ICA Discussion...

So after I posted my post about ICA, a friend of mine gave me a nice e-mail reply with what he had to think about my post. Here is my post: Today in class we had a nice little discussion about Interdependent Co-Arising and how engaged Buddhism works with this. When looking at ICA and knowing it to be true, you can see that every action, every reaction, every “good” and “bad” thing is caused by everyone. Everyone can be held accountable for every other persons actions. How crazy does that sound? Well its true. I was thinking about war. Well being in the military it...

ICA at its best...

Today in class we had a nice little discussion about Interdependent Co-Arising and how engaged Buddhism works with this. When looking at ICA and knowing it to be true, you can see that every action, every reaction, every “good” and “bad” thing is caused by everyone. Everyone can be held accountable for every other persons actions. How crazy does that sound? Well its true. I was thinking about war. Well being in the military it kind of comes with the territory, but doesn’t mean I agree with it. Ok so what causes this bad war stuff to happen?...

The Web...

Today was an interesting day in class. We have been exploring a different area of Buddhism called Mahayana where the experience of enlightenment is not something that needs to be searched for, but is just realized that it exists from within. Though I find the area of Mahayana Buddhism very confusing in relation to the idea of a Bodhisattva or someone that vows to not obtain enlightenment until all other sentient beings are enlightened, I do find it making sense as to what enlightenment is. Buddhism as I have been learning about is not about things, its anything but that....

Water in the Pond...

The last few weeks I have been working on mediation and really haven’t had too much of a chance to do it. I find paying attention to your breathing almost impossible when you are sick, and the paying attention part makes your body think you need to cough for some reason. At any rate I have found it hard to do, but yet very satisfying when I am able to get over the coughing part. When ever I have a moment to sit I tend to find myself following the normal tendencies of the mind that I have read about in some of my books such as papanca. After the thoughts die down I...

Christ versus Buddha...

I recently received a e-mail from my teacher about a topic that comes up quite a bit in class. In Moscow Idaho many of our students are either Christian or come from a Christian type religion such as Mormonism. In result many of those individuals have a hard time understanding not only of the concepts of Buddhism but also how Buddhism can apply to their own beliefs or religion. The e-mail from my teacher contained a link to a New York Times article about a Catholic Buddhist and a recent book published by the individual about how he dealt with such terms. I have yet to read...

People...

I find the experience of people interesting. We get upset, we get happy, and we sometimes even get upset to get happy. I mean really, how odd is that? We all are very complicated beings. We are the only species on this earth that we know of that can contemplate the idea of our very own existence, and even end our existence sometimes on that very thought. Even our most destructive abilities we can find astonishment through the level of thinking it took in order to come up with such of an idea. We are truly an amazing species. With all this amazement how is it that we find...

The Connection of Us...

The relationship between cause and effect can be intertwined into the relationship that people have with one another. I have been reading a Buddhism book about anger and how the relationship between people sometimes causes this anger. The main interesting thing about emotion and the causes is that it takes two events to take place in order for these emotions to be produced. This seems to go into the idea that relationships are not a one way event, that at all times there is manipulate causes creating a co-arising event. Causality is a co-arising event within the...

The Breath...

In the last month I have been working on breathing correctly. Its really interesting how breathing is not just taking air in and letting it out. It also has many connections to life. The Buddhist use it in order to reflect in some cases breathing in dukkha and letting out sukha. For me the last 6 months have been problems with breathing. It all started during the summer and really has become a problem. I have gone to a few doctors about it and they really have helped me a lot, but I noticed that when I start to concentrate on my breathing that it really becomes a problem....

Karma...

Today in class we learned about karma, and still I am very confused on the subject but ill try to explain what I know of the subject. Karma is not as everyone thinks it is. Its not something that builds up over time or you can cash in one day. Karma to me is the intentions of the actions caused by mind. We intent to cause well being or sukha in others lives, that would be “good” karma (even though good doesn’t really exist). If we intend to cause dukkha in our lives or others lives then we cause black karma. The dukkha in our lives are not things but just...

Anger...

Anger seems to be a common thing in my life. I tend to find it in many things I do and result I treat it as a thing, something that exist and can breath and talk and such. Today for class we had a discussion about our jobs and how some of the civilians are taking the military jobs. I remembered how anger I was when I first heard about the jobs being lost and how no one seemed to care that was upper management. It was the ones who were losing their jobs that really cared. Its sometimes hard to put yourself into the shoes of others, up or down. We all make choices based on...