Plato's Playground
Excellent questions! I really enjoyed reading this. I've been reading/exploring buddhism with regards to mindful meditation practice and its theraputic effects on a psychological level as discussed by Dr Mark Epstein in his book "Thoughts Without A Thinker".
Which reminds me, I probably should have put a gloss on "mindfulness." That is a very important idea, it means to go through one's life in an aware and considerate way. 99% of the time, we aren't paying attention to what we are saying and doing.
nicely informative post. i do recall the four truths and the eightfold path now, altho i get it mixed up with the eight kinds of yoga. and what a radical buddha was for insisting that we actually try his method and make our own decision about it. i see that the etymology of the word religion includes roots meaning something like bind again or constrain, so buddha's ideas don't seem to qualify as religion.
about that 99% unmindfullness part--i'd say that the quality of your discourse here and at stayin' alive indicates at least 10% mindfullness. 
Only when I write DPR -- mindfulness is very difficult.
cervantes, as you have explained it to me, Buddhism makes perfect sense and sounds very true. Would you consider that it is possible to be a Christian Buddhist? I would not force Christianity on anyone, but I could say, "Try it; see if it works for you." Thomas Merton said he wanted "to become as good a Buddhist as I can," so you see that I am in good company.
Yes, I know about Thomas Merton. It's definitely possible to be a Christian Buddhist, I think, although the "not self" thing gets tricky when it collides with the soul and the afterlife. The people of Sakyamuni's time and place believed in reincarnation, which also results in some pretzel logic when combined with the idea that the self is illusory, but Buddhist thought has managed to thrive on that paradox. Sakyamuni himself, as I have suggested, welcomed people of all religious persuasions. It was not a problem for him, anyway, although of course he never met a Christian!
Hi, well I've been meaning to respond to your earlier post re Siddhartha, but I wanted to assess what I knew etc, and other things kept getting in the way. I have many friends who are buddhists ( and a sort of cousin who has spent time as a Buddhist monk...)but that doesn't add up to a worthwhile comment.
I guess my sense of Jesus is close & personal as well as historical, but the Buddha has been something I've learned about from a distance. I'll try to gather my thoughts and do better in the future.
You asked for any real Buddhists to set you straight. I thought I was a real Buddhist, but I am one of those people that chant NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO. I'm rather surprised to find out that my beliefs have nothing to do with the teachings of Siddharta Gautama and that I belong to a cult that is comparable to Heaven's Gate. (No offense taken.)
The following is just my opinion as I don't consider myself an entirely "mainstream" member. Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a very pragmatic organization. Like most successful religions, they are very good at marketing. I originally started chanting because silent meditation wasn't working for me. But yes, I was told to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for what I wanted. I tried it and it worked. At first what I wanted delighted me. Eventually, it made me miserable.
Some people never get past "chanting for whatever you want." I was eventually advised and chose just to chant for "the right thing" rather than what I wanted. This wasn't because I was enlightened; it was because I was tired of suffering. But I identify that as a turning point of my life (over five years ago) when I found an inner peace that to some degree has never left.
From my experience, chanting for what I wanted was essentially a marketing device to convince me of the power of Buddhism. It was, in the terms of Shakyamuni and SGI, an "expedient means" of putting me on the path to the truth. I can understand why you would think that an organization that encourages people to chant for what they want has nothing whatever to do with the teachings of Siddharta Gautama. From my experience, chanting for what you want is actually a means to an end, which is not the end I thought I wanted. That is paradoxical, and I can understand why people could get turned off by it.
What is the end we are trying to achieve? My short explanation is that the end is to be a Buddha and help others due the same. That is the teaching of the Lotus Sutra (as opposed to other sutras, which are merely "expedient means" to the truth according to the Lotus Sutra). My interpretation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is "I devote myself to being a Buddha and helping others do the same."
So what is a Buddha? I'll leave that for another day, except to say that I personally do not believe one needs to be a Buddhist in order to be a Buddha.
Best wishes to everyone.
Verzonni has ultimately come to the Mahayana ideal -- a Buddha who devotes himself/herself to helping others become a Buddha is called a Bodhisattva. But the way to become a Buddha is not to simply to chant Nam-yoho-renge-kyo or anything else. I'm glad that you have found a meaningful spiritual path but I still think that Soka Gakkai really misleads people about Sakyamuni and his teachings.
Boy Cervantes, you don't like the Christians, now your sniping at the Buddhists. Who you going to take aim at next? When do you take a turn at the agnostics?? 
Well have fun anyway.
What makes you think I'm sniping at the Buddhists? I'm sniping at some people who call themselves Buddhists, but I believe it's pretty clear that I'm objectively pro Buddhist, or at least pro Buddha Gautama.
Cervantes, one of the things I was going to say about being a Buddha is this. One doesn't become a Buddha. Essentially, everyone already is a Buddha. It's just a matter of realizing ones Buddhahood (which is essentially the same as Christ-nature).
Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now discusses this, although he doesn't use these terms. He simply calls it inner peace.
