Discussion Do you have experience with Buddhism?

[TheSoulless]

At one point I was really intrigued by the idea of following Buddha's teachings, but as of late I've been treading a vastly different path. Have you tried living by Buddhist ideas, and has it helped you?

 

[thisismyusername]

YES! There are lots of different factions of Buddhism, but I like to think of the basic eight fold path, that kind of lays outs how life is suffering. It's an interesting understanding of how we cope, learn, and come to comprehend our realities. Without suffering, how could we determine something with greatness within? Everything that is perceived as positive is defined in the terms of negative thoughts. Or at least, thats how I kind of interpret it. I didn't grow up Buddhist but I went to temple around the corner (the luxuries of the American suburbs I guess) to practice meditations ands teachings that truly follow me to this day. I never take any religion (or practice of life) seriously but Buddhism is unique in its influences to other cultures and religions around the world, and how it seems to persevere through the test of time as modern and intriguing thought. Nirvana is a concept I still can't wrap my head around.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

There are buddhist ideas that have helped me. As @thisismyusername mentioned, the eightfold path can be quite a useful tool, especially for making a big decision: do I want to climb this mountain (right intention), do I have what I need to climb the mountain (right understanding), etc.

I read and studied the book In the Buddha's Words, and some concepts that deeply impacted me were the roots of violence and oppression, the dark chain of causation, and the eight worldly winds or vicissitudes of life. Some of these buddhist concepts combine well with Stoicism, and while my life isn't "fixed" and won't be, I have equanimity that I didn't have before and can maintain myself when there are both negative and positive things impacting me that are outside of my control. I also have a commitment to sticking with my principles even when it's hard, and it helps to know the winds will change when it is hard. I also got a lot out of unwholesome conduct as seeds of negative karma, but the concept of karma itself is described in conflicting ways so I play around with it but I don't connect with it as a teaching that explains going from one life to the next.

I don't claim to have it, but I don't think enlightenment is a high and one feels having a permanent hippie-style world hug, I think it's just... a profound level of understanding about something. There's a zen saying, "Before enlightenment, carry water; after enlightenment, carry water."

@thisismyusername, I was recently reading again on Nirvana. There's of course the idea of a flame that's gone out, and it's of course hard to grasp, especially since we have scientific knowledge now and it's not so mysterious a symbol, at least not to me. Along with that, I read that Nirvana is the absence of hatred, greed and delusion, and it's interesting to combine the concepts as a thought experiment. Sometimes I just try to feel or imagine what it's like to be free of those things, and it lifts a little pressure from my life for a bit. I think even Siddhartha maintained a modicum of those things when I read certain stories about him after he established the sangha, and it's why I resist calling him the Buddha, because I don't think he was perfectly enlightened, so I don't ooh and aah over him, but I definitely learned some good stuff from him.