Other - Society & Culture - 17 January 2007

My picks: First, Texas. Second (by a longshot, but I still love it,) North Carolina.

Texas: some of the friendliest people anywhere; huge, thriving cities (D/FW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston,) great job market, eclecticism in Austin, history in San Antonio and Ft. Worth, beaches, mountains, prairies, deserts, corn nuggets, Houston Astros, a great state! And the women...wow!

North Carolina: Away from the yankee enclaves (Fayetteville, Raleigh, and Charlotte,) it's still a pretty friendly state. There is a lot to do--NASCAR, Asheville, the Biltmore, Outer Banks, hiking, Smoky Mountains, etc. The prettiest of the three states!

Kentucky, while beautiful, is no hotbed of economic growth and progessive thinking. The politicians have helped to prohibit growth and development. People are, by and large, guarded and frankly hateful (especially Louisville); small towns are very sheltered and closed off to "the outside." I'm a native who has NEVER felt comfortable or at home there.

2007-01-17 14:44:18 · 6 answers · asked by BlanketyBlank 1

Brazil

2007-01-17 14:38:04 · 3 answers · asked by Kelsey H 1

on the videotape in the news lately. It would of been funny if they were taping one on one and the girl with the red shirt....who started it...got her *** kicked!!

2007-01-17 14:34:29 · 7 answers · asked by J 1

If you had only one day left to live and God asked you to make a difference in the world to help stop war, famine, and ignorance what would you initiate doing in your final hours?

2007-01-17 14:33:06 · 6 answers · asked by ? 3

2007-01-17 14:31:48 · 9 answers · asked by SUPERMAN 4

I don't understand this obsession people have with these young starlets who are out showing their netherparts to the world and taking every drug known to man...isn't there more important things we should be worrying about?

2007-01-17 14:19:36 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous

2007-01-17 14:18:56 · 3 answers · asked by bribri199313 1

2007-01-17 14:18:53 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous

For me, it would be a lot of things like family, friends, love, music, food, and lots of other things. What's the GREATEST thing(s) to you guys?

2007-01-17 14:16:33 · 14 answers · asked by Bria 1

2007-01-17 14:15:24 · 5 answers · asked by serena b 2

Why is it... The Buddha never talked about the One God of the desert, the Judeo-Christian God? Does this mean that all Buddhists are atheists and don’t believe in God? Did the Buddha believe in God?

These are some of the questions I would like to try and answer today.

The Buddha was born 500 years before Christ, in what is now Nepal. His dad was a king, his mom was a queen, and his dad wanted him to take over the family business (the kingdom) when he got older.

The kind of world the Buddha was born into was magical. Everything seemed to be alive. The trees, mountains, lakes, and sky were living and breathing with a variety of gods in charge. If you needed rain you asked one god, if you needed it to stop raining you asked another. The priests of India did all the religious work, and got paid for it.

In India at the time of the Buddha you became a priest if you were born into the right family, and not because of the school you went to, or the grades you got.

There were other kinds of religious people as well.

Mendicants were men who left their family, friends, and jobs to find the answers to life. They did not live in homes or apartments, but lived under trees and in caves, and would practice meditation all day long. They wanted to really be uncomfortable, so they could understand what suffering was all about.

Many kinds of meditation were practiced by these mendicants. In Tranquility Meditation for instance, you think about just one thing, like looking at a candle or saying a word over and over. When the mind becomes focused in oneness, you experience a great peacefulness.

Even if the mendicants were sitting in the rain on a cold day, they were still content. They found in their meditation practice the essence of happiness.

Renunciation is when you give up all the things that make your life pleasant. Sometimes the people with money and power in India would buy a lot of stuff to make themselves happy and their lives more comfortable, thinking that happiness and comfort depended on what they owned.

When the mendicants could see their own suffering clearly, after many years of renunciation, they understood that happiness was not dependent on the things they owned, but the kind of life they lived.

Even all the gods in India could not end the suffering of one human being.

