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Hi Aniduan,
I am glad to hear that. I know there could many others who may have a difficult time believing this. The reason for that skepticism is that it is hard for us to “see” the power of the human mind.But this is the key to understanding Buddha Dhamma. The “proof“ is actually what you said: One can experience the results.
We cannot “see” the radio or television waves emitted by the broadcasting stations. But we know they exist because we can tune to the station we want by tuning to the right frequency. We can stay away from those we don’t want.
Just like that by adjusting our minds, we can tap the “correct Dhamma” (normally called “Dhamma“)and reject the “bad Dhamma” (also called “Adhamma“).The following Dhammapada verse explains why one can NEVER overcome anger (vera) by anger; it can only be overcome by non-hate or compassion (avera).
“Na hi verena verani
sammantidha kudacanam
averena ca sammanti
esa dhammo sanantano“.It is easier to see the meaning when we break adjoined terms (“anta” is end; “san” is what we do to extend samsara, i.e., sankhara; “ku” are defilements); see, “What is “San”? Meaning of Sansāra (or Samsāra)“. It is important to see how the sounds may change when two words are combined: it is the natural way the sound comes out:
“Na hi verena verani
san anti (will end or stop) idha ku (defilements) udda (to uproot) ācanam (ācaya means “to accumulate”)
averena ca san anti (anti is come to an end)
esa dhammo san antano (that which stops)”.Translated:
“Anger cannot be overcome by anger.
Defilement of the mind ends when those ‘ku’ are uprooted
Compassion will lead to the end of “san” (here to stop bad thoughts from arising)
This is the Dhamma (or the way) to end “san” (and thus to attain peace)”.It is also important to make this “peace of mind” permanent (i.e., remove anusaya or remove “ku” permanently from the mind). That involves comprehending Tilakkhana. That is what is meant by “kammakkhaya” in the post: “Kanha (Dark) and Sukka (Bright) Kamma and Kammakkhaya“.
If anyone has questions on that or the above, we can discuss.
I moved this topic to “Kamma and Kamma Vipaka” forum, since this is really a question on how to deal with kamma vipaka. We all go through situations like this (some much worse), and thus I thought to have a comprehensive discussion on this topic. I hope others with problems/issues like this will talk about their experiences and hopefully will also benefit from this discussion. Please try to go through the links provided, since I don’t want to keep repeating things.
Also, please don’t take what I say personally (and that applies to ALL my responses). I am not going to focus on just Aniduan’s situation, even though I may refer to it at times. This analysis is general. One will be able to get a good understanding of Buddha Dhamma by carefully going through the links provided and, if needed, searching and reading other relevant posts.
It is always good to start by looking at the “root cause” of any problem. Instead of dealing with each issue as they come up, we need to have a good understanding of why we all face situations like the one described by Aniduan.
- Nothing happens without one or more causes. On the other hand, even if CAUSES are there, for something to happen, suitable CONDITIONS must be there too. This is a key principle in Buddha Dhamma; see, “Do Things Just Happen? – The Hidden Causes”. By the way, this is also called Paticca Samuppada.
- All life experiences we go through can be traced back to our MINDS: What we think, speak, and do, will have consequences. This is why “sankhara” come at the beginning of a paticca samuppada cycle. This is another key point most people do not understand, but I hope will become clear as we proceed.
- When something happens to us (injury, major sickness, etc), we tend to think it is just “bad luck”. That is wrong. “We reap what we sow”. We can see this clearly when we look at wider world. Think about a deer being eaten alive by a tiger. It is not like tiger kills the deer and eats it; it is really eaten alive. All these are due to kamma vipaka. But it is important to realize that kamma vipaka are NOT deterministic; see, “What is Kamma? – Is Everything Determined by Kamma?“.
- Furthermore, we can go one more step and make existing kamma beeja (which are responsible for bringing kamma vipaka) effectively “duds”, as we discussed recently: “Kanha (Dark) and Sukka (Bright) Kamma and Kammakkhaya“.
- What happens in general is that when we suffer due to a bad kamma vipaka, we tend to respond in ways where we do more bad kamma and accumulate more kamma beeja, which can bring more vipaka, and so on.
- However, well before we work towards ending sansaric suffering, we need to figure out how to deal with “short term suffering”, like the one Aniduan described. We need to have a ‘peace of mind” and also the right mindset to grasp deeper Dhamma concepts like Paticca Samuppada and Tilakkhana.
