Brucenkhamen

If you've just been around BKK and judging by your description then it's likely most temples you will have visited will be oriented towards tourists.

Forest monasteries in regional areas couldn't be more different.

Having said that its common in Thai culture to value ostentatious displays of wealth and not realise the contradiction with the Buddhas teaching.

4 hours ago, Scott said:

Is Buddhism only relevant to people in Thailand?

 

That's a silly question.

Its quite reasonable to ask if your post is on topic if there doesn't appear to be relevance.

Is there a relevance to Buddhism in Thailand?

A thread about string that resurrects every year or ten?  I think we are being strung along.  I hope he has untied it by now, no need to tie yourself in knots over a piece of string.

On the surface it does look like they are packaging as a commodity something that is freely available elsewhere and aiming it at tourists.

It might be a good experience fort you but I think it would be better to do retreats as a layman at places like those you've already mention, Wat pah nanachat, or Wat Suan mokh.

I don't think there is much point thinking about a temporary ordination unless you've found a monastery or teacher and want to spend more time there.

>The best example I can think of is that the Catholic Church saw considerable success in Vietnam (Mahayana background). Still pretty vibrant there. But the Church never gained any real traction with the Theravadan Lao or Khmer right next door.

Vietnam is probably a good example.  You'd expect the evangelical activity in Vietnam, Laos, and Khmer would have been much the same.  I vaguely recall reading that at the beginning of the Vietnam war there were 15% Catholics to 85% Buddhists in Vietnam which is not a huge number of Christians.

This page provides an overview of Buddhism in vietnam Buddhist Studies: Mahayana Buddhism: Vietnam (buddhanet.net)

It's quite simple and hardly a secret.

We all experience un-satisfactoriness in life, in some cases there is strong pain an suffering but for all there is at least a subtle thread of unease.  The Buddha taught that through seeing clearly that craving, aversion, and delusion is what fuels this instead of letting it snowball we can dis-identify with it and gradually let go of it.  When we practice to purify the mind gradually it stops perpetuating itself it's like a candle blowing out (Nibbana/Nirvana) which is the metaphor the Buddha used to explain this freedom.

>Perhaps a course in Basic English?

No, need, your english is good overall.  Just rephrase for clarity if "what it is:" was not intended to indicate that this that follows is the definition of pursuing enlightenment.

Either way I'd rather have a mind that is free, than one that has developed the ability to perform tricks but still lacks freedom.

>I did no such thing: in fact, I stated the opposite.

I reread your sentence, though it isn't clear it's hard to interpret it any other way.

>suggests that you've been watching too many "action movies".

There weren't too many action movies available in 5th century BCE India when these rules were formulated,. 

The Buddha did not teach a left hand or a right hand path, he called his path the Middle way.

In Buddhist practice psychic powers are understood as possible side affects of advanced meditation practice, they are never seen as a goal, or something to cultivate as an end in themselves.

Monks are forbidden from telling lay people that they have had such attainments, the idea being such monks may be motivated to manipulate others into following them.

Buddhism is about self purification, eradicating craving aversion and delusion, and these kinds attainments can often work against this goal leading to pride, distraction, and craving more.

The Buddha practiced these Siddhis with the teachers of the day reached the conclusion that they were a dead end, and moved on to practice by himself to look for something more meaningful.  It seems to me that equating Enlightenment with mental masturbation and the gaining of Siddhis as the path then you're already on the wrong path.

Mahayana does have ideas that sound a bit more like salvation but I think it varies from school to school.  Pure Land I think is definately salvation oriented whereas Zen has ideas like delaying your enlightenment in order to save others, and of instant enlightenment. but it's practice is very much self purification oriented like Theravada.

I'm not sure Christianity has been very successful in gaining converts anywhere in Asia, except Korea.  In a lot of these cultures people hedge their bets as far as religious practice is concerned, they might attend Taoist, Shinto, or animist etc practices as well as Buddhist, and the idea of a conversion experience is foreign.  So Jesus might be just another deity for them.  Also In Theravadin countries it's not uncommon for lay people to have ideas that sound more like expecting salvation, if someone doesn't have the time and energy for self purification the notion someone else could save them is appealing.

I think that's a reasonable assumption.

On 12/24/2019 at 9:52 AM, mekong.star said:

my adopted son will become monk soon. i have been told i need to contribute 300,000 baht.  i don't understand this.

That's outrageous!

when I ordained many years ago the main expenses were the robe and bowl, probably only a few thousand all up for all of the gear.  In addition to that the monks who officiated in the ceremony each received an evelope with about $1000 baht in it (which they hopefully gave to their steward to handle).

Holding big lavish parties, if that's what the money is being used for, doesn't seem in keeping with an ordination.

Here's a long and detailed critique of Dhammakaya by former member Dr Mano Laohavanich: http://www.undv.org/vesak2012/iabudoc/22LaohavanichFINAL.pdf

Interesting and scary stuff.

I don't know why this group is tolerated by the wider community.

This centre in Pattaya is quite well known see http://www.dhammathai.org/e/meditation/page13.php I'm not sure how up to date the info on this page is.

The traditional Buddhist view, afaik, is that Maya (material reality) is the illusion par excellence.

This was one of the most useful posts for me.

I was wondering why if illusion was such an important Buddhist concept that I had no idea what the Pali/Sanskrit word for it was.

Looking up Maya in wikipaedia I see the answer...

The Pali language of Theravada speaks of distortions (vipallasa) rather than illusion (māyā).

The article has screeds and screeds of information on how the term is used in other Hindu based/Indian Philosophies but just one paragraph regarding early Buddhist practice and Theravada Buddhism, and this is mostly about the Buddha's mother.

