Thoughts on Buddhism

[passionatefool]

I have a question for a buddhist:

When i go to the oriental takeout, they have a huge statue of fat bellied happy buddha. If i rub his belly, I am supposed to get lucky.

The thing is, I feel more retarded than lucky when I do it.

Could you help me?

Signed - Lost my rabbits foot keychain

Buddhist don't believe in that. That "fat Buddha" is actually a Wealth Deity associated more with Chinese tradition and maybe neo-taoism belief, not a buddhist figure at all. However there is also a very similar "fat Buddha" called "Maitreya" in buddhism which according to Mahayana Buddhist is the "Future Buddha". He is in a fat form because it's apparently a representation of joy and happiness. There was a history on why he is fat, i think some historical monk claimed to be the manifestation of Maitreya. However if you look at a Tibetan depiction of Maitreya, he is totally different.

---

The whole 'mindfulness' thing eh??

---

Isn't the Mahayana canon the basis for Zen in Japan??

Zen one of the many tradition of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism. So Zen is based on Mahayana Canon, but they mainly only focus on the "Heart Sutra" or the Prajnaparamita Sutra which is about emptiness, nothing is permanent, nothing exist independently of everything else, Everything is interconnected, nothing is really born or die, increases or decreases. I think they believe if someone is enlightened to that, they realize there is no negative or positive karma or something.

---

I came across an article on Theravada Buddhism, now I did not spend enough time with Theravada buddhism to say much but they are quite interesting. An article said that ordained monks was trained and teach to not accept any teachings either from sutras or from teachers unless it agrees with logic and reasoning

If the bit about logic and reasoning is not just a smoke screen, then one might expect that 2000 years of repetitive injunction to logic and reason would have produced at leadt a few luminaries amongst Buddhists who would have advanced the craft of logic and reasoning in a way perceptible to those outside the echo chamber of mumbling chants that seem to characterize Buddhism.

Well of course they still pretty much have that basic fundamental belief. All religions does, and this is what I meant when I said Buddhism have much in common with other religions. There are blind faith and extremists. But what good about this is that it gives people a little more freedom to analyze things, probably still biased by belief, but they don't have to accept everything in the sutra or whatever taught and Buddhism have this thing call "middle Path" so most buddhists are moderate in general. But they will still share fundamental belief. They also believe in supernaturals and many things other religions have, that is why it is still a religion and what is why I am no longer a Buddhist.