- Here we need to do two things: Make conditions for “good kamma beeja” to bring good kamma vipaka and also avoid conditions for “bad kamma beeja” to bring bad vipaka. I suggest reading the posts in #1 and #3 above, and in “Pattana Dhamma”.
– This happened when you had a peaceful mind for a couple of weeks when you were immersed in Dhamma, while reading posts here. But then conditions changed when you had a bad encounter with someone. The key is to learn how to control one’s emotions when faced with such unexpected harsh encounters. This is done by cultivating Satipatthana (thinking about the bad consequences).
– Kamma vipaka are not deterministic because they can be avoided by understanding the importance of the CONDITIONS. We can do that as humans. But animals cannot.
– The Buddha said this is why our samsaric journey never ends: “kamma vipaka vaddanti, vipako kamma sambhavo”. If we need to break this cycle, we need to understand how to make existing kamma beeja “effectively duds”: That is the key to end of ALL future suffering or Nibbana. This is why the post in #4 above is very important.
Let me close this post by making a suggestion to Aniduan. When someone says or does something to aggravate you, try to “let it go”, i.e, try not to accumulate more kamma beeja; furthermore, retaliation can worsen the situation and makes one’s mind “heated” and uncomfortable. This is hard to do in the beginning, but when one sees the benefits, it will become easier.
– Another is of course to try to avoid interacting with such “annoying people” if possible.
– Yet another is to do one’s best to avoid CONDITIONS that could “germinate existing bad kamma beeja”. For example, drinking too much leads to bad decision making, not doing enough exercises/not eating healthy foods can lead to health problems etc (these are of course not directed to Aniduan).I can go into more details if needed, and we can also discuss any other related issues not discussed above and related questions/ideas from others who may have their own experiences.
y not said: “But the children of the devas – are they these same ones who take on a jati there from other realms – pulled in there, as it were, into the ‘lap of the devi’through their intercourse, of whatever nature that may be.”
There is a danger in trying to analyze phenomena in other realms in terms of what happens in the human realm. We don’t need to, and we cannot ever, figure out such details. Furthermore, that does not help with stopping future suffering.
– For example, since a zygote is not involved in the birth of a deva, we cannot say even intercourse plays any role in births there. Actually, I inadvertently said “appearing on the lap of a devi“, but it could be the “lap of a deva” too. So, I myself got thinking along the lines of the human realm. These may be interesting and intriguing, but it is a waste of time to try to analyze in detail. As I did in this case, there is a danger in saying something incorrect. I revised my above post to say “devi/deva“.Hi Aniduan,
You said: “But since yesterday the anger and hateful thoughts came back although not as intense as before but to a lesser degree. So to let go of this negativity I countered those thoughts by looking at the bigger picture, I started thinking along the lines of 1) This anger/hate will become my Gathi and I will end up in the lower realms..”
The issue is a bit more complex. We do not form gathi in days or weeks, even though an intense experience can point one towards forming a new habit (the closest English translation for gathi is habit/character). Again, I am not sure how may posts on gathi at the website you have read.
– Normally, one has certain set of gathi formed over many, many lives in the past. These are also closely connected to anusaya. Again, I am not sure whether you are familiar with the term anusaya. Anyway, if you can provide a brief summary of your understanding about these concepts, I can suggest a few things.I guess you meant to say: “2) Every human is stuck in this Samsara and tried to show compassion towards them but my hate/anger won’t go away. The anger/hate is mostly due to how people were mean, selfish and things that happened in the past.”
Here it seems that “an angry gathi” that you had was triggered by some event. Is that right? Did someone do something to make you angry? Also, have you had such occurrences in the past several years, where anger was triggered by some incident?
– Myself and others hopefully will be able to comment more based on your response.Sounds are important in Pāli:
Plural of dēva is dēvā; plural of sankhāra is sankhārā.
Feminine of dēva is dēvi; Manussa is huaman: feminine of purisa (male) is itthi (female).
Yes. Dēva belong to kāma loka, and they engage in sex. However, children are born instantaneously (ōpapātika). It is said that equivalent of of a human 16-year-old appears in the lap of a dēvi/dēva. They don’t show aging like humans, but when it close to the end of the lifetime “aging shows”, and it becomes apparent that they are close to death.
Brahma realms are above the realms of the kāma loka (including human and dēva realms).
Brahmās (actually the plural of brahma is brahmā), are born there because they have seen the adeenava (unfruitfulness) in sense pleasures. So, there are no sense pleasures (smell, taste, and touch including sex) in brahma realms.
