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Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Let me put it this way .... to become a Buddhist requires BELIEVING in the Eightfold Path. To become a good, practicing Buddhist requires DOING the Eightfold Path.
Let me put it this way .... to become a Buddhist requires BELIEVING in the Eightfold Path. To become a good, practicing Buddhist requires DOING the Eightfold Path.
This is true. This is also why I don't feel a strong need to fulfill all the requirements needed in order to feel that I can truthfully call myself a buddhist. I don't need to be able to label myself. I take what practices I find helpful to my life.
Let me put it this way .... to become a Buddhist requires BELIEVING in the Eightfold Path. To become a good, practicing Buddhist requires DOING the Eightfold Path.
My personal experience and feelings were that the former is an intellectual position, the latter is a way of life. Your distinction reflects my own experience well.
I always referred to myself as an atheist meditating Buddhist because there are many varieties . . . even some who make of Buddha a Divine figure. Meditation is the path to the other side . . . and having reached it . . . I would recommend it wholeheartedly. It was life-changing for me.
Can someone be Buddhist without meditating? Does meditation depend on the particular school of Buddhism one is following?
I knew two women about 30 years ago who went headlong into Buddhism. One is now a head lama and the other the director of a zen center, so they both stayed with it. They both logged hours and hours of meditation, almost like how many miles you could run (I think this is not a zen approach to the practice?). When I would say I just didn't feel the need to meditate, they'd nod wisely (smirkily?) and say, "Not yet."
It's been 30 years. Still no desire or need to do that.
A wise friend said to me, "Your home is a meditation on a love of art, nature and abandoned animals."
I like that.
No, meditation is not essential to being Buddhist. It is not even necessarily advantageous to meditate as a Buddhist.
I doubt it's easy for anyone unless they've been doing it for many years. All of us have the monkey mind!
I have a lot of trouble remaining consistent with meditation. I go through periods of time when I just don't do it. But I do feel the benefits when I've been consistent - I find concentration and mindfulness easier. I'm thinking of trying chanting instead of meditation for a while.
I doubt it's easy for anyone unless they've been doing it for many years. All of us have the monkey mind!
I have a lot of trouble remaining consistent with meditation. I go through periods of time when I just don't do it. But I do feel the benefits when I've been consistent - I find concentration and mindfulness easier. I'm thinking of trying chanting instead of meditation for a while.
Of course, but if one meditates just to improve concentration, that's not necessarily a Buddhist goal. The main reason one would meditate is to realize emptiness or impermanence in a way that is non-conceptual. And that doesn't require alot of time or training, in fact the whole notion of time or training detracts from the realization.
Meditition is not necessarily a pre-requisite for some forms of Buddhism, but it certainly is for the Zen school. The entire point of Zen is to meditate until you attain the Enlightenment they refer to as "satori."
I think the common thread of the different branches of Buddhism is that, you must, in some way, minimalize your desires and craving for material and temporal things and reach down within and find your true self and then meld it with the rest of the world. Ego must be diminished, if not totally erased. I think one can meditate in many ways; it is just finding a quiet time of thought and relaxation, away from the clutter of Society.
I often get my mediation while in nature, especially while running. Some people can get it through music or art. it sounds like your house might my a pretty spiritual place, filled with things dear to your heart. That might be enough for you.
No one ever gets anything out of formal meditation if they only do it cuz they think they should.
And anyway, the Buddha was a pretty open-minded guy. He tried self-deprivation--asceticism--and denied that, and also eschewed over-indulgence. He preached that we should instead find a "middle way." (He suggested we use his "Eightfold Path" for this, I think.)
He was also much against stern teachers who think they kbnow it all. Didn't he once admonish that if we "find a buddha (teacher) on the side of the road we should kill it?"
Peace/
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Is Meditation a Requirement?
