Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
- All religions outside Dhamma are limited or just false. Some religions come from spiritual experiences plus ignorance on top of it, some are just made to use people’s ignorance to control and benefit themselves. Those two things often co-exist as clergy and mysticism/mystics in most religions (via western categories).
- Saying that you can attain Nibbana through the bible or use examples from the bible is misleading but I think they want to sugarcoat and appeal to people outside Buddha Dhamma. In a position when you need to survive as a monastery based on other people’s good will you may do things like that. If real Dhamma were recognized as something of substance like science they could just have grants for their spiritual research but that’s a different topic.
- From what I see taryal just asking questions and has a very inquiring nature – I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as you do not get into heavy statements. It’s very good to be skeptical, logical, rational, and ask questions as long as one looks for what is true in terms of existential things. Calling people idiots even if they are religious idiots it’s not a perfect solution, is not close to a solution. If they can’t understand their ignorance you do not do anything with them simple some people are incapable of getting of their addictions, religions, desires, or whatever. They may in the future, and they may in the next life but it’s not up to us to be in a position of calling people idiots even if they are simple it does not bring outcomes you would want to get from calling people that. If you don’t follow cause and effect logic – it makes no sense to so.
- The moral life of Buddhist and religious persons is different, while Buddha praised old Vedas (because they come from Buddha teachings anyway) moral life of someone who practices Dhamma comes from understanding rather than just ruleset. It is in line with understanding and whole teaching, while morality of religions is based on fairy tales.
1 user thanked author for this post.
If you experience any fear, anxiety, etc. in your meditation – it means you doing things wrong. What you experienced is not jhana but entry-level of Nibbana or mind getting aligned with Dhamma. Jhana is a very specific state of mind with bliss beyond any physical means. After getting on the proper “way” you started to focus on “me” and stuff like this which probably mixed with wrong views “of no me” and delusion. This is a very dangerous game with your mind. Focus on the core teachings of Dhamma and keep that brightness and lightness often. If you start thinking stupid things like “no me” or “no self” it will create huge problems and mental instability. If you think for example of “money” or “yourself as someone important” or sense pleasure images your body will respond, if you think of “no self” your body and mind will start to crash out as you would bring the wrong “code” to the computer.
If anyone feels anything negative while practicing Dhamma – you are not practicing Dhamma but your delusion. Stick to the teachings, going left or right side will have wrong consequences for your mind.
Buddha Dhamma is like science for “medieval” people. We may advance in terms of technology, understanding of material works etc. (which are good things) but the existential crisis is more than ever. Buddha Dhamma is science that have insight into it and explains it so ideally science and Dhamma would cover all we need physically and mentally.
Advaita got nothing to do with Dhamma, I was studying it before Buddhism and if you compare it to Dhamma it becomes like just anothe misinterpratation of reality. Like most of philosophy is based on “romantic” views which will appeal to those with “idealist” mindset but in reality is just sense pleasure for the mind of intellectualist-hobbyist. (especially in the West)
1 user thanked author for this post.
Changing genders becomes like “getting a tattoo” for teens. It’s just a harmful trend, you can undo a tattoo but can’t undo sex-change. People who have real identity problems and people who do it as a form of “tattoo” neither benefit from this “trend”.
1 user thanked author for this post.
There is nothing in the suttas that is “for” or “against” it if you talking about the orientation (besides vinaya rules for monks). “LGBT” as a social movement I would say do not bring that into Dhamma because making everything “LGBT” (like corporations do for money ie. greed) would cause more harm and ignorance just for the sake of “image”.
If you talking about people’s orientation my take is that the sense of pleasure for anything is the same inherently, if you carve from women it is no difference if you carve for the man same way whether you are heterosexual or homosexual or whatever in between it’s the same thing inherently. The other side is whatever societal impact it has, while often in Dhamma “things do not matter” in the sense that if you lust for black, pink, red or blue, or whatever color the mechanism behind is the same as the “outside” or societal structure may be different as it’s a lot of people with a variety of ignorance, gathi so this is where those things matter. Dhamma at its core has principles not related to this world, LGBT is related to this world and society so they do not work together on the same level.
Also, precepts are universal for every living being (those being spoken by Buddha) so it does not matter what kind of orientation you are but what person you are or what you trying to become, or unbecome in terms of Dhamma.
2 users thanked author for this post.
The “intention” of aborting a human embryo in an unwanted pregnancy would be to protect the mother’s life & well-being, AND the baby from future suffering. So I remain unconvinced that their minds will release javana citta equivalent to the strength of “murdering” a human that is already living independent of their mother.
I think this is a really bad argument, if you kill something for the comfort or sense of pleasure it’s even worse javana citta. Your logic would apply in the sense that I have no problem killing anyone because somebody is bothering me and killing that person will make me feel go away isn’t it the worst kamma to make?
This is why we need to verify our logic from a lot of angles especially if it is infected with mundane ignorance.
I understand there are extreme situations like “the child will be dead anyway so let’s save the mother” as the best choice in a given situation, but Dhamma perspective is different from than mundane perspective and logic that often falls in the big picture of the world.
1 user thanked author for this post.
