The path has become more of a dirt track.

[RubySera_Martin]

Originally Posted by Awaiting_the_fifth

Peace to all,

When I used to post here some time ago, I was so certain in my beliefs. I was convinced that I had now reached my ultimate spiritual path with NKT Buddhism and I would countinue on that path till my dying day at least.

But now, the path is less clear.

I still believe in the fundamentals of Mahayana buddhism, but the details elude me. If anyone asks, I tell them that I am a buddhist, but in my heart I think "Is that actually true?"

Sounds like you are basically at the same place with Buddhism that I am with Christianity. I don't know if you were born into a Buddhist community or if that was a choice you made as an adult. I was born into a Christian community and I fully expected to live out my life in that community. I faced some hard choices and am not longer there.

I find it impossible to come to a position where I will openly say I am not a Christian. Nor do I feel comfortable declaring myself a Christian. I have been in this state for perhaps ten years or more. I keep feeling impatient with myself and wanting to declare myself one religion or another.

But I am so particular that it is RIGHT. That I have definitely arrived and I never feel like I have definitely arrived for a very long time. As soon as I make a declaration, I find the clarity leaving and again I feel like I have something less clear than a dirt road. (A dirt road you can at least see.)

I am asking myself, do I have to have a religious identity? I know what I believe. I just can't recite a creed and sign my name on the dotted line. IS THIS IMPORTANT?

I don't know. Part of me says, Yes you are living a lie. Another part of me says, Quite worrying so much about a religious or spiritual identity and just enjoy the beauty and vitality of life and the universe.

Now I have no clear spiritual guide and no clear direction. Part of me thinks that this is a good opportunity to grow, another part of me is worried that I am making no progress and a small part of me thinks that I should go back to the NKT and just ignore all the things that made alarm bells ring in my head.

I have been told that the idea of progress is pure Enlightenment thinking. Hmmm. Not enlightenment as in spiritual awakening in Buddhist but enlightenment as in West European scientific thought. Apparently, progress has not always been the goal of human life. Maybe it is not the right goal to look for but what are the alternatives? Being? Experiencing things as they happen? I don't know.

So now, I am finding it extremely difficult to post replies to any messages. I type responses and then delete them because I worry that wiser people than I will tell me that I am wrong (even though I know how absurd this is).

Yeah, that seems like the Ego wanting to be All. I find it is usually okay to say "in my opinion" or "in my experience," etc. That allows others to be wiser and it also allows me to share my thoughts. I've noticed others use this approach, too. Sometimes the wisest, or most helpful, words are spoken by those who feel least sure of themselves. We never know for sure what the other person needs.

Although I believe as strongly as ever, I have lost all confidence in my beliefs. If that makes any sense.

I am not exactly sure what you are talking about but I do know that at the times when I have felt least sure of my faith others have made bold declarations about my strong faith. Sometimes I think faith means to go on even when we feel lost and hopeless and have nothing to guide us except the duties of everyday life.

Here is a verse and chorus from an old Christian hymn* that have often been an inspiration for me:

It may not be on the mountain's height
Or over the stormy sea
It may not be at the battle's front
That my Lord will have need of me
But if by a still small voice he calls
To the paths that I do not know
I'll answer "Dear Lord, with my hand in Thine,
I'll go where you want me to go."

"I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain or plain or sea;
I'll say what you want me to say dear Lord.
I'll be what you want me to be."

To me, this means that no matter where I am or what I do, if I just live my daily life the best I can and live it sincerely, somehow it will be okay and come out alright. Like I said, for the last many years I have not really been able to tell what path I am on except that it's mine.

I don't know if any of this is helpful but I share it in case it is.

*Words and music here: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/g/igowhere.htm

[China Cat Sunflower]

Well, thanks man! I thought I was the only one.

I dunno, you get far enough and the "path" peters out. Then you give up your blankie because you're trying to strip down to the essentials. Then pretty soon there's nothing left. No faith, no belief, just everyday, ordinary life. Then I wished I could find something to go back to because I had given up all my toys and had nothing left to play with. Damn, I passed up my chance for ignorant bliss and now it's too late. I never should'a asked those questions. And now I can't go back. Now I'm stuck out here on the perimeter where there are no stars. Damn!

Oh well, it's too late dude. But don't you think this is pretty much exactly what the Buddha was talking about? I mean, the desire for a measure of comfort in faith and belief?

Chris

[pohaikawahine]

"there are many paths to the mountaintop, but when we get there we will all see the sme moon" .... you are on the same path as all of us, seeking a better world and a more spiritual world for our generations to follow .... never fear to post a thought .... we all learn from each other .... aloha nui, poh

[RubySera_Martin]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Well, thanks man! I thought I was the only one.

