What advice do you give to newcomers of Buddhism?

Rebirth, mainly. Regarding this, I think that the only voices that really matter are those that speak from an experiential perspective and not an intellectual standpoint. Someone who has meditated and developed the iddhi that allowed them to break the barrier of birth and death and recollect past lives will have a vastly purified understanding of existence. Their words carry a lot of weight and for someone who is still working through the lower fetters, some faith is required to accept them. But, the messenger is as important as the message (especially in this age !), so prudence in one’s acceptance of teachers would be good as well. One nice example would be Ven. Brahmali who has shared his meditative experiences of past lives, here, in SC.

Sometime ago I reached a conclusion that to explain myself is to explain the world, but until that understanding is fully realized, it’s better to put a lid on my conceit. :slight_smile:

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I agree - the attitude is the issue. Learning Buddhism is a journey and in part about the opportunity, the resources available. My wife is Burmese and we have lived in Myanmar for 6 years. I first started learning in Australia, via my wife and the local Burmese community.
Know I have a very different resource available. I learned from both, by observing, asking questions and sifting all that teaching, experiences and reading until I have found a middle path, not my middle path but a path developed on wisdom. A path grown by practice and realization.
Every one is different and will bring their own concepts to early learning. Just tell people to be them selves and find one thing that they get, understand that and the rest will come. With an attitude of wanting to learn and practice , questions will be answered and then they will find their starting point.
I got - cause and effect - it had been something in me for years, then it all fell into place.
My journey was Monasteries 1st, understanding 2nd.
Many will not have that opportunity or privilege.
So if people want to learn, understand how they learn - seeing, doing, listening or reading. Get them started by their best learning practice - answer their questions and then you and them will discover where to start more formally - but always making it fun!!

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Keep an open mind - there are many different Buddhist schools, and many different methods.
Keep it simple - don’t try to do everything at once.
Try to have contact with others on the path.

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This is some of the best advice available.

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Just keep it simple, listen to your heart and read the suttas/teachings you find most inspiring and put aside the stuff you find boring or weird. Also, find the contemporary teachers who you feel you can trust, who speak ‘your language’, their teachings and advice can be very helpful, especially at the beginning of the path.

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It depends what they asked. I’d typically try (although, alas, don’t always necessarily succeed) to spend some time listening to the individual in question before trying to give any advice. Some people are, for instance, into technical detail, or an overview map and feel really lost without it; others are overwhelmed, intimidated and put off by exactly these details, so it wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate to say the same thing to all people.

The example the Buddha himself set was to guide according to whom he was guiding and I don’t suppose it’s too bad an example to try and follow to the extent that whatever wisdom and compassion we’ve cultivated allows.

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Yes.

If I could go back 10 or 15 years (difficult to remember when this journey started), I’d tell myself to spend less time trying to deconstruct and apply the Satipatthana Sutta. It was more than what I needed.

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We certainly live in the over-analytical era. Interesting to think in the Buddha’s day, he would speak one sutta and it would be enough! Not for us! :joy:

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My main advice would be to focus on virtue. Meditation is important and necessary, but the more I practice the more I see that virtue is the cornerstone, alpha and omega of any Buddhist practice. Just hold your metaphysical horses, take it easy on retreats and deep meditations and put your emphasis on virtuous living the way you and the Dhamma see it. It will help a lot.

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Lol, great point. Perhaps one way to suggest approaching the suttas is to group them by attendee(s)​, and settle on a selection, or a single sutta, within that group for study and practice. This initially goes against the spirit of keeping it simple, but it could lead to simplicity.

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My understanding is that most ordinary Buddhists throughout the history of the religion did not read any suttas.

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I think I’ve heard Bhikkhu Bodhi make this point. If I remember correctly, he said that practice for ordinary Buddhists traditionally centered on ethics and devotional practices. Unfortunately, few Western teachers teach these things, so we have to look to the suttas ourselves for this knowledge.

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If one is fortunate, in the age of instant electronic communication, a teacher does not have to be physically proximate. When I started practicing Buddhism in March of this year I was recommended to an individual who lives in another state in the U.S. The two of us correspond via text and e-mail and have occasional phone conversations when he guides me through my practice. It’s not a perfect substitute for having a teacher nearby, but when we talk on the phone I feel like we are in the same room. I must say that if it were not for this person I would not have made the progress that I have.

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Yes. It is also true that meditation was not really practiced by lay practitioners.

Most ordinary Buddhists may also not have been sincerely striving for complete liberation and enlightenment…

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Yes, and if we adopt the traditional Theravada framework, that kind of striving is probably futile for “lay” Buddhists.

But maybe that framework is wrong. I don’t know what kind of generic advice I would give to newcomers to Buddhism. I suppose that I would have to know what brought them to Buddhism, and what they were hoping to get from it.

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I’d say “most lay Buddhists” - not all :slight_smile:
And totally agree that each persons individual situation should dictate the details of the information. Though I remember when I was starting, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. The INDEX of B.B.'s Word of the Buddha, was a wonderful key for me, as it laid out the relative inter-connectedness of many threads :slight_smile:

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One thing I think is missing in Western Buddhism is that there is not enough easy access to all of the fundamental stories that make up the moral culture and literary imaginarium of Buddhism - for example the Jatakas and the Dhammapada Commentary. And of course western convert Buddhists didn’t learn this stuff at grandma’s knee.

I think when Buddhism spread initially as an appealing religion, it did so through these stories, in which hundreds of historical characters from the earliest days have a well-developed role in the drama of Buddhist life, something that ordinary people can draw on to give their own lives moral meaning and beauty. That’s what is celebrated and extolled in all the earliest art and architecture. Buddhism was a religion of universal love, peace, forgiveness and kindness. This is something that sometimes seems to be dropped in contemporary modern Buddhist culture. But that turns Buddhism into a dry and inhuman asceticism.

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I’m glad you were able to find a clever way to work around the distance issues.

My social anxiety in general isn’t much of an impediment anymore, but the thought of walking into a room full of strangers to meditate still makes me cringe. I’m grateful for the personalized instruction I’ve received, but I think I’ll always prefer meditating alone, or with someone I’m already close with.

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SuttaCentral has English translations for the Jataka tales!

https://suttacentral.net/ja

And if one is after the Dhammapada commentaries, there is a handful of alternative translations available on the web! This is the one I usually go to:

https://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/

It is a great source of inspiration and very easy to read through! :slight_smile:

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