Spirituality General

I wish. The church has been degenerated and perverted, there is no reason to join one anymore. This seems to be the thread to ask, where should I start with Buddhist /lit/ and is shinto worth reading into?

That I am the only person who exists except I'm not really a person and I'm in some shit matrix. And I'm not Elon Meme

I assume the existence of a higher power but ascribe no traits, values or attributes to it. Call that what you will.

>>8610008
>What are your religious beliefs?

I believe that there is some kind of power or force at work and that there is a purpose to life not related to this life.

But I do not adhere to any religion, although I like Buddhism. I like reading about all religions though.

>>8610030
start with what the buddha taught by walpola rahula. Shinto is definitely worth getting into, but only if youre really interested.

>>8610076

gnosticism

After six years on the battlefield I gave up the notion of any type of spiritual being or higher power running the universe. There is only ignorant old men sending ignorant young men to kill one another for the sake and gain of nothingness. The shells, the mines, the guns, the trucks, they're all made by man. There's nothing else here, just a hollow void where reason should be to keep this all from happening. There's nothing when we die there's just an end to all this waste and loss. It's easier to assign the grand design of a higher power to all this than to try and justify such madness we do to ourselves voluntarily. We do it to our selves because we think we deserve it, because we like it. We're no longer in the golden garden and to be separated from it causes us a great pain in a manner we cannot describe with all the poets of the world. There's no sound to drown it out, no paint think enough to cover it, no machine strong enough to bury it. It just keeps coming. It just keeps eating everything in it's path and even I, a sensible man, cannot deny it's gravity. Even in my sleep I feel it pulling me. We were never supposed to go this far. Our reality has become a godless useless car without a brake and if there was a brake to pull to stop this front cocophany, I, a sensible man, cannot bring myself to raise the hand to grab it.

I was an atheist as a teenager, then moved on to agnosticism and now I'm starting to think that there was a creator or some higher power, made this world and then just left it like a clockmaker or something.

I am religious but not spirutual

Hanshan Deqing was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk from the Ming dynasty, who lived about 400 years ago. He was known as a great reformer of Buddhism during that dynasty, and he advocated both Pure Land and Chan together. Perhaps most significantly, he wrote a nice autobiography all about his own cultivation, which became very popular thereafter. The following excerpts come from the translation by Richard Cheung.

First, we have a short account of developing samadhi through concentration on sounds. These events are from when he was 30 years old, when he was living alone in a hut as a hermit.

>Hoping to master this technique (i.e. concentration on sound), I went to a wooden bridge every day and tried to listen to the water without thinking about it or anything else. At first, all I could hear was noise. My mind kept thinking. But after a little practice, my mind began to settle down. Then, one day, when my thoughts had ceased to surge like the water, I became so immersed in the sound that I actually forgot myself. The noise and my existence were gone. Serenity enveloped my mind. After that, whenever I heard a sound that previously would have annoyed me, all I had to do was concentrate on that sound without mentally grasping it, and I would be lulled into the same serene state.

>Every day I cooked rice and ate it with wild vegetables and porridge. Then, after the meal, I’d take a nice walk. But one day, while I was walking, I happened to stop and stand still, and in that blissful moment, I entered samadhi. Soon I ceased to be aware of anything except a great brightness, round and full, clean and still like a huge round mirror. Mountains, rivers, and the great earth, itself, appeared in the mirror. When I regained consciousness, I returned to the hut and noticed that the rice cooker was covered with dust. How long had I been in samadhi? I couldn’t guess.

>>8610008
i belive everything is everything at the same time
i dont know how to explain it
books for this belief?