“When one is infected with parasites, it’d be advised to take medicine to kill them, too”—the value of worms is much less in karmic terms, and being human is extremely rare, the same with pets. As Buddha taught us, “It’s not the way we like it.” You can not even out everything because you want something to be according to your logic. You are trying to bend it with tunnel vision of ignorance. Buddha explained how it is in the big picture, if you see the big picture it’s clear that it is like that.
You put extreme examples but it does not take away that the cell is a living being, just because it does not look like that to you it does not mean it is not. If you see a small sapling of the tree, it is still a tree even if it has no branches or it does not look like it.
In extreme examples, those are very unfortunate for people who experience them and we understand that but emotionally charged arguments will not make truth non-truth. If people value mundane life they will abort or make any sacrifices on all levels of life for the sake of an illusionary sense of pleasure. If you are put in a bad situation you either make it worse for the future or somehow manage it, normal people have no option of Dhamma so obviously they generate more kamma with wrongdoings.
Your arguments are just questions of value. Puthujjana will always choose the option of a sense of pleasure under false views to the extreme version of sacrificing everything for the outcome of comfort and not having problems. Ariya will always value Nibbana even if it costs him his life because in the long term, you will be free permanently from sansara.
I think Vinaya is very good for measuring potential wrongdoings and their weight even if you are not a monk.
People need to understand that society and the way people act are based on distorted sanna so obviously, there will be shortcomings one way or another even if we have a pretty developed society in terms of material-objective truths that help up advance in terms of science and technology, but without Dhamma it can turn wrong way easily.
Having someone with an understanding of Dhamma + strong 4th jhana you could verify most things like that by yourself and experience of it.
1 user thanked author for this post.
We can kind of blame Ananda for that, as he fumbled when Buddha gave Ananada a hint. I’m saying blame in a “joking” manner, of course.
“The Realized One has developed and cultivated the four bases of psychic power, made them a vehicle and a basis, kept them up, consolidated them, and properly implemented them. If he wished, the Realized One could live on for the eon or what’s left of the eon.”
“Ānanda, the misdeed is yours alone, the mistake is yours alone. For even though the Realized One dropped such an obvious hint, such a clear sign, you didn’t beg me to remain for the eon, or what’s left of it. If you had begged me, I would have refused you twice, but consented on the third time. Therefore, Ānanda, the misdeed is yours alone, the mistake is yours alone.”
Buddha would live for that long or longer but nobody asked for that where there was time to ask.
1 user thanked author for this post.
Many people see the transferring of merits in a very ignorant way. In some countries like Thailand, they pretty much sponsor monks so they can be successful for material well-being. If monks are not “successful,” they are not sponsored anymore, leading to harsher times in the monastery. It’s not inherently bad itself, but a mindset like that obviously is not beneficial.
I don’t think we can measure or even see if merits sharing works the way most people think. People should do it without expecting anything and just do it with a sincere feeling towards people because is just beneficial on the base of that feeling
1 user thanked author for this post.
I would say it’s natural for ignorance to “think” we are right or feel right in situations when we are wrong. Nothing to feel sorry about, it’s a condition of all people and we’ve all been there. Even in a mundane way, we know when somebody is wrong yet they feel sure about it and then life bites back. It happens the same with a world view.
The translator’s mistake is the other aspect that the English translation speaks about “cow dung” in suttas. I doubt we had cows at that stage of humanity
At the time of Buddha, there were types of writing around the world:
- Clay tablets (Mesopotamia)
- Stone inscriptions (Egypt, Greece)
- Turtle shells and bones (China)
- Papyrus scrolls (Egypt)
- Pottery and ceramics (Various civilizations)
- Bark paper (Mesoamerica)
- Wooden tablets
- Animal skins
- Leaves (in tropical regions)
There are two ways to make a logical conclusion or argument based on what we have:
Whether Buddha didn’t want transmissions in textual form for various reasons (having Ananda with ultra memory or people memorizing as part of Dhamma training, monks obviously could not engage in such things as production materials) for practical reasons.
or having living Ariya is more beneficial for one understanding and Path. (or just both)
In my personal opinion, both are good, second is better for the arguments I provided above – even if we base on simple logic and life experience we would conclude that. Studying just from the books/suttas or sites may not be enough if someone can’t get pointed out in his “field of vision”. Usually, when you study materials, textbooks, or anything you are put into a very narrow field of understanding that you need to conclude a lot on your own and “teach yourself” so to speak to develop understanding. Having someone else can point out your misunderstanding or ignorance on the topic that you may not be aware of using different examples and can show you different angles of thinking that textual forms don’t have on that level or you may not see them. As I said in my understanding both are good but the second is better, I can not say with 100% that someone will not attain Sotapanna reading the right texts but I very highly doubt it. If you give textbooks to people who can’t read, speak, or write to develop those skills or understanding of mathematics who never really knew the concept of numbers or even know just basics – how many of those people will get to the point of understanding it on the proper level?
Keep in mind that my only intention is to clear logical gaps here and there we encounter in Buddha Dhamma so everybody has good and solid standing, truth of Dhamma will defend itself
1 user thanked author for this post.
