Thursday, March 22, 2012
My introduction to Buddhism
As we start our next I'm very excited because I've been interested in Buddhism for some time. I first became interested in it from an early age. One of my favorite bands is The Beatles and some of you know that George Harrison was interested in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Indian culture as a whole. After hearing Indian influenced lyrics and instrumentations I started to do a little research of my own. But this got me thinking, did I truly learn about Buddhism, or just what uninformed Americans know about it? There must be so much more than what I learned from a bunch of George Harrison lyrics and a few books written by The Dalai Lama. This got me very excited about this new book! Is their overall goal to reach enlightenment? Why is this their goal? You don't necessarilly need to answer these questions for me because I'm sure the book will do that, but I just thought they were fun to think about.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Very interesting point! I was not aware that the Beatles were influenced by Buddhism/ Hinduism/ Indian culture, but now that I think about it that makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that our culture does have very skewed view of various religions. I once heard a quote (I forgot it's origin) "We fear that which we do not understand."
I feel like with some religions,we feel afraid. Some religions are only compatible with certain cultures, because religion reflects the needs of the citizens.
By learning more about Buddhism, maybe we can learn more about what the Beatles songs were about. Sometimes, with more background information, we can come up with different/ more accurate interpretations of the lyrics. Perhaps you have a good starting place, but I agree, I can't wait to learn it all for myself.
That is a reasonable concern. There is a lot of half-baked pop-Buddhism going around, and lots of people are drawn to what they assume are vaguely Buddhist notions without really knowing much about it. This is compounded by the shortage of really good and accessible analyses of it.
ReplyDelete