Born Again Buddhist
After receiving decades-worth of teachings, we still may not feel totally satisfied, and wonder why. We keep going to lectures and retreats in the hope of ‘getting it’. It may feel good, but that’s all. “Have I really got it, or am I just acting?”
It’s possible that we’ve become too reliant on the teacher and the teacher’s followers, who appear to be competitive and over-enthusiastic. Yes, seeing that is a teaching in itself – but it never gets better. Why? Because it’s all theories – cycles of routines that are just part of ordinary samsara – and it gets very expensive.
All we want is to feel natural.
This is the time to take the Buddha’s advice to heart; “Do not take my words for the truth; test them for yourself.” We start testing them every day through our interactions with whatever comes our way. How much empathy do we actually have for others’ concerns? This is the real path.
We give what we thought was lacking
– genuine care and understanding for others.
Born again Buddhist is like the second coming; it’s simply realising the essence of the teaching, rather collecting merit points for turning up. 🙂
Being a ‘Buddhist’ is waiting and living in hope, just like any other religion. Being is what we naturally are – pure consciousness within a body. Realising this, we can now reduce the power of karma through engagement with non-attachment to doctrine.
Is life different? Life is exactly the same as before. Although we cannot change how others react to us as they are too steeped in fantasies, hopes and fears, everything that we meet is now our teacher-of-all-phenomena, so the followers and disciples don’t irritate us any more.
Born again is being practical.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 
We are to be the Buddha. We are to be the Christ. Living into the realizations that were theirs to the point of being the best Buddha, the best Christ, that we are capable of being by being who we are, where we are, when we are, how we are, with nothing in it for us beyond the joy of doing/being it and the satisfaction of having done/been it. Each of us being the Buddha/Christ as only we can be the Buddha/Christ in each situation as it arises, all our life long. Trying to meet someone else’s idea of how we ought to do that is the surest way of not doing that.
Hello Jim,
I agree with you. We have to be very careful about others’ ideas.
Through history certain people have wanted humanity to believe what they believe, which lead to the Inquisition, witch hunts, and now non-crime hate incidence, in other words thought crimes.
Evil doesn’t realise that it is actually waking people up!
Tony