Musings

I'm not looking down on the Buddha, but it is an interesting viewpoint in the photo. You see his hand and knees quite clearly.

Reading The Purpose and Practice of Meditation, Sangharakshita's experience of sort of rigid insight meditation practices are in the 70's in England. I guess I wouldn't have kept that in the collection, it's out of date. I'm reading The Best Buddhist Writing 2010, Vajrayana teachers are teaching calming meditation. Listening on Insight Timer, Theravadan Buddhist are doing visualization meditations. They are all getting us in touch with our bodies and the breath. When I was visiting Zen Mountain Monastery the lovely woman giving us a tour talked about doing metta. I think with the internet we've gotten to a place where all the forms of meditation are available. I listened to a Taoist meditation that seemed rather Buddhist except for the music in the background. Reading Working With The Five Hinderances, there's a kind of Start Where You Are kind of ethic, no dharma and denial. There are no easy work arounds, and you need to avoid spiritual bypassing (coined by John Welwood). It's as though people really are doing a Survey of Buddhism, looking at the breadth and depth of Buddhism.

Looks like there's a copy of the survey for $4.04 in the USA, which is the lowest price for a used book on Amazon. The Best of Buddhism books are 1 cent, but then there's $3.99 in shipping and handling. So after all the free books out there--and there are quite a lot of them--the $4 used book is quite thrifty.

tantric sex magic

Just kidding. I want to write about redemption. Even so this is one of my most popular posts.

I remember back in 2010, Brit Hume suggested that Tiger Woods convert from Buddhism to Christianity because Christianity has redemption. I remember at the time a flummoxed Buddhist going on TV to respond to this charge. At the time I was unclear. I wish to muse further on this situation.

Buddhism doesn't have redemption in the sense that Jesus Christ died for our sins, in the sense that we've been kicked out of the garden because Eve gave the apple to Adam. The whole metaphysical contraption of Christianity isn't, obviously, part of Buddhism.

But were there great comeback stories in Buddhism. Of course there were. Did the Buddha think anyone could stage a great comeback? He did hesitate with allowing women into the order, and he gave them more rules, but many think that was quite revolutionary and feminist given the historical context. Of course the story of Angulimala comes to mind. He had a necklace made out of the fingers of the people he killed. When he turned to Buddhism the people stoned him and didn't give him food because they could remember him as a murderer. But that eventually died down and the Buddha taught that you don't run from your problems.

It's not Darth Vader finally acknowledging his son and saving his life type of redemption, but then again no two redemptions are alike.

Thinking about the Tiger Wood situation, obviously he's lost his wife, and by extension full time with his children. I'm sure he visits his children and whatnot, but it's never the same after a divorce. He's been linked to Linsey Vaughn, the great female skier who is injured during these olympics, so his love life has bounced back. He hasn't really won a major since the incident, and the impact on his golfing life has been quite significant. I'm sure he's lost millions and millions of dollars. I don't really know what it's like when you're super rich, what it's like to see some money drift away from you. I'm not sure how bad that really hurts. I don't know his social context, whether people treat him differently or whether he lost any friends. I suppose a real friend sticks by your side even in the bad times, so I guess he lost a lot of friendly acquaintances.

What ever your motivation for "doing good", I would say if it's a kind of redemption motivation, to make up for the bad you've done, well, there's nothing wrong with that. You might realize that it's not easy to tighten things up and "act good". Our lives are a bunch of habits and when we dig a hole, we often find that it wasn't worth it when we start digging out of it. I think that's one of the themes of My Name Is Earl. I think that's the whole point of ethics. It's not to turn you into a sheep, or to flip pleasure upside down and call it bad. The whole point of ethics is that you get hurt by not choosing the best path in life at times, and you really suffer through not being ethical. And that kind of insight is worth all the tantric sex magic in the world.