ASD and non-sectarian Buddhism

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Thank you Grant.

I recently saw a talk by Ed Brown and he talked
about how the severe and harsh regimes of monastic life can 'straight-jacket' people into the 'postures' of Buddhism without ever touching the heart......I found this interesting.

I recently have been reading Jack Kornfield and he said the exact same thing about his four years in his forest monastery, he suffered as a child much abuse, yet his suffering was not touched upon and his heart remained closed to healing until he found love & tenderness in a relationship many years later.

I understand that in some traditions indifference to ones emotions is called the 'near enemy', they call it such because so easy is it to think that non-attachment, means non-feeling.

I have experienced in many religions, not just Buddhism, the over 'religiousizing' and 'spiritualizing' that leads to a closed heart, yet alongside this I have observed the over-sentimentalizing too.

I know in myself, especially because of my AS that I can fall into this danger of being in the head, the intellect, the discipline of the practice and by-pass my feelings.

I think this is a human problem, and I would like to hear your experiences of being a man with AS and following the path and the struggle to not leave your heart out of it.

In peace.

Chris.

There are a couple of monotheistic Buddhist movements, but they are uncommon:

Rissho Kosei-kai (a branch of Japanese Nichiren Buddhism)

Won Buddhism (a Korean Buddhism movement)

Hi Chris,

I can share a few things from my side,.

We only want to deal with the negative emotions and patterns, the positive ones we enhance through what I like to call 'living practice'.

I think that we can all fall into very idealistic attitudes. The important principle is balance.

This is something I continue to remind myself.

Loving Kindness is having a basic/fundamental affection. The kindness is our care. We all get it wrong at times, but our sincerity either does or does not shine through.

Abuse no matter on what level is an exclusion from true love/true kindness, and it is in positive relationships that we feel the love/kindness return, the trust.

It is true that many of us who look at traditions such as Buddhism are seeking a basic sanity, which inherently includes the medicine of love/kindness/care. The active re-affirmation that our world can be good and that people can be good. To do that we need to know we are good.

Just as the sun is warm, so to should a healthy heart. Non-attachment means to love/have kindness/care without the attachment of our neediness. To experience this is to start to do it from our side. Through correct practice we come to accept our neuroticism, our personal delusion and bravely step forward. We can in measure also accept and forgive the delusion of others, even those who have deeply hurt us. They are not right minded. We need to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones with human difficulty. One of the great teachings of Buddhism is that we can do this with confidence, as we inherently have a basic goodness, which is only presently hidden by our present negative emotional patterns. Just like the clouds which cover the sun. We know the sun is there as we still experience it's light. Similarly we know pure radiance of the mind is there as we experience its radiance, our awareness. We need to get over our wanting/our neediness to the point where we generate the love/affection/care from our side, then our world becomes loving, caring and warm.

If we practice correctly we come to experience the basic goodness which is loving. Love/kindness/care are already inherent positive qualities of the human heart, our native potential.

Sometimes I forget this, sometimes I get caught out by my negative attitudes. Sometimes I get floored by the ignorance of others, their lack of care, sometimes I am also lacking, and could absolutely improve my level of care towards others. Practice helps because we are habitual we need ritual. The ritual of reminding ourselves of the goodness within. We have the negative habitual patterns and so we approach our Inner Work through the means of habituation, by creating new positive habits. Of course we know it is another habit, but we should not underestimate the personal relevance of positive habits over negative ones and their ability to transform the actual quality of our life. Our living experience.

For example although a cloud covers the sun there is much difference between a dark cloud and a white cloud, a white cloud allows us to feel more of the light that is inherently behind it. In time through practice we can experience glimpses of a break in the clouds and the sun shines through. Shines through with the clarity of the reflexive nature of awareness.

I do not know if I have answered your question well, but I have tried to express the Yoga aspect with the philosophy as one and not two separate approaches. The philosophy will takes us far in terms of knowing where to place our energy but it is the Yoga of Loving Kindness and Compassion which makes it a path of human development.

All my very best!

Grant.

Hello Mark,

I had a quick look at your site, wonderful resource.

Grant.

