Thoughts on Buddhism II: Great Doubt
By TJ Seitz
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About this ebook
Essay about the concept of "great doubt" and learning how to recognize it.
TJ Seitz
On the surface Mr. Seitz appears to be a quintessential middle aged male. TJ is married to his HS sweetheart and lives with his family in a suburban split level house located on the outskirts of Rochester, NY. Seitz has spend the majority of his professional career working as an information technology specialist in the fields of education, criminal justice/law enforcement and procurement. While working full time, TJ also attended college part time (and sometimes full time). To keep himself (relatively speaking) sane he majored and minored in non-technology subjects, earning a BA in English with a writing concentration from Saint John Fisher College and a MA in Social Policy from Empire State College. As an undergraduate student TJ attended writing classes taught by George Saunders and Judith Kitchen (though neither teacher would probably remember him). Distractions like kicking virtual wasp’s nests on BITNET Listservs (predecessors to social networking sites like Facebook), soliciting donations for a Panty Alter fund and hanging out with a heavily medicated professional drummer named Dirtbag interfered with TJ’s ability to write anything particularly noteworthy for either class. He also attended a workshop at the Omega Institute mentored by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood. In reality the stable full time jobs have been serving as functional fronts for TJ’s secret life as a writer. They provided him with money to pay his bills and experiential material to write about. The down side of working and going to college was that he did not have a lot of time to devote to writing and publishing. Adding a problematic first marriage, babies, a divorce, a few bouts with unemployment and colon cancer to the mix did not help much either. TJ is currently working on several writing projects/ideas and recently took a graduate writing class proctored by James Whorton. Mr. Seitz's essays and letters have been printed in both local and national publications. His poetry has been published both in the United States and England.
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Thoughts on Buddhism II - TJ Seitz
Thoughts on Buddhism II: Great Doubt
T.J. Seitz
Copyright 2015 by T.J. Seitz
Smashwords Edition
Five or six years ago I started reading a collection of Chan Buddhism books by Master Sheng Yen. One in particular, Shattering the Great Doubt: The Chan Practice of Huatou, was the most provocative of the series.
The idea of great doubt
fascinated me but I had a hard time wrapping my mind around its application.
On a car ride home, after an exceptionally chaotic day at work, it suddenly dawned on me that the buzzing I felt racing throughout my mind and body as I left the office might be what Sheng Yen would consider a manifestation of the great doubt