Therefore, there are no male/female brahmā. They don’t have sex organs, and are born ōpapātika. Of course, they do not have dense bodies at all. Dēvā have “physical bodies”, even though much finer than ours. But brahmā do not have any type of “physical bodies”, i.e., no karaja kaya.
Those who attain various levels of Ariya/anariya jhāna are born in brahma realms. The following phrase always appears in suttās (actually the plural of sutta is suttā) describing jhāna: “vivicca kāmēhi, vivicca akusala dhammēhi..” or “one gets to a jhāna by “abandoning kāma rāga and akusala kamma“”.
Now this “abandonment” is just “SUPPRESSION” for anariya jhānā; those with anariya jhāna still have “kāma rāga anusaya“. Therefore, they will come back to the human realm, and could be born in the apayās later on. But those who cultivated Ariya jhānā do not come back, since kāma rāga anusaya is removed; in terms of the recent post,”Kanha (Dark) and Sukka (Bright) Kamma and Kammakkhaya“, the “hook for kāma rāga” has been removed.
Y not asked: “Again, who is it who ‘with iddhi powers can pull the manōmaya kaya out of the physical body and who does the ‘separating his/her own mental body (gandhabba) from the physical body’? “
No matter how many times you ask, that does not change the answer: It is the “one” who perceives “me” that comes out of the physical body. We cannot think of this in conventional terms. Both views “there is a self” and “there is no self” are NOT correct for anyone before the Arahant stage.
As long as there are causes and conditions, there will be an entity perceiving a “self”, which is the result of those causes and conditions; but that “self” keeps changing because those causes and conditions keep changing. This is why I used the term “dynamic self”. There is an entity that perceives a “self”, until the Arahant stage.
It is the “one” who perceives “me” that comes out of the physical body, which is just an inert “shell”. One could call it “the mental self” if that helps. If I try to explain it anymore, a lot more people may get confused.
In ultimate reality, there is no “person”. Whatever one perceives to be “myself” keeps evolving: could be human in this life, could be an animal or a deva in the next. Even in this life, that “person” changes all the time (to put it in another way, one’s gati can change).
This is a deep issue to comprehend. One thing I can say to everyone is that answers to these kinds of questions become clear when one focuses on the practice. These cannot be resolved JUST by reading. Reading the correct material is IMPORTANT, but contemplating and comprehending is EVEN MORE critical. However, in order to comprehend things, it is first NECESSARY to set the background for the mind by cultivating sila; see, “Sīla, Samādhi, Pannā to Pannā, sīla, Samādhi“.
When one gets rid of the 10 types of micca ditthi things become easier to grasp. When one starts comprehending Tilakkhana, the change will be huge.
Of course, I am not judging you or anyone else, because I don’t have any idea about each individual. But I hope everyone will read the above carefully and contemplate on it. Just reading this website will not be fully productive.
P.S.The “mental body” above actually has a trace of matter: hadaya vatthu and five pasada rupa (called kammaja kaya), and also a very fine body.
P.P.S. (6/13/18): Most important thing is that citta (thoughts) arise in the mental body (gandhabba), specifically at the hadaya vatthu. So, that is where the perception of “me” is.
@inflib: Yes. The Buddha said that the best way to overcome cravings is to think about their bad consequences.
inflib said: “So, would this be a form of kusala kamma as it is eliminating defilements? Does it matter that I’m the only one benefiting from it?”
– Of course. Each person can only cleanse one’s own mind.Johnny_Lim said: “Does it imply that during the last moments of death of an Arahant, he/she would not see any nimitta? Or does he/she still see nimitta but is unfazed by it?”.
– It is the latter. An arammana (or nimitta) comes to the mind based on what types of kamma beeja are there. An Arahant would not grasp any.
A Sotapanna‘s mind would not grasp any nimitta corresponding to a birth in the lowest four realms.This should be clear from my previous set of answers.
It is difficult for most people to imagine a “me” without a solid body. One who has experienced OBE (Out-of-Body Experience) in a heart operation would know exactly what it means.Just published two posts related to this question. These two posts are VERY important since they also clarify kammakkhaya (and removal of asava/anusaya and gati):
Welcome to the forum, Angelo!
This is a bit deep sutta. I need to think about how to formulate the answer. I may have to write a new post. Thank you for the excellent question.
