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This question really requires the writing of a new post or even several. But I really want to get started on the new project.
Hopefully, someone who is familiar with this topic will answer in detail. But here are some key points:
1. One may even not know who a “Buddha” is when starting this process. As mentioned in the post that Tobias referred to (“Paramita and Niyata Vivarana – Myths or Realities?“), one simply starts cultivating “investigative gati“: one wants to know the real nature of this world, and also wants to find solution to the problem of suffering.
2. That does not happen in a single lifetime or even million lifetimes. It is said that it takes millions of maha kappas (each is many billions of years). It is unimaginable for us.
3. But at some point, it will get “locked in”. At time he/she will definitely become a Buddha in the future. That is the time one gets “niyata vivarana” from a Buddha. (However, when one gets to the Buddhahood, one will be born mostly male. Furthermore, there cannot be a “female Buddha”).
4. Many will of course drop out during that initial phase, before getting niyata vivarana. One’s gati can be drastically changed in a single lifetime if the influence of parents, friends, etc is in the wrong direction.
5. By definition, one will not be able to learn Tilakkhana and comprehend while “locked in”. This is because the determination is to find out by oneself. However, we must remember that very few get “locked in”. Even though there are going to be 5 Buddhas in all in this maha kappa, that is a rare event. Normally, in a given maha kappa, there is only one or none. I mentioned in that post that there were 30 maha kappas before this one where not a single Buddha appeared. So, we must take this opportunity.
By the way, maha kappas is the correct Pali word for the age of a Solar system like ours. maha kalpa is the Sinhala word.Embodied said: ” what is the best way of contemplating a Dhamma concept : images, words or both?”
This is probably an issue of expressing oneself (you and me both).
I think contemplation/thinking/analyzing/seeing whether some idea makes sense, etc. all fit in to that category.
By the way, that is same as the “conscious thinking” component of vaci sankhara: “Correct Meaning of Vacī Sankhāra“.
When one grasp an idea or a concept one’s sanna on that will change according to that. Then that sanna will be in effect automatically.
See, “What is Sañña (Perception)?“.Mahendran asked: “If the gandhabba enters at the time of the application of the electric shock, then, as the percentage of success is low, do we assume that as in the natural process, some gandhabbas will not survive to be a full animal and exit in the womb itself?”
It is not a matter of just gandhabba surviving. It is a matter of getting the conditions right for a gandhabba to be able to use that zygote. Since it is an artificial way of triggering cell division, they may not have it exactly right. For example, the failure rate was much higher initially. It took 720 trials to have success with Dolly.
“Now when we say that when a gandhabba finds a matching zygote, is it a selective process? What will be the matching criteria?”
I already mentioned that it is a gati matching process that happens automatically. No one doing a “selection process”. Gandhabba itself also does not have any control. It is just pulled into the right womb, when a matching womb appears.
“In addition to bhava, is it proportional to the karmic energy in the gandhabba? When the unsuccessful embryo dies, for some reason such as the effects of the environment on the epigenome etc, will the gandhabba has spent some amount of karmic energy as a result of the shot life in the embryo? Or would it start all over again with the same amount of energy as before, because it hasn’t started life as a full grown living being.?”
Unsuccessful embryo may die due to many reasons. We can only guess. As I mentioned, in the other post that I referred to on birth control, selection of the gandhabba depends to the state of the mind of mother at that moment too. So, a good mother may have bad state of mind when the gandhabba is pulled in. If the gandhabba turns out to be very different, it may come out of the womb after days/weeks. This is one reason for some unsuccessful pregnancies. It is not possible to micro-analyze each case. But we can get the basic idea.
A gadnhabba would normally have many hundreds if not thousands of years of kammic energy for that bhava at the beginning of the bhava. But, we don’t know whether a given conception is towards the beginning or the end of that time.P.S. I see that Tobias had answered at the same time, and glad to see the similarity of our answers.
I see new comments by Chigstarr, Embodied, and Johnny at various places above. I think it is essential to understand what is meant by samadhi, jhana, and “peace of mind”.
Johnny asked: “If someone who is doing sitting meditation could contemplate on deep dhamma concepts like Tilakkhana and Paticca Samuppada for an hour or more, with little to no other stray thoughts, is he considered to be in Samadhi?”
