Do you find the
origins of
GNN to be consonant with your Buddhist practice?
(not trolling, I'm sincerely interested)
I'm not
quite sure what you mean by your question so I'll answer with this...
IMO, everyone is entitled to pick their flavor of spirituality. For me, Buddhism checked a lot of boxes and provided guidance and answers in order to navigate this crazy thing we call life.
One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is to have compassion for all living things because we all have one form of suffering or another. Whether its the want or desire to have more money, more friends, more celebrity status, more...
WHATEVER. The issue that consumes humanity is that we, on a grand scale, dont know how to live with "enough". We dont know how to live with just enough money, friends, or social status because our deep rooted, neanderthal brains are always afraid of not having something that we
think we need. Food and water are absolute necessities. The newest car or latest iPhone is not. Consumerism on a global scale hasn't done us any favors either but at some point, I think collectively, we will realize that we dont need the latest and greatest of anything and that what we have in this very moment, is enough to make us happy. That might happen in the next 10 years or next 10,000 years.
The teachings that countless monks have discovered throughout the centuries is that compassion and acceptance can ultimately help yourself and others out of this eternal suffering. Since I started my Buddhist journey a few years ago, I've learned to change my perspective on how I see people and the world as a whole. For example, a few years ago, I would have assumed that the pan-handler begging for money on the street was just some lazy ****** who refused to get a job. Now, I dont assume anything with that person and I take into consideration the possibility of their background. Maybe they are physically unable to work or they have been kicked out of a shelter or they stay cant stay off of drugs. Taking that into consideration, I have compassion for that person and I realize that not everyone fits into the typical "stereotype" mold that society has trained us to look at.
Unlike other religions that might perhaps say "Put your faith into <insert diety here> and your troubles will go away", Buddhism teaches that your conscious decisions, whether good or bad, have a direct impact on your life and those around you and that you are solely responsible for those decisions and actions. This leads to Karma. For example, give someone a compliment or help them with a task, this is
good karma. This compassion towards a friend or a stranger will lead to not only feeling good about helping a fellow human being but it has the potential to spread from person to person.
Bad karma would be randomly punching someone in the face, laughing about it and then trying to play victim when the police arrest you. It's like a cosmic boomerang that will either help you or hurt you.
There are a lot of subtitles to Buddhism and once you get into the different schools of Buddhism such as Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, it can become quite murky at times because there's some overlap and some differences.
For me, Buddhism has taught me how we need to conduct our lives, even though I know people will disagree or have varying opinions...
