Several months ago, I discarded an old bibliography booklet of Master Monk Guang Qin from circa 1980's era, This monk was the founder of the temple who I received the 5 precepts back when I was young.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guang_Qin
In that old bibliography, this master advised "don't be stubborn", and do not to be too attached to human body itself.
in retrospect, I have done a 10-day Vipasanna meditation retreat in 2012, and then kept reading several Theravada materials online in these recent years, so I ended up thinking how wonderful that dharma can be personally understood through logical reasoning and personal experience, so I ended up being too attached to logical reasoning alone, especially the Kalama Sutta part about free inquiry.
Then I went visited another Mahayana temple school around October 2018, as there were no direct branch schools from Master Guang-Qin in the Canadian city I currently reside in. And some booklets from that school advised that "good to learn to be stubborn" and loyalty is a virtue. And I was shocked: how can teaching materials from 2 different schools of the same lineage type (Chinese Chan / Pureland) school can have contradictory advice? Stubborn versus Flexible.
As a result of this contradictory duality and my obsession with logical reasoning, and I was stuck in bafflement and felt the need to cut down on reading materials to ease strain on my brain and eyes,
so I ended up throwing Master Guang Qin bibliography into the recycling bin.
Then I realized later the a better compromise is: be stubborn on good virtues when its beneficial, otherwise be flexible when the situation calls for it, but by then its a bit too late. i guess my main fault was that I was too attached to logical reasoning alone and simple opposing dualitiy!
So the warning about some parts of sublime Mahayana Buddhism is beyond logical understanding,
and beyond the contradictory simplified labels of worldly "opposing" duality concept,
is totally true! And could intuition and instinct play important roles as well, beyond simple logic?
Anyways, I remembered I used to heard that some Chinese Buddhist temple elders that in history, that burning or discarding Buddhist books is heresy, like "go into fire enter demon". 走火入魔
I spoke about this with my own father, a devout pureland Mahayana Buddhist himself, and he assured that my act was not a demonic or heretical act, and we can easily just pick up another copy at the temple when we visit next time.
So now I think that the "burn /discard sutra condemnation as heresy" only applies to only back in old history, when it takes much more manual handcopy work to create duplicates of sutras, and duplicates was not as easily available.
And I don't think this heresy condemnation would apply to our modern age anymore, because archives and duplicates are more readily available.
Is this latter more-merciful thinking correct? Have times truly changed?
Wishing all is well,
