Share YOUR ways towards the Path (Dhamma)

[kiranraj]

My Way to Dhamma

My name is Kiranraj, a 24 yr old guy living in Bangalore, India. Although India is the Land where Buddhism was born 2500 yrs ago or rather should I say from where Buddha started teaching dhamma? (Since Dhamma is for the Benefit of All Beings and I feel that this ‘ism’ creates a barrier & narrows it down). I was born in a Hindu Family and All I knew of Buddha was through the stories of Angulimala in our school texts.

I Believe when the wheel of Dhamma was turned in india, most of the Indians followed it, Millions of them practiced it in there daily lives of Sila (morality)-Samadhi(Concentration of Mind)-Panya(Experiential Wisdom) (Dhamma)(Mainly Vipassana Meditation) and benefited because of it. But now not many of the 1 Billion+ Indians practice it, although it’s catching up now. Apart from the intellectual understanding it’s the practical application in our daily lives that gives the maximum benefit.

Still lot of contrasts exist in India even today from the wide extremes of Self-torture which the was condemned by Gautama Buddha to superstitious beliefs these exist even today.

So it is fortunate for me, that I came in touch with Dhamma at an early age in life & here’s how it happened I believe I was around 18-19 when I was seeking intellectual answers to Ultimate Questions of Life. What is the Right and what is wrong? I was like a fish out of water looking for answers.

And One Day it so happened that I opened my Study Table’s Drawer and got this book and had no idea as to how it had gone in there, since my mother was a teacher she used to bring books to home and it seems that it was one of those books and had found a way into my drawer and this was the book “The Greatest man who ever lived-The Supreme Buddha” by Ven WeraGoda Sarada Maha Thero published by Singapore Buddhist Meditation centre and I still treasure this book. And I loved this book and was absorbed into it. And I liked Kalama sutta very much.

I am not sure which of these happened first but this had a major impact on my life, my grandfather passed away just the day before, I had sat along with him in front of the house watching by the roadside and I massaging his shoulders and he was explaining to me how he could have died the day before because of pain in heart, Since He had undergone an open heart surgery 10 yrs prior to this but I didn’t take it seriously and walked back to my home without turning back but something was telling me I might not see him again and this maybe because my mother had said she had seen her father die in her dream.

But just the next day he was dead and I don’t know how to express how I felt, and then it’s kind of a ritual in the family that once they are dead a non-vegetarian meal should be provided after these many days of death and when I ate it again I don’t know how to express but was feeling sad for the animals and this was my last non-veg meal and it made me convert into a vegetarian and till now Iam a Vegetarian and will be for the rest of my Life.

Then I started to read more, get more info on Buddhism and the more I read the more I loved it. I usually used to read at accesstoinsight.org or Buddha net and then one guy on the net had put an ad asking if anybody could help with there website incrediblebuddha.com and I immediately sent him an email that I could help and then I used to sit hours in front of my computer trying to convert most of the info available (Tipitaka-The three baskets-45 yrs of teachings of Buddha) in English into e-books and converted most of those and put them on the website.

And sometimes I didn’t like that Buddhism had turned into so many forms like Theravada, Hinyana, Zen, and Mahayana etc… I wanted to follow Buddhism in its purest form just as Buddha had taught it and was amazed to see diff sects in Buddhism too. Although it’s a long time of 2500 yrs of history no wonder people had changed it into what they liked. I had a strong feeling to follow the words of Buddha in its pristine purity again looking for answers and iam glad I did.

Meanwhile I started to look out for meditation retreats and found about dhamma.org from an article on rediff.com and Buddhism community on orkut and also got myself involved in forum chats on e-sangha.com and then did my first 10 day Vipassana Meditation retreat of my Beloved teacher S.N Goenka during August of 2008 and since then taken another 10 day and a three day and numerous one day course including 1 one day course held at Global Pagoda, Mumbai. And I feel blessed to have done so, truly it’s a Blessing!

I hope to walk on the path of Dhamma and make my meditation practice stronger and stronger to reach Nirvana and Help as many beings as possible along the way towards Nirvana.

