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Originally Posted by Shaunc
Buddhism can be followed quite simply. Please note that I said simply and not easily, digging ditches is simple but anyone that's tried it knows it isn't easy.
Looking for deeper meanings and loopholes in the dharma isn't clever and intelligent behavior. Would anyone driving down the road wonder what people really meant when they came to a give way sign, or ponder the reason why it was placed there, or would the clever and intelligent thing be just to give way.
Spend a bit of time watching nature. The birds and the animals. They eat, sleep, exercise a little, mate and die.
I'm sure that most people could spend their time better than analysing the dharma. Just be grateful we found it and accept it for what it is.
Good luck and best wishes.
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It's not simple, it's just people don't appreciate nuance and complexity, but Buddhist philosophy is not understood in the same way as Western philosophy usually is. The Western approach is to intellectualise, create very clever and convincing arguments (I did philosophy courses at university so I get the drift), but Buddhist philosophy is understood by way of insight.
The key difference is, in my study of Western philosophy I was able to understand the concepts and the reasons behind making conclusions, but nothing happened to me as a person. The word 'philosophy' means the love of wisdom, but as my highly esteemed philosophy professor pointed out to me, what philosophers
really love is reason. Of course - 'the enlightenment' period in the West is also known as 'the age of reason'.
I digress, but the difference with Buddhist philosophy is we can study it and know the texts back to front, just like I know so well the work of Michel Foucault, but in Buddhist philosophy, that intellectual understanding is regarded as a precursor at best, or perhaps as some sort of impetus for a person to become curious enough and find out for themselves if it is really true, and the way in which it true, not as they interpret it, but as they actually see it.
It is this real life seeing, the realisation, the insight... so its actually not important to know any texts. One need not ever have heard of Buddha or his particular teachings (which are things in texts). None of these religious tenets matter apart from serving as a curiosity of sorts.
The religion has gone astray forming different sects, revering icons, having special texts, rituals, wearing costumes and so forth. The fundamental meaning of 'buddha' is something like 'enlightened quality', which has nothing to do with any person. It's more like 'the truth of myself as I am', or something like that.
Then we have a particular kind of desire, which is completely ardent, yet has nothing to do with anything any individual might want. Of course what is true does not concern individuals' preferences. All this talk of desire, I want this and I want that, is a completely different pursuit for some sort of pleasurable sensation, but the truth concerns 'what is', and it's pretty obvious that 'what is' only exists 'just as it is' now.