在本书中，作者走访了不同的寺院，禅宗中心，和禅堂，并会见了佛教杂志，编辑会，禅师甚至达赖喇嘛，活佛。在这个过程中，笔者发现在美国有三种，即禅，佛教，小乘藏一。虽然不同的一些琐碎的方面基本上他们是相同的。虽然他终于发现，佛教起源于亚洲可能不能很好地适应现代美国社会，英语论文题目，作家收益很多，改变他的观点在生活中无意中在探究佛教近况在美国。因此，读这本书就像是去一个灵性旅程和冒险一起与作者。它的教育和娱乐。那里是如此多的话题，我想在这里讨论基于这本书，但由于空间的限制，我会喜欢选择一些关键元素，关于佛教根据这本书，包括冥想或坐，启示三个方面准则的启蒙之路，杀害众生的事情，业力，零售商店和无常，最后赚钱和佛教之间的关系。 Dinty W. Moore, the author of the book, the Accidental Buddhist, Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still, has an authentic upbringing of Catholicism. However, the God from his original religion has let him down since his youth hood is a mess. Some twenties years later when the writer stands at the door of a Buddhist monastery and explores the so-called American Buddhism Project, he suddenly finds his way. During the project, the author has visited different monasteries, Zen centers, retreats, and zendos, and met with editors of Buddhist magazines, Jesuit, Zen masters and even Dalai Lama, the living Buddha. Through this process, the author finds out there are three kinds of Buddhism in America, namely, the Zen, Theravada and Tibetan one. Though different in some trivial aspects essentially they are the same. Though he finally discovers that Buddhism originating from Asia may not well fit in with modern American society, the writer gains a lot and alters his views in life unintentionally while exploring the status quo of Buddhism in America. Therefore reading this book is like going for a spiritual journey and adventure along with the author. It’s instructive and entertaining. There are so many topics I want to discuss here based on this book, but due to space limitation, I would like to select some key elements regarding Buddhism according to the book, including meditation or sitting, enlightenment and the three principle aspects of the path to enlightenment, killing sentient things, karma, dukka and impermanence, and finally the relationship between making money and Buddhism.
First of all, meditation is the basic and primary practice in Buddhism or Zen. By sitting on a cushion for minutes or hours, practitioners may calm their mind and listen to the inner heart. In the beginning of this book, the author cannot sit there without thinking anything, because his “monkey mind” keeps whispering around his head. He has to count his breath so as to concentrate in the Zen Mountain Monastery. However, as time passes by, he can control the monkey better through gradual practicing. When I was reading this part, I cannot agree more with the author. Today the rapid growth of information technology brings both benefits and damages to people. We have so many things that need checking at one time, including Facebook, email, messages and so on. We are anxious about our job, family, friends and future before these things really go wrong. We play the mobile phone while talking with others in front of us, listen to music while running and watch TV while eating. It seems that we are accustomed to handling several tasks at the same time. However, that’s totally wrong. The modern technology and society have made us much more difficult to concentrate and easy to be distracted. The monkeys in our minds keep jumping from one place to another, making noisy voices of interruption. It’s like several small people quarrelling and fighting with one another, both retiring and troubling. Therefore the main goal of sitting or meditation is to quiet both the mind and heart, unravel the interwoven knots, bring every single thing before the light. After keeping an empty mind for a certain period of time, meditation may help people take a fresh view on things happening around them. It may be explained as that only through getting out of the thing, can we find its true nature. Therefore while meditating, we live out of the voices surrounding us for a certain length of time. Also it has been shown to be helpful to adjust the attitude towards life.
Secondly, let’s talk about enlightenment and the three principle aspects of the path to enlightenment. Based on the book, when an enlightened person is enjoying the sunset, his mind is only focused on this beautiful view, without any thought of job, future plan, children, school and other distractions, neither does he feel pitiful for the short existing of this magnificent scenery, while naturally turn to appreciating the stars after the sunset. One striking feature of an enlightened person is that he feels no attachment to anything. When things come, he only accepts it, while it goes, he does not grieve for it. In fact, according to Buddhism, most of our sufferings and agonies are caused by our strong attachment to things like success, families, job, friends and marriage, which themselves should not be blamed. Marriage itself is good, while our desire that marriage can bring happiness to us is wrong. We get married and hope to harvest happiness but finds out the opposite answer. It’s not the fault of others but our desire. Seeking from external things can never solve problems. Instead we should look into our heart, according to Buddhism. As a result, the Zen puts forward three principle aspects of the path to enlightenment, namely, craving for getting rid of problems, doing it for others and realization of emptiness. For instance, problems are weak points of humans and our desire and attachment to things block us from achieving real happiness. Moreover, the Buddha does all things for all sentient things, and then he achieves enlightenment. Finally, we need to understand that the world is a state of non-duality, meaning there are no difference between you and me, human, plants and animals. We are all the same, thus it’s unnecessary to envy or hate others because if you are angry with your colleague, it means that you are just pissed off by yourself since you two are the same person. Also the path to enlightenment is gradual.
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