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Intelligence is the ability to ascertain the essential." Jiddu Krishnamurti
(reprinted with permission)
Who and what is a Buddhist?
Historians tell us that Siddhartha Gautama (563? to 483? BC) was the founder of the organized religion we call Buddhism. The fundamental meaning of the word 'Buddha' is 'Enlightened One.' We know that there were many enlightened ones, many Buddhas, before Siddhartha Gautama's birth and there have been many Buddhas after Siddhartha's death. The historic Buddha was born a Hindu and the evidence suggests Siddhartha wished to reform Hinduism rather than reject it completely. Siddhartha Gautama died a Hindu, not a Buddhist, just as Jesus died a Jew, not a Christian.
What we call Buddhism today is an amalgamation of the true teachings of Siddhartha combined with invented myths and large amounts of culture derived from the country in which the Buddhism is practiced. Tibetan Buddhism, for example, is as much Tibetanism as it is Buddhism. Buddha's words were handed down for several centuries through oral tradition before a committee was formed to commit the communal heritage, not memory, of Buddha's teaching to written text. No human being who actually met the Buddha wrote any of the famous Buddhist scriptures that present day followers take so literally and seriously.
Can we separate the essential teachings of the many enlightened ones, the many Buddhas, from mere tradition? Can we bring Buddhism up to date by keeping the essential tools of enlightenment, while discarding the cultural biases that burden the path with unnecessary obstacles? I believe we can create a new Buddhism if we consciously analyze our situation as present day seekers of truth. With this most fundamental definition of the word 'Buddhism,' anyone who seeks enlightenment can be called a Buddhist.
Is Buddhism pro-family?
Our lives have changed dramatically since the days of the historic Buddha. Technological advances such as birth control have reshaped our most basic human behavior. In Siddhartha's time, if you had sex you were always potentially creating a new child. The strict sexual disciplines of Buddhism were born in a era when sex meant children and children meant no time to meditate. Surviving with primitive farming methods was difficult and raising a family under such severe conditions left little energy for introspection. Today many people are able to have a full life, a family, and still have the time and energy to meditate. The average adult American watches over four hours of television a day, so most of us can easily spare 40 minutes a day for meditation. Scientists have proven through brain scans that meditating just forty minutes a day is enough to physically increase the size of the portions of the brain involved in inner awareness (see [link= http://home.att.net/~meditation/monks.brains.html ]scans prove meditation alters the brain[/link]). You do not have to give up a full normal life and all contact with the opposite sex in order to find your existential identity.
A rich society brings with it the possibility of creating a more complete human being than Siddhartha's era could afford. Which is more important for society: sex, family, and wealth creation, or meditation, solitude, and detachment? Don't we have a need for all? If you live for seventy years you can easily spend a few years in solitude and then go on to have a rich family life. Will the added experience of wife and children make you a smaller person or a b
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
A new path is possible
Buddha said that life exists as constant change, but many Buddhist leaders want Buddhism to remain fixed and dead like a rock.
Man's dogma or the attempt to keep the purity of its origins?
A new, more direct path to self-realization is possible that avoids trying to make Westerners look and act more like people from the East. If Westerners are to find their own self, they will have to look deep inside their own self, and not merely imitate the persona of others. Americans and Europeans are not the same as Tibetans and Indians. Trying to think and act like a Tibetan will only make you a false Tibetan, never a real Tibetan, and never a real enlightened Western human being.
Carl Jung agree with this too! I can't find the quote but he said something to the effect 'why does man search in other continents for spirituality when they
ignore the plenty of it in their own lands.
I love and respect many Buddhist teachers who are alive today. I just hope a newer breed of teacher will one day appear that will actively encourage students of meditation to become total human beings. We need a new living Buddhism that changes with the times and the condition of the seekers traveling the path. Westerners can afford the luxury of being lovers, parents, meditators, and creators of wealth, all in the same lifetime. Buddha gave up his wealth because he thought that was the only way to achieve enlightenment. I am saying that you can keep your wealth, your spouse, your home, and still make spiritual progress. Science can give us the added energy we need to have it all. It all is important, and nothing of importance should be discarded in the name of spirituality.
You are the new teachers and the guru/master is your own soul.