I also suspect you are not really "sniping at some people who call themselves Buddhists", but sniping at the Soka Gakkai organization. I have no real gripe with that, as I think any organized religion that prostelyzes (which SGI does) is inherently flawed.
The inherent flaw is this: in order to be successfully prostelyze, a religion must claim it has the only path to the truth. I personally believe there are more like 6,426,507,951 paths to the truth (see http://www.census.gov/main/www/p...w/
popclock.html for the latest number) minus some number for people way off course, which I make no claims of knowing. Plus possibly some number of other sentient beings... you get the idea.
I think the Theory of Relativity makes the point clear: the truth is a matter of perception that depends on where you are standing.
My friends in SGI are wonderful, insightful, intelligent and compassionate people. They are not brainwashed. Some tow the party line more than others, and I sometimes take those people to task.
But I was just thinking about your use of the word "mislead". I just want to end with an excerpt from the Lotus Sutra. These are the words of Shakyamuni:
(The Buddha) is like a skilled physician who uses an expedient means to cure his deranged sons. Though in fact alive, he gives out word that he is dead, yet no one can say he speaks falsely.
I am the father of this world, saving those who suffer and are afflicted. Because of the befuddlement of ordinary people, though I live, I give out word that I have entered extinction. For if they see me constantly, arrogance and selfishness arise in their minds. Abandoning restraint, they give themselves up to the five desires and fall into the evil paths of existence.
Always I am aware of which living beings practice the way, and which do not, and in response tho their needs for salvation I preach various doctrines for them.
At all times I think to myself: How can I cause living beings to gain entry into the unsurpassed way and quickly acquire the body of a Buddha?
The story is told that a yogi came to Sakyamuni and offered to teach him how to walk on water. Sakyamuni said, "Why should I want to walk on water? For a dime, the ferry man will take me across."
from our first post at dharma bums
I remember from somewhere the story of the student of a buddhist monk who found his master weeping. He asked why his master was crying. When his master replied that a child had died, the student asked "but master, is not all an illusion?" His master said "yes, but a child's death is the cruelest illusion of all."
I think it is absolutely possible to be buddhist and Christian, or Jewish, or etc. Some of the most wonderful books on buddhism have been written by Sylvia Boorestein (sp?), "It's Easier Than You Think," and Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfeld. These are practioners of Insight Meditation, and all have studied in Korea, or China, Asia. Buddhism is extremely accessible in the western interpretation via Insight Meditation. After years of reading books my the Dali Lama, and the above mentioned authors, I have begun a correspondence course through a meditation center in Barre, MA. The town's motto, by the way, is "Tranquil and Alert." A perfect description of meditation. I'm learning to meditate, since mindfulness, right livelihood, right speech, etc. is brought above and/or enhance with daily practice of meditation. I've always read those books and thought, yeah, that's how I wish I saw the world (and, in part, already do). So, I'm practicing. And yes, I find if I talk to some folks about it, they really do have an uneducated notion of buddhism. Although, just like Christianity etc. there are many "paths" within buddhism.
While there can be, if one chooses, a deeply spiritual dimension to practicing meditation, it can also be used for more mundane efforts such as stress reduction. Buddhism is one spiritual path that really respects individuals, I think. There is no need to "push" anybody towards it, no need to indoctrinate. I vacation annually at a Zen center which opens in the summertime for guests, and there is no requirement to practice or profess buddhism. It is so very tranquil, so very alive with alert energy. The staff are wonderul. They seem to me to be tranquil and alert. 
oh, btw, my favorite Buddhist saying, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." Seems pithy and maybe even flippant to the uninitiated, but I find it to be profoundly true.
Thanks tpc, that's more or less how I see it also -- a set of ideas and practices that are available to anyone and which are to be validated by experience. Gautama's claims were really about a rewarding way to live, about ethics, psychology and society. There is an important idea in the middle of it all about the nature of the individual and of consciousness, but it stops just short of the metaphysical, in my view -- it's about how to interpret experience, how to manage one's relationship with the world, whatever that world may be. And DPR -- he didn't say that the world is illusion, he said that the self is illusion. The world is entirely real.
Great post. I always hesitate to speak for any form of buddhism other than zen, which is the one I practice, because I'm really not familiar with how they address a variety of issues. But you stress one of the things about zen that a lot of people miss -- that you can only know for yourself though direct experience, you shouldn't take anyone's word for it, and it's nothing you can know from reading it in a book.
There are a lot of prominent zen Christians (Father Kennedy comes to mind) and I myself was raised as a Christian and probably go to church more than most people do. I use zen as a different lens with which to view it, and it has really been useful in helping to cut away all the political claptrap in the US that can make Christianity hard to bear otherwise. A large percentage of zen practitioners are also Jews. That's very hard for most western theists to understand, but it seems to work.
Hey, great. How clear and, well, enlightening! (I feel lighter.)
Seriously, I don't know if you get notified when there is a comment on, e.g., an old post like this. So far have really liked everything on you all's blogs.
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