Thank you Grant

Chris

Consider the Boo-Joos, i.e. Jewish Buddhists. They are few but they exist.

ruveyn

I think we raise an important point regarding relative approach or tradition.

Ultimately the Buddha taught that there was a basic goodness of being before notions/ideas or whether there was a universal creator, in this sense the historical Buddha was possibly anti-speculative rather than Atheistic, Monotheistic, Polytheistic, etc, etc.

If we look at the history of our Human communities or community [as we were once a small family long ago] we see that in the wish to be right about something- we see the other as wrong, etc. This may stem from our personal fear. Our perceptual behaviour/conditioning may more closely stem from our fear factor regarding the "other", based on our evolutionary history of living with the stress of survival as successful predators, via our meat eating/killing of "other", beings and basic competition for resources within a given area of mobility, even our own family members.

All these thoughts of the "other" has created endless negative actions, harm, pain, death, war and even poverty as acts of hostility to wards the so-called "other".

To liberate ourselves from the stress of, 'survival concerns', we can practice a non-sectarian inclusive model one which accepts and embraces the relative views of others as equal in value. This equality in itself is an expression of getting out of the stress survival game and setting upon a path of personal human evolution beyond the dichotomy of "self" and "other". So the view is non-dual.

Personal peace, positive community or even World Peace will only come about through seeing the "other" as sharing the same fundamental nature of being, absolutely equal in value. Further we can not just hold this equality as another imputation or conceptual projection, we must know it in it's essence. We must know that the basic nature of 'being' is a shared equal inheritance.

This is what I like to call the truth-of-love. Love-in-action rather than as a mere theory. Just another human theory. There is no end to the creativity of mind and so we will continue to think up new ways of imputation. There will be no end to our labeling or imputing a subjective value onto the objects of our world, until we stop actually projecting. Accordingly we approach our Inner-Work.

The Buddha taught that we have the potential to get out of the construction busy-ness of our own minds and find peace through a resolution of knowing our true natures and the nature of all other things as equal in value, hence dependent origination, Interdependence or Interbeing.

Many other compassionate traditions also talk of the value of others, the value of others beyond our subjective imputations of "the other".
No-matter what our relative approach is if we come to appreciate the truth-of-love which is non-dual, we will see that its path is to let go of relative views and seek a peace which holds no-view. The view of no-view beyond subjective ideation. In other words if we still hold to a conceptual view, that in itself, it is not the ultimate view, [experiential non-conceptual Gnostic-wisdom]. The inherent goodness of being before our relative self-referential thought's. The goodness-of-being which lays beyond the limitations of the self-limiting visions of "self" , who we are, or who we are not and also of "others". What does it even mean to call ourselves so-called 'Buddhists', this could be just another self-limiting label/projection. We must see the goodness-of-being that is shared equally beyond monopoly.

All beings seek happiness, our delusion is in seeing that this fundamental right is not equal in value. The truth-of-love is the truth of great equality.

Anyway a few thoughts for today.

All my very best to you!

Grant South.

Thanks, Grant. I also have a page of Buddhism resources (though I am not a Buddhist).

Yep. There are also Jewfis (Jewish Ṣūfīs). However, the major Jewfi ṭarīqa (order) no longer seems to exist.

I think Buddhism in general is a perfect fit for Aspies, as it's nonjudgemental, and we are judged enough throughout our lives. Buddhism doesn't tell us that we are born flawed and need to atone for those flaws, or we are damned forever. Rather, it asserts that we are born perfect but only need to realize our perfect nature. As Aspies, we ARE perfect as we are, and in many ways are ideally suited for non-attachment to the material world.

I certainly respect the various branches of Buddhism.

However, the fact that Buddhism seems, on face validity, to be so popular among Autists is, IMO, precisely why it may not be a wise choice. As I see it, Autists need heartfulness, not mindfulness.

There isn't a huge separation between heartfulness and mindfulness. Plus, Buddhism is heavily concerned with compassion.

Now about reason and logic?

ruveyn

Compassion is sympathy. By heartfulness, I mean empathy.

What about reason and logic?

Most autists' emotional empathy is fine. Cognitive empathy is different and doesn't have much to do with religious values.