Yes I agree one can have it all when one walks the middle path.........giving up/surrendering our comfort zones is a part of self purification and apart of a particular spiritual path of the Sannaysin and as we know there are many, many paths home to the source and this lifetime renounciation may not be part or a necessaary part of the path chosen by the soul.
'Ascertaining the Essential' was something taught to me by the divine so thank you for letting us know that Krishnamurti had also got to this point in his personal evolvement.
Divine Love
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
Hi TigerTurban
I know this is only a brief reply, but how would you feel about a form of Buddhism based on humanism, i.e. regardless of creed, colour, religion, etc, we're all human beings, therefore we must educate ourselves to treat one another as such. Obviously the transition of such is one that requires us to make the transformation within ourselves first, because only then can we bring forth the natural courage, wisdom and compassion to respect/embrace/love others.
How does that sit with you?
Best
Simon
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
Sounds interesting, by the way I signed up for your newsletter but not sure if it zapped through correctly!
I don't want to be black, even yellow or white
I don't want to be on the left or on the right
I don't want to be a catholic, muslim or jew
I only want justice for me and for YOU
You see I think this world would be a far better place
If we were all just members of the HUMAN RACE.
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
Hi again, Tiger!
I used to think that Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) was a new Buddha, and I'm still not sure I was wrong! Anyway, a "new Buddhism" would take a "new Buddha," huh?
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
This isn't at all a comment on the article as a whole, but just a tiny footnote on the Chinese invasions. I doubt Tibet could ever have withstood a Chinese invasion, more's the great pity. Tibet had a vast border to defend, no outside help to speak of, and was facing numbers I'd just guess of 20 to 1, with more and more behind those 20 Chinese if needed?
Nepal largely has the natural barrier of the Himalayas to protect it, and I wouldn't mind betting that a full attempt at invasion would have brought in much outside help.
So unfortunately I can't see that Tibet could have withstood the invasion anyway ....
V
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
This is a really interesting threa although I have to say I'm not sure why there is a need for a 'new' buddhism as what you're talking about I see as already existing int eh work of Thich Nhat Hanh and ch'an or zen in general.
We need to walk our own path and this is one of the things that I am attracted to in Buddhism, it is not a faith but rather a lifestyle in which peersonla experience is the foundation.
The nature of how the scriptures were developed are irrelevent as for me Buddhism is about the experience of the true nature of mind which is reached through the practice of meditation.
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
a new buddhism?
buddhism has taken many centuries, if not millenia to evolve into the living traditions found today from sri lanka to mongolia,the himalayasto china, japan and south east asia. (infactthere are few remnants of buddhist schools left in thenative lands of the historical buddha.) in this process, new schools emerged from old, some traditions died out and others took ascendanceor replaced their predecessors and it can seem that thedivergenceof these traditionsmakesup avery heterogeneous collection of culturally specific applications and reinterpretations of a set of remote, aurally transmitted teachings two and a half thousand years old.
really, it is only in the last few decades westerners have travelled east and encountered these traditions, gained training and returned; andeastern teachers (most significantly tibetans exiled after the chinese invasion) have come to the west to ply their trade. all of these ambassadors of the surviving traditions of the buddha dharma have come in cultural and historicalpackaging that has shaped and moulded the teachings into their current form; and none of these cultural packagings is western; post enlightenement!
it will take time to evolve a western buddha dharma but what is certain is that ithas to go back to carfully preserved texts in asian languagescombined with practical insight from native westerners to evolvethis new floweringof the buddha'steachings in the west. perhaps, in many ways the process of cultural exchange between eastern buddhist traditionsand philosophy is already being in expressed in in the west in ways that are not at first obviously buddhist!
the fact remains that the root of buddhist practice isfound in the four noble truths*, but it is theno-soul or no-self philosophy that makes it different from any other "religion". i beleive that it is the careful examination of this philosophyand its correlatives; the middle way and madyamaka philosophy, (combined with straighforward aproaches to meditation and methods used to cultivateloving and generousemotional states)that will, in time,prove to be deeply significant in the west.
