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@Taweret 🎶 If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.🎶
Buddha Wonka.
#MastoDharma
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#MastoDharma sorry that I didn’t participate as much today. My sleep is really off and my brain is a little fried. I’m very much looking forward to chapter 6.
Is this the part where Harry Potter finds the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka?
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@juliana I would also like to add...
I think the focus on the self is because you can't really help others escape dukkha if you haven't been liberated from it yourselves. As I understand it, (and I may be wrong) the goal of a bodhisattva is to hold back complete enlightenment in order to help others. It's the realization that if you can't swim yourself, then you can't save anyone from drowning.
(And again, thank you for your perspective.)
#mastodharma
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@summer #mastodharma
That's the insight I took away as well.
I have spoken to others about the Dharma and at first, I would become frustrated that they did not see the truth of what I was seeing. To me, it was obvious.
But then I realized that the beauty of the dharma is in its ability to bring in all according to their levels of understanding. That for some, the rain would nourish them completely and that for others, their hindrances would need more.
Each according to their need.
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I missed the third weekend, so I ended up reading chapter 3 on Friday, then I didn't have much to say about chapter 4, so I've been thinking for a while what, if anything, to say about my thoughts. But here's a shot.
Chapter 3 really, really bothered me, particularly when the Buddha started talking about the punishments for those who don't accept the Lotus Sutra. The heart of my discomfort is that that was an ableist, casteist, classist diatribe that advocated (or at least apologized for) slavery and animal abuse. The lack of compassion for those who reject the sutra — and by extension for anyone whose life matches the description of the punishment described — is in direct contravention of everything else about the concept of compassion. Like, yeah, yeah, all five skandas are empty; but fuck, dude, don't be a cock about it.
Chapter 3 also bothered me because it felt like it also has a carrot to go along with that stick. "Oh, don't you want a glorious eternal reward of riches and comfort?" No! I want a just fucking world, asshole!!
Chapter 4 at least felt more resonant because the Boddhisattvas were like, "Yeah, we don't give a shit about complete enlightenment; we just want to help others. It's neat we may get something more, though!" Because that's definitely where I'm at and where I come from as a person and practitioner. Except I'm annoyed and, honestly, a bit resentful of the assertion that I should enjoy riches and comfort.
Idk this is very much a "product of its time" section to me. Like the point of discussing riches isn't to lionize actual riches; it's to say shit'll be sweet. I get that. But the other side of the coin, the description of torments and what the authors think of as torments, is morally repugnant to me. I am thinking once again of Shakyamuni initially rejecting women monastics until a relative was like "what the fuck dude." He was just a guy. The people who wrote this were just guys. The teaching is not corrupted for the teacher's corruption.
Still, the two chapters together appealing to personal reward and comfort closely echoes what made me lose my drive to participate in the Zen community here. It felt far more focused on the self and the sangha than reaching out in compassion to others and fighting for a better world.
I vowed to free numberless beings. How can I do that by only sitting silently on a cushion? How can I do that by only focusing on myself and my path and maybe those who want to follow a similar path?
There may be times in history when that's viable and even useful. This is not one of those times.
@Mrfunkedude lol kind of. we hear about the pure lands of various future buddhas
@Taweret 🎶 If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.🎶
Buddha Wonka.
#MastoDharma
#MastoDharma sorry that I didn’t participate as much today. My sleep is really off and my brain is a little fried. I’m very much looking forward to chapter 6.
Is this the part where Harry Potter finds the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka?
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@Taweret@timeloop.cafe And he'd have been speaking to a world that was 98.3% farmers by trade, so this would probably have seemed much more down-to-earth.
#Mastodharma
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Lotus Sutra chapter 5 is again hammering home the idea of diversity. The same environmental conditions produce a wide range of plants. We can expect the same teachings, even if they help different people equally, to result in a wide range of changes in people, and it's according to individuals' nature. It doesn't indicate a failing in some.
Different fruits according to their natures.
#Mastodharma
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@Taweret@timeloop.cafe "The sizes of all the trees depend on whether their capacities are superior, mediocre, or inferior"
Hey now, autumn olive isn't inferior to sequoia! This is bigotry against shrubs 
#Mastodharma
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@Taweret I think I need to reread this one (thankfully it's short) because I ended up having to play with Mr Mittens for most of the video. I got the basic idea (and reading posts here helped) but I missed some of the details I'd rather know.
I do like the idea of each according to their own (For enlightenment).
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@Taweret The rain, which falls upon everybody, calls back to what we’ve previously read about the dharma lifting up all beings and not just a chosen few. Some of us need the same story told differently. My meds ain’t your meds.
The more-enlightened beings respond to the cured man’s hubris effectively. You can see more now: that’s good. It doesn’t mean you see and know everything yet. This feels like a stern reprimand to narrow, often but not exclusively conservative, sects.