The post published yesterday clarifies this further:
“Pathama Metta Sutta“.That is not the right sutta. That is one of those suttas made up by the Mahayanists.
You said: “Regardless of the nature of the above source, it seems like he traveled, and got lost, physically, and that he was able to do this because of his supernormal power?”
Yes.And there is another sutta that gives the basic idea. There Rohitassa, when he was a yogi with supernormal powers tried to find “the end of universe” and died on the way. He was reborn a deva, and came to the Buddha to tell his story: “Rohitassa Sutta: To Rohitassa“.
Questions from y not:
“Put simply: who is in charge here?”
Gandhabba is ALWAYS in charge.“Does the gandhabba in any way have influence over the decisions taken by the brain?”
Gandhabba MAKES decisions and those orders are carried out by the brain. However, the gandhabba gets information about the external VIA THE BRAIN. So, if the brain does not function well (due to brain damage or even via influenced by drinking/drugs), then the gandhabba will get “bad information” and make bad decisions.
– This is an important point to understand. It is discussed in those posts; there are several related posts. I suggest to do a search on “gandhabba” and read all of them. It is complex issue.“.Does it follow that the gandhabba is the one NOT making you type or speak when you are weighing the pro and cons.”
The critical point to understand is YOU are the same as GANDHABBA, the mental body. The physical body is just a “temporary housing”. Again, these issues could be resolved by reading all those posts at the website. Of course, ask questions if an explanation in a given post is not clear. But one needs to go through those posts. It is NOT possible to explain things in a single post.
There are two main sections on gandhabba:
“Mental Body – Gandhabba” and “Gandhabba (Manomaya Kaya)“.I would start with those. There are other posts in other sections too, but that is a good start.
Thanks for the reference, Lang. Yes. That is the right one on Mahanama.
You said:”Wherever Ven. Moggallana “went”, it would have been in one of the 31 realms, would it not? Someone of his caliber certainly would not have been lost in one of those realms.”
No, that is not where he got lost.
– There are an uncountable number of Cakkavata (or Star systems with planets around them). Ours is the called the Solar system because it is centered around Sun.
– Like that, most of the stars in the universe have planetary systems like that. EACH OF THEM has 31 realms!
– There are billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. And there are billions of galaxies like that!
– Of course scientists have not yet found life in even a single star system. However, the closest star is 4 light years away. To get an idea of that distance think about the fact that it takes only 8 minutes for light from our Sun to get to Earth, i.e., if one one traveled at the speed of light it will take only 8 minutes to get the Sun. But even at that speed (which cannot be reached), it will take FOUR YEARS to get to the nearest star. So, don’t expect scientists to find life in other star systems anytime soon.So, the universe out there is mind-boggling; see the video in, “The Grand Unified Theory of Dhamma – Introduction“.
That is where Ven. Moggalana got lost.@Eric: I am not sure how I (or anyone here) can help you. You have dismissed my prior suggestions. I am not a psychologist anyway, so you don’t need to take my advice.
From your previous posts, I can see that you have a sharp mind; you just need to direct it in the right direction. Here is another set of suggestions for the last time:
- Before comprehending Tilakkkhana, one needs to setup the background. I say this all the time to everyone, so it is not just you. In your case it is even more important, since you need to get out of the “mental trap” that you are in.
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I hope you will try very hard to stick to a diet and NOT get back to obesity. One does not need to count calories, but needs to eat reasonably healthy food.
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You have said that you let the sink overflow with dirty dishes. That is a bad habit. Try to make a resolution to get rid such bad habits (which includes over eating). Try to keep the house or the apartment clean and well-lighted. Darkness can darken the mind too.
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Get into an exercise program. You can start by taking walks out in the Sun. Sunlight is necessary for good health too.
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Stop playing video games, and cut down on TV. Don’t associate with those who drink, take drugs, and in general “bad company”. Start reading books if you have any liking for reading. Read posts at this website (in sections that like). Just try to occupy time with useful things.
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Most of all, stop having “self-pity” and keep thinking about depressing thoughts.
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When you get the temptation to violate any of the above, think about the bad consequences of getting back to those bad habits. The Buddha said that best way to avoid bad actions is to pause and think about their bad consequences; the Pali word is adeenava if you want to look up at the website.
Anyway, these are just suggestions.
These things take time to show results. Don’t expect results in a few days. If you like, try the above for 6 months and see whether any of them helps. You can turn your life around, but only if you can take the initiative and stick to the plan.
