I've been subscribed to this Buddhist thought of the day thing for quite sometime now and I'm sure people of any belief can find meaning in these words.

I'll post the Buddhist thoughts of the last three days to get this started.

When you give a shilling to a beggar - do you realize that you are giving it to yourself? When you help a lame dog over a stile - do you realize that you yourself are being helped? When you kick a man when he is down - do you realize that you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick - if you deserve it! - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei


Once you are living your life in awareness, it will be as though you stand high above others, witnessing their suffering, while you do not suffer at all. - Buddha


A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Feel free to post your own Buddhist thoughts, or comment on the ones already posted; or don't post in this thread at all and just have the thought with you.

I've been subscribed to this Buddhist thought of the day thing for quite sometime now and I'm sure people of any belief can find meaning in these words.

I'll post the Buddhist thoughts of the last three days to get this started.

When you give a shilling to a beggar - do you realize that you are giving it to yourself? When you help a lame dog over a stile - do you realize that you yourself are being helped? When you kick a man when he is down - do you realize that you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick - if you deserve it! - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei


Once you are living your life in awareness, it will be as though you stand high above others, witnessing their suffering, while you do not suffer at all. - Buddha


A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Feel free to post your own Buddhist thoughts, or comment on the ones already posted; or don't post in this thread at all and just have the thought with you.

Here's an acrostic to help remember the eightfold path: "vital emc". E=mc squared means one can work out how much energy one is composed of and, it is a vital law of physics just as the Fourth Noble Truth is a vital law of psyche:D

V = Right View
I = Right Intention
T = Right Talk/Speech
A = Right Actions
L = Right Lifestyle/Livelihood
E = Right Effort
M = Right Mindfulness
C = Right Concentration

One's View, or ideas of life, gives rise to thoughts/Intentions, leading to expression as words/Talk/Speech, often resulting in Actions that can determine one's Lifestyle. To develop the 'Right' Views, Intentions, Talk, Actions and Lifestyle requires Effort, Mindfulness and Concentration. VITAL EMC

Cheers:)

When you give a shilling to a beggar - do you realize that you are giving it to yourself? When you help a lame dog over a stile - do you realize that you yourself are being helped? When you kick a man when he is down - do you realize that you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick - if you deserve it! - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei

Ah yes, good 'ol karma. Here is a very short reason why I don't believe in karma:

Dubya and Cheney still live, still hold office, and will most likely die fat, rich and happy. Unless I should just have faith they will be punished in the afterlife. Which may or may not be true, but will certainly stay a person's hand today from exacting vengence if THEY believe in Karma. Social control and nothing more.

Religion is the only thing that keeps the poor from mudering the rich-Napolean Bonaparte

I don't know how Buddhist this is, but I have the following written down on a slip of paper , taped up where I can see it when I leave my cabin:

Judge nothing.
Accept everything.
Bless everyone.
We are All One.

Ah yes, good 'ol karma. Here is a very short reason why I don't believe in karma:

Dubya and Cheney still live, still hold office, and will most likely die fat, rich and happy. Unless I should just have faith they will be punished in the afterlife. Which may or may not be true, but will certainly stay a person's hand today from exacting vengence if THEY believe in Karma. Social control and nothing more.

Religion is the only thing that keeps the poor from mudering the rich-Napolean Bonaparte
I'm not sure it's referring to karma here. Probably something about the unity of man/existence, or that doing evil to someone else is doing evil to yourself because that means you've done evil (i.e. something bad - Socrates also has espoused this view, that the evildoer is just as harmed/lowered), or something of that nature.

I have a certain fondness for Buddhist thought, though I'll admit to finding Karma a pretty terrible notion on the whole.

There is no objective world independent of the observer. - Deepak Chopra

Ah yes, good 'ol karma. Here is a very short reason why I don't believe in karma:

Dubya and Cheney still live, still hold office, and will most likely die fat, rich and happy. Unless I should just have faith they will be punished in the afterlife. Which may or may not be true, but will certainly stay a person's hand today from exacting vengence if THEY believe in Karma. Social control and nothing more.

Religion is the only thing that keeps the poor from mudering the rich-Napolean Bonaparte

Why do you want them to be punished? You aren't thinking like a Buddhist.

In the noble eightfold path, what is Right Action? Not to kill, not to steal, and not to engage in sexual misconduct.

Sexual misconduct?

Sexual misconduct?

Fornication, multiple partners, masterbation

"If you meet the Buddha on the path to enlightenment, kill him."

Why do you want them to be punished? You aren't thinking like a Buddhist.

