So I’m sitting here reading Wikipedia’s root article on Buddhism, and it occurs to me that while I really like the sound of it, I’ve never gotten into it because I couldn’t handle the pressure of needing to achieve nirvana.
That’s funny right?
So am I being a better Buddhist by not worrying about Buddhism?
The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.
I have read somewhere that anyone who says they are a Buddhist can’t be a Buddhist, because labels like “I am a Buddhist” are un-Buddhist.
I’m not a Buddhist, and neither is my wife.
I discovered this myself a few days ago. Someone told me I have a “Buddhist outlook” on life I decided to look deeper into it. On the surface it sounds like a fine way to live, and I do like the idea of learning to live with suffering but eh, I don’t care about getting anywhere “spiritually”. The idea of sitting still and meditating doesn’t really excite me either.
My (extremely limited) understanding of Buddhism is that each individual soul needs to go through several cycles of life, death, and reincarnation before reaching Nirvana. During each lifetime, an individual may move up through several steps on the eight-fold path. One who does so successfully gets reincarnated as an individual who can then tackle the next few steps. Unless you happened to get reincarnated as a monk (which I presume you did not), you’re not expected to reach Nirvana in this lifetime.
I call myself a recovering Southern Baptist.
Am I supposed to worry about doing something to make it more likely that I’ll be reincarnated as a monk, though?
We used to have a member here named Tao Jones. Unfortunately, none of his posts were above average. 
Labeling has been regarded as a useful intellectual tool by many Buddhists, so I have no problem telling people that I’m Buddhist. The general consensus, however, is that labels are ultimately constructs that can limit our understanding of our true selves if we take them too literally.
I mean, a fundamental part of Buddhism is the belief that the self does not exist–or rather, that the self does exist but isn’t as narrow as our limited conception of ‘‘I.’’ But it’s stupidly unpractical to cease using the construct ‘‘I.’’ Buddhism may be about looking beyond received wisdom, but it’s also very pragmatic.
(Not that I’m some kind of authority – every Buddhist is going to see things a little differently.)
Some sects of Buddhism emphasize the achievement of nirvana more than others. The Zen Buddhist outlook is sort of like if you’re looking for it than you haven’t found it. It’s much more about appreciating the journey than fixating on a destination. In fact, the idea of nirvana, if you go REALLY deep, is yet another artificial construction. It’s a handy paradigm for understanding the way beyond suffering, but as a literal achievement it is meaningless. If we are ultimately one entity, then the notion of a single person achieving enlightenment doesn’t make much sense, does it?
It depends on what kind of Buddhism you practice. It’s totally possible to be a Buddhist and not believe in reincarnation. It’s tricky to talk about Buddhism in general terms beyond the Four Noble Truths because you will find so many different opinions about what Buddhism really is.
groan I’m pretty sure puns like that lead to being reincarnated as a dung beetle.
In Theravada, if your desire for nirvana becomes an attachment to this world then its a problem. I imagine the idea is that your lack of desire in life itself will lead to nirvana naturally.
To be fair to Buddhism, its doubtful a lay person could achieve nirvana without hundreds/thousands/millions/billions/trillions of more rebirths while on the path. A lay person would only try to achieve some level of detachment and try to acquire more good karma than bad.
“It is better to accept than to understand.”
Read that somewhere, relating to Buddhism, and it irritated the HELL out of me for a long time, and I couldn’t do it. I need to UNDERSTAND to ACCEPT. Accepting without understanding feels a lot like being a doormat for whatever life hands you. But at some point it made sense. Had it on my wall at work for months trying to figure it out. Finally just…accepted it. O.o
As one of the other official board Buddhists, I should point out that I agree with you completely. 
*
IMHO, The problem with Buddhism in the west is the long road between hearing about Buddhism and actually getting to learn something about it. There is Buddhist canon, there are various branches of the religion, some of which are superficially contradictory, and then all of their ideas taken out of context and swished around, and then there is a huge cloud of western interpretations, surrounded by Buddhisty-sounding ideas and phrases ('cause “it’s better to accept than to understand” just sounds, like, deep, dude). Someone who wants to learn more about the religion, has to dig through a mountain of crap**.
Anyway. Nirvana is either a long way off, and you don’t need to worry about it, or it’s a single breath away, in which case it’s no more pressure than fly fishing***
** I think Milarepa had to do this 
*** or both, dude. Whoa.
I don’t know squat about Buddhism, other than as far as religions go, it seems like a pretty good one.
On an episode of the Daily Show they were discussing which religion would be most beneficial for Tiger Woods to convert to, they pointed out, although the sheer number of mistakes he’s made make him a good candidate for Catholicism, if he was Buddhist, how Fing great was he in his last life to come back as Tiger Fing Woods!?
Please do start an “Ask The Buddhists” thread.
Depends. If you are attached to a certain outcome which you’ve labeled good, and feel you need that outcome or else something is bad then no.
Either way, what is cool is there is work in neuroscience and psychology about Buddhism now. They are studying monk’s brains to see how meditation changes things. Interesting stuff.
But a world of Buddhists would be easy pickings for a dictator. Apathetic peace has its limits.
I’m not sure ‘apathetic’ is the exact word for this.
There are many different ways to enlightenment grasshopper. 
You’ve got ascetic monks from boyhood, samaurai warriors who have killed half the planet ala Yojimbo who suddenly in a flash of englightenment become well enlightened, those spending hundreds or thousands of lifetimes in the cycle of birth and reincarnation until they get it right and paying for past sins, etc.
Tibetan buddism is pretty cool with a bit of their own spin. Tibetan buddhism absorbed the original indigenous Bon religion (although the Bonpo still exist today). One famous tibetan buddhist story is of an evil king. A man dressed in black on a black horse assassinated the king and then disappeared. Ended up it was a buddhist monk (IIRC) would could not bear the awful suffering the multiple lifetimes the King would have to be reborn as a scum of the earth for his awful deeps, so the monk killed the King. The monk was willing to take on the suffering of murder to save the broad populace as well as the evil King from further suffering. He disappeared because actually the monk covered himself and his horse in soot, and when they swam across the Tsangpo River it washed away and no one noticed the dude on a white horse riding away…
Aside from spiritual and meditative people who choose to actively study, there are quite a lot of “cultural” Buddhists out there who don’t seem to give it much thought. My SO is Vietnamese, and like a majority of Vietnamese, grew up identifying as Buddhist. A big thing I notice with him and other practical Buddhists is that they are very conscious of karma, and try to act in ways that build good karma. I would not call them apathetic and peaceful, though!