Mahayana Buddhism and Tantra also get a mention, as I expected though nothing about the mind being an illusion rather about objects in the world being illusion unlike the mind which perceives them which is the ultimate reality.

There doesn't even need to be a "mind" for illusion to happen.

Quantum physics shows that the properties of matter change state upon observation.

Assuming you mean the change of state is the illusion you've got a contradiction there.

I'd expect in terms of the above it's the mind that does the observation.

A major principle of Buddhism, as I understand it, is that the mind is continually tricking us in all sorts of ways that we are often unaware of. I believe Science can confirm this is true.

Here is the problem with your original hypotheses.

Above you've stated "mind is continually tricking us in all sorts of ways" which to me is fine as a description of delusion, you'll notice you have two things going on there "the mind" which produces the illusion and "the trick" which is the illusion produced. You can't have an illusion without something that produces it, other producers of illusion would be magicians, cgi, audio visual etc.

So if as you say the mind is an illusion, what produces it?

Likewise it may have been worthwhile for "the Buddha" to promote a doctrine of "the mind" even if mind was/is an illusion.

Yes, that would be my other point, even if there were a degree of truth in it depending on how you looked at it wouldn't be skilful means to define the mind in this way.

Having gone though many sutra PDFs (looking for quotes) it does seem that Buddhism proposes a doctrine of mind.

Thanks for taking the time to dig around.

Obviously we can see that: There is material form.

And according to Buddhism; There is Mind.

Yes, and of course the Buddha would not have spent so much time defining, developing a psychology, and teaching how to train the mind if in fact it was/is an illusion.

An illusion which does not exist is not an illusion.

Thanks for cthe concise response.

It exists as an illusion, it does not exist as a reality, that's the point.

If I see a monster it exists as an illusion, it does not exist as a monster, that's the point of the word illusion.

From vacabulary.com...

An illusion is something that isn't real. It may look real, but it's actually fake just a crafty construction or fantasy. Like the old rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick practiced by magicians around the globe.

An illusion is an act of deception. Some optical illusions are pretty cool to watch, but an illusion can also point to an erroneous belief or false perception of reality, which is where you start getting into hallucination territory seeing things that aren't there. You can give the illusion that youre fascinated by your professors lecture by chewing on your pencil, furrowing your brow, and making sure to nod enthusiastically every so often.

Actually; there are a great number of sutras where it's stated that the mind is an illusion and does not exist. I will find some and quote if you'd like ?

Yes please.

It's good to see somebody else understands illusion = does not exist.

Whereas my understanding is that everything the brain/mind perceives is illusory to some degree. At one end of the 'illusion' spectrum we have the magician who is skilled in deliberately tricking our normal perceptions through the use of 'sleight of hand', for example, and at the other end of the spectrum we have scientifically rigorous observations using sophisticated tools which can translate all sorts of normally unobservable and undetectable phenomena into some form of recognizable reality, but still a distorted reality, such as X-ray images and brain scans.

To some degree? Something is either an illusion or it is not, you can't have half a nightmare or half a magic trick or half a hologram. When something is not perceived correctly by the mind I'd call that delusion, corruption, misperception, misinterpretaion etc there are many words situations for when the mind experiences reality incorrectly.

That does not make the mind itself an illusion.

The fact that the mind experiences reality incorrectly is beside the point and should be obvious to all. So are you saying that because the everything the mind perceives is illusory to some degree that means the mind itself must be an illusion, or are you not? I don't need all this waffle just a straight answer.

Part of the above quote explicitly states that in some Mahayana texts "the mind is assumed to be just thoughts, and since thoughts are impermanent, they are illusory - therefore the mind is an illusion", a position which sort of concurs with my own stance on this issue.

That text wasn't part of the quote, it was part of Camerata's introduction, and yes there is nothing in the quote he posted below that supports the last part of that sentence. I don't agree that the mind is just thoughts, nor that impermanent = illusory. Camerata posted it as a Mahayana view not his own nor the Buddha's so doesn't need to defend it.

However, in post #8 a while ago you wrote "My understanding is some Mahayana philosophies say only mind is real, everything else is illusion", which contradict the statement in the above quote, so I think once again we might have a problem with the definition and/or translation of words.[/font][/size]

Yes, the above refers to a Mahayana view and may or may not be an accurate account of a Mahayana view, the quote that Camerata posted is a Theravada view.

As far as I recall, I have never claimed that the mind doesn't exist. Perhaps part of the confusion here is due to an assumption on your part that illusions by definition do not exist, whereas as I consider that illusions do exist but are distortions of reality, or fictions.[/font][/size]

"The mind is an illusion" = "The mind does not exist" I've never heard of an illusion that actually really exists. Now if you said the mind produces illusions I wouldn't have a problem with that as illusions are tricks of or by the mind, however you said the mind is an illusion which means the mind is not really there but produced as a trick or by imagination, but by what or by whom?

I struggle to understand how you can't see the difference.

I think the following extract presents the Theravada view of mind and illusion, i.e. that the thoughts created by the mind don't reflect reality. In some Mahayana texts, the mind is assumed to be just thoughts, and since thoughts are impermanent, they are illusory - therefore the mind is an illusion. To me, the mind is a function of the brain, not in itself an illusion.

That quote is a good description. It talks in terms of illusions being mental events that arise and that cognizing the real nature of those mental events removes the black clouds that obscure the mind.

This is whole point of the mental development integral to the Buddhist path, one couldn't do that if the mind itself were inherently an illusion also.