Lal, Akvan, Johnny:
Lal said: ‘The mental pain that you talk about in the fourth paragraph is “samphassa ja vedana”. That is not due to previous causes’.
How so? Or, more correct to ask, How always so? There is a difference between the suffering when one just ‘feels down’ or falls into a sad mood for no apparent reason and when that sadness surfaces due to an event that took place in the past that involved another person, for instance. Here ,clearly, there is a cause and one can point to it as the cause: ‘If that did not happen, this would not be happening now.’ And as I see, this sorrow or sense of regret about the course of those past events leading to mental pain now would need, now or later, the other person too for the elimination of that pain,(no inner ‘spritual effort’ works) for ‘trying to forget all about it and moving on’ does not work, only the ‘moving on’ does, and that only because life must go on somehow, otherwise…..
It may be a ‘mind-made concept’, as Lal has it, but it is more of a ‘mind-retained’ concept; the cause was an event or events in the past, and the mind registered it.It did not create it. Or did it, if one goes deep enough? Please elaborate on this.
The other point I would like to comment on is the apayas. I come from a Catholic background, or environment is a better term in my case(for I never felt that what was I was being taught made sense, it never ‘clicked’), one of those teachings being the concept of an eternal hell. It seemed to me to be too much of a punishment, overly disproportionate to condemn someone to suffer forever, however many and however heinous the crimes committed. I feel the same about the apayas. Why should someone suffer for so long, millions of years, and in intense, unimaginable agony for just one act, however odious, and however many and full of hatred in the mind the days that led to the crime. Had anyone else but a Buddha said it, I would reject the teaching outright. Of course, I have no problem with the scale or proportion or disproportion of the cause to the effect when it comes to the rewards in the deva realms!! One short life here generating a deva bhava results in a deva birth lasting millions of years. Comments on this please.
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