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Home > Archive > Yoga > December 2005 > American Buddhism - Introduction - Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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American Buddhism - Introduction - Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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| Buddhist Monk 2005-12-25, 1:13 am |
| American Buddhism - Introduction - Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr.
Frederick Lenz
"Remember, you are a Westerner. If you want to practice Eastern
philosophy such as Tibetan Buddhism you should take the essence and try
to adapt it to your cultural background and conditions."
- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
Main Page:
www.ramaquotes.com
American Buddhism - Introduction:
www.ramaquotes.com/html/introduction_american.html
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Zen Master Rama:
"The Western lifestyle has many things to offer, as do the Eastern
methods of self discovery. I think blending the two is very desirable.
Ashrams often become places where there is a hierarchy and a pecking
order and not much enlightenment. That is what some people are drawn
to. But that has nothing to do with enlightenment.
It is not bad living in a monastery. I've done it many times in many
lives. But I think you can do a better job outside the monastery if
you have the necessary component parts.
I think one can advance faster outside a monastery if you use the
experiences of daily life to advance yourself.
The spirit of the West, of America, is different than the East. The
cultural conditioning is very different. It seems to be harder for
people to work in teams, more difficult for people here to live in
harmony, in a monastery.
If your motives are high and noble and your work is hard and you do a
good job, then whatever the task is in your life, it will benefit you.
The person who's in the Zen monastery, who's doing a kind of poor job
at meditating and a half-XXX job cleaning the gardens is not doing very
good yoga.
The person in the business suit who works on Wall Street, who does
their work perfectly, is probably evolving a lot faster, if they also
meditate.
I think to be in a monastery or an ashram is not always the answer
because we don't fight, we kick back. We don't listen to Sri Krishna.
I don't think there is a right approach to teaching self discovery.
Every situation is unique.
There is a certain beauty and refinement that is often found in our
world and it is expensive. It shouldn't necessarily be so. It is just
the way our economic system is.
Truth occurs in unusual places. Sometimes it's in the frozen food
section of the supermarket, sometimes it appears while you are waiting
for your car to be fixed, sometimes you see it while in bed with
someone you love, sometimes you find it while you're meditating on a
lone mountain.
You can live in the world and have all the myriad experiences that life
has to offer and yoke your awareness field to the planes of light, and
eventually to nirvana itself.
Between the creative, open and spontaneous approach to life, and the
highly disciplined, pragmatic approach, there's a doorway, if you can
find it, and it leads to immortality.
It is possible to renounce everything and attain enlightenment. But
most people don't want to renounce; they wish to run away from
responsibility and hard work.
You need to become a winner to go beyond winning and losing.
There are lifetimes where one goes off into the Himalayas and meditate
in a cave. But this is not really one of those lifetimes for most
people. Our earth has changed.
This is the fourth age, the Kali Yuga, and it's a time of great
darkness. At the end of this age, there's supposed to be a cosmic
dissolution and then life begins anew. It's a wonderful cycle of
rebirth.
We live in a world where money is necessary. You can't just go out and
roam the forest and the cities, at least in America.
You need a job. You need a career. You need a focus. Otherwise, you
will just pick up lots of strange psychic energy because you are not
focused.
People in the West sometimes have these marvelous visions of India and
Tibet. They assume that there are all these sadhus walking around and
everybody is breathing enlightenment. Forget it. Don't look at it
through rose-colored glasses.
I don't think people should be primarily concerned with money or
material success. They should be concerned with doing that which is
right and being in harmony with the way of life.
What we are seeking to do is not melt the map of America. We are
seeking to melt the self, the solid form that we consider ourselves to
be.
Somehow in the middle of the L.A. trendiness, Boston conservatism, New
York chic and San Francisco intellectual mellow, there's a place where
everything meets.
You exist forever. You've always existed and you'll always exist. You
move in and out of bodies like some people in Los Angeles move in and
out of houses, every other week, every other lifetime.
In the West people spend most of their time and energy working. The
problem is you are so tired from work that you don't have much energy
to meditate - unless you use work in a tantric way.
Material success is a way of tightening up your life so that you can
move into higher planes of attention. You should try to do well in
every aspect of your life, because each aspect of your life affects
your total being.
Self-control is completely necessary for increasing and raising your
attention level. One of the places you practice that is at work.
A Buddhist is working not just to get paid, but working to advance
spiritually. You shouldn't create a syntactical break in your mind
between your career and your religious practice.
The degree of success that you attain in all of your physical, mental
and spiritual undertakings is dependent upon the strength and clarity
of your finite mind and your ability to access your infinite mind.
If you meditate you will be able to find new ways to utilize your
career and the routines of daily life.
Combine meditation with career as a yoga. You will find that your
practice will not be any less powerful than a person who lives in a
monastery. You might even excel because practice in a monastery can
get very one-sided.
It is necessary to go through all the daily tasks and bring perfection
to them, to learn to be perfect in your meditation, and to win in all
your endeavors so that one day you will complete again.
Changing the way you dress can make it easier to make deeper changes in
the structure of your personality.
Clothes can have a very refined vibration. An ochre robe can be
extremely refined and so can a wonderful satin gown or a silk brocade
coat.
If you want to create a different character, you can do so just by
altering your style of dress and cosmetics.
Clothing is art. It's an expression of how you feel. I think that
it's not so much a question of a certain style or designer, but of
finding the type of clothing that works well for you.
Life is learning how to deal with traffic. It requires patience, a
good sense of timing, and sometimes not giving in to the traffic but
reshaping your life.
Clothing has a great deal to do with the attitudes and energy that
others direct towards you. I favor the chic, and tend to avoid the
trendy. I think that it's good to be chic when possible because it is
more inaccessible.
Ideally, you would live in an area that is not necessarily in the
middle of the country, out in the woods, because you can isolate
yourself there and get stuck in your own thoughts.
I feel that there's a certain danger in always being in a lovely rural
setting. You can lose touch.
It's certainly easy to meditate on top of a mountain, but one should be
also able to meditate in the heart of the city.
If you want to help people, if you care, go to the cities. The city is
where the pain is the greatest. And the cities are a hell of a lot of
fun if you like art, movies and plays.
There are millions of little opportunities out there to advance
yourself. But you need the personal power to see how to do it.
You can live in the world and have friends, family and possessions.
But don't take them all too seriously. Death removes everything. Feel
death is every moment, as life is every moment.
Spiritual people are often persecuted because of their beliefs.
Christians were fed to the lions. Jews were slaughtered in
concentration camps. Various forms of persecution still exist today
throughout the world.
Molecules are moving. Universes are colliding. Generations are being
born and dying simultaneously throughout eternity. As one of our great
American poets, Walt Whitman, once said, "I contain multitudes.""
- Zen Master Rama
www.ramaquotes.com
Thank you in advance for your religious tolerance.
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