Forum: The Big Issues

I started to pose this question on the Dali Lama/Mushroom thread but I didn't want to get off topic, but I've been curious for some time about this: does the fact that I my goal is to attain the highest level of enlightenment mean that I'm Buddhist?

I don't think it's a terribly important issue, but If someone asked me if I am, my answer would be "no". It may be a simple matter of semantics, but I personally would describe myself as a meditator who happens to use some of the techniques and information laid down by the Buddha as a means to an end. I consider a Buddhist to be one who subscribes to and tries to closely follow the doctrines of the traditional Buddhist schools.

Since it seems most here have been to retreats, courses, what have you directed by mostly Buddhist organizations, I'm curious about how others look at this question, so how say you?

Author: GhostLLP

If that were the case, then all Sufis, Gnostics, Taoists, Hindus, etc would all be Buddhist.



Peace
Lucas

Good point - I suppose I'm again, showing my ignorance (I seem to do that alot, don't I?), but is the gold standard for them enlightenment of the same nature as buddhism's?

I know a bit about Taoism and the concept of wu-wei, but I don't think I've seen or heard that their 'goal' is the big E.

good question. i dont say im a buddhist either but it has to do with self-image and how i want others to see me. i don't want to be viewed through a prism that will likely cause my image to include elements that are irrelevant to my practice or lifestyle, especially when you consider that my beliefs aren't particularly buddhist, and nor do i consider the highest level of enlightenment to be my ultimate goal.. its more like a means to yet another end. maybe i'll start calling myself a post-buddhist.. i certainly won't deny that my narrative and context has been largely defined by the buddhists and other such spiritualists who have come before me.

Author: GhostLLP

I would say the nature of enlightenment is very similar in all of them. All are, in one form or another, trying to realize a greater reality by giving up self grasping.

In Sufism, Gnosticism, and the other mystical western schools of thought, it is thought more in terms of a "Union with God." Also some of the Hindu schools have this kind of view.

In Hinduism and Jainism, you have Moksha, which is liberation from samsara. Very much similar to enlightenment in Buddhism, Nirvana.

Taoism, at least in the Quanzhen school, it is usually said in term of "attaining to the Tao" or the such. "Quanzhen" can itself be translated to "Way of Complete Perfection," which most would consider "enlightenment."

Peace
Lucas

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm just a guy. Once upon a time, I was checking into a Buddhist monastery in Rangoon. The man I later came to think of as my "next-door-Sayadaw," because he lived the room next to mine, helped me fill out a registration form.

"What is your religion?" he asked, in perfect English.

"None," I replied.

He dutifully noted my response. Two months later, when it was time for me to return home, my next-door-Sayadaw helped me fill out my exit form.

"What is your religion NOW?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye. (The rumor mill had it that I had attained 2nd Path while there, which was in fact the case.)

"None," I replied, to the obvious disappointment of this kind old man.

Like John, who started this thread, I just think of myself as someone who practices Buddhist meditation along with techniques from other mystical traditions. Calling myself something, or believing in some set of pre-fabricated ideas seems extra and unnecessary.

These identifier issues get huge spin everywhere don't they!
Just a guy is a more appropriate kind of representation in many ways. Just a disciple is the only suitable one in other contexts. I'm hardly going to be able to get away with 'just a guy' if I am soon going to be walking around in a bhikkhu rig. So, identification is relative and mutable and representation has many different roles. To be comprehensive and honest, I can't fully answer in only one or the other way. I strongly recommend making self definition a very secondary concern to nailing down the accessible and knowable experiential truths. I find these kinds of self identifying definitions are far more important to other people than they are to me. I have made peace with a lot of these issues on a great many levels. So I am comfortable in quite a few different environments and contexts. I try to respect any eccentricities involved in a given community and work towards understanding and furthering the common compatible agendas without sacrificing my own established aims be they conventional or somewhat eccentric. There are usually some slight adjustments both ways but less and less need for compromise either way.

