A Buddhist University for Birmingham
Wednesday November 23, 2005
There is news just in that thinkBuddha’s home town of Birmingham is to have a new Buddhist university, based at the Ladywood Buddhist pagoda and run in conjunction with Birmingham University.
The course will include both scholarly and practical elements, from studying the Pali texts to practical tuition in meditation, and the course organisers are hoping that it will attract students from all over the world.
Heading the degree course will be a senior monk from Burma, and the programme of study promises to be ‘vigorous’. And if it proves all too vigorous for the undergraduate students once they have enrolled, the worldly delights of the Bull Ring shopping centre by day and Broad Street by night are just a short bus ride away.
If any local visitors to thinkBuddha are interested, then there’s an open day this Saturday. Or visit the Birmingham Buddhist Vihara for more details.
The full story can be found on icBirmingham
#2 · Will
23 November 2005
Once again, Hi, Jez.
First I should confess that I don’t have a clue what the Buddha actually said. We only have records written several hundred years after his death. Nor does anyone else have certain knowledge. We are left with guesses, conjectures and the like.
And, besides, the Buddhist tradition is not just the Buddha, but it is made up of generations of folks – some of them really quite peculiar folks at that – who have themselves contributed to the babble of voices that we call the Buddhist tradition.
I don’t think it is a question of moulding Buddhism to my own sets of beliefs, because there’s not really a thing there to be moulded. I see Buddhism less as a monolithic system of belief (thus susceptible to moulding) and more as a clumsy label for a huge diversity of practices, ways of being and often mutually exclusive ideas, in continual change, handed down through the centuries. So I feel shameless in saying ‘this bit makes sense’ and ‘this bit doesn’t make sense.’ And hopefully others will treat my own ideas with similar shamelessness.
For me, it is more a question of getting into conversation with these many voices and traditions of Buddhism whilst being true to my own cultural conditioning. This makes me sceptical of anybody who claims to know what the real Buddhism is about, largely because the idea of the ‘real Buddhism’ is nonsense. There are merely flowing, fluctuating and changing traditions, generations of conversations, fumbling attempts at practice, explorations of what it is to be human, and so on. Part of engaging with all of this is mucking around with ideas, seeing what makes sense and what doesn’t, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and not being too precious about the abstraction ‘Buddhism’.
But that may just be me.
Best wishes,
Will
#3 · Gareth
23 November 2005
Do you attend the Vihara regularly? I’ve sat once with a Zen group (The Order of Contemplative Buddhists there (and hope to again), although I haven’t been to any of the Theravadan teachings.
I have a couple of friends who used to practice there – and they might be heading there tomorrow.
About adapting faiths…One of the difficulties I have with the Tibetan tradition I’ve been practicing with recently is that all their teachings have become fixed. – Although the dictum to test ideas for yourself is still implicitly present, this isn’t stressed.
It’s one of my few beliefs that we need to be willing to let our beliefs and faith change in order to repond to the present moment
Best Wishes
#4 · jez
24 November 2005
Will,
I see this is where my second post ended up!
Well, I guess the Dalai lama would disagree with you.
I don’t want to say you should respect such religious leaders as him-frankly I couldn’t care les, even if I support his political struggle. For me it’s more a matter of rational thought. As I wrote in the other comment, I believe Buddhism is a religion, despite claims to the contrary. It may not have a divinity in the christian sense, but it does have a set of dogmas-even if they vary from sect to sect.
I may be wrong, but if I understand correctly, what attracts you to Buddhism is more the philosophical aspects of it than the spiritual (religious) aspects. If I decided to study Buddhism closely, I would probably find that there are benefits, say, to meditation as practiced by buddhist monks, and may even want to try it out myself. That would not make me a Buddhist, though. In the same way, I often visit a catholic monastary here in France, and I find the atmosphere very peaceful, and I could almost (I stress!) imagine myself living the life of the monks. Unfortunately, I do not share their religious beliefs.
I don’t want to tell you what you should or should not call yourself, but I have a deep mistrust of religion, and while I accept all practises are not to be rejected, I think it is necessary to be logical, rational and consistent.
Sceptically yours,
Jez
#1 · jez
23 November 2005
PS: I have read your first post. What I mean is this: unless you feel you KNOW that what the first Buddha’s message was something else than what has been passed down by the various branches of Buddhism, then how can you pick and choose what suits you? Of course it is possible to share some aspects of Buddhism but not all of them. It’s the same with other belief systems. I share many of the beliefs of Christians, such as not killing my neighbour(...). I am not, however a Christian, since I do not share all the beliefs of Christianity, and it is not up to me to mold Christianity into what I want it to mean.
Again, what do you think?