I saw a Buddhist in Fry's Electronics

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Peregrine, Dec 10, 2013.

  1. Peregrine Registered Member

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    90
    First of all, I did a quadruple take. If you are curious about the quadruple take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFMrBldVk0s&feature=player_embedded


    This Buddhist was in his orange robe, barefoot, and with a necklace that I would compare to a rosary.

    He was looking and CD-roms and appeared very confused about the whole situation.

    So I'm curious...

    In Christianity, sinners repent or are shunned. In Buddhism, what does the Buddhist community do with those who accumulate worldly possessions???
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing, I think. It's up to them. But there are exceptions to the rule, Buddhism is pragmatic.
     
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  5. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I think that you mean Asian monastic, not Buddhist. The appearance of lay Buddhists is indistinguishable from everyone else. There are Hindu monastics that dress in similar fashion, so your monastic might not have been a Buddhist. If he was a Buddhist, his orange robe suggests a Theravadin monk.

    And yeah, it probably was a rosary, Buddhists call it a 'mala'. They are common all across Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Muslims and Buddhists use them in much the way that Catholic Christians use them, for counting prayers or meditations.

    You might have been imagining the confusion. Monks are earthlings and they typically know what CD-roms are. Maybe he (and a companion, see below) had been sent out to buy some CD-roms and he was unsure about what kind to buy or how many or something.

    Are you sure that he was sinning? Buddhism doesn't really have the concept of sin. What it does do is divide acts into skillful and unskillful, defined as producing good and bad results. Monastics pay very close attention to this and voluntarily submit to several hundred 'rules of training' in the Buddhist monastic rule, the Vinaya.

    If he was lusting after a material possession (a CD-rom? that's weird) and dreaming of owning it as a possession, then he was probably acting unskillfully.

    Buddhist monastics aren't supposed to own any personal possession, with a few minor exceptions (their robe, their food bowl). Lusting after possessions is unskillful. It's something to be confessed to the other monks when they periodically gather. (Buddhist monks have confession too.)

    But that doesn't mean that the temple or monastery where the monk resides can't have a computer. It just means that the computer can't be the property of an individual monk. Buddhists, including monastics, make great use of computers. Lay Buddhists use computers just like anyone else and there are also more religious uses that would interest a monk. Many of the Buddhist scriptures, commentaries and secondary literature have been put into digital form and many of those exist in CD-rom format. Monastics use computers to read them and they use computers to create them. It's not unusual for them to create and access online material as well. There's no monastic prohibition that I know of against using computer technology.

    One potential problem though, for the monk who was looking at CD-roms. The Buddhist monastic rule doesn't permit monks to possess or even to touch money. So if your monk intended to buy some CD-roms for his temple or monastery on that trip to Fry's, he probably had a lay Buddhist accompanying him somewhere in the store who would actually pay for them.
     
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  7. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Why didn't you ask him?
     
  8. Peregrine Registered Member

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    Yazata,

    Thank you. That helped!!

    I was busy. plus, its Fry's.... much too busy.
     
  9. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    Fry's busy? What time were you there? I go about 1 PM and it isn't crowded.


    Buddhists can and do buy things for their temple that they live in.
     

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