I'm looking forward to Thailand...
I'm looking forward to Thailand as a real place.
I think I have ideaized it a lot as this really amazing place with an abundance of fascinating experiments in conscious and communal (community) living. I'm not sure what I am going to find there, or whether what I find will change my perspective on Buddhism, but I keep thinking about how Schroeder keeps telling me that Buddhists in Asia don't necessarily practice Buddhism the way I may be idealizing it from our readings.
I was bothered this past week in meeting Dhamananda and hearing about last summer's Thailand trip, for instance, by what I perceived as deep sense of giving over your life to Buddhism/Buddha, and the similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. I had been reading Buddhism as a very humanistic and people-centered ethical system, but Dhamananda seemed to imply that there was very little difference (mere terminology) between Christian and Buddhist thought. I also felt that similarity in hearing living Buddhists talk about what seemed like faith-based experiences. Replace "faith in Buddha" with "faith in God" and you seem to have fundamentalist Christians who I simply have a much more difficult time taking seriously.
I am realizing that there are a wide variety of Buddhists with a wide variey of personal experiences of Buddhism that inform their individual lives and opinions. Is it ok to judge some of these lives and opinions as better (more worthy pursuits) than others? It almost seemed to me that Dhamananda judged other Buddhists at certain times in conversation, despite not being supposed to do that. Perhaps it is better to interpret Buddhist texts as an incitement to be socially active rather than a closed off monastic.. is there something wrong with this value judgement?
We have to make choices to live our lives in certain ways. Don't we try to make the "best" choices? Is there realy a way to get away from value judgements in attempting to live ethically, or is it an unavoidable consequence of choice? Is Dhamananda just practicing doublethink in saying that she does not judge others?
I think I have ideaized it a lot as this really amazing place with an abundance of fascinating experiments in conscious and communal (community) living. I'm not sure what I am going to find there, or whether what I find will change my perspective on Buddhism, but I keep thinking about how Schroeder keeps telling me that Buddhists in Asia don't necessarily practice Buddhism the way I may be idealizing it from our readings.
I was bothered this past week in meeting Dhamananda and hearing about last summer's Thailand trip, for instance, by what I perceived as deep sense of giving over your life to Buddhism/Buddha, and the similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. I had been reading Buddhism as a very humanistic and people-centered ethical system, but Dhamananda seemed to imply that there was very little difference (mere terminology) between Christian and Buddhist thought. I also felt that similarity in hearing living Buddhists talk about what seemed like faith-based experiences. Replace "faith in Buddha" with "faith in God" and you seem to have fundamentalist Christians who I simply have a much more difficult time taking seriously.
I am realizing that there are a wide variety of Buddhists with a wide variey of personal experiences of Buddhism that inform their individual lives and opinions. Is it ok to judge some of these lives and opinions as better (more worthy pursuits) than others? It almost seemed to me that Dhamananda judged other Buddhists at certain times in conversation, despite not being supposed to do that. Perhaps it is better to interpret Buddhist texts as an incitement to be socially active rather than a closed off monastic.. is there something wrong with this value judgement?
We have to make choices to live our lives in certain ways. Don't we try to make the "best" choices? Is there realy a way to get away from value judgements in attempting to live ethically, or is it an unavoidable consequence of choice? Is Dhamananda just practicing doublethink in saying that she does not judge others?
posted by Liz @ 10:29 PM
1 Comments:
At 7:44 PM,
Liz said…
its a theory about what happened n 911 that is different from what the media and government have been telling us.
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