Short answer is, YES.
But it needs to be understood what is meant by samadhi:
“What is samādhi? – Three Kinds of Mindfulness“.
Samadhi can be thousands of different types. There are micca samadhi too, which are opposite of samma samadhi. Samadhi means “the mind gets pulled into that direction”. Normally, one’s mind will become peaceful when one’s mind gets pulled in the “moral direction” since that makes the mind less cluttered with akusala or sensual thoughts.Samadhi is not necessarily jhana. Jhana are really mental states of beings in rupa and arupa realms. So, when one is in a jhana, it feels much better overall since they are higher mental states mostly devoid of akusala and sensual thoughts:
“Samādhi, Jhāna, Magga Phala – Introduction“.One can get to magga phala via Samma Samadhi and also via jhanas:
“Samādhi, Jhāna (Dhyāna), Magga Phala”@Chigstarr: So, when one does any type of common meditations, one’s mind could become peaceful, and I said so in my previous comments. I never said otherwise. During the time of the Buddha, Devadatta attained even supernormal powers with such techniques, but he lost all that at the end. He never understood Tilakkhana.
The message of the Buddha is not just to go after a calmed mind (or even jhanas or supernormal powers), but to attain magga phala and get out of the suffering-filled rebirth process. But that idea may not be even palatable to many people. That is because they don’t have an understanding of Tilakkhana (anicca, dukkha, anatta). So, there is no point in discussing this issue if one has already decided that all one needs is a “peace of mind”. What this website is focusing on is magga phala, and specifically the Sotapanna stage, which will stop future rebirths in lower realms. Therefore, the bottom line is that: if one can show that Goenka’s techniques can lead to magga phala, we can have a discussion on that.
Also, “A Buddhist or a Bhauddhaya?” and “Buddha Dhamma: Non-Perceivability and Self-Consistency“.Yes. That is why Dhamma is “akaliko“. Those truths are valid anywhere in the universe at any time.
All Buddhas teach the same Four Noble Truths, Noble Eightfold Path, Paticca Samuppada, Saptha Bojjanga, etc etc.
But their true meanings are permanently lost after the end of a given Buddha Sasana, even if mundane interpretations may survive.
“Y not” said: “So, as I see, Buddhadhamma fits perfectly with the tenets of the Upanishads.”
It is actually the other way around. All these concepts to Upanishads or Hindu Vedas ORIGINATED in the previous Buddha Sasana of the Kassapa Buddha, who was born before the Gotama Buddha.
There have been four Buddhas in this Maha Kappa, or within this life cycle of this Earth (the Solar System), including the Gotama Buddha. These Buddha Sasana (or the Ministries) last only a certain short time compared to the age of the Maha Kappa (which runs to billions of years).
Gotama Buddha Sasana will last only 5000 years (2500 years more). Then it will fade out, just like the Buddha Sasana of the Kassapa Buddha before that (which is said to have lasted 80,000 years).
What happens is that at the end of a Buddha Sasana, the true meanings of key words are lost. But the Vedas had kept the mundane meanings of the concepts revealed by the Kassapa Buddha. That is why most of these terminologies were already there when the Gotama Buddha (Prince Siddhartha) was born. But they had lost the true meanings.
For example, Anapana bhavana was there as breath meditation. Saptha Bojjanga, five or eight precepts, metta bhavana, etc etc were all there just with mundane interpretations when the Prince Siddhartha was born. Of course the concept of kamma/kamma vipaka were there too in the Vedas. The Buddha has mentioned this in several suttas. At some point, when I have time, I will write more. But it would be nice if someone can post such suttas here for others to see. I simply do not have time to look for them at this time.
New post: Cloning and Gandhabba
Alay said: “However, I am still a bit uncertain on the “Killing” cetana – the fact that the cetana would be the same for intentionally killing an animal vs killing one’s parent(s).
Anyway, there is much to learn and practice.”Yes. It is a complex issue.
However, when one analyzes many examples one can come to conclusion that those two “rules” make sense.
