Kill the Buddha- save the world

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Polar Bear
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Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Polar Bear »

Here is an essay on a possible new way to treat buddhism. I was wondering what your thoughts are on this article




Killing the Buddha

By Sam Harris

“Kill the Buddha,” says the old koan. “Kill Buddhism,” says Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, who argues that Buddhism’s philosophy, insight, and practices would benefit more people if they were not presented as a religion.


The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi is supposed to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Like much of Zen teaching, this seems too cute by half, but it makes a valuable point: to turn the Buddha into a religious fetish is to miss the essence of what he taught. In considering what Buddhism can offer the world in the twenty-first century, I propose that we take Lin Chi’s admonishment rather seriously. As students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.

This is not to say that Buddhism has nothing to offer the world. One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced. In a world that has long been terrorized by fratricidal Sky-God religions, the ascendance of Buddhism would surely be a welcome development. But this will not happen. There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can successfully compete with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to.

The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religion of Buddhism. Even in the West, where scientists and Buddhist contemplatives now collaborate in studying the effects of meditation on the brain, Buddhism remains an utterly parochial concern. While it may be true enough to say (as many Buddhist practitioners allege) that “Buddhism is not a religion,” most Buddhists worldwide practice it as such, in many of the naive, petitionary, and superstitious ways in which all religions are practiced. Needless to say, all non-Buddhists believe Buddhism to be a religion—and, what is more, they are quite certain that it is the wrong religion.

To talk about “Buddhism,” therefore, inevitably imparts a false sense of the Buddha’s teaching to others. So insofar as we maintain a discourse as “Buddhists,” we ensure that the wisdom of the Buddha will do little to inform the development of civilization in the twenty-first century.

Worse still, the continued identification of Buddhists with Buddhism lends tacit support to the religious differences in our world. At this point in history, this is both morally and intellectually indefensible—especially among affluent, well-educated Westerners who bear the greatest responsibility for the spread of ideas. It does not seem much of an exaggeration to say that if you are reading this article, you are in a better position to influence the course of history than almost any person in history. Given the degree to which religion still inspires human conflict, and impedes genuine inquiry, I believe that merely being a self-described “Buddhist” is to be complicit in the world’s violence and ignorance to an unacceptable degree.

It is true that many exponents of Buddhism, most notably the Dalai Lama, have been remarkably willing to enrich (and even constrain) their view of the world through dialogue with modern science. But the fact that the Dalai Lama regularly meets with Western scientists to discuss the nature of the mind does not mean that Buddhism, or Tibetan Buddhism, or even the Dalai Lama’s own lineage, is uncontaminated by religious dogmatism. Indeed, there are ideas within Buddhism that are so incredible as to render the dogma of the virgin birth plausible by comparison. No one is served by a mode of discourse that treats such pre-literate notions as integral to our evolving discourse about the nature of the human mind. Among Western Buddhists, there are college-educated men and women who apparently believe that Guru Rinpoche was actually born from a lotus. This is not the spiritual breakthrough that civilization has been waiting for these many centuries.

For the fact is that a person can embrace the Buddha’s teaching, and even become a genuine Buddhist contemplative (and, one must presume, a buddha) without believing anything on insufficient evidence. The same cannot be said of the teachings for faith-based religion. In many respects, Buddhism is very much like science. One starts with the hypothesis that using attention in the prescribed way (meditation), and engaging in or avoiding certain behaviors (ethics), will bear the promised result (wisdom and psychological well-being). This spirit of empiricism animates Buddhism to a unique degree. For this reason, the methodology of Buddhism, if shorn of its religious encumbrances, could be one of our greatest resources as we struggle to develop our scientific understanding of human subjectivity.


The Problem of Religion

Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in recent decades.

Why is religion such a potent source of violence? There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us–them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If you really believe that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism, or politics.

