Confusion and Buddhism
First I want to thank all the wonderful lovely people here that kindly and patiently answer and discuss all the things with the people who are quite new.
I've recently been reading Walpola Rahula - What the Buddha Taught and found a lot of information new to me. I own a small library of buddhist books that I continue adding new books to because I believe the next one will have the information to get me to liberation. I come to the conclusion that time and time again these new books don't satisfy my thirst for new insights. On the contrary, it confuses me even more every time. Now the book of Walpola Rahula resonated with me very well and it was very clear, so whoever made that recommendation in the recommended books thread... thank you!
Walpola was talking about nonself and it made a lot of sense. Normally I would dive into nonself and come out confused and depressed. Now I understand that everything that (I'm?) experiencing is just a play of the skandhas. But still I have a few questions I would like to ask..
- Could we replace "I experience" "This happened to ME" with "Skandhas are experiencing" "This happened to the skandhas"?
- The eightfold path of the Buddha makes a lot of sense. But it still is not really clear what I should and should not do. If I don't indulge myself in distractions like hanging out with friends or watching a tv show/movie or playing a game it seems I am completely freaking out and feel like I am going mad. On the other hand I can see how these distractions are futile and serve no purpose. So reducing distractions and thirst is what we should strife for. But while doing that I spiral right down into depression and anxiety. I seem to have a wrong understanding of something. Could anyone clear this up for me?
Furthermore I am quite intriguid by nirvana. I seem to understand that it just means going out. Like it never existed in the first place or something like that. But I wonder if it is possible for this cycle to one time in the far future start again anew.
(PS. English isn't my native tongue. The book I have is in English and quite old English at that. So if I understood the teaching not correctly, it might be because of that. The sentences I just wrote might be hard to understand because I'm not that great at writing in Englishm, please excuse me for that)
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