To repeat those two rules in evaluating how to assess a kamma vipaka:
1. Which of the dasa akusala is the intention? That is the “cetana” in “cetana ham bhikkhave kamman vadami”.
2. Then the strength of the kamma vipaka is based on the “level of consciousness” or “qualities” of the living beings affected by that kamma.That is the clearest way to analyze any given situation.
So, the intention here is NOT “I am going to kill so and so”, but just “I am going to kill”. That is all.
Vipaka or the result is always according to the damage done: Who got killed.Therefore, even if the person killing his mother does not know it is his mother, it does not matter; “nature knows”. That action is a very strong action and thus the vipaka will materialize accordingly.
– The only question is “how does the nature know” that it is his mother that was killed. The nature knows because we are all connected. The preliminary evidence came from those experiments on quantum entanglement.– In fact, I believe that we can show that even inert things are all inter-connected. I will be starting a new section at the site, “Quantum Mechanics and Kamma Vipaka”. It may take a while to get to the connection to kamma vipaka. I will first show the “connectedness” using reflection of light with a glass plate. That will be like the third post, because I need to setup the background with a couple of posts first.
Anyway, I will start a discussion forum on that section when I start posting. I hope you and others who are interested in this topic will make comments and ask questions “to keep me straight”.Regarding your original question: There are five anantariya kamma: killing mother, killing father, killing an Arahant, injuring a Buddha (a Buddha cannot killed), causing schism among Sangha.
You asked: “My question is – When we define parents, are we referring to the “Biological” parents?”
Yes. That is where the “inter-connectedness” comes in. Nature knows who the parents are.
You asked: “ Is this purely dependent on the fact that since the gandhabba was able to come into the human world using this particular “Parents” and therefore, the child is indebted to the biological parents?
Yes. That is the reason.A child killing a person who adopted him/her would NOT qualify as an anantariya kamma for the above reason. However, it will be a much stronger kamma than killing a normal, unrelated person, because he/she is in debt for the care that person had given.
Regarding the hunter shooting and killing one’s parent not knowing is again explained by the “connectedness”. As explained in the two-step process, the intention of killing is the first factor (the key is which dasa akusala is violated and NOT who was killed). The intention is simply “killing”. Who gets killed is the second factor (which he may not be even aware of) and it turned out to be his parent; the inter-connectedness!
I know it is a bit difficult to see. But this two-step process is automatically followed by nature. There is no one monitoring all that. The proof will come, hopefully with quantum mechanics, with the illustration of light particles and electrons. Even the motion of those particles are inter-connected.
” Which allows me to contemplate essential Dhamma concepts…”
OK. That means you are able to think. That is good.
Embodied said: “a)When i focus on breathing there are very few thoughts arising.”
Is that a good thing?
The goal of meditation is a calm mind, not a mind devoid of thoughts.The mind should be devoid of BAD thoughts (with greed, hate, or ignorance); that is what makes the mind calm in the long term. It happens when one stops such BAD thoughts from arising. That is Anapana or Satipatthana.
One should be able to think much clearer about Dhamma concepts (i.e., GOOD thoughts) when in meditation.
Welcome to the discussion forum, Mahendran!
This is a bit complicated issue and I thought it is better to write a post on it. Hope to publish it in a day or so. Will provide a link here.
“y not” said: “But you will recall that in the gandhabba posts it is stated, and more than once, quite simply that the gandhabba exits only in human and animal realm”.
What I meant was that the word “gandhabba” is used to describe the “trija kaya” that is created at the cuti-patisandhi moment for animals and humans only. “Trija” means with three “kaya“.
Both gandhabbas and brahhmas have a “trija kaya“, but a brahma kaya is NOT referred to as a gandhabba.
Four types of bodies or “kaya” are possible, see, “Manomaya Kaya (Gandhabba) and the Physical Body“.
There is a key reason why only the “trija kaya” of a human/animal has a special name of gandhabba. The word gandhabba comes from “gandha“ + “abba” or “inhaling aroma” (gandhabba means “aroma”). See #6 in my previous reply. This is why brahma kaya is NOT referred to as a gandhabba; brahmas do not do “gandha abba“.
