Buddhism and Self-Defense

Chapter 26 Verses 389, 391, 405, and 406 of the Dhammapada, all feature the same message: Do not harm others, even if they harm you; do not use weapons, words, or thoughts to harm them, etc.

While I was reading through this chapter I was thinking about possible scenarios where this sort of philosophy would provide a disadvantage. Given that I follow this philosophy myself, it was something seriously worth considering. I wondered about what a Buddhist would do if someone came up and attacked them, intending to seriously wound them (put them  in critical condition), or kill them. I realized then that I had already come up with a solution which is the style of martial arts that I am learning; aikido, I think, would be an excellent style of martial arts for those who take this part of the teaching seriously and strictly. It's philosophy is basically that if someone is an attacker, something about them is wrong or off-balance so it is the job of the person being attacked to defend themselves and to protect the attacker from injury. I can imagine that aikido appeals greatly to many practising Buddhists. The philosophies seem to blend so perfectly.

Meditation and YOU MUST BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION

People seem to equate various practices with beliefs. I was once meditating in my room when my father entered and saw me there. Now, I had only recently informed him that I no longer wanted to practice Catholicism. In response to seeing me meditating he informed me that it was absolutely crazy to believe in reincarnation. At that time I had not known that the rebirth that Buddhism speaks of is not a literal transferring of souls. I was, however, meditating for more practical reasons, so I found it slightly far-fetched to see that he had equated mediations so hastily to believing in reincarnation. I don't particularly believe or disbelieve in reincarnation and I was only meditating to relax. People do often tend to assume that partaking in certain activities must necessarily have been caused by some ideological opinion change.

Meditation and Hearing

I practised meditation for two reasons that I can remember. The first was to relax after some sort of strong emotional distress. The second was to to focus on my hearing ability. I would sit in quiet-ish areas and try to focus on one noise that was distinctly more quiet than other noises, the hum of an electronic device is a good example. I would work on concentrating on that until it was easy to pick that thing out from others. Then I started to try focusing on more than one thing. I would find a recording of a simple drum beat and then I would concentrate on both the hum and the beat. After that, I started to try to count the drum beats and concentrate on the hum again. I continued with this sort of thing, until I was able to focus on three things with proficiency. After that, I tried to concentrate on things that were more distant from me. This worked fairly well, and at one point in time, I could sit in crowded rooms and listen in to one conversation over others.

Meditation to Relax

Response to Ryan - full post here

I practised meditation for a while. I was not doing so in search of spiritual experience so I never really had one related to meditations. It was, however, useful in relaxing and controlling breath. It helped to sort out problems that mattered from problems that didn't, and it helped to determine solutions to those that did matter. I used it countless (not really though) times in order to calm myself down after any sort of large emotional distress.

Proper Noun Church

In response to Lauren's post - full post found here

When you think of lip balm, adhesive strips, tissues, slow cookers, and cotton swabs, you likely think of, respectively, chapstick, band-aids, kleenex, crockpot, and Q-tips. These companies who own the brand names that we associate with products are incredibly talented and maybe slightly lucky. My point here is that sometimes it is the work of organisations to replace a general product with a brand name. The catholic church, actually, is one of those organisations. They do not object to the association of the word church with Catholicism. In fact, they often do it themselves; I would not doubt if this were completely intentionally done. You can look at the Catechism on the Vatican website and see examples of that all over the place . This part, here (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P29.HTM), mentions the Church often.

Crossan and Catholic and History

I do wonder why people chose to identify with one denomination of Christianity over another. Mostly I am concerned with Dominic Crossan's denominational choice. I wonder why he decided to call himself a Catholic. Surely there are other denominations which more closely follow or resemble his view on Jesus. The Catholic take the gospels more literally than most other denominations of Christianity, and they back their claims up with a history that is non-existent, or lean a history in their favour when clearly it was not meant in that manner.

Surely Crossan does not support having only male authorities because Jesus chose men as his followers (Catechism 1577 - Part(p) 2 Section(s)2 Chapter(c) 3 Article(a) 6). Surely he doesn't agree with the Catholics when they say that "it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (Catechism 816 - p1s2c3a9 Paragraph3). Jesus did not, after all, think that one could only reach the Kingdom of God through a single establishment/building. Does Crossan agree that those who deliberately do not attend Sunday mass commit a grave sin (Catechism 2180-2181 p3s2c1a3) and thereby a mortal sin (catechism 1857 p3s1c1a8)? If not, then why does he call himself a Catholic? If you believe all of those things, then feel free to honestly call yourself a Catholic. If you do not honestly believe all of those things it would likely be best, to avoid confusion, if you correctly identified yourself under the correct denomination.


Most of the ideas that Crossan supports and believes about the historical Jesus, I also support. Most of these ideas however, do not line up with the catholic church's beliefs

Life and Death - Two sides of the same coin?

Is death necessary for life? In class today someone said that death and life are part of the same thing; the only way you can have death is if you have life. But is it true that in order to have life, you must have death? Does the very nature of receiving life equate to receiving death? Many religions would have us think so; there is a common place belief that death must always accompany life. The Vatican, for instance, said that "disposing of death is, in reality, the most radical way of disposing of life" (Communion and Stewardship - Paragraph 93). In the same document they say that it would be radically immoral to extend human life through production or genetic engineering. Basically, they are saying that death is a part of life and that it would be wrong to change that. I disagree with that assertion and I do not think that death necessarily has to exist due to life. With transhumanism, it could be possible to extend human life to near immortality. Though presumably with this technology it would be possible to kill yourself if you were bored. Maybe everyone would get bored with that sort of life span, making death an inevitable part of life still.