hug from a buddhist

[bodhigirlsmiles]

hello everyone! i am brand new here, and i wanted to send a warm greeting out and tell you a little about myself. i was born in the united states to tibetan parents. i have been a follower of buddhism my whole life. i have always been curious about lds people and have admired you from afar. i cannot claim to know a lot about who you are and in what you believe, but from the little i have read, i find you to be a remarkable people with values similar to my own. i was very excited when i discovered this lovely website! i hope that this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship and hope, in time, we can understand more about each other and what we believe. i bid all of you the warmest of greetings. may buddha shin with compassion upon you today and every day. if any of you have anyquestions at all about buddhists or our beliefs, even mundane everyday things, please feel free to ask me. i am not easily offended. i am sure i will have many questions for you as well. i know that this isn't the intorduction forum. i posted there as well. just wanted to say hello in more than one place :)

[john doe]

Welcome, hope you like it here.

[bodhigirlsmiles]

Welcome, hope you like it here.

thank you very much....glad to be here!

[Palerider]

welcome to the site....

[pushka]

Hi bodisgirlsmiles, I attended Buddhist meditation classes for a few months last year, and attended one local weekend retreat at a Buddhist centre too..in fact, I was hoping that I may be able to retire to the local Buddhist community around this area eventually but then the centre closed, due to lack of funds for the upkeep of the building they were based in, and now the nearest centre is a few more miles away, and not in quite so peaceful surroundings I imagine

I loved the idea of meditating for peace and for the control of various negative emotions within ourselves, I really felt at peace when I returned home from the classes I attended, and during the weekend retreat I took. I loved the people and the philosophies.

Unfortunately, at the time I was attending the classes, my son's school friend, aged 14, died of a rare cancer. He was a lovely boy, the cancer took his life within 7 months of him first feeling any symptoms..my son was devastated by the loss, I was too..unfortunately I couldn't view his death as being a possible result of some 'bad karma' that had ripened at his birth, which meant that he was supposed to die young..so I stopped attending the classes, feeling very disgruntled.

I'm sure that I was looking at that particular teaching in too stark a way, and that there is probably more to it than I allowed myself to know at that time, I was so upset and angry at his death..perhaps you could explain this to me a little more, and help me to come to terms with the teaching as I interpreted it?

I still love the Buddhist way of life and still wish that I could have given up everything to go and live at the retreat..maybe one day I still will, but at a different location.

[Misshalfway]

Welcome! Welcome! I would love to get to know you.

[bodhigirlsmiles]

Hi bodisgirlsmiles, I attended Buddhist meditation classes for a few months last year, and attended one local weekend retreat at a Buddhist centre too..in fact, I was hoping that I may be able to retire to the local Buddhist community around this area eventually but then the centre closed, due to lack of funds for the upkeep of the building they were based in, and now the nearest centre is a few more miles away, and not in quite so peaceful surroundings I imagine

I loved the idea of meditating for peace and for the control of various negative emotions within ourselves, I really felt at peace when I returned home from the classes I attended, and during the weekend retreat I took. I loved the people and the philosophies.

Unfortunately, at the time I was attending the classes, my son's school friend, aged 14, died of a rare cancer. He was a lovely boy, the cancer took his life within 7 months of him first feeling any symptoms..my son was devastated by the loss, I was too..unfortunately I couldn't view his death as being a possible result of some 'bad karma' that had ripened at his birth, which meant that he was supposed to die young..so I stopped attending the classes, feeling very disgruntled.

I'm sure that I was looking at that particular teaching in too stark a way, and that there is probably more to it than I allowed myself to know at that time, I was so upset and angry at his death..perhaps you could explain this to me a little more, and help me to come to terms with the teaching as I interpreted it?

I still love the Buddhist way of life and still wish that I could have given up everything to go and live at the retreat..maybe one day I still will, but at a different location.

hello pushka. thank you for your very candid and beautiful reply. i am so sorry to hear of the death of your son's school friend. loosing someone who is close to us is certainly a horrible thing to have to endure. when it is a precious child, it is even more so.

before i share my feelings, i want to say that they are just that....my feelings. i often flirt with intellectualism, but i cannot claim to be an intellectual. nor do i claim to be a buddhist scholar. there are so many facets of the buddhist tradition, and people have devoted their lives to the pursuit of their study. i do, however, promise to share my honest feelings and hope that you will forgive any misdirection i may give!

while i do believe that our situation in this life is largely determined by karmic connections from previous existences, i do not believe that ALL of what happens to us is a direct result of whether we were good or bad in the past. did your son's friend get cancer because of something he did in a previous existence? perhaps, but i do not personally believe this to be true. since i believe that we are all connected and that nothing is of permenance, it follows, IMHO, that the universe acts out it ways that may not be readily understood by us. perhaps his death served some greater purpose to the universe and was not a direct result of something that he did. i know that this was a horrible attempt to bring light to your very heartfelt question, and i aplogize! i would love to keep this question and conversation open so that we can explore it together. i wish you peace.