Metta

May All Beings be Happy :-)

P.S: Share-YoUR Way towards Dhamma :-)

[Bodhisatta2012]

Thank you for sharing some of the intimate details of your path, Kiranraj.

Death of a loved one, my first wife, was also a significant factor in my decision to abandon The Abrahemic Religions for Buddhism.  Like yourself, I was attracted to the literature of The Tipitaka.  I wasn't taken too much aback by the diversity and number of branches and schools of Buddhism, because I am drawn to diversity of thought and believe that we are much like the three blind men discussed in the old Indian parable, who discovered different parts of the same elephant.  Like these blind men we profit most by listening as our associates share their experiences and also remaining willing to share ours.  By integrating our experiences we gain a better view of the total picture of reality.  The danger of course as Buddha warns is becoming attached to the delusion that our view is the correct and/or only one.  Fact is that there are as many views of reality as there are steradians* from which to gain perspective.

*note:  

steâ‹…raâ‹…diâ‹…an  /stəˈreɪdiÉ™n/  Show Spelled Pronunciation [stuh-rey-dee-uhn]  â€“noun Geometry. a solid angle at the center of a sphere subtending a section on the surface equal in area to the square of the radius of the sphere. Abbreviation: sr
    

reference:  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steradian

My daily practice is in accordance with an old zen proverb:

Study,
Meditate,
& Chop Wood.


Thanks for starting this very interesting thread and for your candid sharing.

[Wonky Badger]

Some years back I was browsing through the old books at a local second hand shop. I found a pocket book about Zen and probably just bought it because I associated it with Japan which I have had a slightly unhealthy affection for since young years. The book ended up in my bookshelf for a few years.

Then, during summer 2008 I was very stressed and didn't feel very well, so I decided to try meditation to relieve it. I knew that Zen was about meditation, so picked up the book and started reading. It was "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts. It made sense to me, so I searched the net for more. I found a series of lectures by Alan Watts in mp3 format, I read what Zen books I could find at the library, I started buying Zen books.

As a hardcore atheist of many years, I had a short spiritual crisis during which I found my way to e-sangha for support.

Before long I started exploring other traditions of Buddhism. When e-sangha collapsed, so did my practice. I tried to find substitutes but didn't find any. What I did find was other's roaming around the net just as rootless as I was. So since e-sangha didn't seem to be coming back, I decided to try to create a new forum. It seems to have worked.

[kiranraj]

  Absolutely Wonky, you have done a great Job!

I believe through this you have done a gr8 deal of Good Merit

May this site help people along the path of dhamma, May more and more people find it and strengthen there practice of meditation n may they all be riveted in Sila (morality), Samadhi (concentration of mind) and panya (wisdom) and may it not be attacked by hackers or suffer the fate of esangha or BC

May All beings be Happy

Metta 

[Karma Sonam]

I never imagined I would become a buddhist, when I was a child I was quite a strong christian!  Looking back though, I think very subtly, my lapsed Catholic mother was pushing me intentionally or not towards it with what I thought were stupid questions at the time (turned out they were koans).  Went to Tahiland and visited Wats etc, felt no connection.  Went to India - Rumtek - and felt like I had come home.  Came back to the UK and was looking for a centre and saw an ad in a magazine for Samye Ling.  Took some teachings there.  Moved to Cornwall and found a buddhist group that was mainly Theravadan.  Couldn't settle, then by chance found a tiny Kagyu group.  Never looked back.
 

[humanitas]

Even though I practice in Nyingma school, I feel a strong draw and calling to Kagyu (not exactly a huge stretch off from Nyingma).  I've been told that TBs can practice two lineages, that would be interesting. That's about as much as I feel comfortable disclosing about that.  

I have a feeling that if I go on the path I'm going I'll go towards Vajrayana, but I'm not sure how I feel about that yet, if I'm ready for it, or cut out for it, or if there may be a more suited path.  In any case, I don't worry about it too much I trust myself and the process, I'm sure I will go where I need to to wake up more and be a more constructive human being.  I wish they gave degrees in that... and that you could make a living DOING nothing but that.  After many years of practice and study, I could say, I have a PhD in Human Skillfulness with a focus on Interbeing Relations and an emphasis in Grief and Compassion Studies from Samsara University.  Then I'd be cool.

