My two cents:SaaZ wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:01 am Hi everyone!
Sometimes a doubt crosses my mind: what if all this Buddhism is just a big fuss over nothing?
I mainly studied the Soto Zen tradition and I have been practising Zazen (Zen meditation) twice a day for almost 10 years. Although there is a side of me that thinks Buddhism is the only way to go. Sometimes I have some doubts, like:
- It appears to me that Buddhist and non-Buddhist have the same quality of life; random people that seem ok and random Buddhist that seem tangled in their own problem.
- When people say "don't overthink stuff" it can be pretty close to what a generic meditation is.
- I think Buddhism changed me from being a deeply neurotic person to a normal guy, but what if is just the common growing and life experiences and that has nothing to do with Buddhism?
- Buddhist is great! Why not everyone is Buddhist? Why among my peer and relatives I'm the only one?
Do you also have these doubts? Any comment?
Thanks
Same quality of life - maybe at a given slice in time, but temporary happiness and ultimate happiness are not the same.
Without Dharma our happiness is like a raft swept to and fro and up and down by conditions. Happiness is conditional, bound to what goes on around us, the circumstances of life and our relationships. Dharma leads us toward unconditional happiness that can be joyful even when things around us are falling apart.
We also need to distinguish between Buddhists who are Buddhist as a religious identity and Buddhists who actually practice actively (the two are a venn diagram and overlap but are not fully the same group)
I think if you looked at practitioners versus non practitioners and their PERCEIVED quality of life or happiness LONGETUDINALLY over time then I think you would find a difference with practitioners being happier on average over the course of a longer time but that is just my speculation personally, no evidence for it I can give you.. At the very least I think they would relate to their unhappiness in a more resilient way
People can also have temporary happiness or condiitonal happiness for quite a long time in a diluded state... This is why the saying ignorance is bliss exists. It's bliss until the conditions that prop it up are slipped out from under you and then your world crumbles!
Don't overthink stuff yes but think of the teachings on topics like inter dependant origination, shunyata etc. Those are unique and not just "don't over think" and chill out
Close is not the same.... Once I heard, there is a hairs breadth between shunyata and nihilism. Nihilism is one of the teachings preached against by the Buddha... So EVEN A hairs breadth difference can make a huge difference
KN