Buddhism

Another requested topic!

I've always had a bit of a love affair with Buddhism. It was one of the first things I remember reading that lead me on the path away from Mormonism and ultimately Christianity.

There are many ideas that I came to through that study of Buddhism that stay with me today and are key pillars in my own spiritual understanding. Things that I am radically under qualified to talk about, but this is the internet so here's what I think.

Buddhism and in particular Zen Buddhism will always have a very special place in my heart. One of the first books I read about spirituality was a book on Zen Buddhism. I had only read one other book that questioned what was being said in Sunday school and that was a book on animal totems.

I found it fascinating. I think I read it at least three times. I think I actually read it in the middle of church meetings on a number of occasions. There was a beauty and complex simplicity to the ideas presented. It talked both of the importance of the Self and also of rejecting the Self as the ultimate goal of all meditation and Zen practice. Now I don't know how accurate it was, or even how well I've retained all the data but I remember how deeply I was moved. In that book I found one of the first things that I truly identified with that wasn't part of the Mormon cannon. The idea of Zen meditation. And that with Zen focus, anything and everything could be a meditation.

What a beautiful idea! If I devote all that I am into doing the dishes and work towards that perfect Zen focus it can become as much a ritual as breathing under a waterfall, or chanting mantras in the temple.

There's a simplicity and practicality that made it easy for that belief to become one of my most important ones. But there are others that moved and changed me.

Growing up in the Mormon church can be a difficult thing. Particularly when you deviate from the norm in a place like Utah. Utah is a place that seek homogeny like it is the same thing as Perfection. I bring this up not because I want to talk about Mormonism or Utah, but to allow for a complete understanding of why the thousand Paths to Enlightenment truly stayed with me. In Utah Mormonism, and even more so in the parts where I grew up, there is a firm and unyielding take on the idea of the Iron Rod.

With my understanding as a child, there was only one way to salvation. Only one right choice. As I got older that began to nag at me. The level of logistics require to make sure that everybody got a chance to follow the One Path seemed deeply prohibitive. It seemed as if God had set up millions or billions of people to fail, and I couldn't understand how that could be so. This was also during the time that I was struggling with keeping to the church rules and was tearing myself apart over and over again trying live up to it. It put so much stress and so much strain on me that it was completely unsustainable.

But then I learned of the thousand paths to Enlightenment. It's an idea in Buddhism (once again more a Zen thing) that there is no single correct path.

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand paths to it.
If you pass through the barrier,
you walk the universe alone. -Wu-Men ( The Enlightened Heart, Edited by Stephen Mitchell, p. 46)

When I was a sad young man already feeling like the Iron Rod was going to lead me far from happiness, this came like a shaft of light.

The last of the things I took away from my time studying Buddhism was "The Middle Way". The importance of moderation. There's many different ways to interpret that concept. But here's my take, and it's not a very Buddhist one. Everything has value, and everything can be dangerous. Through diligent moderation and seeking the middle path, the one of compromise, we can sort through and find the best way of going forward. It's not a matter of strictly taking the Middle Path but finding the worth and middle path in everything.

Even for negative emotions, like lust, hate, gluttony, and rage. I view everything as serving some ultimate purpose. Which isn't entirely out of the middle way, but it's the tree that grew from it in my heart.

There is a great deal to talk about with Buddhism. Just like with any truly interesting religion, I haven't even scratched the surface of this. The Four Noble Truths, the Eight Fold Path, all of those and the thousand different sects inside it.

But I think this is a good first outing.