SPIRIT WORLD UPDATE: MORE BUDDHISTS SENT TO WORK WITH MORMONS

Some Mormons were okay with this
symbol until they realized it didn't
illustrate the Young Women's Values

Spirit World—Reports out of the Spirit World indicate that more Buddhist have been sent to bring light and truth to groups of Mormons. The reports say that while some Mormons are quick to respond to what the Buddhist have to offer, others are quite resistant.

One report explains that several Buddhists had been sent to work with Mormons who were grieving for the actions of their wayward, mortal children. In the course of their conversations, Buddhists spoke about letting go of the almost overwhelming anxiety about and attachment to those mortal childrens’ actions. Buddhists introduced concepts like tonglen where Mormons learned to reduce selfish attachment while actually increasing compassion and loving-kindness. Mormons who rejected these Buddhist ideas about letting go of attachment wanted to be eternally sealed to and thereby attached to all of the good people that made them feel good about themselves. Those same Mormons indicated that they did not want to have to worry about “compassion toward the bad people who wouldn’t be in their kingdom.” They also complained that such “crazy talk” is something that they had “never found in any manual” and that it “sounds like the sort of hippie crap that beard prohibitions are meant to prevent!”

Other reports indicate many Buddhists working with Mormons on meditation. Those Mormons soon discovered that, as they started to meditate, it was difficult to find both attentiveness and stillness. Over time attentiveness and stillness started to emerge for them, even in the midst of internal or external chaos. Still, many Mormons rejected this spiritual practice. Such Mormons said that they already knew how to pray, that they had a list of items that they always discussed with God in their customary allotted time (47 seconds), and that the Buddhists could not be praying in the correct manner “since they didn’t ask for protection against any harm or accident that might befall them” and since they were noncommittal about praying that foods like brownies “would nourish and strengthen them.” Those Mormons also complained that “sittin’ around and not doin’ anything” was against both God’s mandate to be constantly and “anxiously engaged in a good cause” and flew in the face of the “pioneer spirit of rollin’ up your sleeves and gettin’ to work!”

A reported final area of potential connection and conflict was over the nature of evil. Many Buddhists talked about meditation as a way to understand desires and drives. Such meditation could allow one to experience discomfort, pain, and even temptation for what they are without feeling the immediate need to rid oneself of them. Those who embraced such spiritual practices found that they allowed Mormons to resist what can seem like “evil” by paradoxically not fighting it. Drives and hungers for food, affection, comfort, security, pleasure, and even sex were compared to tides and were seen as useful, vital aspects of the lived experience that one can attend to, understand, and gracefully, patiently incorporate into life’s vast richness. Those aspects can find their rightful place in one’s life, and one can find her or his rightful place with them. Other Mormons rejected this idea, saying that they had to “constantly keep the ‘stage of their mind’ filled with busy and anxious goodness to prevent ambiguity, laziness, or evil from ‘taking over the play’.”

While some Mormons found insight and joy in what the Buddhists taught, when others found out that those teachings where part of the Dhammapada and other Buddhist scriptures, they rejected the message, saying, “a Book of Mormon, a Book of Mormon, we have a Book of Mormon, we need no more…books…at all!”

Thank you to special investigative reporter Kevin Winters for research on this story.