Never Disparaging

I'm a Soka Gakkai buddhist from Italy, an English teacher, and a visual novel enjoyer

[jofukyobosatsu]

I didn't die out, but I went through a lot and I ended up abandoning this blog. Back in April I broke up with my first gf over religious disagreements. I wanted her to be open-minded and respect all the other religious traditions, but instead I shook her christian faith and she resented me for this. I tried my best to earn her forgiveness for a whole month but it didn't work out at all. Spiritually we parted ways when she told me her problems were due to her relationship with god, which I had harmed according to her. As a devoted practitioner, I outright told her that all her inner turmoil was caused by her toxic and exclusive worldview, but I couldn't get through to her. She had been the center of my social life and after we broke up I crashed out. It took me almost two months to finally come around. In the meanwhile I began to feel disillusioned with a philosophy of renunciation and isolation like Theravāda Buddhism. It became clear to me that I needed community, I needed to live alongside others, not apart from them. That's when I was invited by a man I found on reddit to join Soka Gakkai. Since joining, I’ve been attending meetings, practicing consistently, and most importantly, connecting with people. My mental health has been steadily improving thanks to the unwavering support of a community that preaches compassion, courage, and inner transformation. I also joined a Soka Gakkai youth group and will be participating in upcoming events with them. For the first time in a while, I feel rooted, not just spiritually but socially.

This blog may have been silent for a time, but I haven’t given up. I’ve just been transforming.

[jofukyobosatsu]

[jofukyobosatsu]

Never allow yourself to be defeated by circumstances. Failure is not the end but a natural part of life and a stepping stone toward success. At first, it may plunge you into despair, but over time, repeated challenges build resilience until setbacks no longer shake you. This spirit of transforming failure into strength is what distinguishes Nichiren Buddhists from other Buddhists and from non-Buddhist teachings.

[jofukyobosatsu]

A buddhism which is not engaged is simply not buddhism.

[jofukyobosatsu]

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[jofukyobosatsu]

The reason I joined Soka Gakkai after my break up and crash out isn't found in any scriptures or logical reasoning. It just clicked with me, I realized orthodox buddhists do not display the universal compassion of the Buddha at all. Rather they're pretentious and demand respect only because they believe their texts are the earliest in the history of buddhism. The Buddha himself said enlightenment can't be attained through logic and religious formalism. Yes there are lots of Mahayana schools out there but they all demonize each other and are grounded on a strict spiritual hierarchy. Soka Gakkai gets rid of this rigid structure and fosters an environment of mutual understanding and equality. So I believe that's what the Buddha would've wanted, not a religion where monastic elites rule over lay people who are treated as second class practitioners.

[jofukyobosatsu]

Hello. I just recently found your blog and looking at your posts has been very inspiring to me, as within the last year I’ve really gotten interested in Theravada and its practice. Buddhism just makes more sense than any other worldview and I want to begin practicing it.

My one problem is that there are hardly any resources for what a daily Theravada Buddhist practice looks like without a temple (I don’t have access to one) and alongside meditation.

My question is: how do I begin a daily Theravada practice? There has been some confusion as to what one might look like and I was hoping that you might have some insights.

Read the Dhammapada and the Buddha's words, listen to forest monks' Dhamma Talks on youtube, learn to chant the parittas and practice with metta or breathing meditation. Dhammadarini's monastery has weekly online services on Zoom if you're interested. Also https://buddho.org/books/ here's a library of free Theravada books.

[jofukyobosatsu]

[jofukyobosatsu]

[bubbulupuma]

Introduction: A Buddhist Recovery Blog?

The first step of any recovery program is to make a Tumblr blog about the experience. This is what I currently look like:

My name is Michael. I'm 32 years old, my parents met in a mental hospital, childhood and adolescence was often pretty bizarre, laying a pretty textbook foundation for a very mixed-up person with a lot of issues. I was always a bit bizarre just on my own, besides. Then, by 14 I discovered both Buddhism and drugs.

For years, I continued to read about Buddhism (and, eventually, all sorts of mystical and contemplative traditions) voraciously and, with more passion and zeal than consistency and discipline, attempted off and on to practice and meditate. There were even some of my teenage years during which I barely consumed any drugs besides the very occasional single hit of cannabis, actually meditating quite seriously, for several hours a day, and keeping strict precepts and a tight daily routine.

Mostly, however, I didn't let my interest in a path which prohibits drug use stop me from exploring and experimenting with all sorts of drugs through the years, never actually staying sober for any significant length of time.

I was always open to any random offer and never used a single drug exclusively every day, but I developed more or less serious addictions to particular drugs for a few years at a time. In my teenage years I stole and drank a ton of Robitussin, but it began to produce a sort of "allergic reaction" that forced me to stop. I began to drink a lot in my early twenties, but that also eventually faded away more or less on its own. I got very addicted to poppy-seed tea for about four years mid-twenties, but I quit that with the help of Refuge Recovery. I tried kratom and only took it very occasionally for several years before ever starting to take it regularly sometime after I'd quit poppy seed tea, at which point I finally developed a real addiction to it. Finally, at a particularly low point of more or less total despair, sleeping in a car alone and unemployed in Fort Worth, TX, I accepted someone's offer of a little methamphetamine and thereby began a roughly 2/2-1/2 year nightmare of meth addiction from which I have only just begun to awake in the last six months or so.

Now I am still addicted to kratom, as I am finding it, oddly enough, much harder to quit than meth precisely because it is so much less destructive. This is the next concrete item on my list, as it were. This is the main reason I wanted to make a blog--I think it could be helpful in getting over this next hurdle of quitting kratom (and hopefully many further hurdles to come). I will explore exactly how I think it could help sometime later.

For now, I'll just finish with this statement of intention: I want to get fully clean, and I want to finally be able to say I am an actual Buddhist, following the five precepts and leading a life which is at least not grossly misaligned from my own core values. This is what this blog is about.

Peace

[jofukyobosatsu]

[jofukyobosatsu]

[jofukyobosatsu]

Religions teach you to submit your will and life to gods, buddhism teaches you to be free from all illusions. No one can ever find happiness in slavery.

[jofukyobosatsu]

[jofukyobosatsu]

The Buddha is stronger than any gods by virtue of transcending their realm of existence.

[jofukyobosatsu]

Life is suffering