Thread: Me experience with Buddhism

This series of articles will be broken up into parts due to its length. I'll post all the parts in this posting. I hope you find it interesting.

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Part I

Introduction

I’m writing this based on my experiences with Buddhism. At one time I was a strong believer in the teachers. However, my opinion on Buddhism has changed quite a bit. Now, I could start off by saying Buddhism is no good or it’s great and so on, but that’s unfair. Usually what makes something good or bad is how we use it. Simple example would be using a knife to prepare a meal or using it to hurt someone. I’m not here to condemn or praise Buddhism. Instead, I’d simply like to discuss my experience with Buddhism and leave it to others to conclude what they wish.

Everthing has a beginning...

I have always disliked God-based religions, especially Christianity. I have a great deal of difficulty with people who believe in such religions, but I do my best to cope. The initial appeal of Buddhism was that it wasn’t God-centric. There was no mention of God at all. It spoke a lot about the “here and now” and that appealed to me. Not only that, but it spoke a lot about suffering, which I was feeling a great deal of at the time. Most importantly, the teachings that I came across when I first learned about Buddhism made a great deal of sense to me and I couldn’t find anything like that in other religions. All these factors played a role in my choice to pursue the Buddha’s teachings. Given where I was at that time in my life I think I was the perfect candidate to follow Buddhism.

That being said, in some ways I look back and think I was a bit too ready for it. What I mean is that it took over my life. I became so enthralled and passionate about the teachings I studied them, well, religiously. I lost interest in the other subjects. When I had homework from school I tried to finish it as quickly as possible so that I could focus my attention on studying Buddhism. Everything else seemed insignificant and at that point I saw work and school as a means to live until I finally decided to take up the monastic life. Well, it wasn’t that easy, because part of me wanted to become a monk and another part of me wanted to live out the common life, get married and so on. There was a big struggle there. I constantly asked myself, how am I ever supposed to find “Truth” living like everyone else? I felt I needed to ‘cast away’ that life and live a life that allowed me to explore myself more. However, there’s another side to this story. I also felt it was an escape. Living the monastic life would allow me to escape from the 9-5 rat race, which is something I didn’t want to be a part of. At that time finding a full-time job and pursuing a career seemed overwhelming. It wasn’t something I wanted to deal with.

I experienced a lot of guilt during that period in my life. I (almost) had a computer science degree in my pocket, but I had lost my passion for what I was studying. At that time I felt that if I pursued a career in computer science I wouldn’t have been true to myself. At the same time I felt that if I ever did try and pursue the monastic life then people would think I was foolish. To make matters worse, I wouldn’t have been able to contribute to my family in a financial way, which made me feel selfish for putting my needs in front of others. I also felt frustration towards my family and society for putting me in a position that forced me into the workforce. I walked away from this with a plan. Get a job, work for a couple of years, eventually sell everything and become a monk. One of the things that complicated this plan was my desire to marry someone. I wanted to have a wife and possibly kids. How would I support a family? What women would want to live that life along with me? I was having enough problems with women, this wasn’t helping. My desire to be with someone was something I constantly struggled with. I couldn’t understand how I could ever become “free” and find truth while still having a crushing need to be with someone and have someone I could depend on (and vice versa). Two worlds had collided: the world of 9-5, wife, kids, picket fence, 2 cars and a pool vs. shaving my head and meditating in a cold mountain. Although I had a plan, I saw problems with it. I was really interested to see where I would be in ten years.

