Thank you Donna. You are most welcome.
Thank you Lal,
Your reply is much as I expected. I had read the relevant posts,and more than once, so nothing new there. That is not to detract though from your kindness in taking the time to answer, let that be quite clear.
Of late I have been thinking of the apayas a lot, and thinking is putting it mildly. Hence my digging into posts that concern processes and ways to eliminate them or, at least, to not let them come to fruition for myself and for others. Obviously ‘others’ has two meanings:those I know and love, and all other sentient beings in the whole of existence, whose suffering cannot be any different from that felt by those I love. I realise that this dichotomy can only be due EXCLUSIVELY to attachment, and as I cannot recall past lives, the attachment can, in my case, be only to those I have known in this life.
“Dukkham bhayattena” – This phrase has been occuring to me often these last few days, and like that, in Pali. This dread of the apayas, the niraya in particular, made me go back to instances in my life where I acted, spoke or even had thoughts that may lead there. There surely will be more, many more, rooted in previous lives, and that is one reason I have long stopped wishing I could see into those. The other reason is that if I came across a life in which my lot was better than it is in this one, regret would follow: ‘then I was so, now I am only this!’; if worse,there would be disappointment to various degrees, if not horror and incredulity: ‘what? I was that?’. In either case, no instruction would be forthcoming about what action to take NOW. And this is my main concern: how to avoid those states for myself and others,if it were possible, and to find ways that reconcile both objectives into one.
I have noticed that’Seeing past lives’ too has been commercialized on the internet almost to a fad. Years back a female friend of mine said to me enthusiastically: ‘you know what? I was Cleopatra!’ It is always someone popular, a king, a queen, a rock star..It is amazing how people do not see through the game. But life is no game. And the realization that WORSE may be on the way….
I heartily welcome any replies…comments, rather.
Lal’s reply is quite satifactory.
y not