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#mastodharma Separately from that observation of the metaphor of medicine, I have been reading lately a lot about the emergence and history of Mahayana Buddhism because I've been very interested in the story of the gender transition of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara to Guan Yin. (Been reading "Kuan Yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara" by Chun-fang Yu to find out more.)
Avalokitesvara (shape shifting and genderfluid- wait til chapter 25) is depicted in almost exclusively masculine forms in the Pali Canon and early Mahayana sutras, but they slowly take on more and more feminine forms and eventually are depicted almost exclusively as a female being within East Asian lay Buddhism over the course of centuries. This is interesting, because of the gender transition seeming to have a significance to an emerging trend within Mahayana Buddhism and 11th century Taoism against gender discrimination in the temple. You can see the ripple of this proto-feminism in Eihei Dogen's "Raihai Tokuzui."
In a separate essay I'd read from the citations, The Consecration Sutra by Michael Strickmann about an esoteric Buddhist texts, I learned of a long, ongoing, and very fiery discourse in the 6th century about the legitimacy of various translated sutras in China. Many of them were considered "suspect" and regarded as Mara or false dogma. Mahayana sutras were written a long, long time after the extinction of the historic Buddha, in a different place by different people...
but importantly, the Pali canon was too! The Buddha and his posse in his lifetime didn't write anything down. His legacy was written by transcribing verbal history that people had kept by repetition in what we call the Pali canon about three hundred years later.
The Lotus Sutra is a sutra written many hundreds of years after that, and it emerged from discourse. It seems to be speaking of itself here: as a seed that was watered by the Buddha, but which took many, many generations to sprout.
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#mastodharma a very short one, but just like a koan it contains a lot of the dharma. the Buddha compares his appearance in the world as like a rain storm that drenches the soil, and from that rain millions of seeds grow that are all different kinds of medicinal herbs.
each of these medical herbs is a prescription (Thay here):
"Whether a Dharma talk succeeds or fails does not depend on the teacher’s eloquence or on whether his or her knowledge of the Dharma is profound or superficial. The transformative power of a teaching depends entirely on the teacher’s understanding and clear perception of the psychological state and situation of those who will receive it. A Dharma talk must always be appropriate in two ways: it must accord perfectly with the spirit of the Dharma, and it must also respond perfectly to the situation in which it is given. If it only corresponds perfectly with the teachings but does not meet the needs of the listeners, it’s not a good Dharma talk, it’s not appropriate."
Thich Nhat Hanh analogizes the appropriateness of a medicine to the appropriateness of dharma. He says a good doctor provides a medicine that matches the condition; there is no one medicine for all conditions, even if all patients are trying to reach the same ideal of good health.
This insight is something I try to reflect on: Our words, even if we think of them as wise and correct, are nothing if they are not right for the person receiving them. I have been guilty of saying things unskillfully that, though they may have been the truth, they caused harm.
@neia there's an amazing amount of diversity embracing and meeting people where they are for something written two thousand years ago
@Taweret@timeloop.cafe And he'd have been speaking to a world that was 98.3% farmers by trade, so this would probably have seemed much more down-to-earth.
#Mastodharma
Lotus Sutra chapter 5 is again hammering home the idea of diversity. The same environmental conditions produce a wide range of plants. We can expect the same teachings, even if they help different people equally, to result in a wide range of changes in people, and it's according to individuals' nature. It doesn't indicate a failing in some.
Different fruits according to their natures.
#Mastodharma
okay! Chapter Five: Herbs! let's go!
@Taweret@timeloop.cafe "The sizes of all the trees depend on whether their capacities are superior, mediocre, or inferior"
Hey now, autumn olive isn't inferior to sequoia! This is bigotry against shrubs
#Mastodharma
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A weekly, low-pressure peer-led Buddhist sutra discussion group for the Fediverse. It's not Buddhist school. Just a casual place for us to read and chat and share with each other
Each Saturday, we read and discuss one chapter of a Buddhist sutra starting with the Lotus Sutra
We’re moving on to Chapter Five: Herbs - the parable of the medicinal herbs - this one is super short!
How to Join
Read Chapter Five before or on Saturday Oct 18
(if you're not caught up on the previous chapters that's okay. you can still join in the discussion of this chapter)
Post your thoughts anytime on Saturday using the hashtag #Mastodharma
Follow and/or pin the hashtag #mastodharma so you can keep up with the discussion and boost others
Where to Read or Listen
text (html) https://sacred-texts.com/bud/lotus/index.htm
text (pdf) https://huntingtonarchive.org/resources/downloads/sutras/06lotusVimalakirti/Lotus%20Sutra.doc.pdf
audio with on screen text
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_J5Y4JXVdU&list=PLFb9wBs0vR0euw2b8VJzNtvBl9x8obLw7