Religion is also the only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet, these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and—all too often—what they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. At the level of societies, the choice is between conversation and war. There is nothing apart from a fundamental willingness to be reasonable—to have one’s beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new arguments—that can guarantee we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing.
Therefore, one of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns—about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering—in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. While there is no guarantee that rational people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by their dogmas.


It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world simply by multiplying the occasions for interfaith dialogue. The end game for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality. All parties to ecumenical religious discourse have agreed to tread lightly over those points where their worldviews would otherwise collide, and yet these very points remain perpetual sources of bewilderment and intolerance for their coreligionists. Political correctness simply does not offer an enduring basis for human cooperation. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.


A Contemplative Science

What the world most needs at this moment is a means of convincing human beings to embrace the whole of the species as their moral community. For this we need to develop an utterly nonsectarian way of talking about the full spectrum of human experience and human aspiration. We need a discourse on ethics and spirituality that is every bit as unconstrained by dogma and cultural prejudice as the discourse of science is. What we need, in fact, is a contemplative science, a modern approach to exploring the furthest reaches of psychological well-being. It should go without saying that we will not develop such a science by attempting to spread “American Buddhism,” or “Western Buddhism,” or “Engaged Buddhism.”

If the methodology of Buddhism (ethical precepts and meditation) uncovers genuine truths about the mind and the phenomenal world—truths like emptiness, selflessness, and impermanence—these truths are not in the least “Buddhist.” No doubt, most serious practitioners of meditation realize this, but most Buddhists do not. Consequently, even if a person is aware of the timeless and noncontingent nature of the meditative insights described in the Buddhist literature, his identity as a Buddhist will tend to confuse the matter for others.

There is a reason that we don’t talk about “Christian physics” or “Muslim algebra,” though the Christians invented physics as we know it, and the Muslims invented algebra. Today, anyone who emphasizes the Christian roots of physics or the Muslim roots of algebra would stand convicted of not understanding these disciplines at all. In the same way, once we develop a scientific account of the contemplative path, it will utterly transcend its religious associations. Once such a conceptual revolution has taken place, speaking of “Buddhist” meditation will be synonymous with a failure to assimilate the changes that have occurred in our understanding of the human mind.

It is as yet undetermined what it means to be human, because every facet of our culture—and even our biology itself—remains open to innovation and insight. We do not know what we will be a thousand years from now—or indeed that we will be, given the lethal absurdity of many of our beliefs—but whatever changes await us, one thing seems unlikely to change: as long as experience endures, the difference between happiness and suffering will remain our paramount concern. We will therefore want to understand those processes—biochemical, behavioral, ethical, political, economic, and spiritual—that account for this difference. We do not yet have anything like a final understanding of such processes, but we know enough to rule out many false understandings. Indeed, we know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is much more to be discovered about the nature of the human mind. In particular, there is much more for us to understand about how the mind can transform itself from a mere reservoir of greed, hatred, and delusion into an instrument of wisdom and compassion. Students of the Buddha are very well placed to further our understanding on this front, but the religion of Buddhism currently stands in their way.


Killing The Buddha, Sam Harris, Shambhala Sun, March 2006.

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?o ... mitstart=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"I don't envision a single thing that, when developed & cultivated, leads to such great benefit as the mind. The mind, when developed & cultivated, leads to great benefit."

"I don't envision a single thing that, when undeveloped & uncultivated, brings about such suffering & stress as the mind. The mind, when undeveloped & uncultivated, brings about suffering & stress."
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Ben
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Ben »

Greetings,

You may also find the following thread of interest:
Sam Harris on meditation
kind regards,

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

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paarsurrey
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by paarsurrey »

polarbuddha101 wrote: Killing the Buddha

By Sam Harris

“Kill the Buddha,” says the old koan. “Kill Buddhism,” says Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, who argues that Buddhism’s philosophy, insight, and practices would benefit more people if they were not presented as a religion.


