Post by Bruce diyen on Jun 9, 2008 19:14:47 GMT -6
Hi y'all from here Downunder.
I've been around on Krishna forums since the '90's and many of you have corresponded with me at times, and I was often invited here but held back because I was sorting out my feelings toward the bengali Radhakund devotees. (Also I still have no idea what 'IGM' is, since I studied BR Sridhar's teachings for a decade and could find little resemblance between 'GM' and 'I'...)
Anyway- I've become a Buddhist.
-Slowly over the past 6 months (experientially) or 15 years (philosophically), but formally a couple of days ago at this 'anagarikaa' ceremony where I also took 'ti-sarana' - the 3 refuges which are the basic affirmations of Buddhism:
santifm1.0.googlepages.com/
(I'm not in the pix)
This turn of mine strangely parallels the recent experiments of our web-friend Madhava/Ananda, but is coincidental because the seed for me was planted 15 years ago when I first heard about Dependent Origination (Paticcasamutpada) at University.
Now some may see this as a u-turn, especially as I went to all the trouble to go to Radhakund a few years back to get Gaudiya diksha. And my roots in Krishna 'Consciousness' (Samatha?) go back to 1970 when I was inspired by meeting ('the') Upendra das to want to shave up and become a monk like him.
But for me so far, Buddhism has helped me make peace with my past and see it as a fairly smooth development in my understanding over the past 40 years - As I am a slow thinker it took many steps and they were probably all necessary - hence 'from Krishna to Buddhism'.
So I just spent the past week at Santi Forest Monastery, (above link) whose abbot Bhikkhu Sujato is at the forefront of working for the rights of Thai and other female monks in their fight for the recognition which they had in ancient Buddhism.
At Santi I was given a Kuti to stay in - a hut with just room for a bedspace, meditation mat, and stove for warmth. Mine was on the edge of a cliff, next to a waterfall, looking thru windows across the gorge at the jagged cliff wall opposite. At 3am when I tried to meditate in the freezing cold, I could see glowing blobs of glow-worms on the cliffs. Meals, bathrooms and shrine were in the main building, where most days various Sri Lankan families would bring delicious lunches to feed the monks and residents. We followed '8 precepts' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_precepts) while in the Monastery - no meals after noon. Basic chores between breakfast (7am) and lunch. Communal drinks and chat at 6pm, meditate or whatever the rest of the time. And each Kuti is equipped with its own 50ft walking path for private walking-meditation. No charge but 'dana' welcome.
Ajahn ('abbott') Sujato is a gifted speaker, able to read Pali and to put the most complex Buddhist concepts into plain english, with a modern liberal inclination. He has written a couple of fine books which you can download thru the santi page linked above.
I'm hooked. What do you all think?
I've been around on Krishna forums since the '90's and many of you have corresponded with me at times, and I was often invited here but held back because I was sorting out my feelings toward the bengali Radhakund devotees. (Also I still have no idea what 'IGM' is, since I studied BR Sridhar's teachings for a decade and could find little resemblance between 'GM' and 'I'...)
Anyway- I've become a Buddhist.
-Slowly over the past 6 months (experientially) or 15 years (philosophically), but formally a couple of days ago at this 'anagarikaa' ceremony where I also took 'ti-sarana' - the 3 refuges which are the basic affirmations of Buddhism:
santifm1.0.googlepages.com/
(I'm not in the pix)
This turn of mine strangely parallels the recent experiments of our web-friend Madhava/Ananda, but is coincidental because the seed for me was planted 15 years ago when I first heard about Dependent Origination (Paticcasamutpada) at University.
Now some may see this as a u-turn, especially as I went to all the trouble to go to Radhakund a few years back to get Gaudiya diksha. And my roots in Krishna 'Consciousness' (Samatha?) go back to 1970 when I was inspired by meeting ('the') Upendra das to want to shave up and become a monk like him.
But for me so far, Buddhism has helped me make peace with my past and see it as a fairly smooth development in my understanding over the past 40 years - As I am a slow thinker it took many steps and they were probably all necessary - hence 'from Krishna to Buddhism'.
So I just spent the past week at Santi Forest Monastery, (above link) whose abbot Bhikkhu Sujato is at the forefront of working for the rights of Thai and other female monks in their fight for the recognition which they had in ancient Buddhism.
At Santi I was given a Kuti to stay in - a hut with just room for a bedspace, meditation mat, and stove for warmth. Mine was on the edge of a cliff, next to a waterfall, looking thru windows across the gorge at the jagged cliff wall opposite. At 3am when I tried to meditate in the freezing cold, I could see glowing blobs of glow-worms on the cliffs. Meals, bathrooms and shrine were in the main building, where most days various Sri Lankan families would bring delicious lunches to feed the monks and residents. We followed '8 precepts' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_precepts) while in the Monastery - no meals after noon. Basic chores between breakfast (7am) and lunch. Communal drinks and chat at 6pm, meditate or whatever the rest of the time. And each Kuti is equipped with its own 50ft walking path for private walking-meditation. No charge but 'dana' welcome.
Ajahn ('abbott') Sujato is a gifted speaker, able to read Pali and to put the most complex Buddhist concepts into plain english, with a modern liberal inclination. He has written a couple of fine books which you can download thru the santi page linked above.
I'm hooked. What do you all think?
