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Hi Embodied,
Original or previous doesn’t matter. They are merely convention of words. At the end of the day, all things will change and get destroyed.
Aggañña Sutta and this video have proven Darwin’s theory of evolution to be false!
It’s truly inconceivable and magnificent, vilaskadival.
Allow me to share a very nice Youtube video:
Timelapse of The Entire Universe
Nature is the greatest creator. Ironically, this amusement park is not fun to hang around in. Between kamma and vipaka lies an infinitesimally small room for a great sage to find a way to ‘hack’ the curse of sansara. The methodology has been found and we owe it to the Buddha, ourselves, and all the sentient beings who had and are still facilitating our practice to end this sansaric odyssey.
Imagine there is a place where the lake and the earth there are red in colour. Mainly because the soil there has a distinct red colour that gave the landscape a distinct reddish hue. This place became so popular and the government decided to develop it into a tourist attraction. They build houses that have a distinct red colour to it, and a ferry terminal to cater for boat rides. They named the place Red River Park. The ferry terminal, the red houses, the red hill, and the red river are all conditions to create a single entity called Red River Park. People who are familiar with this place would describe these distinct features when asked whether they have been there before. Now, if one day the government decides to revamp the place and make it even more commercialised, for example, by demolishing the red houses and build restaurants and pubs there, I am sure people would still recognise that place as Red River Park. The underlying conditions are still there. Mainly the red earthly colour of the terrain and lake. The same water that runs downstream to another village located hundreds of kilometres from the Red River Park would not have the same reddish hue to it. And if you were to ask the villagers there have they heard of the Red River Park and describe the colour of the water to them, you would most probably get a puzzled look. The same water that passes through natural filtration has become another colour. Obviously, we cannot say they are the same colour anymore. One is greenish, the other is reddish. But neither can we say that they are different either. Because it is the same water that flows continuously from the upstream to the downstream. What happened then? Causes and conditions at work. At a different location, the same object is subjected to a different set of conditions, thereby altering the characteristic of its original form.
Nothing is enduring enough to survive for infinitely long period without change and destruction. But we also cannot deny the existence of the Red River Park and our bodies too. They truly exist, but they exist for as long as the causes and conditions permit. We can see them as a process-self or impermanent-self. We are never a substance-self. There is no core essence in anything that can appear and operate on its own indefinitely without any cause and condition.
In this post, it is mentioned:
“When the path difference between those two paths is equal to the wavelength of the light, those two contributions are cancelled out (there is a phase shift of 1800 for the two paths in addition). That is why one sees zero intensity at plate thicknesses that are multiples of even number of half the wavelength.
On the other hand, when the path difference between those two paths is equal to the half of the wavelength of the light, those two contributions add together.”Is this the standing waves of transmission line theory? I studied electromagnetism back in my uni days and it is good to use science to help me gain confidence in Buddha Dhamma.
We know that light travels at 3×10^8 m/s in vacuum. And if light is made to pass through a medium like glass, it is going to slow down much more. As the light bounces off the first glass surface and gets reflected off as arrow #1, it has to ‘wait’ for its much slower counterpart that is transmitted through the glass that gets reflected on the other side of the glass and emerges as arrow #2 and reunion with arrow #1. But wait a minute, the reflected light taking path #1 doesn’t know the medium which its counterpart is taking and certainly doesn’t know how much slower it is going compared to itself. So how can both meet at the same point? Nature has a way to readjust itself. Regardless of how thick the glass is, as long as it is relatively free from impurities, the above observation will hold true. Hope I understand this post correctly.
Since QM describes the interconnectedness of materiality, and mind creates matter, it implies that all sentient beings have a part in creating the universe since beginning-less time, right? And as of now, beings who have yet to attain full enlightenment, will still continue to contribute to the creation of future materiality.
Since matter is created by the mind, how then is matter evolved into lakes and mountains, stars and galaxies, and other physical objects that we see around us? What is the doctrine governing this mechanism and evolution?
Well said y not!
Indeed, it is very difficult for a normal being to understand the danger in clinging to sense pleasures. Even for someone who has been exposed to Buddha Dhamma, the task to overcome sense pleasures is extremely daunting. I think there are 2 main reasons why this is so.
1. The will to live is too strong. Suffice to say, one values his/her self too much. A self that requires constant sense pleasures gratification in order to ‘feel alive’, which gives the person a reason or purpose to be alive. Once addicted to sense pleasures, this self would want to stay alive for as long as possible.
2. We never believe we will die so soon. Let’s be brutally honest with ourselves. If someone with supernatural power were to tell us with certainty that we are going to die tomorrow, will we really believe this person’s claim? I seriously don’t think so. A normal person would most probably think he is mad. We know that everyone including ourselves would die one day. But it is hard to accept that we are going to die tomorrow, especially when we are in a healthy state. Deep in our consciousness, we want to live for as long as possible. We are always looking forward to that tomorrow to live. Now this is a very unrealistic kind of thinking which can become a huge obstacle in our practice. Look at those people who died an untimely death. If they were to know that they would die today, would they still drive on the road, take a plane, or do strenuous exercises?
Hi Donna,
Forgot to mention…regarding the above sense pleasures that gave you adverse effects, which caused you to turn away from them, if they did not cause you any adverse effects, would you continue to enjoy them without considering the implications? We all should seriously consider this point if we are really keen to end future suffering.
Hi Donna,
The danger sense pleasures can bring is more than those you have described. If one values so highly of worldly sense pleasures, he or she will definitely keep coming back to kama loka to ‘enjoy’ sense pleasures. For nature to impart kamma vipaka onto us, we need to exist in kama loka. Which implies if we are going to exist in kama loka again to enjoy sense pleasures, we would need to take rebirth, grow old, fall sick, and die. This process itself is already burdensome enough. Not even to mention the unimaginable kamma vipaka one has to go through in woeful states when highly immoral deeds are committed.
The only safety net we can have in this lifetime is to attain at least a stream entry and take a slow boat out of sansara. We have to play our cards right. Time is ticking.
Photon is like a F1 race car going around a race circuit in super high speed which we cannot see. The race circuit is like the wave function defining the path the race car would take. We can’t know for sure at any one time, where this race car will be. But we do know that it must reside within the race circuit. When we are able to detect the race car precisely, it is always the race car that is detected and not the motion of the race car.
