Monday, March 3

Not another Buju

It may make me a cliche, but Buddism has always interested me, and it is one more piece of culture affinity I have with Phylis. Recently, she and I have been reading the works of American Buddhist Nun, Pema Chodron. We first found about her when she was interviewed on Bill Moyer's PBS program Faith and Reason. I am thinking of reading Don't Bite the Hook next.

Here's an excerpt from Karen Armstrong's Buddha which explains why I, despite being repulsed by delusionally self-confident talk of the supernatural, can still be fascinated by Buddhist teaching:

[Buddha's teachings were] wholly pragmatic... his job was to relieve suffering and help his disciples attain the peace of Nirvana. [...] Hence there were no abstruse theories about the creation of the universe or the existence of a Supreme Being. These matters might be interesting but would not give a disciple enlightenment... He told one monk, who kept pestering him about philosophy, that he was like a wounded man who refused to have treatment until he learned the name of the person who shot him and what village he came from: he would die before he got this useless information. [...] What difference did it make if the world was eternal or created in time?

I don't think myself a Buju/Jubu because rather than identifying myself as both, I identify as neither. This doubtless makes the cliche fit even better!