At the age of 29, the Buddha stopped praying to the gods to end his suffering and the suffering of others. He left his family and friends, went to the edge of the forest, took off all his clothes and jewelry, covered his naked body with rags of cloth, cut off his hair and started to meditate.

He became a mendicant, and It took him six years of hard work and much suffering, but in the end he was able to stop his suffering forever (Nirvana) and help others stop their suffering as well.

Did the Buddha believe in God, the One God of the desert, the God of the Christians, Jews and Muslims?

Well... No... He didn't... Monotheism (only one God) was a foreign concept to the Buddha, his world was filled with many gods. The creator god Brahma being the most important one.

At the time of the Buddha, the only people practicing the religion of the One God of the desert, were the Jews. Remember, it was still 500 years before Christ came into the world.

The Buddha never left India. The Buddha walked from village to village... In his entire lifetime he never went any further than 200 miles from his birthplace.

The Buddha never met a Jew... And because of this, he never said anything about the One God of the desert.

There is also nothing in the teachings of the Buddha that suggest how to find God or worship the god's of India, although the Buddha himself was a theist (believed in gods), his teachings are non-theistic.

The Buddha was more concerned with the human condition: Birth, Sickness, Old age, and Death. The Buddhist path is about coming to a place of acceptance with these painful aspects of life, and not suffering through them.

Please be clear on this point... The Buddha is not thought of as a god in Buddhism and is not prayed to. He is looked up to and respected as a great teacher, in the same way we respect Abraham Lincoln as a great president.

He was a human being who found his perfection in Nirvana. Because of his Nirvana, the Buddha was perfectly moral, perfectly ethical, and ended his suffering forever.

Does that mean that every Buddhist in the world is an atheist?

No!!! I have met a lot of Buddhists who believe in God. I have met a lot of Buddhists who don’t believe in God... And a lot of Buddhists just don’t know.

All three points of view are OK if you’re Buddhist because suffering is more important than God in Buddhism.

Sometimes a student will ask me how everything in this world got started... "If you don’t have God in Buddhism then who or what caused the universe?"

When the Buddha was asked how the world started, he kept silent. In the religion of Buddhism we don’t have a first cause, instead we have a never ending circle of birth and death. In this world and in all worlds, there are many beginnings and ends. The model of life used in Buddhism has no starting place... It just keeps going and going.

Now having said that... If you’re a Buddhist it’s OK to believe God was the first cause... It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering... It's also OK to believe science has the answer… Like the big bang theory, etc... Some Buddhist’s don’t even care how it all started, and that’s fine too. Knowing how the world started is not going to end your suffering, it’s just going to give you more stuff to think about.

I hope you can see that God is not what Buddhism is about... Suffering is... And if you want to believe in God, as some Buddhists do, I suppose it's OK. But, Buddhist's don't believe God can end suffering. Only the teaching's of the Buddha can help us end suffering through wisdom and the activity of compassion.

In his whole life and in all his teachings the Buddha never said anything about the One God of the desert.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Also by Kusala

How I Became a Buddhist

Do Buddhists Go to Heaven

The Problem with Sex in Buddhism

Buddhist Enlightenment vs Nirvana

2007-01-17 14:13:42 · 1 answers · asked by Thomas 6

2007-01-17 14:12:00 · 6 answers · asked by beardedoctopus 4

During the day, there are many, many GOOD questions and answers. But this time of day/night, The bats come out of the caves!

Is it that the kids are home from school and loose on the computers? Or is it that the "adults" are home from work and unleashing the internet version of road rage?

2007-01-17 14:07:38 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous

I've seen this in a lot of animes and Japanese-inspired video games: a person pulls lightly at an eye socket and sticks his or her tongue out. Is this an equivalent to the American middle finger? How did it start?

2007-01-17 14:05:03 · 1 answers · asked by deroflame 3

2007-01-17 14:01:10 · 17 answers · asked by ANANK3 1

We supplied people with the stop smoking patchs,gum and or Pills ? I know they have people who they can talk to on the phone
but we are talking about an addictive drug here I'm not sure that just talk is the anser. What do you think? Or do we just let them DIE?

