Korean Job Discussion Forums

[kangnam mafioso]

any people studying buddhist philosophy in korea or elsewhere?

do you have any recommendations for good books on the subject/ resources in Seoul, for the novice?

i'm most interested in theravada / mahayana strains of buddhism. i find korean and japanese variations also to be worth investigating.

bong eun sa temple near coex in seoul is beautiful as is kwang hwa do island and kyungju.

i just finished reading "The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling towards Enlightenment in the land of the tattered Buddha," by Stephen Asma, an American philosophy professor teaching eastern religion in cambodia. good travel narrative of se asia and introduction to se asian buddhism/ buddhism in general.

is it just me, or is buddhism harder to grasp than most western forms of religion?

[identity]

western religion is easier for you to grasp for the same reason that english is easier for you to understand than korean. either way, knowledge of the language does not always correlate to the content of your speech.

alan watts wrote a bunch of books on eastern religion. i never read much from them, but my brother and father liked them.

read the tao te ching if you're interested. it's taoism, as opposed to buddhism, but it's good.

[seoulsucker]

Just watch the guy on channel 36 giving lectures in English. Fairly good stuff. The best part is watching the Koreans in the audience smile and nod as if they understand a f'n word he's saying.

[Troll_Bait]

[ddeubel]

Zen and the Art of Archery is fairly accessible and a good read. But more in the general category.

I got my start reading Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki......just finished a great read by Suzuki, "Mysticism: Christianity and Buddhism" where he comments extensively on the work of Meister Eckhardt and how it related to Buddhist teaching. Alan Watts though, is more accessible to a Western reader/mind.

Also try Huxley's "the Perrenial Philosophy". A GREAT book on religion and in particular buddhism.

But always remember emptiness is approached backwards and if you know the Buddha, you don't know the Buddha. Kazai!!!!!

DD

[Chow]

Theravada Buddhism by Richard Gombrich is an excellent, academic, introduction.

What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula is amazing (Theravada).

Anything by Thich Nhat Han (a Vietnamese/Theravada) for a more spiritual approach. He's a prolific writer/speaker but any one or two of his books are as good as any other. [did that make sense?]

Even though Tibetan Buddhism may seem different than the Theravada or Mahayana traditions, the Dalai Lama's books tend to be Theravada-esque, in that they deal with basic Buddhist issues in ways that anyone can understand.

[yodanole]

Impermanancy is the stuff of existance.
Philosophy/religion aside it's still
ashes to ashes/dust to dust, but
our water returns to the sitch.

[tacon101]

ooh anyone have more info on kwang hwa do?

[ddeubel]

[kangnam mafioso]

When I say Buddhism is hard to grasp, I know that part of it has to do with growing up in the West. We internalize protestant/christiant ethics to a large degree. Asians grow up and internalize Confucian or Buddhist ethics in the same way.

However, Christianity has a central text (The Bible) and basically says:

1. You are a sinner (born guilty)
2. Jesus died for your sins
3. If you accept Jesus (believe), then you will go to heaven.

of course the bible says many other things, but that is the main message.

That premise seems rather simplistic when compared to Buddhism which has no central text (but instead thousands of scattered sutras and other writings by monks that often speak in a kind of poetic mystical code or riddle)

there is no heaven, hell, god or even "self" or "soul" as we understand it in the west.

karma affects our future reincarnations, but how does that happen if there is no self (annica)? for example, if there is no self/soul and you do something "bad" in this life, what does it attach itself to in order to affect the reincarnation in the future?

buddhism does have some more straightforward tenets (4 noble truths, the middle way -- 8 fold path, impermanency and egolessness) but even those get murky when you start studying them.

i guess that's why buddha was so adament about not spending your time trying to figure out the unknowable.

[uber1024]

[anjucat]

I would recommend Chogyam Trungpa's classic "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism." A wonderful book of basic/profound Buddhist ideas aimed specifically at the neophyte westerner.

Other than that, i agree with the other poster who suggested Thich Nhat Hanh, Walpola Rahula's book (excellent), or pretty much any of the Dalai Lama's books as introductory material. Much more, but it's probably better to go sit...


Oh yeah, as an aside: Vajrayana is not limited to central Asia. There is the Shingon sect of Japan (there used to be other Japanese Vajrayana branches, but they died out), which has a fairly lengthy history and has established roots in North America.

[kangnam mafioso]

[Rteacher]

The Krishna consciousness movement, which I've tried to be into most of my life, is a non-sectarian, post-graduate level study of all religion and philosophy. My attachment to books by Alan Watts and similar authors served mainly to reinforce the false notion that I (along with everyone else...) was really God experiencing the world of illusion (and suffering) and that after the demise of the material body I'd realize that we were all interconnected as God (or something like that - there was certainly no concept of a personal God greater than everyone else...)

Here's an understanding of Buddha expressed from the Vedic bhakti-yoga perspective:

When Lord Krsna came and revealed His transcendental knowledge to Arjuna, Sanatana-Dharma (eternal occupation) was perfectly re-established. But later, from a lack of bonafide teachers, people misinterpreted these teachings and began sinning in the name of scripture by sacrificing animals. The incarnation of God, Lord Buddha, appeared preaching non-violence establishing Nirvana, (the cessation of the self) rejecting the Vedas.

The incarnation of Lord Siva, Sankaracharya, wrote the first commentary on Bhagavad-Gita to re-establish the Vedas, driving Buddhism out of India.

As Lord Siva says to Parvati in Padma Purana:

"I shall appear as a brahmana (Sankaracharya) in the age of Kali-yuga [the present age of quarrel and hypocrisy] to introduce the speculative impersonal philosophy of Mayavada, which is another form of Buddhism. I will describe this philosophy in which the Lord has neither form nor qualities in order to fool the atheists into following the Vedas."

Subsequently, spiritual authorities led by Ramanuja in the 11th century and Madhva in the 13th century re-established personal Vaishnava philosophy (later perfected by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Krishna appearing in the form of his own devotee at the highest level of ecstatic devotional service...)
http://www.krsna.org/cfaq/faq.php?qid=11&catid=4

[kangnam mafioso]

see, now you are talking about another fringe offshoot of hinduism, the krishna faith.

buddha broke off from hinduism because of some flaws he saw in that system, for example, the caste hierarchy, etc.