Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hey everyone, it's George. I haven't been active on gaia for the past few months and I thought I'd come back. ^^

I was just curious how do you guys learn about Buddhism teachings? Do you use the net? Books? Or do you have a teacher? Also if you don't mind give a little information about what you do use.

I only know of one school around here, and I do not think it is for me. So at the beginning of learning Buddhism I used the net; mainly just to find out what Buddhism was about and the different types of Buddhism.

After a few months of reading I finally found out what type of Buddhism I wanted to part take on; Zen Buddhism! I went to chapters and looked at books for about a week. I made a choice on my first Zen book it is called; Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The author of the book is Shunryu Suzuki, and may I say this is one excellent book! This is an amazing book for beginner's and I recommend it to anyone interested in the teachings of Zazen.

Oh, razz Well I'm glad to see the "other" option in good use. razz Heh.

Same as Nirvahara; books and the internet. I recently moved to a tiny town that has nothing as far as spiritual stuff aside from a handful of Christian churches. While I like the churches and the church goers, they're not much for expounding on the dharma around here.

I also get into occasional discourse with my husband, who's Theravadan and has a slightly different outlook on teachings. Helps to get someone else's point of view, I find. 3nodding

Yeah, I'm in the "other" column as well. I used to live in Los Angeles, but now I go to college in a small town. I kinda did things backward from most people: instead of becoming interested in Buddhism through scholarly studies and then converting, I chose Buddhism as a religion early on and only later studied it academically. So, I've read books about Buddhism and its impact and influences and etc., but my knowledge of the Dharma largely came from teachers. We also have a Buddhist Students Group here, which has been wonderful support, but it's largely for meditation and academic discourse.

If you haven't read Zen mind, beginner's mind, you should probably read it. xD While I've never read it, I've heard alot of good about it. As for other Zen books .. Well .. I don't know. D; I've got this one, just titled "Zen: The Art of Life" but it's not the best, and it's not very popular. Soo .. No idea. Thich Naht Hanh (sp?) perhaps?
(No boob quests here, indeed. wink )

Alright, thanks a lot guys. wink >

The whole thing?! Lords of the Nine, man, that thing is like, three bookcases worth of texts. xd

...Can I borrow it?

The whole Pali canon - the entire Tripitaka - is a huge collection of work. It's far more than a single book will hold. 3nodding