I’ve been reading over the recent posts both on this page and the End of Buddhist Spirituality page. Lots to digest. Thanks, Srini, for the articles. That’s a lot of reading and I’ve only been able to quickly peruse a few of them. I see Rachel is busy with school, and I haven’t had time either to get to the readings I was planning on doing, including Srini’s list. Paul, I’m sorry, but I’m going to postpone a reply to your posts for a while longer. I feel like I’ve plateaued, and while I have a few points to make, I think it would be more prudent to wait til I’ve digested the readings more.

When is this fall break Srini spoke of? It would be helpful if I had a deadline.

I will make one point about Trungpa and his followers. The people in Shambala in Halifax do not think they are in a personality cult. Quite the contrary: they are certain theirs is the most uncorrupted lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. So, the majority of them followed their guru and rationalized his behaviour. Once when I was discussing Buddhism with my therapist, who was a Buddhist and follower of Trungpa, I suggested to him that maybe his devotion to Trungpa was as deluded a belief as any Christian notion of eternal life. How does one know? How does any Buddhist know that their particular sect or school isn’t off the rails? Buddha rejected all the schools, didn’t he? I don’t think, maybe, it’s so much about wanting to reinvent the wheel, as realizing that the wheel seems to continually fall into corrupt hands. So, some of choose to just sit, and learn with an open mind, and look at institutionalized Buddhism with a wary and skeptical eye.

I haven’t had enough time to read all of the above posts thoroughly, so I must apologise if anything I say is already posted above. Also I have only a little time on my hands to bash out this post, so please forgive my brevity.

The first thing I want to state is that Buddhism in Japan is a sham. Buddhism in Japan is a funeral business run by families who have been handing down the funeral business since the early Edo period (1600-1868). Each Buddhist temple here belongs to the monk who resides in a house attached to the temple. There are no student monks or homeless people living in the temples as in other Asian countries. There are no monks in training and there are no meditation classes. In order to learn Buddhism here in Japan you must be born into a Buddhist temple family.

People in Japan attend Buddhist temples for only two reasons – to pray to Buddha for something they may want (amulets and magical talismans blessed by the monks are sold for many prayers) and to attend funerals.

Monks are paid enormous amounts of money to recite the Buddhist funeral rites and to ensure that the souls of the dead pass over into heaven (monks have cars and big houses and huge families). ALL the various sects here believe that when a person dies, their soul goes to heaven or waits to be reborn. Dosen’t sound like what is written in English books on Japanese Buddhism does it? You’re right, what is written in English books is Westernised and modernised Buddhism. That is a secular Buddhism devoid of all the intense ritual and magical stuff that goes on here.

Buddhism here requires that one believe in souls and ghosts (that pay a visit on a specific time of the year) and that the Buddha watches over all that you do.

Just quickly, in regards to karma, the Japanese believe in the Hindu version of Karma (many Buddhists the world over do, as Brahmin teachings entered Buddhism during the great Mahayana schism). They believe that your suffering now is caused by something you have done wrong in a previous life and also that your relatives may affect your karma. A point in case, I look after disabled children: it is the belief of most Japanese (yes, Buddhist monks too) that these disabled people are paying for misdeeds in a previous life.

These beliefs, this form of Buddhism, has been this way since Buddhism was introduced here in the 8th century – so the Japanese don’t understand any other way. Buddhism is a big business that rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The biggest land owners are the monks who own the temples with enough land for the graves.

Thank you for your comments and suggested articles. I will get around to reading them (the articles) sometime soon, I hope. I will respond when I have more time than I do now.

Brent

And this fellow called Chogyam Trungpa broke the basic Five Precepts and people still believed in him. So whose fault is it? Is it the believers’ or Trungpa’s.
If a President of USA keeps controlling the Press but still says he is abiding by the Constitution, then the citizens need to bring him down. If they don’t do it then it is their mistake. You cannot say that the Constitution is bad. The constitution gave us some rights and responsibilities and we didn’t care about either one of those. Buddha gave some basic principles and some people don’t follow those and still call themselves Buddhists.

I looked up online about this guy and there definitely are people who excuse him saying, who is perfect. How lame is that? If my math teacher is a spend thrift I wouldn’t be worried about that because that wouldn’t prevent him from being a smart teacher. But if he can’t tell what 2+2 is, then I am definitely NOT going to be his student because that is the minimum I expect from him. And also if comes drunk to the class he is going to do a mistake some day or the other and I wouldn’t be his student.

Above all I guess some common sense helps!

Srini.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/notself2.html

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/nirvanaverb.html

Srini.

End

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/lifeisnt.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/karma.html