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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Fascinating, thank you for the writeup!
So how do you prepare yourself mentally to contemplate death in front of a corpse?
I don't honestly know, it's not something I tried and it's not something anyone I know actually did. It is something that is mentioned in texts though. It's supposed to be a very advanced practice if you do it at all, so not something for newcomers. Primarily for the reason I mentioned of how it can really mess you up if you just go and do it on a whim.
Yeah thats fair enough, did you learn/experience anything that changed the way you see reality on a fundamental level (other than what you mentioned about community)?
Well, I edited my comment to say the experience also turned me vegan. Since the primary goal is the reduction and elimination of suffering, it only stands to reason this includes animal suffering. I don't consider myself a Secular Buddhist in that I don't try to mold the religious teachings I've received into a secular framework (and I do not like Stephen Bachelor), but I just go along with some things while not personally believing they are true. Rebirth being the biggest thing, where a lot of Buddhist philosophy falls apart if you remove cosmological components like that, since many things follow from that assumption. But I'm not personally sold.
Buddhists tells a lot of stories about how significantly advanced practitioners can influence their own rebirths by building the mental fortitude (through years/lifetimes of meditation practice) to withstand and navigate the hellish and chaotic experience of their mindstream being ripped from their body at death and scattered/pulled in many different directions to their new life. It's silly to tell, but essentially, someone told me that my cat could be an enlightened being who is here to teach me patience and compassion for other beings. Do I literally believe that? No. But the idea did make me try to temper some of my impatience with their more destructive behaviors and open my mind to being more compassionate toward other animals in general.
Wikipedia no doubt has a simplified explanation, but in Madhyamaka philosophy, there's the idea of the "two truths" which is something we delved very heavily into. I don't know that it has really changed how I interact with the world as much as the former thing though.
I think I get what you mean. I was trying to avoid orientalizing because there are white Buddhist teachers across the globe who really know their stuff. It's not a matter of "Asian teacher good" or "Asian religion good". There are plenty of Vietnamese monks who were born into the religion who smoke and ride motorcycles and buy the latest iPhones. It happens everywhere. But institutionally, because there has been more community and monetary support for Buddhist temples, you get more of the philosophy and less of the 'meditation-as-productivity-tool' stuff in non-Western countries.
Westerners just primarily get exposed through very watered down versions of the philosophy from people like Alan Watts and other spiritual hippie types who traveled to India decades ago. And before that, people like the British colonists who threw out any idea they couldn't recontextualize into a Christian framework. Or modern tech grifters selling their meditation apps.
There's lots of cool teachings and stories you can interpret literally or metaphorically depending on the situation. Like Manjushri cutting open the Himalayan valleys with a giant flaming sword, the consumption of human ashes as an intentional taboo to shock the mind out of a dualistic concept of reality, Chinese monks burning the books of other monks and essentially telling them to
. There's thousands of years of cosmology that blends with different cultures. And equally as much philosophical work as all of the European philosophers combined.
But with that also comes stuff like the Gelug school burning down other Tibetan monasteries, abuses of power in the sangha, etc. Some more humerous stuff like Buddhists debating Daoists, winning, then writing a follow up called "Laughing at the Dao". Just regular infighting, violence, and things that plague every other religion.
So its good not to have a romanticized view of Buddhism or any other religion. I personally vibe it much more than anything that relies on a creator god, but as this thread discusses, governance based on religious principles doesn't usually go so well.
Nah, I just meant that there are people who do not conform to the ideal stereotype of a monk, sometimes because they were born into the religion. Which sometimes is fine, like tons of monks have full body tattoos and stuff unrelated to their practice, but sometimes there are people who do things contradictory to the teachings. A monk smoking, riding a motorcycle (not like a motorbike for transport), and with a flashy phone probably isn't following the teachings to the letter, if at all. There are militant monks warring against other religions right now. That blows some people's minds because all they get is sanitized images of lotus flowers. Just wanted to point out that Buddhists are people too so romanticizing them, Asian or not, will always lead to disappointment and impossible standards. Just like how Christian's aren't always Christ-like. Tons of Buddhists only engage with things on a surface level, even if they're born into a culture more inclined toward it.
EDIT: Many people's first introduction is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I haven't personally read.