you're dumping a container of paint into the comments section

Agreed. Seeking refuge in the triple gems feels like the moment! Buddha Sasana!

that's beautiful

interesting wikipedia entry on him

That sounds very Humanist

People who are seeking nothing often has a good heart. But they are not interested in a spiritual path.

@@skyjuke2006 somewhat along the lines of charles bukowski's poem "lifedance" the area dividing the brain and the soul is affected in many ways by experience - some lose all mind and become soul: insane. some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. some lose both and become: accepted.

That's understandable.

Thanks! See you in hell!

Ha, that's funny and familiar. One of my relatives worries about me going to hell and frequently tells my wife how worried she is about me.

When you’re that high.

Lol, when you're high on angel dust

I've noticed some different styles regarding using Dharma names. People in Sanbo Kyodan tend to use them like a middle name, for example John Daido Loori. In SFZC they often, but not always, use them before their first name. Some people even legally change their names.

@@HardcoreZen Yeah, I've noticed that as well. I don't really understand people who go all out with it. For me, a white American who's never even been to Korea and who's only experience with the culture is what I see in the Zen center and what I can glean from conversation, it would feel disingenuous to run around telling people to call me Haeng Ji.

@@HardcoreZen so you're Brad Odo Warner...

Dont you need a self to be a Buddhist? Who is the Buddhist?

@@Teller3448 Which always got me ☺ ☺

When I was a white guy in Japan I was a Buddhist who worked for a company run by Japanese Catholics!

@@HardcoreZen THAT would have been a fun group to watch Scorsese's Silence with!

It's been stuck in my head since the 80s! I even have a demo I made on cassette of a re-arrangement of it in rockabilly style (not very good) that I made around 1990. I swear I didn't write it, though!

Part of the Jukai ceremony is taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. It's the first of the vows that I outlined in this video.

"The answer I came up with then was - if Buddhism is a practice..." Not just a practice. Other traditions primarily practice sitting meditation...but are not Buddhist.

@@Teller3448 What would you say is outside of practice within Buddhism?

@@jaked5144 "What would you say is outside of practice within Buddhism?" The practice is not what defines Buddhism because many other traditions use the same practices Buddhists do. What makes Buddhism unique is its dharma. But which dharma? The dharma of the founders is radically different than the later Mahayana.

Can you be a footballer without playing football?

What do Taoists practice?

@@Teller3448 they practice not practicing of course.

@@iansmith8783 You mean they just lay around all day...drinking beer and eating potato chips?

@@Teller3448 that would probably require too much effort. It takes a lot of discipline to be truly lazy.

@@iansmith8783 Well if you made NO effort at all, not to eat or drink or even to inhale and exhale...I imagine you would just die.

What about "Buddhism before Buddhism", or "anonymous Buddhism", or "Post-Buddhism"? Seen in an integral mode, they also seem to be part of the World of Buddhism.

@@gunterappoldt3037 What "dharma" did the follow and practice, tell me then? 🤔 Also, there is no such thing as "World of Buddhism".

@@nettinetti8465 Well, if one takes to mean "World of Buddhism" something like Buddhism as a life-world phenomenon in the broadest sense, the label "WoB" seems quite useful as signifier, analogue to, e.g., the "world of sciences", and the "world of sports" (one may as well speak of the Sangha in the broadest sense, then it would even seem like an all-inclusive all-quantor). What regards the "dharma", it seems to be a very general lable and applicable for constituting a multitude of sense-worlds in many different ways. And Gautama Siddharta, what was he, then in old India: Proto-Buddhist, Ur-Buddhist, anad/or Post-Buddhist? Again, the Four Noble Truth are formulated in such a general way that one can find them, mutatis mutandis, in nearly all religio-philosophical systems we know. People who orient their thoughts, talks and works on this "axiology", are they then "anonymous Buddhists"? One might see it this way. Means, in sum, the natural hermeneutic circle keeps on turning, and sometimes, maybe, even spiraling...

@@gunterappoldt3037 Buddhist is just a term assigned to recognize one or those who follow the Buddha's teachings. Remove the Buddhist term if you want, still many who sincerely practice the Buddha's teachings remain -- follower of of the Buddha's teachings.

