It is my finding that most religions are a complete fraud, not just Buddhism.
We are being called to deepen our focus on what the big religions were originally meant to support. Since these religions were almost instantaneously taken over by power-hungry zealots in whose interest it was (is) to keep the people ignorant of actual spiritual experience, it's clear that we as committed contemplatives need to focus directly on the Ultimate and leave all the distracting religious blatherings alone -- eventually, people grow weary of them and leave, which is a first step toward regaining their true heritage.
Thank-you, Michael, I agree.
I was a student in very strict conservative Roman Catholic schools in both my primary and secondary years. I spent three summers in boys camp in Quebec run by Jesuit priests. There were all kinds of sexual abuses going on. By the time I was 13, I declared myself an atheist. In my last year of high school I enrolled in a public school where I found the atmosphere very relaxing. I came to the conclusion that all organized religions are corrupt.
According to Michael's above formula, then there is no surprise, Michel, that you found yourself here.
Self-ordained monk??? According to his own About me, modesty is not one of his qualities. Whatever he is, it does not appear to be Buddhism to me. This person cannot be a genuine Buddhist monk; probably even less a Buddhist teacher.
Hahaha. I love the pathos with which the author writes this. Then he says, "it does not appear to be Buddhism to me." So there is no real argument; no real acquaintance with you or what you're about. It's his own self-judgment.
It is funny and at the same time pathetic. Why list me on his list of Controversial 'Buddhist' Teachers & Groups? I think I most probably ran into him on one or more Buddhist forums, where I was banned for discussing jhana, and he felt it was his mission in life to "protect" people from being "infected" by my ideas of cultivating bliss, joy and ecstasy by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which in his corrupt version of Buddhism is not valid.
Rick Ross used to have a listing for me as well. I searched his cult archive website for my listing there, and found it gone. I guess he figured that either I was too small to bother with, or he was just contributing to the persecution of mystics today.
It isn't good to delight too much in this, however. This world is a horror, and without ironclad discrimination, and help from a divine Hand, there is no way to navigate through this mess of confused ideas and teachers. This author, among others, will keep spinning in the wheel of samsara.
Arahatta (enlightened, mystic) Jhanananda (Jeffrey S. Brooks) is a self-ordained Western Buddhist monk in the Great Western Vehicle,
I also like you're unapologetically calling yourself an arahant now! As it should be.
Well, I took a few years getting there. I thought I would start with just calling myself a stream winner. Doing so created a huge backlash in the fundamentalist Buddhist community, then everyone in the west started calling themselves, stream winners, then I kept upping the anti. Now there are lots of delusional Buddhists calling themselves arahants.
