in my mind's zen garden

the dalai lama & buddha nature

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” —John Muir

I was browsing around in the Religion/Philosophy section at Borders. And I was totally awed by the number of books written by the Dalai Lama.

Browsing through many other books there in that section… Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sufism, etc… I ended up sitting on the carpet in that particular aisle just skimming the pages of many books about the Dalai Lama and Buddhism.

Self-Realization Fellowship was a church I used to go to in my early 20s, and so I ended up browsing through some books on Paramahansa Yogananda, the pioneering Yogi who founded “SRF” and brought Indian Philosophy and Wisdom to the West. I still like SRF’s approach of respecting the world’s great religions.

I’ve been really getting into Buddhism lately… not that I want to become a Buddhist right this moment, or become a monk and live in the Himalayas in a cave, but I’ve been studying Buddhism as a philosophy and many things I’m reading reflect a practical application to the real world.

But then again, what is real?

Buddhism teaches that the material/physical world we’ve known out there is all an illusion. Meaning that, our “mind” interprets what we see, hear, feel, taste… so, what is our mind? If our entire life experience has been based on what our limited senses have perceived up until know…

…then what is this world in which we live in?

Anyways, I got a nice catalog in the mail from Hugger Mugger… their Fall Catalog and they really have some awesome Yoga stuff, and Buddhist as well as Tibetan stuff… at Target I actually was a little surprised to find a statue of the Buddha in the candles and tea lights section. Hmm… But the most awesome store to get a Buddha statue is over at Buddha For You, here in San Diego. I was there some weeks ago and was simply amazed at the number of Buddhas available ranging in price from $10.00 to thousands of dollars for a 6 foot statue!

I was watching a special tv show about Siegfried and Roy, and the accident that happened to them. They showed footage of their beautiful mansion, and they had this enormously inspiring Buddhist shrine/altar with a very large golden Buddha in the center.

It seems that I’m suddenly seeing images of the Buddha everywhere, but I know it’s just because I’ve been reading about him lately…

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