Even if a gandhabba is born with a trija kaya at the cuit-patisandhi moment, it is likely to acquire the fourth kaya. There may be different gandhabbas out there with “different densities of the fourth kaya“. Another point is that when a “gadnhabba descends to a mother’s womb”, any fourth kaya it may have comes off, and only the “trija kaya” merges with the zygote in the womb; see, “What does Buddha Dhamma (Buddhism) say about Birth Control?“.
By the way, devas have all four “kaya“. They are born at the cuti-patisandhi moment with all four kaya, but the karaja kaya is extremely fine. It is said that numerous devas can fit in to an area of the size of a hole in a needle. So, you see the mechanisms are different in different realms.
It will take time to sort out these issues. It is not possible to discuss all these details even with many posts. So, there could still be details that are not even in the posts. Even though these could, in principle, be explained in much more detail, I have time limitations and space limitations (the web site already has over 500 posts). Furthermore, I cannot anticipate all the questions people may have.
But these are important issues to be cleared up. This is why it is important to have the discussion forum.
I was trying to find the key issue that “Embodied” and “y not” are trying to resolve. I think it could be in the following statement by “y not”:
“I expanded on your.. ‘ i’m a gandhabba that is using this very body to type’,saying that you cannot be ONLY the gandhabba, for that will not be there when you are in the higher realms.”1.Beings in the higher realms, especially in the 20 brahma realms, have very fine “bodies” like our gandhabbas. These are not “bodies” that we can see.
2. To get an idea, imagine diving the body of an ant to a hundredth of its size. We will not be able to see that. A gandhabba would be of size at least a million-fold smaller than that!
– To put it another way, human cell is less than a billionth of a meter (millionth of a mm). A gandhabba descending to a womb merges with a single cell in the womb. So, you can imagine how small it is.3. So, all those brahmas have such fine bodies. So, they have ONLY their gandhabba; no other physical body. Yet they can see and listen, But they cannot type or touch, because they do not have solid bodies like ours.
-They also have gathi and asavas.
– These ultra-fine bodies are created by kammic energy. They are extremely complex, even though unimaginably small.4. Our gandhabbas have such fine bodies as those brahmas. Our gandhabbas have gathi and asavas too, even while in paralowa, i.e., when not inside a physical body.
– Those gathi and asavas are certainly not in the physical body or even in the brain. The brain is just a very sophisticated computer that helps manage body movements.
– This is why when the gandhabba comes out of a physical body, there is no visible change in the body, except that it is not alive anymore. But it has the same size as before.5. But that tiny gandhabba is the one making you type or speak, etc.. In fact, you are your gandhabba, the mental body. The physical body is just a huge outer layer! Speaking and body movements are done with the help of the brain. See, “Brain – Interface between Mind and Body”
6. Some gandhabbas can become more dense by inhaling aroma. Then they can be seen by those with supernormal powers, or even by some normal humans (there are very few with such capabilities). So, those “ghost like” figures shown in cartoons depict such “dense gandhabbas”.
I know that it is hard for one to visualize this situation. I have given these details in a number of posts. If you are really interested on the subject, you should do a search using the key word “gandhabba” and print out and read all of them.
It is not possible for me to go over all that. But if you can then ask questions based on those posts (give the post and bullet numbers), then I can clarify in more detail any unresolved issues.
Yes, Donna. You have the right idea.
Once one’s all gathi are removed one has attained Nibbana!
Of course, one should start with getting rid of lobha gati, dosa gati, which will be first reduced to gati associated with kama raga/bhava raga and patigha. Then moha gati will be reduced to various gati associated with avijja.
With the comprehension of Tilakkhana (in four stages), one removes those too, and by that time all types of gati contaminated with defilements would have been removed.
However, there could be some character behaviors (not associated with lobha, dosa, moha) may still be left over. I think that is what Johnny mentioned below. For example, one young Arahant had a habit of jumping over things.
Hi Alay. Welcome to the discussion forum!
Some parts of your question have been answered in the following topic:
“adding kamma vs. receiving vipaka“.Please pay attention to the “two-step process” discussed in my reply. I don’t want to repeat the stuff that is already there. That basic understanding will help a lot to go further. Let me know what you think.
By the way, do you have a science background? For example, does that post on quantum entanglement make any sense? That is not necessary, and not many people are familiar with such concepts. But it will help me tailor my reply accordingly.
