Who can help me with Buddhism?

Question

I don't want to read FAQ's about it on websites. I want to actually talk to someone who is a Buddhist and can help another person (i.e. me) make an important decision.

Okay?

Answer 1

You've been vague in your question, pertaining to what your important decision is.

What specifically did you need to know ?
Would like to help you, if I can.

Our family:wife, 2 children, and myself are practicing Tibetan Buddhists. Its a philisophical way of life for us, which provides much purpose, peace of mind, and happiness. Tibetan Buddhism has greatly helped us to live free from stress, providing contenment and peace. It has helped us enormously in our relationships with one another, and with friends, family, and all of humanity.

Buddhists do not convert, or attempt to convince others to come over to The Middle Way. *That is not our way, as Buddhists.*
Buddhists respect the free will of all people.
We do not judge, criticize, nor condemn others, for all people must find their way to peace of mind and happiness, and for a person, one certain path may work best, for another maybe the Buddhist Path will work best.

It is hard what to know to inform you of, without specifically knowing what your question(s), are.

The nature of Buddhims is to understand suffering, and its causes. No one has peace or happiness when there is a lot of suffering in their lives. Even discontentment is a cause of suffering. Siddhartha Gautama layed out a plan to end our suffering. It is laid out in The Middle Way, or the Noble Eightfold Path. The Middle Way is the means to tranforming our minds. Even Scientists and Psychologists state that the mind is the cause of our suffering, and our hapiness. As our minds are tranformed, our lives are transformed. We acquire a stable peace of mind, a goal/purpose, and happiness.
The 2nd book, I read (on Buddhism) which helped me so very much {and I applied, still apply to this day) is "Open Heart, Clear Mind." By: Thubten Chodron. {The Buddhist approach to peace of mind, and happiness). She, the auther is such an excellent author, easy to follow and understand. The first
book I ever read, actually was also by her, and this book I read before ever deciding to get into Buddhism. It is called "Working with Anger" {how to Cultivate Patience). I had found this book in the library, when researching how to successfully overcome impatience, and anger.
For when I really struggled with impatience and anger, I realized that I did not really have peace of mind.

I would never trade the peace of mind and happiness I and the wife and kids have, for anything - ever. The Middle Way has proven itself already to be so very effective for us in every way. We are much more calm, more mindful/aware in life, appreciate humanity more, and look forward to what the future holds for us.

Suppose you could call this our personal testimony. Did not know what to say exactly since the question you asked was not specific. Hope I was able to help you some.

I will look to answering your future questions, but much less lengthly answers to you in the future.

With Metta {loving-kindness and friendship).

P.S - decided to type up for you some information, hopefully it interests you, on Love vs. selfish attachments. *It is by Thubten Chodron, the author of those two books I mentioned.*

*Please Patiently read this.* Thank. Enjoy.

**LOVE vs. selfish Attachment.**

[A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective].

*What in the world is the difference between loving a person and being selfishly attached to them?
Love is the sincere wish for others to be happy, and to be free from suffering.
Having realistically recognized others' kindness as well as their faults, love is always focused on the other person’s welfare. We have No ulterior motives to fulfill our self-interest, or to fulfill our desires; to love others simply because they exist.
Attachment, on the other hand, exaggerates others' good qualities and makes us crave to be with them. When we're with them, we're happy, but when we're separated from them, we are often miserable. Attachment is linked with expectations of what others should be or do.
Is love as it is usually understood in our society
really love? or attachment ? or even possibly for some, only selfish lust.
Let us examine this a bit more. Generally we are attracted to people either because they have qualities we value or because they help us in some way. If we observe our own thought processes mindfully, and carefully - we'll notice that we look for specific qualities in others.
Some of these qualities we find attractive, others are those our parents, or society value.
We examine someone's looks, body, education,
financial situation, social status. This is how most of us decide on whether or not the person holds any true value to us.
In addition, we judge people as worthwhile according to how they relate to us. If they help us, praise us, make us feel secure, listen to what we have to say, care for us when we are sick or depressed, we consider them good people, and it is this type of people we are most likely to be more attracted to.

But this is very biased, for we judge them only in terms of how they relate to "us", as if we are the most important person in the world.
After we've judged certain people to be good for us, whenever we see them it appears to us as if goodness is coming from them, but if we are more aware, we recognize that we have projected this goodness onto them.

Desiring to be with the people a lot who make us feel good, we become emotional yo-yo's -
when we're with these people, we're Up, when we're not with these people, we're Down.