[pushka]

Thank you for your reply, it really is appreciated. I know what you are trying to say, and I can live with that explanation for the loss of my son's friend.

I still don't think that I'm completely over his passing, even tho I'm not related to him, his death affected me so much and still does...

Thanks again for your attempt to help me with your reply..I hope that I didn't sound a little too aggressive in my original post to you, I even forgot to welcome you to the site..

I would like to talk with you more about my son's friend, and other issues surrounding Buddhism, as I said before I loved the people and the philosophies, I still have the books which I purchased and started to study, and have learned much from them about how to cope with situations in my life..If I can only remember to put them into practice sometimes! :)

[bodhigirlsmiles]

Thank you for your reply, it really is appreciated. I know what you are trying to say, and I can live with that explanation for the loss of my son's friend.

I still don't think that I'm completely over his passing, even tho I'm not related to him, his death affected me so much and still does...

Thanks again for your attempt to help me with your reply..I hope that I didn't sound a little too aggressive in my original post to you, I even forgot to welcome you to the site..

I would like to talk with you more about my son's friend, and other issues surrounding Buddhism, as I said before I loved the people and the philosophies, I still have the books which I purchased and started to study, and have learned much from them about how to cope with situations in my life..If I can only remember to put them into practice sometimes! :)

please do not feel bad that you were too aggressive! i did not take what you had to say as aggressive at all. you were simply sharing emotions and thoughts that are important to you. along those same lines, i hope you do not take the quote i am about to share with you as didactic. i am certainly not hoping to repremand you in any way! it is simply a quote that has helped me when i've faced uncertainty about a various facet of buddhism.

"A man approached the Blessed One and wanted to have all his philosophical questions answered before he would practice.

In response, the Buddha said, 'It is as if a man had been wounded by a poisoned arrow and when attended to by a physician were to say, ‘I will not allow you to remove this arrow until I have learned the caste, the age, the occupation, the birthplace, and the motivation of the person who wounded me.’ That man would die before having learned all this. In exactly the same way, anyone who should say, ‘I will not follow the teaching of the Blessed One until the Blessed One has explained all the multiform truths of the world’-that person would die before the Buddha had explained all this.'"

[Dr T]

Hi bodisgirlsmiles, I just picked up a book, "The teaching of Buddha" and it's very interesting so far. I'm sure I'll have many pragmatic questions about those belief and how they function in real life. I'm happy you're here and I look forward to talking to you. I am not LDS btw.

[bodhigirlsmiles]

Hi bodisgirlsmiles, I just picked up a book, "The teaching of Buddha" and it's very interesting so far. I'm sure I'll have many pragmatic questions about those belief and how they function in real life. I'm happy you're here and I look forward to talking to you. I am not LDS btw.

very nice to meet you! by whom was the book you mentioned written? just curious. by all means, please ask me anything and everything. this is not only true of scholarly questions, but everyday things as well (i.e. do buddhists really go without any meat? do buddhists marry? do buddhists vote? do buddhists wear underwear? ). i am not easily offended. i look forward to talking to you as well....it's always nice to have new travelers on this journey of life.

[Dr T]

The book was produced by Society for the Promotion of Buddhism and has a copyright by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai in 1966. It is from Tokyo Japan.

[Elgama]

hi lovely to meet you - I admire Buddhism greatly (I am LDS) and use a lot of the teachings in my everyday life, since I picked up a Buddhism for Mothers and Little Buddha's a book about teaching my daughter to meditate. I love the thoughts of learning from the past but living in the moment and constantly appreciating every little part of everyday life.

-Charley

[pushka]

please do not feel bad that you were too aggressive! i did not take what you had to say as aggressive at all. you were simply sharing emotions and thoughts that are important to you. along those same lines, i hope you do not take the quote i am about to share with you as didactic. i am certainly not hoping to repremand you in any way! it is simply a quote that has helped me when i've faced uncertainty about a various facet of buddhism.

"A man approached the Blessed One and wanted to have all his philosophical questions answered before he would practice.

In response, the Buddha said, 'It is as if a man had been wounded by a poisoned arrow and when attended to by a physician were to say, ‘I will not allow you to remove this arrow until I have learned the caste, the age, the occupation, the birthplace, and the motivation of the person who wounded me.’ That man would die before having learned all this. In exactly the same way, anyone who should say, ‘I will not follow the teaching of the Blessed One until the Blessed One has explained all the multiform truths of the world’-that person would die before the Buddha had explained all this.'"