 
Ogyen.

[Monkey Mind]

All right, I have shared most of this in different posts, but here is the consolidated version.

I grew up in what they call "Bible Belt" America. There were more Christian churches in my hometown then there were schools, and if you did the math the churches were disproportionate to the population. (The only explanation that makes sense is that people must have been "double dipping", i.e. going to Pentecostal church on Saturdays and Baptist church on Sundays.) I was a gay teenager, and decidedly anti-Christian. On television I saw a tele-evangelist, who stated that "[sic] Buddha was a homosexual, and Buddhism is a religion of homosexuals." Well that caught my attention, so I marched down to the library and read any books I could find about Buddhism. I visited local "New Age" bookstores, to learn more about Buddhism. When I was 18, I met some "real" Buddhists who informed me that a lot of the New Age stuff was misinformed. When I started university, I majored in Psychology and minored in Buddhist Studies. First of all, I saw a lot of parallels between neurocognitive psychology and the teachings of Buddhism. The other thing, in my Buddhist studies class I had the opportunity to earn "extra credit" if I joined a local Buddhist group and wrote a report about my experiences. There were many Buddhist groups on campus, and to facilitate my decision making process the Buddhist Studies program hosted a Buddhism Fair, and all the local groups had booths and passed out literature. In the classroom, we read a smorgasbord of Buddhist literature, from the Dhammapada to the Lotus Sutra and the teachings of Dogen. Reading the Dhammapada changed my life, whereas I had a difficult time understanding the Mahayana teachings. So I joined the local Theravada Dhamma study and discussion group. The group was pretty informal, but just by coincidence a nun from Burma (was it Myanmar then?) was the teaching assistant for my class, and she sat in the group as an adviser. She was in the States completing her graduate education. She was my first Dhamma teacher.

A couple of years later I moved across country. All of the Theravadan Sanghas I could find were built around immigrants from Laos or Cambodia, and teachings were in the languages native to those people. Through my martial arts affiliations, many of my friends were Zen practitioners, so I attended Dharma talks in Zen communities, and I followed the Theravadan guidance for "Buddhists living in non-Buddhist lands". Many years went by, sometimes my practice was energetic and sometimes it was lax, while I completed school and worked jobs and fell in love, etc.

A couple of years ago I met a friend whose Buddhist practice frightened me. He is a devotee to a rather controversial Japanese group. My friend's practice, which I perceived as weird, inspired a revival of my own practice and I sought out Sangha. In my community there are several dozens of Mahayana groups, and 3 Theravadan groups: a Thai Forest group, a lay practice group of Burmese lineage, and a Goenka retreat center if I was willing to travel. After visiting them all, I opted for the Goenka tradition. I also attend a pan-Buddhist group hosted by a local Soto Zen Sangha. At least some of my college education occurred via on-line programs, so I was also attracted to E-Sangha, which led me to Buddhist-Community.com, which led me here.

[kiranraj]

  Wow...Thank you Dhamma Friends...for sharing your stories

Hope it inspires more people to walk on the path of Dhamma

I would love everyone anywhere in the world to go to a 10 day meditation retreat and its FREE

Find a center near your city www.dhamma.org

Keep posting guys 

Metta 

[Resident]

I was very glad to read about the paths of others. Its great to see how diverse everyone's experience is.

I hope this thread will grow.

[santamonicacj]

I grew up in a Jewish area and as a child I could not believe that an all powerful benevolent God could have allowed the Holocaust. End of Christianity.

In the late '60s I added psychedelics to adolescence and became really confused. Confusion is painful. That means looking for answers.

Flash forward to my early 20s. My roommate had avoided a psychotic break by becoming a Sufi (New Age version). Sufis honor all traditions and he hosted a Tibetan Lama's talk in our town. I went to the talk out of friendship only. The lama spoke about spontaneity, authenticity and a bunch of stuff that interested me but was not like anything really 'Buddhist'. I decided to join the Buddhist group in town so when that lama came back next time I'd be able to spend some serious time with him. I helped organize other lamas to come to the center and talk but I wasn't interested in what they had to say because they were all traditional. I wanted to see the first guy. But he didn't come back for two years. After a while I met enough other lamas that I got interested in the traditional approach.

