#skillful means

[jamabushi]

[makapatag]

one thing i really like about buddhism--particularly mahayana buddhism--is that it understands context, so in my mind it's a very "human" religion. mahayana doesn't tell you to live up to impossible standards but rather, to actually attain what was once thought impossible through whatever means you have. by any means necessary is very applicable to mahayana buddhism.

in the lotus sutra, the buddha states something along the lines of "if a person needs an arhat to be saved, i will appear in the form of an arhat" and proceeds to list down several other forms they might take to save someone, right down to "if they need a common person to be saved, then i will appear in the form of a common person." now, buddhism has been soteriological from the start (it's all about emancipation from the wheel of rebirth after all) but that sutra passage only really served to highlight the major message of the entire sutra: the use of skillful means.

so to me this means buddhism accepts contexts. it doesn't require you to do 180,000 prostrations, it doesn't require you to be a perfect peerless meditative god, it doesn't require you anything that you cannot do at all. it doesn't matter: you will become a buddha all the same. that last bit makes it even better: since in buddhism emancipation means becoming a buddha, when sakyamuni "saves" you he only really supercharges your enlightenment so you can get to it easier, or if another buddha saves you (like amitabha) he whisks you off to his pure land sukhavati so that you can focus a thousand kalpas on just enlightenment without having to be hungry, thirsty, or oppressed.

the majority buddhism in my country is mahayana--it used to be some form of esoteric buddhism during the classical period but that has long since vanished away. though the fact that there has been avalokitesvara images found somewhere in batangas makes it a very spiritual thought to become a buddhist in a country that has partial buddhist roots.

it's mahayana because the buddhism that was brought back here during/after colonization was chinese buddhism. which is dominated by amitabha/pure land buddhism. now one of the most important deities/bodhisattvas in chinese buddhism is guanyin 觀音 (bodhisattva of compassion, who is a strange sinicized version of avalokitesvara). you'll still find her statues in the philippines, especially in parts most concentrated with chinese immmigrants. in one corner of binondo you will see a street shrine with guanyin, mother mary, and jesus christ beside each other, and with passersby offering incense to all three of them.

so since guanyin (who, by the way, is sometimes syncretized to essentially be "chinese mama mary" because religion in religious countries is very bumfuck evades taxonomy) is the most popular bodhisattva in the PH, when tibetan lamas arrived here to teach vajrayana, they adapted a lot of chenrezig rituals even though chenrezig isn't really overtly huge in tibetan buddhism. so now when you go to vajrayana pujas in manila, they almost always have some semblance of chenrezig invocation, and its common to have chenrezig pujas.

another upaya-kaushalya thing i noticed is that buddhism doesn't really do like mass every sunday. but since filipinos have been doing sunday mass for around 300 years now they adapted and now we have sunday pujas because the common filipino expects some sort of religious commitment on sunday

i think buddhism could be a huge boon to socialist movements. cutting through the ego, emphasis on emptiness (that is, nothing has inherent nature, which is essentially mystical materialism), and an emphasis on a sort of helping each other to gain merit would really benefit everyone. especially since unlike christianity they don't force other local religions or local people to change for them, but rather, they retrofit themselves into the local space, adopting the principle of skillful means to help everyone realize their buddhahood.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“Zen is a method for transformation. It’s fierce, you don’t hide out, you appear as yourself. You want freedom, you want to understand the universe. You want to stop building the house of pain.”

- John Tarrant

[Alive On All Channels]

[littlemissrhizome]

Capital is probably read in its entirety during the proclaiming of the Lotus Sutra in one of the purelands where it's a million million stanzas long.

[compassionmattersmost]

The Art of Pacing: Managing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with Skillful Means

There is a rhythm to living with chronic illness, one that requires a kind of surrender. Those who walk the path with myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome soon learn that pacing is not merely a strategy—it becomes an art form, a way of listening, of harmonizing with the body’s quiet whispers before they become cries. To pace oneself is to acknowledge the body’s finite energy, to…

[deepinsamsara]

[joetsantos]

One of the things we need to do is to stop blaming ourselves in response to our addictions. Blaming ourselves is just us responding to unskillfulness with further unskillfulness. Having a tendency to be addicted isn't something to take personally. It's not weakness. It is just causes and conditions unfolding in our lives.

Bodhipaksa (x)

[silentgong]

By witnessing and interrupting your own reactive patterns, you will both reduce your suffering and increase your ability to deal with the suffering of others