## Metadata - Author: [[Dinty W. Moore]] - Full Title: The Accidental Buddhist - Category: #books ## Highlights - During meditation, the mind is supposed to be still. But the mind doesn’t want to be still. In fact, left to its own devices, the mind would prefer to babble, jabber, and prattle all day—rushing from thought to thought, worry to worry, and generally keeping us as far away from enlightenment as possible. Buddhists call this Monkey Mind, Jimon says. ([Location 118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=118)) - AFTER SEEKING THE tranquillity that comes through Buddhist meditation for roughly half a day or so, only one conclusion makes any sense: I have Attention Deficit Disorder. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=191)) - One day, many years later, though, I chanced upon a book called Being Peace by a Vietnamese monk named Thich Nhat Hanh, and something was awakened in me. Not any deep faith in God, to be honest, but just enough curiosity to start me thinking again. What was it that these Buddhists had discovered? What was I missing? ([Location 224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=224)) - if we were happy and kind, we would pass this happiness and kindness on to the people around us, and they would be happier and kinder, too. Simple as that. He said that this was the heart of Buddhism. ([Location 228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=228)) - “Many of us worry about the situation of the world,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. “We don’t know when the bombs will explode. We feel that we are on the edge of time. As individuals we feel helpless, despairing.” ([Location 233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=233)) - When the first person goes into dokusan, the formal name for the face-to-face encounter, the rest of the hallway line moves up one space. When it is our turn, and we enter the dokusan room, we are to put our hands together, bow twice, then step forward, then bow again, then do a full prostration bow, dropping to our knees and bowing until our foreheads hit the floor, then another half bow, then we should sit about a foot from Daido-shi’s knees and introduce ourselves, first name only, and tell Daido-shi what kind of practice we do (“If you don’t know,” Jimon tutors us, “just say that you count breaths”), and then we can ask Daido a question. ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=307)) - Zen is not learned from books, Jimon tells us, it is learned from teachers, and for a teacher to be legitimate, his or her transmission lines should be intact, and John Daido Loori is the real thing. ([Location 319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=319)) - Back in the old days, I never much liked the deference we were expected to pay our parish priests, or the idea that they were God’s hand-picked representatives. ([Location 325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=325)) - But these weeds, it turns out, are not bad. Just as garden weeds, when properly composted, can be used to nourish the vegetable patch, Suzuki writes, mind weeds, when properly observed, can nourish a beginner’s Zen practice. Watch the weeds, he advises, be aware of them, watch them begin to lessen, and that will give you hope. ([Location 454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=454)) - The difficulty I have with Buddhism is that it’s just too damn simple. ([Location 461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=461)) - WHY DO TIBETANS HAVE SUCH TROUBLE WITH THEIR VACUUM CLEANERS? They Lack Attachments ([Location 462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=462)) - Just like Catholics and Methodists and Baptists all believe in Jesus but differ on some finer points of theology, ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=466)) - American Buddhism, I learn, falls into three main categories—Zen, Theravada, and Tibetan. Maybe what my Project needs is to sample all three. ([Location 468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=468)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Geshe is a title, somewhat akin to Doctor of Buddhist Philosophy, and it means he has undergone a rigorous course of study, starting at age fourteen. He is now roughly thirty-six, but looks younger. ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=485)) - Gassho, ([Location 499](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=499)) - Though we often tend to blame them, it is not external things like families, jobs, or money that create problems for us in our lives. Rather, what actually makes us unhappy is our tendency to desire that these things bring us happiness. This expectation that family, job, money, a new car, whatever, will make us happy is what binds us and causes our discontent. ([Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=501)) - Happiness is internal, not external, and chasing externals is a waste of time, a cycle of longing, an endless wandering in the wrong place after the wrong thing. Buddhists call it samsara. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=512)) - “Craving something good and hoping to avoid something bad is what creates problems,” he says in summary. “So get rid of all attachment and aversion.” ([Location 533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=533)) - Or maybe I respect Geshe-la because of his simplicity. When I was growing up, priests drove better cars than my parents, lived in far nicer quarters, and even had servants, old Irish widows who kept house and cooked the food for a pittance. The priests were princes, and usually acted like it. ([Location 696](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=696)) - Sister Mary Catherine’s job was to beat me into submission, to make me a quiet and obedient Christian child, and she did so with a single-minded purposefulness. ([Location 728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=728)) - I don’t remember a whole heck of a lot of what the nuns taught us about God, except that they seemed to be in fear of him just as I was in fear of Sister Mary Catherine. I remember— ([Location 730](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=730)) - long discussion in religion class about whether it would be all right for a starving woman to steal a loaf of bread from a bakery truck if she were stealing it only to bring it to her starving children. This was a Catholic school koan—Thou Shall, after all, Not Steal—and I remember our bright little minds wrestling with this for hours upon hours. Certainly, one of us insisted, it is not a sin if she is only feeding her starving kids. We weren’t exactly starving in my small Catholic parish—most of our fathers had manual labor jobs in the forges and foundries up along Twelfth Street—but it wasn’t a big stretch for some of us to imagine it. “Well certainly she wouldn’t be punished for that,” we insisted, but with a question in our little voices. The nun seemed truly troubled. She didn’t want to break down and admit that sin was circumstantial—goodness only knows what can of catechismic worms that might open—but she saw our point. “Well,” she finally demurred, “it would only be a venial sin anyway, and you don’t go to Hell for a venial sin.” ([Location 731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=731)) - organized religion domesticates and dwarfs God to a controllable and lovable size.” ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=758)) - Good karma is defined as any thought, word, or action that you do that ultimately brings you some sort of happiness. That is the definition of good karma. The definition of bad karma is anything you do or think or say that ultimately brings you some sort of pain or suffering.” ([Location 1048](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=1048)) - “We need cars to get to our jobs,” I say, “because we need the job to pay for the car.” ([Location 1169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DD85F1K&location=1169))