Part II

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An Arrogant Buddhist

I continued to worry about my future, but I kept going and would have to just see how everything turned out. Nevertheless, I continued to study Buddhism. At first I learned a lot about the basic teachings of the Buddha and how he saw the world. During this period I experienced a transformation in my way of thinking. I was reading about non-conceptuality and I understood it with a great deal of clarity. The more I read about it the more I wanted to read. It was addictive. I wanted to discuss these ideas with everyone around me, but I noticed a sense of resistance from most people when I brought the topic up. When I wanted to talk to people about non-self and how we conceptualize everything most people didn’t want to be a part of the conversation or just didn’t care. Unfortunately, this caused me to take on an elitist attitude. I convinced myself that these people weren’t intelligent enough to grasp what I was talking about and that I was better off not discussing it with them. I started to view Christian and Catholics who were resistant to this way of thinking as weak people who, like the others, couldn’t grasp these incredible teachings. These were the only two God-based religions I was familiar with. If I familiar with others I would have probably attacked them too. Along with this unfortunate attitude came a lot of hate towards these people. Particularly those who practiced and preached about religions which I felt were wrong and misleading people. I had a growing desire to try and help these people but any attempt I made created conflict. I couldn’t understand them and they apparently didn’t understand me. A half-assed attempt was made on my part to understand Christianity, but that got me nowhere. If anything, reading the Bible only made me more frustrated, although I did walk away with a greater appreciation for Jesus, the person himself. I felt that what he was saying was worth thinking about, but the institutionalization of his teachings is what bothered me. It just seemed wrong. However, Buddhism was also guilty of this. It had various sects and I was beginning to feel suspicious about what I was studying. Why was any attempt made to organize and institutionalize the teachings of the Buddha? It’s something that bothered me about every religion.

Meditation

When I came across meditation for the first time I skipped through it, thinking that it wasn’t important. I just had no interest in meditation. I wanted to whet my intellectual appetite, not sit cross legged and meditate. However, it kept coming up again and again so eventually I caved in and started to read about it. It seemed peculiar to me at first. I asked myself, why should I do this? What is the point? However, one day I had a strong desire to meditate, but I was paranoid that someone in my family would find out that I was meditating so I did it alone in the bathtub. I was sitting in the warm water and it was really comforting. Trying to meditate wasn’t easy, but sitting there in the water was very peaceful and it helped calm me. It was very silent. My mind started to settle down a bit and then I began to think about the water. I could feel it up against my body but when I asked myself what water was I drew a blank. Various concepts like ‘H20’ and ‘liquid’ popped into my head, but I realized at that moment that none of them could describe it. My mind really blanked out at that point. Almost as if I was stoned and couldn’t keep a train of thoughts going. It was like that for most of the day. It felt freeing not to be able to think, especially for myself, who wrestled constantly with a restless mind. I felt very different after that. However, I tried holding onto that feeling, but I was back to my old way of thinking in a day. I’m still not sure if that was a deluded state of mind or if something changed. Nevertheless, that’s what happened. It wasn’t something I talked about, because I didn’t know if it was just all in my head or had any significance. I knew that it was easy for my mind to play games with me. Besides, I felt weird telling others I was contemplating things like what water was. They would think I was crazy. I was beginning to think I was a bit crazy myself.

As soon as we experience something we enjoy we have a natural desire to repeat that experience. I fell into this pitfall. I tried to recreate this experience and my meditation became a game for a while. I saw what I was doing and realized it was foolish. This was frustrating me. Not only that, but meditation was very boring and usually put me to sleep. I didn’t want to do it. Sometimes I did, but usually I didn’t. I would have rather listened to music or watch television. But I continued to do it, mostly because that’s what the books told me to do. The teachings were becoming a set of instructions that I needed to follow. At first I never questioned what these books were telling me. If it says I have to meditate than I should. I didn’t think I was in any position at that point to question these teachings. But at times I was lost as to why I was doing it and what I was trying to accomplish. The books would tell me to meditate, but do it without trying to strive for anything. This frustrated me. These books were presenting me with instructions and talk about ‘enlightenment’, but at the same time they wanted me to meditate without trying to strive for anything. Was I supposed to fool myself into thinking that I wasn’t striving for anything? It was obvious what I was striving for. I wanted to be an enlightened being. I wanted to find Truth. I wanted to be like the Buddha. Free from confusion and suffering. I was told meditation was the key, so I meditated.