By Gaylon Ferguson — 2011
When we stop focusing on ourselves, we begin to see that our happiness is dependent on the happiness of all beings. Gaylon Ferguson examines the political, social, and environmental implications.
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CLEAR ALL
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.
A panel discussion with Phillip Moffitt, Cyndi Lee, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Reggie Ray. Introduction by Anne Carolyn Klein.
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