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  1. The Rev

    Meditation: Eyes Open or Closed?

    That's a good point, actually. Something I've been trying to do more, especially in identifying the arising of Self. I probably should have said "distracting" instead of "weird" in my post; it's more what I meant. :namaste
  2. The Rev

    Meditation: Eyes Open or Closed?

    I've never really tried it seriously. I have been meditating, and my eyes just sort of open on their own, and I have tried sticking with the method with them open, but it starts to feel weird so I generally close them again. I will have to try it eyes open from the beginning one time and just...
  3. The Rev

    Meditation: Eyes Open or Closed?

    I've always meditated with my eyes closed, but all of the Buddha statues I've ever seen show him with his eyes slightly open. Which way do you meditate, and why so? Thanks. :namaste
  4. The Rev

    Right Livelihood

    As one of the eight in the Eightfold Path, Right Livelihood is important. And, since I'm currently unemployed and looking for a new job, I want to do something that will be more in line with the Dharma. I used to be a manager and engineer in a number of manufacturing companies; I'm very good...
  5. The Rev

    Rebirth

    I think what koan said pretty much sums it up. I don't have a specific book that I can point to, other than any good book on Zen, that breaks that idea down. It's just something that is taught by my teacher in his Dharma talks. It's a pretty fundamental idea of Ch'an (which is the Chinese...
  6. The Rev

    Rebirth

    I practice Chan, and this is pretty close to how my Dharma teacher has explained it. The thing that still confuses me is interbeing. If everything is mind, and karmic forces are just like currents in the water, then every mindstream must be part of every other mindstream. This would make...
  7. The Rev

    The Present Moment

    Cool! :namaste
  8. The Rev

    The Present Moment

    In the same way that everything happens now, it also happens here. That is, there is no "there", except as it is experienced "here". In fact, now IS here, in a temporal sense. One way to think of is is, the future is ahead, the past is behind, and the present is right here. And in the same...
  9. The Rev

    The Present Moment

    It's a contradiction. It's always now, yet now has no substance. That was the point I was trying to make. Personally, I think that the contradiction must be resolved in order to see how things really are. :namaste
  10. The Rev

    The Present Moment

    The present moment is like a point on a timeline. If you make a line from one hour ago to one hour from now, you cannot precisely locate the present moment on it. You could magnify it by many billions of times, and yet the point on the line would never be more than a point. In this way it has...
  11. The Rev

    The Present Moment

    Everything occurs in the present. The past and future are just ideas we have, and they are experienced in the present. Everything that arises and falls away in mind does so right now. The thing of it is, the present has no substance. Even a millisecond can straddle it, with half its...
  12. The Rev

    Zen driving

    Drive mindfully. That's a lot safer than driving while allowing one's mind to drift off in thought. :namaste
  13. The Rev

    What would the real Siddhartha Gautama have looked like?

    That's what I was hoping to see, too, but I haven't been able to find anything like that. :namaste
  14. The Rev

    What would the real Siddhartha Gautama have looked like?

    So, probably not like this? :facepalm: :namaste
  15. The Rev

    Song of the Mind

    My Dharma teacher introduced me to this poem yesterday. The first two lines, alone, encapsulate deep understanding: "The nature of the mind is non-arising, What need is there of knowledge and views?" The poem is "Song of the Mind" by Niutou Farong (594-657) and the link to the whole...
  16. The Rev

    Buddhism & Discipline

    I see. I think my Dharma teacher would say that you can't get what you want, ultimately, because the "you" part of the equation doesn't exist. It is in learning not to attach to things that we come to see this, and when we do, we become liberated from the illusion of self, and therefore from...
  17. The Rev

    Buddhism & Discipline

    If I'm reading this correctly, it sounds like the question is, "Isn't an effort toward mindfulness also an attachment to mindfulness?" This would be true if effort were equal to attachment. However, in mindfulness comes a clear view of things, whereas in attachment there is delusion (the idea...
  18. The Rev

    Warrior Monks

    If Christianity can get from Jesus' admonition to "turn the other cheek" to the Spanish Inquisition, then it's safe to say that literally any act can be rationalized to abide faithfully with any religion. :namaste
  19. The Rev

    What would the real Siddhartha Gautama have looked like?

    I am inclined to think that many of those marks and characteristics are largely part of the myth of the Buddha (like the idea that he spoke at the moment of his birth, for example). I'm more interested in what regular people of that time and place in the world looked like. I'm sure Siddhartha...
  20. The Rev

    What would the real Siddhartha Gautama have looked like?

    I remember seeing an image which anthropologists created to show what the historical Jesus, had he really existed (not debating this either way), would have looked like, based on what they knew of the different races of people who lived in the area at the time, and what their defining physical...
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