My Experience with Buddhism Pt 1 (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 13, 2022, 16:54 (709 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt: I think what you have with that single teaching I shared earlier has a similar danger to other religious texts--out of context it's easy to railroad it into any form you want. And we humans tend to be negative. Maybe it would be good in this case to get an idea for a practice I do daily:

"This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born —
May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world."

Just to level set, this is centered on my personal views here, I'm not meaning to project to anyone else here. This is chanted followed by a meditation where we start with ourselves radiating a warm feeling of loving kindness, and then expand that out in greater circles to beam that feeling out in all directions.

Why engage daily in a practice designed to have us create the feeling of loving kindness--the same sort of love and compassion that a mother has for her child--and deliberately engage with everyone in the world with this feeling of love and compassion sitting in the background? One of the reasons I chose to throw my lot in with the Buddhists, is because after about a year of engaging with this practice daily, my wife even said she noticed major changes. Notably with my mother--that's complicated but the short version is that there was abuse involved and I was 100% fine with writing her out of my life. But it hit me in other places too.

An abusive parent is a terrible load to bear. Has Buddhism returned you to her? I realize this is very personal.