2007-01-17 13:57:22 · 7 answers · asked by jackdbail 1

????????????

2007-01-17 13:48:11 · 22 answers · asked by تشاك نوريس 2

If you need specifics, I'm from South carolina, I'm a light skinned African american, I'm very smart, I love gum, and I'm a little quiet and a tiny bit shy. I can have a an attitude and i have a short temper. See what you can do.

2007-01-17 13:39:10 · 9 answers · asked by crazylove4myboo1 1

Someone on this message board equated making fun of fat people with racism, sexism, or homophobia.
No, no, NO! With racism--first of all, being any given race is not a bad thing. Second, no one chooses their race.

But, no one can honestly disagree that being overweight is bad.
By very definition of the word, this person is OVERweight.
It looks terrible, and it's unhealthy.

And yes, with very few exceptions, if you're fat, it IS your fault. People with some rare glandular problem may be powerless to avoid obesity, but 99% of fat people ARE fat because they have a disgusting, undisciplined diet and they get little or no exercise.
Fact.

If you are fat and you drastically alter your diet (cut out the junk food, for a start) and exercise even moderately (and no, taking the stairs instead of the elevator at work is NOT exercise!), you WILL lose weight. Fact. Simple fact.

I think it is okay to make fun of fat people--maybe it'll motivate them to lose this disgusting flab!

2007-01-17 13:38:14 · 27 answers · asked by Anonymous

Yeah, and how Liberals were soooo pissed off when Rush made a comment about MJ Fox!!!

2007-01-17 13:27:04 · 9 answers · asked by mr america 2

Does anyone else have this fear?

2007-01-17 13:20:12 · 9 answers · asked by Fox Paws 6

ok just say American Idol and all these bad singers. There family and friends tell them how good they are and they suck. I am a horrible singer and my mother and father told me that you have many talent but singy is not one of them. i think parents should tell there kids before the go make a but of themsevles. what do you think

2007-01-17 13:18:24 · 25 answers · asked by Big Daddy R 7

And why?

2007-01-17 13:14:47 · 25 answers · asked by LOFTY 3

In my culture, there's no middle name so I was wondering what's the purpose of a middle name. Is it like another first name that you can use interchangeably, or is it another part of the name to distinguish people? For example, many people could be named Jennifer Brown. Is a middle name used to distinguish 2 Jennifer Brown's?

2007-01-17 13:14:00 · 11 answers · asked by Smarties 3

us,help change our diapers.Too young to have sex or go out.**** and piss our pants.Then we get old enough that we can "Do it all".Then what happens?We grow older and lose our teeth,have no hair, can't walk, can't talk,go blind and deaf.Have people feed us and change our diapers.We have no more sex or go out anymore and end up shitting and peeing our pant's. Any comments on this are welcome-Let's hear your thoughts on this subject.

2007-01-17 13:10:25 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous

If singing end wars....maybe we should send Simon over to Iraq?

2007-01-17 13:08:39 · 2 answers · asked by mr america 2

So why do they?

2007-01-17 13:04:46 · 7 answers · asked by osoroco 2

I can't deny that it is fun to give advice or voice my opinion. I think some of the questions here are pretty strange, others are hysterical. The questions that really puzzle me though, are actually the serious ones that sound sincere. I understand that some people can't talk openly about some things, but do you also think it strange that people are getting advice on their families from complete strangers that may be 10 or 80? I know everyone is entitled to an opinion and I think some of these younger people have solid minds, but do you think answers to questions on leaving one's significant other or keep a baby, etc. should be taken seriously. Do you ever wonder if you are giving sound advice based on the limited facts you are given?

2007-01-17 12:56:34 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous

2007-01-17 12:52:39 · 26 answers · asked by broadwayaprilandtiffany 3

2007-01-17 12:51:54 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous