Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

Post by realreality » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

brodo wrote: post #56

mudita wrote: post #38

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My own personal experience differed from yours. In a retreat in Burma I observed a lot of traditions, which made it very clear that men had a higher standing than women. When forming a line for going to lunch, the monks were first, then the laymen, then the nuns and then the laywomen; only the monks ate on a raised platform, but not the nuns or laypeople etc. This was not just old books, which nobody cared about, but…

There is sexism in Buddhism. I stayed at a Buddhist temple in Germany and there where way more rules for the nuns than the monks. > "It is extremely important to note that world religions [...] are, naturally and inevitably, in large part compendia of rules for managing daily life." - John A. Hall, Ideas and the Social Sciences, 1993 This is why I think it's a good thing that western Buddhism exits. It gets rid of al…

Post by WJW » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #82

toyg wrote: post #14

In Italy, in the '90s, we had a popular tv program with comedians doing sketches. One of those sketches was written and interpreted a guy who used to work in important advertising agencies. The sketch had a corporate manager who always started as a calm and devout supporter of buddhist-like tranquility in the workplace, all meditation and zen and care for personal wellbeing; by the end of the sketch his schizophrenic…

The TV show Silicon Valley also satirises the aggressive, egotistical CEO (a character called Gavin Belson). Belson spends some time at a Buddhist retreat which seems to impart nothing from his experience. The attraction to Buddhist ideas are only at shallow, surface level. He also employs a full-time spiritual adviser. Even the adviser looks out for opportunities advantageous to him and manipulate situations. It's a…

Post by mtalantikite » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #95

plsbenice34 wrote: post #78

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There are many varieties of Buddhism. It is a mixture of eastern culture and knowledge in general, including many generations of empirical psychotherapy, religion, philosophy, etc. Some varieties of Buddhism, like some schools of Zen, do focus heavily (or entirely) on meditation practice. Scientific research suggests that meditation has a real effect on the brain. To me it seems completely rational and expected that…

> There are many varieties of Buddhism. It is a mixture of eastern culture and knowledge in general, including many generations of empirical psychotherapy, religion, philosophy, etc. Some varieties of Buddhism, like some schools of Zen, do focus heavily (or entirely) on meditation practice. Zen does not traditionally focus heavily nor entirely on meditation practise, for example it has a heavy amount of ritual and ch…

Post by KennyBlanken » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 8:55 PM UTC

RicoElectrico wrote: post #229

toyg wrote: post #14

In Italy, in the '90s, we had a popular tv program with comedians doing sketches. One of those sketches was written and interpreted a guy who used to work in important advertising agencies. The sketch had a corporate manager who always started as a calm and devout supporter of buddhist-like tranquility in the workplace, all meditation and zen and care for personal wellbeing; by the end of the sketch his schizophrenic…

> I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days. I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society. For all our social progress in this millennium, we regressed in many ways people don't readily notice. This was mostly an American thing in the past; but it spilled into Europe over time.

Post by rg111 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #211

rg111 wrote: post #198

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Yes, this Chen person is so so wrong. She says that meditation is for some monastic elites, but that is far from the truth. Who even chose to publish her book? Buddha himself said to Ananda that several thousand of his household desciples attained Nirvana. Not only did these "laymen" did meditation, they even attained Nirvana.

> She says that meditation is for some monastic elites She did not quite say that. She said that it was only practiced by monastic elites up until the early 20th century: "Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reformers such as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of modern Vipassana meditation, promoted it as a lay Bu…