Fruitions
On the other hand I don't have an uptight employer, parents, children or other people in the world I have to present a special face to. And I went through "my life in public" years ago, when I spent a year walking around a corporate office in my white initiation garb from Santeria, answering people's baffled questions. Then again it was NYC, and they got bored with the novelty in about five minutes.
Fact is as I've talked about my current practice with people in daily life, I've discovered they tend to fall into two camps. Either they find it utterly uninteresting, or they have had some practice or experiences in the past and are quite interested and have questions and stories to tell. I tend to talk about my practice in very generic ways with people I don't know well, and let their response guide how much detail is appropriate.
With this forum, I presume the point is to talk about "dharma" practice, otherwise it would be called something else.
But here we are talking among ourselves (the dozen of us who post regularly), BUT being read by the general public who has at least enough interest in dharma to google the word. So what I will share here is aimed at you all that I am conversing with, and may make no sense or not be appropriate or useful to a googler who stumbles across the site. In that sense, the founders need to clarify the purpose of the site. If it's to provide helpful discussion to random dharma googlers, that's one thing. If it's a place to discuss whatever relevant dharma practice stuff comes to our minds, that's another thing. The former might be better constructed as a series of teaching articles summarizing good advice for beginners, for example, rather than an open discussion.
Anyway, I'm verbose after my coffee. I'll shut up now.
I remember hearing a talk where the teacher brought up your question, who else is practicing this stuff? What he said was, 'If there is no self, then WHO is it who receives the effects of karma?' But I don't actually remember the answer
Which kind of seems like the point to me.I'm very happy being a person with personality and likes and dislikes, because that's the person that cultivates the paramis, that's the person that does good meditation, that's the person that creates and is heir to kamma. There's lots of good stuff that positively requires at least a working assumption of a self. Thanissaro Bhikkhu hammers this home a lot, but even cuddlier teachers like Ajaan Amaro make a point of it.
Oh, for sure. I was just being silly because I found your list of personal attributes funny (and I'm sure you were being light-hearted yourself). I'm actually pretty pro-atta, as it were; not only do I not truck with emptiness much at all, but I take anatta as not-self, rather than non-self; that is, the use and import of the anatta doctrine (at least until I'm really, really close to enlightenment) is not to make some assertion about the nature of selfhood in reality—to assert that there isn't one—but rather as a practice technique to constantly remember that the apparent material of mental experience, the khandas, are themselves NOT my self. Beyond that—so what is my self? Eh, not important right now.
I remember hearing a talk where the teacher brought up your question, who else is practicing this stuff? What he said was, 'If there is no self, then WHO is it who receives the effects of karma?' But I don't actually remember the answer
I'm very happy being a person with personality and likes and dislikes, because that's the person that cultivates the paramis, that's the person that does good meditation, that's the person that creates and is heir to kamma. There's lots of good stuff that positively requires at least a working assumption of a self. Thanissaro Bhikkhu hammers this home a lot, but even cuddlier teachers like Ajaan Amaro make a point of it.
-cruxdestruct
very nice
and for sure josh korda isn't shy about being a person in the world with likes and dislikes, etc.
I've always been inclined to share personal stories about my practice. My fear is that I do it too much and tend to post about personal experience when folks might prefer more theory. That's the ONLY reason I posted my "apology" this morning, and when I did that I had no freakin' idea that it would become this much of an issue, or could lead to some sort of speculation that Jackson and I have some nefarious or unstated reason to start or maintain these boards the manner we do.
Note, please, the smiley.
Haha. The "founders" (I guess that would be Chris and I, officially) have absolutely no problem with open sharing at this site. To my understanding, neither Chris nor I ever intended for this to be any kind of teaching platform, or seeker-sensitive dharma gateway, or anything else. This site was a way to have a better dicussion format than email was providing at the time. And, we thought that people who found the site might find it interesting. Please do NOT hold your tongues. At the same time, do not feel like you HAVE to share as intimately as everyone else. You are free to participate however you like.
-awouldbehipster
What?! I thought there was going to be a raffle. Winner gets 2 tickets to paradise on Suddhavasa Airways.
I was misinformed.
http://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/suddhavasa-worlds/index.html
I see a future career as a dharma-comedian.I do adore that you all can be silly about this stuff.
-ona
I was actually just thinking about this today. As discussed here before, Garry Shandling is a very famous and incredibly funny long-term practicing Buddhist. But he's frustratingly reticent about his practice, in interviews or otherwise. Can you imagine if he put together 20 minutes on Buddhism? It would KILL. The world needs more dharma comedians.