I dunno, you get far enough and the "path" peters out.

People are always telling me that few people ever get to this point so maybe everyone else has a "recipe" that works for all of life because they're not trying to move beyond the known. Maybe they find something that is comfortable then stay there. I don't know. It's just really good to find other people like me who are really serious about this life and want to go places and notice when things aren't going the way they were supposed to.

One piece of consolation. Sometimes I find if I stick with something long enough suddenly there's a breakthrough of insight. Of course, it's not a resigned sticking-to-itness, or a passive sitting around. It's an active looking for loopholes through which to move beyond the block. Maybe as we all sit here brainstorming suddenly someone will say something that helps another person move forward and the block is broken. Just an idea....

[China Cat Sunflower]

I dunno Ruby. Maybe it's because I just don't have the ability to asign something outside of myself the status of a higher authority. I can't trick myself into just believing, trusting, having faith that something else knows better than me. I would like to feel that I'm superior to others in that respect, but perhaps the opposite is true. I may be communicating a sense of futility and depression but that's not how I feel about it. How it feels to me is accepting that there is always going to be conflict and tension and just living with it as a natural thing. I'm no longer looking for comfort and security in belief systems and affirmations. I took a good hard look at my motivations and threw out my security blanket and pacifier, but that came after a lot of years of deconstructing myself.

Of course there is always something that can be done to progress a little bit more, but I think that people get to a certain point where they've buttressed their emotional needs in a satisfactory way are willing to just leave it at that. If we were to ever really reach a true state of enlightenment we wouldn't be able to function in the physical world. So there's always a conflict in accepting or justifying the trade-offs there. How to care and not care? How to try and not try? How to persue what can't be persued? How to accept without becoming complacent?

Chris

[Awaiting_the_fifth]

Well, a fairly successful comeback thread I feel!

Seriously though, it is such a relief to see that so many people are in a similar position.

Thank you all for sharing.

[flowperson]

Hey Guys:

I've been out here on the end of the tree limb swinging in the breeze for about twenty five years now. Being a seeker IS NOT EASY, but it is very rewarding since it becomes self-evident to you that your view of the world is unique and like none other in its entirety.

This is what it means to explore the eternal, for what we are doing is never ending if our children and their children are to make their way into the future.

Have faith. Watch for the signs. They are all around us, as are the angels of our better life who show us a way when we come to believe that there is none.

flow....

[Jeannot]

John Donne put it this way:

"On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go,"

Another image that comes to mind is Kafka's unreachable castle. But then there's Ferlinghetti's take on the Castle (from A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND):

1Kafka's Castle stands above the world

2 like a last bastille


3 of the Mystery of Existence


4 Its blind approaches baffle us

5 Steep paths

6 plunge nowhere from it

7 Roads radiate into air

8 like the labyrinth wires

8of a telephone central

10 thru which all calls are

11 infinitely untraceable

12 Up there

13 it is heavenly weather

14 Souls dance undressed

15together

and like loiterers

17 on the fringes of a fair

18 we ogle the unobtainable

19 imagined mystery

20 Yet away around on the far side

21 like the stage door of a circus tent

22 is a wide wide vent in the battlements

23 where even elephants

24 waltz thru

[Caimanson]

Now I have no clear spiritual guide and no clear direction. Part of me thinks that this is a good opportunity to grow, another part of me is worried that I am making no progress and a small part of me thinks that I should go back to the NKT and just ignore all the things that made alarm bells ring in my head.


You listed 3 voices within yourself, which one is really yours?
Listen to your inner voice, respect yourself. In my view seeking is spontaneus, striving is effort.

Thanks for the other comments, I found them very inspiring.

[Prober]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Well, thanks man! I thought I was the only one.

I dunno, you get far enough and the "path" peters out. Then you give up your blankie because you're trying to strip down to the essentials. Then pretty soon there's nothing left. No faith, no belief, just everyday, ordinary life. Then I wished I could find something to go back to because I had given up all my toys and had nothing left to play with. Damn, I passed up my chance for ignorant bliss and now it's too late. I never should'a asked those questions. And now I can't go back. Now I'm stuck out here on the perimeter where there are no stars. Damn!

Oh well, it's too late dude. But don't you think this is pretty much exactly what the Buddha was talking about? I mean, the desire for a measure of comfort in faith and belief?

Chris

My favorite part is when the path "peters out". I think that's when you can feel the magic the most...when there's nothing else. Comfort is an attachment, toys are an attachment.

It's hard not to have a formula, though..., maybe I didn't study as much so I didn't suck all the juice out of it.

