By Barbara O'Brien — 2019
You've heard of Zen. You may even have had moments of Zen—instances of insight and a feeling of connectedness and understanding that seem to come out of nowhere. But what exactly is Zen?
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Reginald A. Ray discusses the close connection between Buddhist philosophy and practice.
Meditation is often considered a self-contained activity, different from our actual life. More accurately, meditation is training for life.
What does it mean to be a religion without a God? More broadly, what does it mean to live without an exterior savior of any kind?
Many Western Budddhists, says Reginald Ray, perpetuate the mind/body, secular/sacred dualism that has marked our culture since early Christianity.
Like many Westerners, I always assumed that meditation was a “spiritual” phenomenon, which I took to mean that it somehow had to do with realms beyond the physical.
According to Reginald Ray, Buddhist philosophy and practice can’t be separated. Once you understand, through study, what the Buddha is saying about his own awakening, you are already within the fiery process of the path.
If the “self” is ultimately nothing more than a figment of our imagination, what is this figment like and how does it come to seem so real? In the third of four posts on the self, Dr. Reginald “Reggie” Ray breaks it down.
The central teaching of Buddhism, discussed in detail in the psychological descriptions of the Abhidharma (higher dharma), is that of anatman, or “not-self.
In Buddhism, an ever-deepening understanding unfolds naturally from intellectual study. This process is classically expressed in the teaching of the three prajnas, or kinds of knowledge—hearing, contemplating and meditating.
A panel discussion with Phillip Moffitt, Cyndi Lee, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Reggie Ray. Introduction by Anne Carolyn Klein.
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