*the four noble truths are:suffering or unsatisfactoryness of conditioned existence, its causes (lack of concentration, attachement and aversion), the fact that removing the causes removes suffering, and the path to achieving this (the noble eightfold path). in many ways this is not ateachingspecific to buddhism: all religions and culturesteach that there is a path toa better life or a path to eternal bliss if life is lived according to divine edict; and thatthe cause of suffering in this lifeor the path to damnationis some form of sin or departureor fall from the divineor sanctified way of living.what the buddha was pointing out, and was a radical position in its historical cultural contextisthat the cause of suffering is in ourselves and liberation is also in ourselves and is not dependent on making offerings to a class of society (brahmin) that exclusively held spiritual power and influencethat enabled only them to perform rights whichcould benefit the devotee and society.
at no point in history has there been such fertile ground;a post enlightenment / post modernculture, with very high levels of literacy and education,fertilised by teaching of the buddha.i believe the prospect of a flowering of buddhist based wisdom and practice ona scalethat the world has neveryet witnessed and the benefit this can bring is truely astounding and may already be taking place in many unseen ways.
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
I would like to state first off, that I've no personal investment here. I don't call myself a 'Buddhist', nor do I feel the need to defend/attack the doctrine as I understand it. But I do think this 'call' for a 'new' Buddhism is fundamentally flawed.
To begin, the very idea suggests there is something in the recorded Buddha-dharma that is no longer applicable in Today's World. That 'we' are at base, entirely different from the people to whom the Buddha first addressed his discourses.
The Buddha however, so far as it is possible to know, never put an expiration date on his teaching. There was no hint that the dharma knew any geographic bounds, and was therefore only applicable to certain ethnicities. True, nothing exists in a vacuum, there is an important cultural and temporal context to be borne in mind. However, the very foundation for his teaching was the belief that deep down, all sentient entities share the same basic characteristics.
Unsatisfactoriness ('suffering' as dukkha is often translated) is common to all. The apparent causes of it may change over time and place (no one in the Buddha's day had to go through the anguish of losing a whole week's work when the computer crashes), but its root, the very fact of its existence, remains stable and common.
If a remedy be efficient then 2500 years ago, there is no reason why it should not remain so today. The Buddha also taught that his was the 'sole path' (eka magga) for the overcoming of grief, sorrow and lamentation etc. To invent a new path and call it Western Buddhism is in my view, an false representation of the Buddha -dharma, and the product of gross arrogance, for it supposes the proponent/inventor knows better than the Buddha to whom they aspire.
I suspect much of the motivation for cobbling together some new idea of Buddhism is financial - far fewer people I suspect would attend weekend 'retreats' or 'workshops' if the Buddha's teachings were presented as they are recorded,instead of beingwrapped up in some airy-fairy new age nonsense. Many people like the idea of calling themselves 'Buddhist', of 'meditating' [read: 'daydreaming' in many cases], of 'going on retreat' [two days at some 5* mountain lodge] but would recoil at actually having to do the hard-yards, as it were. It is for them (and their wallets) that such 'new' paths are designed.
[Aah, that feels better.]
RE: Call For a New Buddhism
ORIGINAL: norbu
buddhism has taken many centuries, if not millenia to evolve into the living traditions found today from sri lanka to mongolia,the himalayasto china, japan and south east asia. (infactthere are few remnants of buddhist schools left in thenative lands of the historical buddha.) in this process, new schools emerged from old, some traditions died out and others took ascendanceor replaced their predecessors and it can seem that thedivergenceof these traditionsmakesup avery heterogeneous collection of culturally specific applications and reinterpretations of a set of remote, aurally transmitted teachings two and a half thousand years old.
I'm really no expert on Buddhism at all, but can see the truth in that. And, it being so, Buddhism is therefore always "evolving". No religion ever gets etched in stone and held static, unchangeing. There may be core tenets that are rarely abandoned by this or that school, but things always change. Same for Christianity, Islam, etc.
That being so, the idea that there might be a "new Buddhism" isn't so revolutionary. I'd guess that it's "new" in some respects from year to year. It's certainly not one thing, one religion or belief. Whenever I pick up a book on Buddhist practice, the author seems to need to clear the decks by stating almost straight-off which school of Buddhism he's coming from. Some are newer, some are older. The newer ones will have been entirely "new" in their day.
And I doubt that anyone actually knows what Gautama wholly and completely thought and taught anyway. Well, what a silly thing to write: of course they don't. :eek:;)
V