And this is why Religion is the only thing that keeps the poor from mudering the rich - Napolean Bonaparte

And this is why Religion is the only thing that keeps the poor from mudering the rich - Napolean Bonaparte

I was just disagreeing with your social control comment. If there was no "social control" we would just be regular animals with no intellect whatsoever.

I have only one object in writing books: to demonstrate that there could not be anyone to do it. "The Tenth Man" by Wei Wu Wei

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes


This is my favorite of the three. I heralded skepticism as a principle of absolute necessity until I had an experience that showed fanatical skepticism as what it truly is: a roadblock to progress.

This stretch of the mind is eloquently expressed in,
"There is a principle which is bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
-Herbert Spencer

Fornication, multiple partners, masterbation

I'm pretty sure it is more along the lines of rape.

I'm pretty sure it is more along the lines of rape.

Not if you're a buddhist and your trying to understand lust.

Not if you're a buddhist and your trying to understand lust.

How does this make it okay to have sex only within marriage?

How does this make it okay to have sex only within marriage?

Continence. :)

No matter what one does, whether one's deeds serve virtue or vice, nothing lacks importance. All actions bear a kind of fruit. - Buddha

Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. - Albert Einstein

This is my favorite of the three. I heralded skepticism as a principle of absolute necessity until I had an experience that showed fanatical skepticism as what it truly is: a roadblock to progress.


Without skepticism, the chances would be damn near infinite that you will end up falling into a false, deluded belief.

You would accept every belief without reason, even if they contradicted each other.

I agree that skepticism is a roadblock to progress. If you think you can truly believe it, better to just go with something that makes you feel good/best suits you and even if it is false, at least you had a positive/happy perception of the world and a minimization of suffering during the time you were alive. For example, believing in God gives people hope.

Chances are we're all equally deluded anyway since I can't see humans being able to attain absolute truth. Why not at least make your illusiary perception of reality a positive one?

Vanhalla these Buddhist quotes of the day are good. :)

Link?

Oh and Vanhalla, were you ever a believer in one of those Norse revival religions?

Your name either reminds me of that, or a level on Halo 3 that I regularly play at a friend's house.

Vanhalla these Buddhist quotes of the day are good. :)

Link?

http://www.amidabuddha.org/
I subscribed from my home page, I'm not sure how to subscribe from the website.

Oh and Vanhalla, were you ever a believer in one of those Norse revival religions?

Your name either reminds me of that, or a level on Halo 3 that I regularly play at a friend's house.

Vanhalen/Valhalla.

Not a religion.
I've meditated to the runes, it's a way of describing the universe through symbols.
My ancestors were Norsemen, and the ideas resonated with me.

Without skepticism, Whore of God, you have no doubt, that is true. But doubt is not of itself; it is faith in the contradiction. To doubt god, you have faith in godlessness (god is unnecessary, not there, not possible, not probable, and so on). To lack skepticism, you must lack faith. Faith is the ceiling, skepticism is the floor. With the two gone, the walls collapse and the mind is opened to infinity.

Judgment is skepticism and belief at the same time. In its lack is neither skepticism or belief, only being.

Without skepticism, Whore of God, you have no doubt, that is true. But doubt is not of itself; it is faith in the contradiction. To doubt god, you have faith in godlessness (god is unnecessary, not there, not possible, not probable, and so on). To lack skepticism, you must lack faith. Faith is the ceiling, skepticism is the floor. With the two gone, the walls collapse and the mind is opened to infinity.

Judgment is skepticism and belief at the same time. In its lack is neither skepticism or belief, only being.

To doubt God does not imply that I have faith in godlessness. I suspend absolute judgement on the matter because I do not know whether there is a God or not. I'm not an atheist

Infact I suspend judgement on all things.

Why bother eating an apple if I don't know whether it ultimately exists or not?
because I choose to live accordign to my sensory experience.

Since I like existentialism for whatever reason, I choose to create my own meaning and standards. I chose something akin to the scientific method. Science would indicate that there is little reason to believe in a God; until substantial evidence is found to support this assertion. Therefore I live my life under the premise that God doesn't exist, but I have no idea whether God really does exist or not.

Faith is the ceiling, skepticism is the floor. With the two gone, the walls collapse and the mind is opened to infinity.

True. Sounds very much like what you can get from meditation.

"I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world- so manifestly real was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. We discover abruptly that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrications. - Timothy Leary, 1966

An excerpt from the Kalama Sutra...

"Rely not on the teacher/person, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience.Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
-- the Buddha