Furthermore, we form fixed concepts of what our relationships with those people will be and thus have expectations of them. When they do not live up to our expectations of them, we're very disappointed, or may become angry !
We want them to change so that they will they will match what we think they are. But our projections and expectations come from our own minds, not from the other people.
Our problems arise not because others aren't
who we thought they we're, but because we mistakenly thought they were something they
aren't.
Checklist: "I Love You if __________ "
What we call love is most often attachment.
It is actually a disturbing attitude that overestimates the qualities of another person.
We then cling to tightly to that person, thinking our happiness depends on that person.
"Love, on the other hand, is an open and very calm, relaxed attitude. We want someone to be happy, and free from suffering simply because they exist. While attachment is uncontrolled and much too sentimental, Love is direct and powerful. Attachment obscures our judgment and we become impatient, angry, and impartial, helping only our dear ones and harming those who we don't like. Love builds up others, and clarifies our minds, and we
access a situation by thinking of the greatest good for everyone. Attachment is based on
selfishness, while Love is founded upon cherishing others, even those who do not look very appealing to the eyes. Love looks beyond
all the superficial appearances, and dwells on the fact that they are just like us: they want inner peace, happiness, and want to avoid suffering. If we see unattractive, dirty, ignorant people, we feel repulsed because our selfish minds want to know attractive, intellectual, clean, and talented people. Love, on the other hand, never evaluates others by these superficial standards and looks much deeper into the person. Love recognizes that regardless of the others' appearances, their experience is the same as ours: they seek inner peace, to be happy, to be free from sufferings, and to do their best to avoid problems.
When we're attached, we're not mentally and emotionally free. We overly depend on and cling to another person to fulfill our mental and especially our emotional needs. We fear losing the person, feeling we'd be incomplete without him.
This does not mean that we should suppress our emotional needs or become aloof, alone and totally independent, for that too does not solve the problem. We must simply realize our unrealistic needs, and slowly seek to eliminate them. Some emotional needs may be so strong that they can't be dissolved immediately.
If we try to suppress them or pretend they do not exist, we become anxious, insecure, falling into a depression. In this case, we can do our best to fulfill our needs while simultaneously working gradually to subdue them.
"The core problem is we seek to be loved, rather than to love. We yearn to be understood by others rather than to understand them. In all honesty, our sense of emotional insecurities comes from the selfishness obscuring our own
minds. 'We can develop self-confidence by recognizing our inner potential to become a selfless human being with many, magnificent qualities, then we'll develop a true and accurate feeling of self-confidence. And
then we'll seek to increase true love, without attachments, to increase compassion, to cultivate patience and understanding, as well as generosity, concentration and wisdom.'

'Under the influence of attachment we're bound by our emotional reactions to others. When they are nice to us, we're happy. When they ignore us, or speak sharply to us, we take it personally and are unhappy. But pacifying attachment doesn't mean we become hard-hearted. Rather, without attachment there will be space in our hearts and minds for genuine Affection and Impartial Love for them.
We'll be actively involved with them.
If we learn to subdue our attachments, we can most definitely have successful friendships and personal relationships with others. These relationships will be richer because of the freedom and respect - the relationships will be based on. We'll care about the happiness and the misery of all human beings equally, simply because everyone is the same in wanting and needing inner peace, happiness, and not wanting to suffer. However, our lifestyles and interests may be more compatible with those of some people more so than with others and that is alright. In any case, our relationships will be based on mutual Love, mutual interests, and the wish to help each other in life.*

Answer 2

Buddhist, is in my heart and will always be, and as more days go past me, my heart, and my Spirit will continue moving a lot closer to such reality......and because (Buddhism) is a reality, for my self and perhaps for others, that essential love I need, and we need for our self's to identified our inert self, the living energy, and the being, we should call "The human self", I plan to keep my self open to any new revelations I will be able to perceived, specially from Tibet. Tibet, the Potala, and the Godly Image of the Dali Lama, are to me, second, although because where I'm in the West, I see my self, been more responsible, to continue following the western civilization believes, to which I will identified my self as Christian, but, and to my knowledge better yet as Catholic, simply because I don't which ever to be seeing, nor perceived by my own pears, as a protestant. Although, and because of my deep understanding of God, Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, muslin, Islam, as well than Judaism, as well than many different philosophers, theosophy's, Platonism etc., I have chosen to be a Christian and pursue my purposes in life as such. taking in consideration the many obstacles anyone will encounter to achieved the true, by simply becoming part of a non-wester believed and religion where the practicwe of such expecific religion a/o believed will be always interfearing with yours, my, or others social -practices?, In despite of which I deny my self any participation whit any so call Society, as the true reprecentation of any Country, and its boundaries, instead I have learn my self to recognise my society, within any, Human a/o Intelligent being, person, more peoples, a/o Individual, that can open and keep her/his mind open to the posibilities that there is a God, that also a heavenly Father, was the creator of humanity, and the human life, a life that His Son lost trying proving to others, that life was the gift of God to each and every soul, molecule and Spirit, as creation, and that is why I firmy believed that "Life is God, bussiness". I can say no more its up to you, to understand this and decide.<< God bless you.>>

Answer 3

I would check out the book "entering the stream". its gives some history and general guildines and stories.

Buddhism is just like christianity. There are several sects out there, all with different views.

I am not a Buddhist but i lived with a family that was very devout and i have a deep respect for the teachings.

the most interesting story i heard on this was (not sourced but sounds right)

"buddha himself said, to enter nirvana, one must even look past buddism itself!"

my friend told me that...nice food for thought.

Answer 4

While I am not a Buddhist, I do not have anything to sell you either.

Remember if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you only ask one Buddhist, you will get the answer that looks like a nail to them.

Best of luck on your question.

Elder Norm
www.aro-religion.org

Answer 5

I followed Zen for a while. Now I'm more towards Taoism (which overlaps with Chan - Chinese Zen).

A Wiki of my old 'teacher' is below. I accept mail if it'd help.
.

Answer 6

I am a buddhist, hope I can help - my e-mail is [e-mail]

Answer 7

feel free to email me any questions at [e-mail]