@@nettinetti8465 Karl Barth differentiated between religion and belief; I think the argument approximatively follows this fault-line.

"Isms are too narrow and confining." That's where the hippies come from. How did that work out?

@@Teller3448 Real well. I'm a proud hippie, we could use more of us.

@@brookestabler3477 Hippies aren't usually interested in Zen...because its very austere and highly disciplined. Hippies seem to prefer Daoism or some vague Hindu ideas....sprinkled with perceptions gleaned from psychedelic experiences. Is this where you're at??? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kMykkplh0rO3h4U.html See that girl, barefootin' along, Whistlin' and singin', she's a carryin' on. There's laughing in her eyes, dancing in her feet, She's a neon-light diamond and she can live on the street. Well everybody's dancin' in a ring around the sun Nobody's finished, we ain't even begun. So take off your shoes, child, and take off your hat. Try on your wings and find out where it's at.

Thank you!

@@Teller3448 Show me where it's at. I assume a short KZfaq isn't going to send me dancing around the sun.

the kool-aid wasn't what you thought it was

"I did jukai mostly as a public expression of gratitude for what Zen and my teachers had given me." Can you keep all the precepts without being a Buddhist?

Oh my!

It may also reflect Eastern style "bureaucratism" and "parentalism", which put much emphasis on the collective being, from the family up to the state -- and even farther, to the "Heavenly bureaucracy", which, e.g., thoroughly permeates Sinitic folklores. Not that there is no "spirit of collectivism" in India or Southern Asia, but, all in all, these societies seem to have left more free space for virtuosity, if only for climatic reasons, which make it easier for "virtuosos" doing their "free wandering". PS.: Some scholars suppose that this "climatic" difference is echoed in the "Southern Flourishing Country..." of Master Zhuang, who lived nearer to "aboriginal" societies, still dominated by "organic solidarity" -- I think this was the term, created by E. Durkheim, which points to some organic holism (where to "allrounder" was the ideal type of person) or, with other words, a stage in evolution, when specialization had just barely begun to evolve, leading, at some times at some special cultural "hot-spots" (and out of reasons, which are still heavily debated: Was it "bear"[sic!], was it "brain overfunction", was it "water regulation", was it ...?) to the creation of societies, which were to a significant degree "mechanically" organized, like the Zhou-dynasty, which Master Kông and later Ruists idealized as "golden age".

@@gunterappoldt3037 "It may also reflect Eastern style..." What does IT refer to?

@@Teller3448 Well, it refers to the paradigm shift, which already bewildered Theodore Stcherbatsky (an early Buddhologist from Leningrad, whose writings I studied with great interest).

@@gunterappoldt3037 "Well, it refers to the paradigm shift, which already bewildered Theodore Stcherbatsky" Thanks for mentioning that name Gunter...excellent tip! I'm just starting to read a PDF of one of his writings. lirs.ru/lib/theodor/Papers_of_Th.Stcherbatsky,Gupta,1975.pdf Just the opening paragraph is outstanding... "It is known that Buddhism is an atheistic religion, which negates the existence not only of one God but also of all substances and facts in general which are not subject to the laws of samsara, i.e. which are not subject to that causal relation which unites the entire world into a single whole. According to the Buddhist view, everything in the world is determined by necessity. The law of cause allows no exception and no freedom of self-determination. The only exceptions are the Buddha himself and those many Buddhas who preceded him or may come after him. But the Buddhas, liberated from the fetters of the samsara, do not have any influence on the world of phenomena, which continues to flow as before. As a French orientalist puts it, if the Buddha is something divine for the Buddhists, this divinity is a dead one." Question: What paradigm shift did Theodore find so bewildering???

@@Teller3448 Thanks for Your reply. The one paradigm-shift T.S. mentioned and I pointed to, was (in paraphrase) the one from -- formulated as idealtypes -- the extremely "individualistic" Theravâda(-methodology) to the extremely "collectivistic" Mahâyana(-methodology). One special "fault-line", for example would be: the shift from one-dimensional karma-"bundles" (which means: no "merit" can be transferred) to multidimensional karma-"bundles" (which means: "merits" can be transferred, therefore Bodhisattva-ship is possible).