[Jeannot]

When the path seems to peter out, what we need, I think, is a change of focus, or new lens, to see it. There are always our daily duties, our responsibilities, etc.

Nancy Mairs, in an article "Letting Go of God" in the current NOTRE DAME MAGAZINE, says,

"Better, I think, to embrace chaos, which has, physicists have discovered, its own weird elegance, and to admit that no Supreme Being stands outside creation taking charge, in the comforting way the vestigial infant in each of us would like to think, of the events that befall us. God is the whole: the fall, the pain, the healing, the new fall . . . . We are never left alone to face the tests an Almighty Examiner chooses to set for us. We, like the rest of creation, are in God, of God, and God is unfailingly present as Whatever Happens Next."

[Tariki]

Once again I come to this thread.........................this time as some sort of refugee from another forum where a thread I was involved in began to become far to "heavy" for me to endure. Anyway, I just wish to offer a quote, from the words of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in his "Note to the Reader" from his book "The Way of Chuang Tzu".

It seems relevant to this thread.

"...............the way (of Chuang Tzu)...is characteristic of a certain mentality found everywhere in the world, a certain taste for simplicity, for humilty, self-effacement, silence, and in general a refusal to take seriously the aggressivity, the ambition, the push, and the self-importance which one must display in order to get along in society. This other is a 'way' that prefers not to get anywhere in the world, or even in the field of some supposedly spiritual attainment....................For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one's life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one's own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home..........In any event, the 'way' of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a 'way out'. Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost"

Anyway, sorry I am not offering at the moment anything from personal experience. But I do recognise here the gentle and kind way that people of various paths seek to encourage each other.

Thank you.
Derek

[Jeannot]

Originally Posted by Tariki

Once again I come to this thread.........................this time as some sort of refugee from another forum where a thread I was involved in began to become far to "heavy" for me to endure. Anyway, I just wish to offer a quote, from the words of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in his "Note to the Reader" from his book "The Way of Chuang Tzu".

It seems relevant to this thread.

"...............the way (of Chuang Tzu)...is characteristic of a certain mentality found everywhere in the world, a certain taste for simplicity, for humilty, self-effacement, silence, and in general a refusal to take seriously the aggressivity, the ambition, the push, and the self-importance which one must display in order to get along in society. This other is a 'way' that prefers not to get anywhere in the world, or even in the field of some supposedly spiritual attainment....................For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one's life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one's own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home..........In any event, the 'way' of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a 'way out'. Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost"

Anyway, sorry I am not offering at the moment anything from personal experience. But I do recognise here the gentle and kind way that people of various paths seek to encourage each other.

Thank you.
Derek

In Christianity as well there has long been a strong tradition of contempt for the world and its ways. Jesus said,

"You know that those who are recognized as ruiers among the Gentiles [the worldly] lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.

"But it is not this way among you. Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever wishes to become first among y0u shall be slave of all." (Mark 10:42-44)

[Vajradhara]

Namaste AT5,

thank you for the post.

perhaps a bit of the Dhamma would be appropriate here.

to wit, the Kalama Sutta.

excerpt:

"It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them."

.....

"Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them."

metta,

~v

[earl]

Originally Posted by Tariki

Once again I come to this thread.........................this time as some sort of refugee from another forum where a thread I was involved in began to become far to "heavy" for me to endure. Anyway, I just wish to offer a quote, from the words of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in his "Note to the Reader" from his book "The Way of Chuang Tzu".

It seems relevant to this thread.

"...............the way (of Chuang Tzu)...is characteristic of a certain mentality found everywhere in the world, a certain taste for simplicity, for humilty, self-effacement, silence, and in general a refusal to take seriously the aggressivity, the ambition, the push, and the self-importance which one must display in order to get along in society. This other is a 'way' that prefers not to get anywhere in the world, or even in the field of some supposedly spiritual attainment....................For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one's life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one's own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home..........In any event, the 'way' of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a 'way out'. Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost"

Anyway, sorry I am not offering at the moment anything from personal experience. But I do recognise here the gentle and kind way that people of various paths seek to encourage each other.

Thank you.
Derek

Hey Tariki. I know of what thread you spoke, (seems like that forum's been tilting too much to the monochromatic, stilted,and literal lately hasn't it?) But yes in the spirit I think you mean there's always good old Lin-Chi, Rinzai Zen founder: "If you want to live freely or die, go or stay, to take off or put on (your clothes), then right now recognize the man who is listening to my discourse. He is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place yet is brisk and lively." Lin-Chi, also in the same regard spoke of the enlightened man as a man "without rank." Without dwelling place, without rank, yet free to roam. I do believe that pathless path is the life/death we ultimately seek to live. Does that come in a brand name? Have a good one, earl