Buddhism?

[Da_iMac_Daddy]

I've been reading about Buddhism lately and many books and internet resources talk about using meditation on the path to enlightenment. Anyway I want to try meditating but I can't find much information on it. I've checked out Buddhanet.net and I didn't really find anything maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Any help would be appreciated.

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[marz]

I liked the book "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living" ... you can get it used at Amazon for around 10 bucks, or your local library might have it.

[Arden]

Keep in mind that Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion. You can be a Buddhist Muslim, a Buddhist Christian, a Buddhist Jew, a Buddhist Shinto, a Buddhist atheist, or whatever you like. Just in case anybody brings it up.

[adambyte]

Wow, really? huh. You know, calling yourself a "Buddhist Christian" or a "Buddhist whatever" is bound to piss off at least a few people of those religions.

oh well

[marz]

Originally posted by adambyte
Wow, really? huh. You know, calling yourself a "Buddhist Christian" or a "Buddhist whatever" is bound to piss off at least a few people of those religions.

Calling oneself a member of ANY religion is bound to piss off at least a few people of other religions or those that espouse no religion.

~Peace

[lurk]

There are several brands of meditation out there that serve different needs and people. It is also not necessarily a non-western thing as is often presented, the vocabulary is just different. For instance in the Christian tradition the practice of religious contemplation and things like saying the rosary are exact parallels to meditation in the eastern tradition.

This parallel even goes so far as to reach the same ends in many ways. Again the terminology is different but they are the same.

The christian version: The result of focused contemplation is to become closer to god and achieve a deeper understanding and possibly a state of rapture.

The eastern version: The result of focused meditation is to transcend the material world to a plane to higher understanding and possibly the state of bliss.

Now according the the tradition there will be specific words like samsara and samti in the second version but that is not really important.

One "brand" of meditation that I particularly like is Vipassana. There is a nice introduction called Mindfulness in Plain English you can read online here .

-Eric

[dlloyd]

Arden, I disagree with you. My aunt is now a Buddhist (she just got her name this year) and she left Christianity for it. My understanding is that it is just as much a religion as Christianity, Hinduism, Muslim, etc. I'm probably wrong, but...

[Da_iMac_Daddy]

Thank you all for you input. I would like to discuss Buddhism more but I don't know where to start asking questions. If you guys wouldn't mind giving me a shove in the right direction I would love to participate in an open discussion about it.