I used to hold quite strongly to the view that 'I wouldn't join any club that would take me as a member' but I have had to revise that thinking extensively in recent years and I much appreciate the upgrade. I will remain just as content with either 'just that guy' or 'the so and so of such and such'. Any significant degree of social attention will definitely see me running off into the wilderness anyways.

Author: marinr

I don't know, I would probably say 'yes'. But it's more of a respect thing, then religious. I am more comfortable with people thinking
I'm following the teachings of a certain wise being then go around doing wild speculations about my practice. And I'm also used to
the buddhist conceptual framework when speaking about practice, if someone wants to know what am I exactly doing.

On the other hand, I never came into direct contact with the dogmatic version of the dharma, so I don't have any negative
associations connected to the term.

Hmm....

Grew up in a ethnic buddhist family (in the west), didn't really get buddhist philosphy. Went to Catholic School, wanted to be a catholic like all of my friends at the time.

At about 13-14 read a book that was simple, clear and concise about the dhamma and it appealed logically and was a buddhist ever since but did not practice seriously until about perhaps 5 years ago. Although I like sufism and some of the vendatta teachings, people who sincerely practice them seemed slim on the ground compared to buddhism.

My other gripe with other teachings other than sufism and vendanta were the great obscurity before coming to anything related to spirituality. Taking the christians for example there is much to admire about some of the benedictine monks but what a roundabout way to go before getting to direct practice dealing with the mind.

Being just a dude or dudette practicing dhamma training has the advantage of questioning what in the teachings is relavent. For me being a buddhist generates a type faith as a buddhist and undertaking refuge gives a boost of energy to practice, knowing that the teachers aren't trying to con you so one should put a consistent effort even though there is much that is unknown or yet to learn. Practicing more often it's a bit surreal the more you realise the teachings are true. More importantly a community as an accompaniment to travel the journey helping each other (like this site) is probably one of the greatest benefit, or close to being the greatest benefit.

Author: suzumi

I am a Buddhist because I want to reach the highest level of enlightenment. I doubt if I could find it on my own. When you are climbing mountains it is a good idea to have a guide, or at least a map. The first guy made it to the peak of the mountain without a map, but how many tried and didn't make it? I think meditative traditions are useful as guides.

Just my two yen.

Regards,
T

Author: josh0

But does following a guide somehow change your identity? Would we call Sir Edmund Hillary a Tenzingist, because Tenzing Norgay was his guide up Everest? Was his guide an essential part of who he was?

I've put quite a bit of thought into the issue of identity. My conclusion is that there's nothing to be gained by identifying yourself with anything. In fact, isn't our whole purpose here to liberate ourselves from the very process of 'identifying your self'? This came up for me, most recently, in the discussion on alcohol and practice: I discovered that drinking had become an identity. I was identifying my self with drinking alcohol. This might sound strange, or as some sort of admission to alcoholism, but it's not. Rather, consider what it means to drink, why people drink, and the effect that drinking or not drinking has on their life. For me, at least, drinking is a social activity. When I considered the idea of not drinking the only objection I could come up with was that it would alter, possibly negatively, my relationships with my friends and perhaps even my wife.

Drinking, like Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, or whatever other identity you take on, is an interface through which interpersonal relations are moderated. In other words, it's an artificial boundary which we use to partition off and identify the self. Calling yourself a Buddhist, in my opinion, serves only to emphasize the illusion of self; it's just another way of delineating the self from the other.

Hi Josh,
This is good stuff. Trick question: does "not identifying myself as a Buddhist" also imply a partitioning - into "me, not identifying myself as Buddhist" and "those who identify themselves as Buddhist"? I've had endless fun with this one.

Where I'm at now, I'm viewing the question of identifying from two angles: the conventional, "sila" one, where I'm happy to label myself Buddhist (or atheist, or German, or whatever) where it helps with relating and talking to other people, and the insight angle, where all these stories about who and what I am just babble on like MTV, or an endless powerpoint presentation on autopilot.

Cheers,
Florian

Author: suzumi

Hmmm... 'be' a Buddhist = self-identify as a Buddhist...??