Then I decided the path was too difficult. But that's another couple of stories...

[Caz]

I here many people talk about authentic Dharma the original Dharma Buddha taught, It is difficult to proscribe this original Dharma, As Dharma is constantly changing to meet the needs of samsaric patients 
The Dharma which is good is Dharma which controls the mind and makes it more peaceful and subdued and then helps one progress through the stages of the path.
What i practise, or what i try to practise is kadampa buddhism, It is the path i have been raised in and have a very good karmic connection to.
Buddha gave many teachings to help pacify the mind it is just finding the ones that are proscribed for you.

[katersy]

This is a nice thread indeed. It's good to see that people are part of different traditions and have had totally different introductions to Buddhism.

When I was 18 or 19 I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and was fascinated by it. I'm not really sure how much of it has to do with Buddhism and how much of it has to do with the author's mental breakdown, but it was that book that introduced me to Buddhism!

So I bought a few books, including Buddhism: Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen, Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor, and The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. The first two books really got me, and I was totally hooked!

Things went downhill for me after this time. I was in my first year at university, very homesick and lonely, and was really searching for answers to life's questions. Unfortunately, this combined with a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder, severe anxiety and a depressive temperament brought me dooowwwwwwn. I read and read, and thought and thought, and obsessed and obsessed, and didn't ever practise any meditation, and I nearly had a mental collapse. Thankfully, though, I recovered from that and stopped reading about Buddhism and put the search for the meaning of life on hold!

Last year, I was living in Poland and met some meditation teachers who are part of the Western Buddhist Order. I became good friends with one of them, and went along to meditation classes. This was great, and this was my real introduction to meditation. I've been meditating pretty regularly since then, and I've had a daily practice for the last few months.

Lately, whether because of more uncertainty about my future, loneliness or I don't know what, I've had a slight re-lapse of that original crisis that occurred in my early days of discovering Buddhism. I've been obsessing about things, constantly contemplating, worrying, analysing, philosophising things to death, etc. However, because I'm older than I was then, and I perhaps also because of my meditation practice, I've dealt with this crisis better than the first time. I've had some pretty grim moments, to be honest, and at one point became suicidal, which really disturbed me.

So - I dunno - it's all mixed up with my emotional / mental issues, and it's challenging, to say the least.

So who knows where this path will lead me. I've got one foot on it at the moment, and am anxiously looking over my shoulder a lot of the time.

I'll keep you informed 

Lovely to hear your stories.

Katy

[Bodhisatta2012]

Hi, Katersy.  18 or 19, huh?  Was that last summer?

What I do when my mind gets overly busy is just observe.  Don't interfear with things.  Just observe.  Listen to the breath.  Let go.

The mental dissonance comes with attempts to control.  Control is not possible.  The only thing we can truly control is our willingness to let go....and sometimes not even that.

Be at peace.   

[katersy]

Hi, Katersy.  18 or 19, huh?  Was that last summer?

What I do when my mind gets overly busy is just observe.  Don't interfear with things.  Just observe.  Listen to the breath.  Let go.

The mental dissonance comes with attempts to control.  Control is not possible.  The only thing we can truly control is our willingness to let go....and sometimes not even that.

Be at peace.   

18 or 19 last summer? unfortunately not, ron! i'm 25, if you wanted to know.

thanks for your kind words (the other ones)   

katy

[Michael_S]

My own experience of the Dhamma was propelled by my wife's illness. She had stage 3 breast
cancer and we went through a year together of absolutely difficult treatments that effected her
quite badly. Her suffering, and mine (derived from watching her) led me to the answer to suffering,
which is the eightfold path.

Like others, I became very distraught in the midst of this ongoing crisis and became self-destructive.
How much horror can one witness? How can we see the ones we love in such terror and pain?
My ability to be compassionate towards her (and myself) was greatly increased. At the same time,
my clinging or attachment to the idea that all things last forever was faced and accepted. I now live
in the moment as much as possible and understand that is all we really have.
Metta

Michael