Thanks for the quote above, it makes sense to me, it doesn't offend me..I haven't looked at the Buddhist books again since I stopped attending the classes, but I will do so again eventually, they are the books written by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and are really interesting. I always intended to visit the Buddhist temple in Grassington, here in the UK, but haven't got around to doing that either, yet..I think I will do one day.

[bodhigirlsmiles]

hi lovely to meet you - I admire Buddhism greatly (I am LDS) and use a lot of the teachings in my everyday life, since I picked up a Buddhism for Mothers and Little Buddha's a book about teaching my daughter to meditate. I love the thoughts of learning from the past but living in the moment and constantly appreciating every little part of everyday life.

-Charley

i think that is wonderful as well....we can do nothing about the past and the future has yet to happen....we have only this moment....

[bodhigirlsmiles]

Thanks for the quote above, it makes sense to me, it doesn't offend me..I haven't looked at the Buddhist books again since I stopped attending the classes, but I will do so again eventually, they are the books written by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and are really interesting. I always intended to visit the Buddhist temple in Grassington, here in the UK, but haven't got around to doing that either, yet..I think I will do one day.

i certainly hope you will....but we must all approach this life's journey at our own speed and in our own way....to do otherwise would be simply horrible

[melissar]

Hi and welcome to the site!

[bodhigirlsmiles]

Hi and welcome to the site!

thank you melissa!

[bodhigirlsmiles]

hi lovely to meet you - I admire Buddhism greatly (I am LDS) and use a lot of the teachings in my everyday life, since I picked up a Buddhism for Mothers and Little Buddha's a book about teaching my daughter to meditate. I love the thoughts of learning from the past but living in the moment and constantly appreciating every little part of everyday life.

-Charley

thank you charley! i look forward to getting to know you.

[Moksha]

I had posted what I considered to be a very nice greeting for Bodhigirlsmiles and now it has disappeared.

[bodhigirlsmiles]

I had posted what I considered to be a very nice greeting for Bodhigirlsmiles and now it has disappeared.

oh no! does that happen often?

[Over43]

The book was produced by Society for the Promotion of Buddhism and has a copyright by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai in 1966. It is from Tokyo Japan.

That's the same one I am reading right now. It's very good,and very applicable.

I also enjoy the writings of Thic Nhat Hanh. "Being Peace" and "Living Buddha Living Christ" are my two favorite non-LDS religious books.

Nice to have you here bodhigirlsmiles. Welcome.

Take Care,

O43

[Dr T]

Yeah, Over, cool! I like it so far too. I'm just in the beginning and find the ideas broad and the fundamentals seem cool. Like I said above, "I'm sure I'll have tons of questions" as I go through it.

[Traveler]

hello everyone! i am brand new here, and i wanted to send a warm greeting out and tell you a little about myself. i was born in the united states to tibetan parents. i have been a follower of buddhism my whole life. i have always been curious about lds people and have admired you from afar. i cannot claim to know a lot about who you are and in what you believe, but from the little i have read, i find you to be a remarkable people with values similar to my own. i was very excited when i discovered this lovely website! i hope that this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship and hope, in time, we can understand more about each other and what we believe. i bid all of you the warmest of greetings. may buddha shin with compassion upon you today and every day. if any of you have anyquestions at all about buddhists or our beliefs, even mundane everyday things, please feel free to ask me. i am not easily offended. i am sure i will have many questions for you as well. i know that this isn't the intorduction forum. i posted there as well. just wanted to say hello in more than one place :)

Welcome - If it were not for the LDS I would be Buddhist – From my studies I prefer a form a Buddhism that has roots in Tibet. Some things you might find interesting about LDS and Buddhist relations:

The highest ranking Zen master outside of Asia lives in Salt Lake City, Utah and is on good relations with the LDS. Our sacred temples are in part to honor our dead in every nation and many sacred symbols used in our temples are similar to symbols Buddhist use in their cemeteries. I personally have a good friend that is a Buddhist monk of European decent.

I am also familiar with the writings of Ken Wilber and his integration theory of modern religious thinking.

The Traveler

[ztodd]

Hi bodisgirlsmiles, I just picked up a book, "The teaching of Buddha" and it's very interesting so far. I'm sure I'll have many pragmatic questions about those belief and how they function in real life. I'm happy you're here and I look forward to talking to you. I am not LDS btw.

Is there a Buddhism discussion board somewhere else on the internet where we could go to learn more about it?