User:Robertinventor

From Encyclopedia of Buddhism
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Photo of myself

My main role here is technical, writing templates, importing pages, and working with issues with the encyclopedia.

I have also contributed a blog post and may do more posts like this:

Some time I'd like to research for and contribute articles on Buddhist Music.

I trained as a mathematician. I write software that I sell over the internet, my main program being Bounce Metronome and I also do a lot of science blogging with a special focus on planetary protection, at:

I also help people who are scared that the world is about to end, as a result of false prophecies, and also inaccurate and exaggerated journalistic accounts of science. I write debunks here:

And our Facebook group is here:

I have been a Buddhist now for 35 years. I was Christian before, brought up by my parents both of whom were Christian missionaries in Madagascar with the London Missionary Society, belonging to a small Scottish church that had ordination of women already long ago. My father was a teacher in religious education after his days as a missionary and he got interested in other religions as well as other denominations of Christianity. We ended up being attenders at Quaker meetings, for many years. They meet in silence with no preacher, occasionally someone will stand up and say something that moves them, often ordinary seeming things. It is rather like Zen meditation in feel. They believe in "that of God in everyone" - at least the branch of Quakers popular in the UK as there are many varieties of Quakerism. They also do not believe in a second coming of Jesus in the future but instead interpret all the teachings of that type in the Bible as about the present. The branch of Quakers in the UK have a strong focus on simplicity, quiet, and most of all on Truth. George Fox who founded the Quakers refused to swear on the Bible saying he always spoke the truth anyway.

This idea of quiet, of listening, of being truthful as central to the path, true to yourself and true to everyone else, and indeed the idea of "that of God in everyone" too - though I am now nontheist the Buddhist approach is not unlike that idea. As a non theist, Trungpa Rinpoche's term, it is not relevant to my path whether there is or is not a supreme deity and I don't need to make any decision on that. I also don't need to be agnostic either. It is just not relevant to the path I'm following

So, now I talk about "Buddha nature" instead of "that of God". So it was a natural transition. I also found the idea of a cycle of rebirths very natural and many puzzles I'd had as a Christian just fell away once I learnt about those ideas, all the ones centered around the "problem of evil" of why there is pain and suffering in the world. It is just confusion is the basis of it all. That made so much sense to me when it was explaind by various teachers, and the idea of a path of relating to the plain truth all the time, wherever it leads. For me that was a continuation of the path I was already on as a result of my association with the Quakers before.

Although I ended up following the Tibetan traditions, particularly the Nyingmapa teachings, and though I do enjoy the rich and varied Tibetan art and ceremonies, I am strongly attracted to simplicity. This is of course present within the Tibetan tradition as a path one can follow. My main meditation practice in Buddhism is the breath meditation as taught to beginners.

This video is b a Therevadhan teacher Ajahn Amaro, but it is pretty much identical to the meditation I do

I am also attracted by the Therevadhan teachings too. Particularly Walpola Rahula's "What the Buddha Taught".

I live in Scotland on the Isle of Mull in a beautiful remote location by a stream.

drafts

import process

Pages with the prefix 'robertinventor/import process' in the 'User' and 'User talk' namespaces:

User talk:

full list of sub pages

Sub pages

Statistics page is now here:

EOB:Project Site statistics

Retrieved from "https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/index.php?title=User:Robertinventor&oldid=39759"