Thoughts on Buddhism

During the past few years, I have sought a greater understanding of buddhism, zen, meditation and the likes.  I’ve liked the idea of both buddhism and zen, but it’s been meditation that has kept me going in trying to understand these philosophies.  I have yet to master my time, and I’m not sure if I ever will, and so my practice of meditating consistently is varied.  But, I’ve recently read the Dalai Lama’s book, “An Open Heart,” and it’s opened up my mind to more questions about buddhism and meditation.
The book is great and full of wise words, but one thing that stuck out to me is that, even though, Buddhism is more open minded to many things, it seems like a slight repackaging of other religions.  Maybe that isn’t the best way to put it, but this is what I mean:  it is as rule oriented as any of the major religions out there.  And that if we do not follow the rules then we go to a “hell.”  Is stating rules and tenets always required to survive morally as a human being?  I feel my moral code would not be very suspect if I had no environmental factors contributing to the way I think.  I feel that, intuitively, we are social creatures that can, without the guiding help of some divine creature or philosophy, live just fine.

 Then, on top of that, buddhism basically tells the practitioner to conceal all of their feelings in a way, to reduce suffering.  This, to me, is a double edged sword.  Sure, I can rationalize not getting angry at things that are inevitable, but to do this consistently without a let out of emotion looks like a break down waiting to happen.  Now, I haven’t studied it exhaustively and I have read a few times if something malicious is happening to me then I can do something about it, but little things can and will add up, I feel.  However, maybe it’s all better to go about your life this way.  I do feel as my understanding has progressed I have been a lot more impartial to incidences that may have sparked unreasonable rage/hatred/anger in me before.  So, it’s probably better to have the impartial attitude, in the end.
I guess questioning is the only way to move forward in whatever goal you have.  And this post was partially inspired by a few events in my life that have seemed to go wrong.  But, they are only coincidences and, in actuality, not very big problems.  I can envision what or how I might have felt without taking the impartial attitude I have now towards the problems.  And from what I envisioned, I definitely fared better than what I would have.  I think this topic isn’t over for me, and I’ll come back to meditation later on in my posts.