Buddhist thought of the day

hobo

simple guitar player
Thought this was interesting to pass along:


Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. - Buddha ...
 
I'm a big Buddha fan. Here we have the over-privileged son of a king, someone the city cleaned the streets he was to walk before he left the kingdom compound, with everyone in their best clothes tossing petals and candies at him, until he started to question the reality of his life. So he left on his own to see how the rest of the people lived and ended up with men who were called "ascetics", living close to nature in denial of modern culture. While living with them, sitting in a circle meditating in a forest clearing, it started to rain. When the other ascetics were starting to get wet enough to want to leave, a giant cobra raised itself behind our prince and spread it's fan to protect him from the rain. Beyond his own behavior, this convinced the other ascetics this man was born to lead his people.

As we now know, almost 2,500 years later, his words resonate with us. Historians think it was over two hundred years after his death before people started carving his image, and his over-weight stylings are more the result of popular admiration, equating that with wealth and a leisurely lifestyle, not the lean and mean ascetic machine he became.

If you want to think about God's world, the whole world, Buddha should be seen as a major prophet. Jesus may have had the tribal ancestry, and as a half-begotten son of God he certainly had a mainline connection, but his miracles and passion have their own resonance, just as all the elaborate and meta-physical expoundings of Buddha explain and discuss topics Jesus did not.

I have a great, and original, question for you. And like all great questions, you need a few small ones to warm up.

What was the first creature Noah let out of the ark when the water started to subside?
I'm always surprised at who says a dove, a white dove, or a dove with an olive branch.
He let a black bird go, and it didn't come back. Where did it go? It doesn't say in The Bible.
Why does every North American tribe and clan, from the Inuit in northern Canada,
through to the natives at the tip of South America,
believe or have a myth about a black bird, raven, Quetzoacotl or starling,
as their creation myth or restoration myth, bringing the sun down from the sky,
quieting the waters and settling the earthquakes?

Hmmm! That's a truly global consciousness thought.
And that's brought to you free, here at Mark Wein's Guitar Lessons.

as always, John Watt
 
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It sure is interesting to study mythologies around the world, and see what keeps mankind together. I recently read about the theory of a common ancient culture who shared the same religious thoughts, and had a common view of it´s cultural background. It has been discussed if the pyramids are much older than we originally thought, and are built according to astrological knowledge. Looking at paintings in the Altamira cave, the paintings can perhaps be interpreted according to present astrological figures, the ox, the capricorn, and so on, which many people today still see as influencing personal character. The legends about the birth of mankind have a quite similar look, no matter in what part of the world we are looking; a common cultural background for all human beings seems not to be a odd conclusion to take? With your question about the point of sending out a black bird first, I still must return to Levi-Strauss and seeing it as a structural approach to the story told; legends often goes from North to South, from West to East, from man to woman and from young to old. In this case it seems that the black bird represents a darker side of life, which the legend say will never solve the problems. Only the white bird, the good one, will come back with an olive branch. If that is the idea told it seems to make sense. Otherwize; the black bird perhaps followed his own idea and just didn´t have too much respect for his teacher, and was then doing the right thing according to the great reformator of Hindu religion; Buddha.
 
Between what you and I typed, Wilmer X, I had nothing progressive to add.
But this week, I got into this with a Baptist preacher up from Vermont, and he got back to me.
He said later on, the black bird was described as being independant, self-sustaining.
I was happy to add this line of scripture to my previous perspective.
The natives of North America heard The Great Spirit, sometimes all around them.
They saw the other creatures of the earth as being directed by Him.
And we all know how North America was a pristine garden of plenty when Europeans arrived.
The natives of the Canadian prairies have an estimate for when the white mans' society will self-destruct,
and it's the same as the Mayan and Aztec.
The Great Black Bird, Quetzoacotl, disappeared as predicted back then.
We all should worry when he returns.
 
While I find the study of philosophy, theology, spirituality, and all that stuff very interesting from a sociological point of view, I sure as hell have no interest in joining any club... But, if I had to, Buddhism would be my second choice, if it didn't pan out being a Rastafarian...

Cool quote, hobo... My own is: Just because I refuse to believe what I am told does not mean I disbelieve...
 
Bhudda said:
"a man need not travel more than thirty miles from his place of birth,
to experience everything life has to offer".
 
Historians think it was over two hundred years after his death before people started carving his image, and his over-weight stylings are more the result of popular admiration, equating that with wealth and a leisurely lifestyle, not the lean and mean ascetic machine he became.

Technically, the big fat guy is Budai, and not Siddhartha.
 
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