Dharma Wheel

Dan74 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2017 12:34 am

Lindama wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2017 7:27 pm i c... for purity sake. nothing new under the sun.

Not sure what you want to say with this, Linda. Sounds like you disapprove but I'm just not sure.

https://zen1.space

Moderator's note: This thread has been split from here.

It seems to me that, in those times that sentient beings perceive to be the most inauspicious, Buddhas perceive them as the most auspicious: blessings are easier to receive, unsurpassable awakening is more available, and the potential for nirmanakaya Buddhas to appear is greatly increased. Look at t...

"For a person whose mind is concentrated, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I know & see things as they actually are.' It is in the nature of things that a person whose mind is concentrated knows & sees things as they actually are. "For a person who knows & sees things...

"Then is the holy life lived under the Blessed One for the sake of purity in terms of knowledge & vision of what is & is not the path?" "No, my friend." "Then is the holy life lived under the Blessed One for the sake of purity in terms of knowledge & vision of t...

Megha wrote: Well, to be frank, the American Zen crowd aren't up to much, so you're not missing out on anything, and neither is anyone else.

And you know this how?

If your understanding of preventative healthcare is limited to good diet, sleep and exercise, then you are not qualified to talk about preventative healthcare.

You can only know whether your meditation is "successful" or not in the greater context of the technique itself and the student-teacher relationship. In some contexts, bliss is considered an obstruction to successful meditation. In other contexts, it's encouraged and sometimes even necessa...

Just as an aside, hua tou (Jp. wato) is also used extensively in Japanese Rinzai practice. Rinzai folks tend to say "koan practice", but this encompasses the use of wato whether they come from koan cases (e.g Mu) or not (e.g. "Who am I, Who is it who sees/feels/thinks" etc.). So...

It is wrong if the motivation is not to spread the Dharma but instead to make money (which, if you are at all familiar with the Wilber crew, is obviously the case). In that case, the student will not be taken on his or her own terms, but will be fed whatever keeps them paying. Who can say, ultimatel...

Disease can be caused by a number of things completely unrelated to healthy lifestyle... Yes, which is, again, irrelevant to the discussion at hand - to remind you: (1) Allopathic medicine is not useless, but it should be a secondary form of health care. (2) It is only the primary form of health ca...

I'm sure it's helpful on a psychological level, and may even trigger some kind of opening experience, but I see no place for the deepening and integration of awakening that is the very essence of the Zen school.

Yep, many feel just this way until they have been sick enough to need allopathic treatment, then you get to see it's redeeming values, all the sudden when your choices are to go with that medicine or die, not walk, face dialysis etc., and all alternative treatments have yielded no results, then the...

This is just a bunch of commodified psychospiritual nonsense. Not to mention that the "teacher", Jun Po, is open about and proud of his own sexual misconduct.

Yes - materialism is completely baseless, groundless. However, I believe that it is not merely a philosophy or ideology, but an expression of our psychological condition in the contemporary world, in the same way that philosophies of the past were expressions of their own material and existential co...

Dechen Norbu wrote:Most people who think they'll attain Buddhahood in a single life time are day dreaming, whatever the school they follow. Sorry to spoil the party.

This is irrelevant - people with an affinity for direct paths to enlightenment are very likely not on their first life of Buddhist practice.

If you don't have any conviction in rebirth, then death means the utter cessation of all subjective existence and suffering. Death becomes your liberation and if your suffering becomes too unbearable death is an easy exit from it. This is a rational thought process, but death-anxiety is not rationa...

That's true but in Zen Buddhism there are people who achieve some attainment in this lifetime. In Pure Land Buddhism there are people who shows signs of attainment after death. I don't deny that, but in Mahāyāna the idea of full buddhahood in a single lifetime is not generally part of the plan. Ear...

No wonder Shimano got problems in this american protestant puristic surrounding :) I guess he was very kind to people :) maybe too kind... Shimano did not simply have sex with people - he used his influence to manipulate particularly sensitive people, ultimately putting a number of them in mental h...

Thank you for the clarification. Now technically isn't Anapanasati the same as Samatha in that they both focus on a specific object (the breath)? And isn't the goal of Zazen in the Rinzai tradition also just Anapanasati most of the time? I have never been given a koan (although I'm not too far alon...

You will find that many, many Zen teachers are conversant in both the language of no-self and that of true-self. Zen is a school of mind-to-mind transmission that is not dependent on the Sutra, Sutta, or Tantra, or the language thereof. Furthermore, when Zen teachers speak in this way, they are not ...