The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi is supposed to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

As students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.



http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?o ... mitstart=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



1. Killing the Buddha By Sam Harris
“Kill the Buddha,” says the old koan. “Kill Buddhism,” says Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, who argues that Buddhism’s philosophy, insight, and practices would benefit more people if they were not presented as a religion.
The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi is supposed to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

2. As students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.




I think Sam Harris is wrong, I have not yet studied his book, and his uttering the above words seems to be with bad intention of promoting atheism/agnosticism/skepticism.

Buddha definitely founded a religion and reformed Hinduism who had indulged in bad practices under utter contradictions what Krishna had taught.

Buddha was against skepticism out an out.

I agree that one should follow Buddha instead of following Buddhism.
I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim

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cooran
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by cooran »

Hello paarsurrey,

This is incorrect. Hinduism did not exist at the time of the Buddha. Brahmanism was the main belief system at that time.
Please read this brief information from Buddhanet.net
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dha ... /fdd48.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

with metta
Chris
---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
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Ben
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Ben »

paarsurrey wrote:I think Sam Harris is wrong, I have not yet studied his book,
Then maybe you should.
kind regards,

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

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Buckwheat
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Buckwheat »

There is a risk to this approach: I was developing a strong "Buddhist" identity in my early 20's and read something that said something like 'in order to become a Buddha you have to forget about Buddhism.' This is probably a fair statement for somebody toward the end of the path, but I was a fool and ran with this and basically ignored Buddhism for a few years. I know this behavior is not what the citation in the OP was aiming for, but if we overemphasize moving beyond Buddhism to beginners we run the risk of them never digging very deep into the tradition.

I think the religious aspects bring a positive element to the tradition. That being said, I fully agree that at a certain point or maybe several stages of the practice, one needs to move past religious dogma and do some out of the box experiments to really dig into suffering and it's causes. The path is simple, not easy.
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
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Ben
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Ben »

Buckwheat wrote:I think the religious aspects bring a positive element to the tradition. That being said, I fully agree that at a certain point or maybe several stages of the practice, one needs to move past religious dogma and do some out of the box experiments to really dig into suffering and it's causes. The path is simple, not easy.
I agree. Yet, for very many people the religious aspect of Buddhism makes it a deal breaker that stops them from developing sila, samadhi and panna. Keep in mind also, that when the Buddha was teaching, he didn't set out to create a new religion. What he found was that suffering was universal and the remedy to suffering was likewise universal. Secular approaches to Dhamma have been very successful in making it accessible to a whole lot of people for whom Buddhism is "just another organised religion".
kind regards,

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,

I find it beneficial to reflect that the Buddha established the Buddhasasana, not Buddhism. Much in Buddhism leaves me scratching my head.

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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manas
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by manas »

The article makes some good points, but I'm not sure that there is *no* place for faith *at all* in the Path that the Buddha was teaching.

For example, regarding samma ditthi, 'right view':
"And how is right view the forerunner? One discerns wrong view as wrong view, and right view as right view. This is one's right view. And what is wrong view? 'There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.' This is wrong view...

"One tries to abandon wrong view & to enter into right view: This is one's right effort. One is mindful to abandon wrong view & to enter & remain in right view: This is one's right mindfulness. Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right view."

— MN 117
The part I bolded suggests that one is actually making an effort to straighten out one's view. Now considering that apart from those with direct knowledge of previous lives (a tiny section of Buddhists nowdays, I'd say), that means that for most of us, this is going to involve just a little bit of faith in the Buddha's words - that there is a next life, and that the actions in this life will have future consequences. It's not 'blind faith' of course, but faith it still is.

So, I'm not so sure that we should try to recast the Path as something that can be fully explained by science. I think that the Path includes science, but also transcends it.
To the Buddha-refuge i go; to the Dhamma-refuge i go; to the Sangha-refuge i go.
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Ben
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Ben »

manas wrote:The article makes some good points, but I'm not sure that there is *no* place for faith *at all* in the Path that the Buddha was teaching.

