Stories of the Lotus Sutra - Chapter 6: Shariputra

[Bion]

Those who slander the sutra have to listen to electronic dance music for ten thousand kalphas?

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō

LOL.. you know what...

gassho
sat lah

[Ryūdō-Liúdào]

I’m back after a vaycay, so it’s time to play “ketchup.”

I also felt some cross-religious overtones here. I think this is pretty natural. After all, when we come from one cultural background and encounter something quite different, we tend to interpret it through the lens we already have. That lens doesn’t just disappear overnight.

I saw this in my own experience. Growing up around the Baháʼí faith, I was taught to understand the Buddha as something like a prophet of the same God found in Abrahamic traditions. I suppose I was lucky to start questioning and exploring religious philosophy and metaphysics in grade 5. Realizing that what I had been taught was only part of the picture led to a lifetime of “full-time questioning.” (High five, Socrates!)

Having every standard worldview shattered one after another is much easier, and a lot more fun, when you're still busy playing with Lego blocks!

As Seido mentioned:

The Buddha appears to people in the way that they need. How have my needs shaped the way this practice appears to me? It’s a question that still sits with me.

And equally, how have other people’s needs shaped the way the Buddha appears to them? Understanding that our needs are unique to us, maybe the things that seem so alien and repulsive to me will be critically important to another. Still, we walk this Way together.

It seems to me that each of us encounters the Way through our own conditions and experiences. What feels strange or even off-putting to one person may be exactly what another needs at that moment. Still, we’re walking the same path together.

When I look through my own lens, I tend to notice things like ritual, structure, and doctrine are keystones of religion; while being drawn more toward direct experience, “ordinary mind,” just practicing, just living. That seems to be the form the teaching takes for me.

More and more, I find myself content simply being a householder, practicing and living day to day. Like Layman Páng said, “My daily activities are nothing special… hauling water and carrying firewood.”

Gasshō,
流道-Ryūdō-Liúdào
Satlah