Buddhism, and Other Contemplative Traditions

     "... much of what I’m saying about Buddhism also applies to the contemplative traditions of other religions. In fact, contemplatives of different faiths often have more in common with each other than they do with practitioners of their own religion. It comes down to how much we personify or solidify the absolute —whether it’s a supreme being who passes judgment on us or an open expanse of love and awareness. In their experience of God, Thomas Merton, Rumi, and Martin Buber had more in common with the Buddha (and each other) than with most practitioners of their own faith.
     The difference is that meditation is the very essence of Buddhism, not just the practice of a rarified elite of mystics. It’s fair to say that Buddhism is the most contemplative of the world’s major religions, which is a reflection of its basic nontheism.
     Buddhism is about realization and experience, not institutions or divine authority. This makes it especially suited to those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious."

       Melvin McLeod. "Are You Spiritual But Not Religious? 10 Reasons Why Buddhism Will Enrich Your Path." Shambhala Sun, October 2014 edition

         http://www.lionsroar.com/are-you-spiritual-but-not-religious-10-reasons-why-buddhism-will-enrich-your-path-november-2013/

savolio   www.dpreview.com

Fear-driven Orthodoxy vs Responsibility for Being a Light Unto Ourselves

     "Every religion, at least sometimes, claims that its forms - its literature, its doctrines, its practices - derive from a source of unimpeachable authority. This includes Buddhism. ... Many times I have heard teachers say that since masters of the past were more accomplished than we are and knew what they were doing, we can't tamper with established forms. That even a nontheist religion like Buddhism tends so often to rely on an inflexible source for its forms indicates how desperately many humans long to deflect responsibility for shaping their religious lives." 

       Rita Gross, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Summer 2013

'no mud, no lotus' necklace from: http://www.buddhagroove.com

"Faith" as a Universal Human Capacity

     "Unless we find a way of living constructively with the infinite, living in the infinite, unless we find the courage to have faith in that which we cannot begin to understand or begin to articulate, then we're going to suffer what Kierkegard called angst, we're going to suffer that anxiety."

    "Say No To Happiness" Frank Faulk's (~54 min) documentary on CBC Radio's "Tapestry" originally aired May 27, 2012 https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2458656554

     “We human beings seem unable to survive, and certainly cannot thrive, unless we can make meaning. We need to be able to make some sort of sense out of things; we seek pattern, order, coherence, and relation in the disparate elements of our experience. If life is perceived as only fragmented and chaotic, we suffer confusion, distress, stagnation, and finally despair.

     This capacity and demand for meaning … faith … goes far beyond religious belief … the activity of seeking and discovering meaning in the most comprehensive dimensions of our experience. … a broad, generic human phenomenon … to dwell in the sense one makes out of life – what seems ultimately true and dependable about self, world, and cosmos (whether that meaning be strong or fragile, expressed in religious or secular terms). … has value for secular and religious folk alike. It addresses our culture’s current hunger for a shared language about things ‘spiritual.’”
     Parks SD. “Big Questions, Worthy Dreams. Mentoring Young Adults in their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith.” John Wiley & Sons, 2000. SUPERB, VALUABLE BOOK!

Photo: boar   www.dpreview.com

Psychospiritual Technologies

     "It seems like our culture is totally asleep. Hidden behind conventional rituals of religion, is a contemplative core constituted of a technology, a mind-training set of practices for cultivating the same states of mind that the founders of the major religions had realized. This spiritual technology is accompanied by road maps, psychologies and philosophies which describe the worldviews, insights and discoveries that emerged as one did these practices. These traditions contain a gold mine, a reservoir of human kinds deepest accumulated wisdom.
     For the first time in history, we have all the world's spiritual traditions available to us, all of the contemplative practices, plus a psychology (transpersonal psychology) that recognizes altered states of consciousness and transpersonal developmental stages. So that for the first time in the West we have a psychology that is adequate to an understanding of the great spiritual traditions and doesn't reduce them to pathology or some problematic status. Now there's a way of understanding these spiritual traditions as psychospiritual technologies producing altered and higher states of consciousness, for cultivating postconventional, transpersonal developmental stages, and for cultivating the great virtues - love, compassion, wisdom, empathy, which the great traditions have held as ideals across the millenia."                                       Roger Walsh

Roger Walsh MD, PhD - keynote address