection and recitation.   
   >   
   > While this is not history it doesn't mean that the Nikayas do not   
   > reflect actual events and statements. My point is that we must remember   
   > in the forefront that all of this, from then to now, has been the   
   > composition by men and women generations removed from the events that   
   > they were reporting.   
   >   
   >   
   >   
   > Buddhist Paths   
   >   
   >   
   > One of the reasons I have never had a problem with the Mahayana sutras   
   > as being ³compositions² is that at root   
   >   
   > Š they are identical in being the composition of men and women who were   
   > the inheritors of a tradition of mental cultivation who used the   
   > materials of legend and lore to express their own experiences of   
   > putting those practices into effect.   
   >   
   > Yes, the Mahayana did reflect an evolution in intellectual thinking and   
   > meditation practice beyond That Buddha Guy - but the work of one man is   
   > carried on by another. It is considered to be the further work of the   
   > same man if it is sufficiently directly downstream to reflect the   
   > original goal and insight of the founding genius and extend it in that   
   > same spirit. To think otherwise is to be naive.   
   >   
   > For either collections of literature to ³put on airs² towards each   
   > other is disingenuous. You cannot imagine a way of thinking and   
   > practice that is stagnant for hundreds of years as somehow being more   
   > worthy than one that is interacted with the life of generations and by   
   > that struggle maintained a grasp on the life force of the insight   
   > within it.   
   >   
   > In truth, BOTH the so-called ³old tradition² and the so-called ³new   
   > tradition² are 2000 years old and counting. Both have evolved each in   
   > their own distinctive manner covering 2000 years of hard won road by   
   > self investigation and practice.   
   >   
   > And in all cases we are talking about the works of men.   
   >   
   > There is nothing in the actual practices of the Buddhist Tantras that   
   > demand a externalist and substancialist belief in other worlds and   
   > prodigies of magical power. When one actually pursues extended Buddhist   
   > Tantric teaching on the paths of liberation one is introduced to a   
   > series of meditations which all prove to be ³the practices of an   
   > individual in meditation working with their own phenomena of mind².   
   >   
   > In other words, all Buddhist practices are meditation practices which   
   > take place on the meditation cushion in the ³here and now² relationship   
   > between an individual and their own awareness performing a liturgy of   
   > meditation.   
   >   
   > The central thread of Buddhism remains a meditator in meditation. All   
   > extraneous claims and prodigies are just extraneous claims and   
   > prodigies.   
   >   
   > And having myself been introduced to some of the highest practices of   
   > Buddhism I can vouch that their effectiveness is based on meditation   
   > and self transformation dependent only on concentration applied to   
   > taming the mind by calming it and deepening in insight.   
   >   
   >                      Deity yoga is in essence the meditation on a corpse.   
   >   
   > In short, when you perform a Buddhist practice, you are walking in the   
   > footsteps of a man or woman you respect and following their deeds to   
   > reach an insight that granted them a transformation of character you   
   > deem worthy. That is the honest way of dealing with a Buddhist guru.   
   >   
   >   
   > Buddhist Scriptures   
   >   
   >   
   > And as to Scriptures there is a great problem. Except for the short   
   > ³Heart Sutra² there are very few sutras that are not composite works of   
   > a core and then accumulated modules of further insight and commentary   
   > somehow presented as one singular revelation on a singular moment   
   > bracketed by a mythological tale and put in the mouth of a symbolic   
   > Buddha or bodhisattva.   
   >   
   > This means that it is hard to deal honestly with a Buddhist Sutra the   
   > way you deal honestly with a man.   
   >   
   > When you want to deal honestly with a man you compare his words today   
   > to words he said yesterday and then look at comparing both statements   
   > to his deeds. You look for internal consistency. You look that his   
   > deeds match his words. Then you can evaluate his way of thinking as a   
   > system of looking at life.   
   >   
   > Except for some of the shorter sutras like the ³heart Sutra² in their   
   > original form, you cannot compare a statement made in one part of the   
   > sutra with the statement in another part of the sutra to find internal   
   > logic. You cannot follow a series of statements in the Sutra to see if   
   > the outcome of assertions made in it well match the observations that   
   > lead to them.   
   >   
   > You have to look at a Buddhist Sutra the way you do a political party.   
   > You can like a general trend of thinking, but ultimately you have to   
   > put together your own version of the politics and that party and   
   > understand that it is your individual ³politics².   
   >   
   > It is not just that we cherry pick those verses in Scripture that   
   > flatter our own prejudices and agree with our own preconceptions, is   
   > that each of us must build our own Buddhism because it is a path we can   
   > only follow by ourselves and the wilderness were only wisdom is the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)