For example, regarding samma ditthi, 'right view':
"And how is right view the forerunner? One discerns wrong view as wrong view, and right view as right view. This is one's right view. And what is wrong view? 'There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.' This is wrong view...

"One tries to abandon wrong view & to enter into right view: This is one's right effort. One is mindful to abandon wrong view & to enter & remain in right view: This is one's right mindfulness. Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right view."

— MN 117
The part I bolded suggests that one is actually making an effort to straighten out one's view. Now considering that apart from those with direct knowledge of previous lives (a tiny section of Buddhists nowdays, I'd say), that means that for most of us, this is going to involve just a little bit of faith in the Buddha's words - that there is a next life, and that the actions in this life will have future consequences. It's not 'blind faith' of course, but faith it still is.

So, I'm not so sure that we should try to recast the Path as something that can be fully explained by science. I think that the Path includes science, but also transcends it.
I still think you are conflating blind faith as faith.
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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ground
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by ground »

The "save the world" may turn out to be just another religion.

Kind regards
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manas
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by manas »

Ben wrote:
manas wrote:The article makes some good points, but I'm not sure that there is *no* place for faith *at all* in the Path that the Buddha was teaching.

For example, regarding samma ditthi, 'right view':
"And how is right view the forerunner? One discerns wrong view as wrong view, and right view as right view. This is one's right view. And what is wrong view? 'There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.' This is wrong view...

"One tries to abandon wrong view & to enter into right view: This is one's right effort. One is mindful to abandon wrong view & to enter & remain in right view: This is one's right mindfulness. Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right view."

— MN 117
The part I bolded suggests that one is actually making an effort to straighten out one's view. Now considering that apart from those with direct knowledge of previous lives (a tiny section of Buddhists nowdays, I'd say), that means that for most of us, this is going to involve just a little bit of faith in the Buddha's words - that there is a next life, and that the actions in this life will have future consequences. It's not 'blind faith' of course, but faith it still is.

So, I'm not so sure that we should try to recast the Path as something that can be fully explained by science. I think that the Path includes science, but also transcends it.
I still think you are conflating blind faith as faith.
Hi Ben,

I will say it again, although it gets a bit tiresome to have to keep restating it, but hell is more likely to freeze over, than I am to advocate blind faith. I would only advocate informed faith.

I don't see how I am conflating blind faith as faith. But if you could kindly elaborate, I would appreciate it!

:anjali: .
To the Buddha-refuge i go; to the Dhamma-refuge i go; to the Sangha-refuge i go.
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by cooran »

Hello all,

The Buddha never encouraged 'blind faith'. He encouraged saddha or confidence in his teachings, after considering, 'tasting', and testing them in one's life.

Faith in the Buddha's Teaching by Soma Thera
http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh262-p.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

with metta
Chris
---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
---It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
manas wrote:I don't see how I am conflating blind faith as faith.
Neither do I.

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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Dan74
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Re: Kill the Buddha- save the world

Post by Dan74 »

I am guessing that Ben meant that Harris is attacking blind faith, rather than faith, not that anyone here mistakes one for the other in their practice.

For what it's worth, I don't quite get the point of Harris's essay. To me, it seems that we in the West have too much hubris and too little religion and this kind of a thing is preaching to the converted and maybe even more that converted. Perverted?

I am sure there are places and people where Buddhist is a bunch of superstitions and a call to rescue the Buddha's message like that of Harris, of Batchelor or Ven Dhammica, is not without merit. But for most of the Western practitioners who I have met, it seems that their worldview and approach to Buddhist is monopolised by rationalism and materialism. They don't need more, but less to allow room for other aspect of their humanity to blossom.

The title itself is probably the most misused and maligned line from Chan (Zen) Buddhist tradition. If nothing else, I hope it's going to bring Ven Huifeng back to give some context to this.
Last edited by Dan74 on Sat Apr 21, 2012 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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