(no subject)

[zana16]

It's a good thing I decided not to become a Buddhist nun, because starting last week I have been having a huge crisis of faith.

I have commitments at the Center, commitments I'm not ready to back out of -- for one thing, my teacher asked me to teach a class next month, which is an honor and also terrifying -- but it's very weird going to class when I have to reexamine everything with "Do I still believe this? Really?"

I think it was mayhap who once commented to me about "hacking the human experience," and it's weird -- reciting the prayers for going for refuge still calms and comforts me just as much as it did when I had (admittedly limited) faith. I'm still persisting with the Vajrayogini mantras daily, and I'm going to go to the Quick Path to Great Bliss ritual tomorrow to see if my heart's still in it. The Avalokiteshvara mantra was actually more powerful for me today than it usually is. But the rest... I don't know. Tara, though, is a rock; I went Thursday for Tara practice and sat there with tears streaming down my face cause I'd thought losing my faith would mean losing her, and it didn't.

Today we did a Tantra daycourse, and it was very technical-discussion instead of blissful-meditation, and I couldn't manage the meditation well even though my concentration was better than usual. But it was great to see a few Sangha friends. There was one point where everybody was talking about samsara and how they were so psyched to be on the path to liberation and it was all so much Kadampa-speak and I was participating, I knew all the words, even the motivations behind the word, but also I was kind of like "I believed this, maybe I still believe it, I don't know, but it's scary to me how they're getting their groupthink on." And I inherited my distrust of religion from my father, so I kept thinking "we sound like a cult" which really applies to any discussion of religion between people to share the same faith, but the dichotomy was weird.

So I decided to go to book group (first had to find an internet cafe to download and read the book, because Google Accounts decided to suck yesterday -- first and last time I plan to use them) and there were lots of fandom people and they were awesome and totally had their own internal speak, which I am much more comfortable with for whatever reason. So yay fandom!

Comments

[twistedchick]

I've been uncomfortable with the word 'believe' for years, because for me it tends to lead to a lot of head games that do not help anything. Would it be a useful exercise to substitute 'trust' for 'believe'? I have found that if I don't think about intellectual belief but about what I trust, what is reliable, it's easier to deal with some of the rest of it. YMMV, of course.

[woah-its-kevin.livejournal.com]

I, personally, feel that the zen masters know what's up when they say that it's best for us not to cling to dogma-texts, rituals, etc. That's not to say that texts and rituals can't be used by people, just not clung to. Meditation definitely nourishes the soul, but everything else in your practice is pretty much personal preference. Trust your heart; only you know what's right for you. =)