Monkeymind, for me, the social interaction part is the MTV babble. I hope there IS an autopilot function, so my 'mind' will be heading toward the goal even when I am not meditating, etc. My model of 'being a Buddhist' includes mental programming. I heard that my iMac does maintenance and stuff automatically in the middle of the night. I want my mind to work toward the goal even when I am not thinking about Buddhism.

The root of the word, buddh-, means achievement, so if you are trying to become enlightened, I think by definition you are a Buddhist, even if you prefer not to identify yourself that way in social situations or whatever.

Regards,
T

Yeah. Bodhi ain't autopilot but beyond a given point it certainly refuses to be denied due mindful attention! I think of it as an iMac that will spank you if you don't sit up straight to type.

Hi Suzumi,
I've found the three divisions of the noble eightfold path a very useful framework to apply to complex things like self-identification. As I indicated in my previous post, the way I use this is to separate out the "everyday life" and "ultimate wisdom" bits of the issue, so they can be worked on in the context appropriate to them.

So, in my experience, whenever I start to treat social interaction as a stream of meaningless babble pillowing my attention, I run into trouble - because that's not a helpful way of dealing with it, neither for me nor for the people I interact with. Instead, going for kindness and compassion (and really going for it; sometimes less is more when it comes to engaging compassionately, depending on all kinds of circumstances) is key when moving in society. By this I don't mean to say, "I'm Buddhist, look at how kind and compassionate I am", but instead, working really hard on all the babble, content and "stuff" I contribute to all the babble already out there. Going for "quality babble" (and other high-quality behavior) over just any old mindless babble This I understand to be what the "morality" or "sila" or "virtue" part of the noble eightfold path is all about. While eminently mundane, this IS a full 1/3 of "heading toward the goal".

On the other hand, on the ultimate wisdom, insight partition of the eightfold path, I leave the tiresome content of the babble aside, and instead train myself to see it just as babble (even the quality babble): transient, not ever permanently satisfying, causal, not something I can identify with. This is where even identifying as Buddhist (or deliberately not identifying as Buddhist) is just another bit of babble that will have its say and then subside. Here, it's key to be able to see suffering, impermanence, and not-self.

(cont.)

On the second, ultimate wisdom front, I run into trouble when I start to indulge in the content of the babble, just as I run into trouble when I treat people as transient phenomena in a social setting.

Whew. I got into lecturing, it seems. Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)

About the autopilot - yeah. From a certain point onward, I've found that the Dharma becomes a noticeable influence, even to the point where I felt a bit driven. Like Triplethink says, it becomes harder to deny appropriate attention to the Dharma (deliberate pun there).

And welcome to the Dharma Overground, Suzumi!

Cheers,
Florian

In an effort towards a more eloquent apple os metta upgrade.
classic compatible
In seeing the imac only seeing the imac.
In knowing the imac only knowing the imac.
OS Zen
First there is only a computer, then there is hardware and software, bits, electrons in vibratory motion within semiconducting matter, ordered particulates arising, sustaining, decaying and passing.
Then there is only a computer.

Typed that and began to sense spending a portion of today musing on the shortcomings of my glibly posted iMac models. Even in the second person these are inadequate.

A first person investigation of the inadequacy revealed that it is not a shortcoming in either adaptive software AI or dynamically configurable hardware, rather it is the lack of iSense that is the cause for the absence of iBe and iBecome. This is why iMac has no life and being and cannot aspire to overcome ignorance. No tactile sense perception, no feedback loops, no desire, no suffering, no insight and no understanding. No seeing the shortcomings of the model, no saying 'this is stupid' and 'I feel like having ice cream instead'.

The focus on the centrality of what is at its root tactile sense perception in the 6 factored modes has defined my participation in Overground and correspondingly defines the experience of the Overground community for me. I can broaden or narrow identifications and definitions from there but this has been the core focus I perceive continually probed, exposed and reexamined within this networked group of global yogins.

This model, the computer, the network, is inanimate without the addition of sensate contact with dynamic internal and external being and becoming. Only when, where and how we 'make it in our image', when we lend it 'sense', does the model, the computer or the network appear to arise in the sentient image of it's makers.