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Roman Jakobson, linguist, said
Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.
When I saw this, I could feel why Pāli word anatta must not be interpretated as “anātma”, the Sanskrit word.
The reasons are as follows :
- Vedic brahmins wanted to be the Brahma permanently. They were attached to brahma bhava.
It is natural for such people to be obsessed with “No-self”.
- According to neuroscience, human brain cannot understand negatives.
Let’s suppose that we heard like “Don’t think of an elephant“.
When we hear this, we have no choice but to think of an elephant.
Same way, the Sanskrit word “anātma”, means “No-self“, leads people obsessed to their bhava, I think.
- But Pāli word anatta, which means worthless, leads peole to nibbana.
This is because everyone has an instinct to avoid damage.
Thank you for your help, Lal!
I think the revised sentences is better.
Because the modified context seems to lead the reader’s mind toward nirvana, more.
Previous version may be misleading to the reader, I think.
The appropriate use of bold and bulleted list tool increased readability also!
Thank you again for the correction.
Nowadays, I think I have often unterstood the process of making new bhava with kamma viññāṇa.
How does lobha make the pretta bhava?
I understood as follows :
- Lobha is based on the mind that “I do not have this one severely!” It looks natural that such a mindset makes preta bhava.
And why does Dana leads to the deva or human bhava?
- When we give something to others, we have the mindset of “I have this, you don’t have it, so let us share.”
- It looks natural that such a mindset makes good bhava or good vipaka.
In a word, craving is a statement about deficiency in itself.
- Using this fact, we can see why we have to do saṅkhāra. Why?
- Because we do not have something in our pancupādānakkhandha, structurally/automatically.
For example, why should humans eat food?
- Because human bhava does not automatically produce food.
In contrast, a Brahma does not need any food.
Because Brahma bhava arose due to a mindset with alobha.
And this structure, called bhava, is created by our defiled mind named kamma viññāna.
Why?
To enjoy something, we must be lacking it inherently and are under stress (pīḷana); thus, we enjoy it when we finally get it.
For example, water tastes good if we are very thirsty. But after we had enough water, we would not enjoy drinking more.
Because of this, we could conclude that amisa sukha is just a pain killer.
To quote Laydhammafollower’s advice: bhava(=maintaining sansara) is a disease, amisa sukha is just a painkiller, and we can fully recover by reaching Nibbana.
In the rebirth process, we have always had cravings because we thought they could give us pleasure and happiness.
But in reality, our cravings have only brought us “states of deficiency,” i.e., we are always looking for ways to reduce stress (pīḷana), and when we get it after much struggle, we become joyful. That is our ignorance!
In summary, when we crave something, it leads to future bhava with more deficiency built in.
That is why it is a never-ending process until we get rid of tanhā (craving) for worldly things!
MEMO 1
To paraphrase, bhava is like a heated pan.
And tanhā is the flame that heats the pan.
The temperature of a heated pan is pīḷana.
Let’s say there is a frog on the pan.
When the surprised frog jumps up, it feels cool for a while. This is amisa sukha.
But frog have to land on the pan eventually.(Eventually leads to suffering. As Ven Lal said in the desana.)
The heated pan has anicca nature. We heat the pan by our own tanhā.
When the fire(tanhā) dies down, we feel cool. It is niramisa sukha.
We tend to think amisa sukha is the only solution. It is because of avijjā.
When someone feels real niramisa sukha, he or she cannot forget it.
MEMO 2
The important thing is, we cannot crave(or imagine) about parinibbana.
The sankhara named craving, only focus on a thing in the pancakkhandha.
But nibbana’s feeling, cannot figure out that way.
It is just understood by ragakkhayo(=dosakkhayo = mohakkhayo )
Ragakkhayo can be initiate by comprehending about anicca nature.
When one’s mind feel the need to ragakkhayo, it will initiate automatically.
(This contents are corrected by Dosakkhayo.
May the blessings of The Triple Gem be with him and everyone!)
First of all, thank you for your metta. I felt samadhi just by reading the text.
Sādhu Sādhu Sādhu _()_
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Secondly, thank you for explaining it in an easy-to-understand way.Analogy of root problem(disease) and symptom is worth.
In my understanding, we maintain disease(samsara) for an infinite amount of time, because we love the effects of painkillers(amisa sukha) so much.
We cannot imagine what is real recovery(nibbana). Only the Buddha can find it.
I want to contemplate this metaphor a little more.
Once again, thank you for your help.
May the blessings of the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha be with all beings.
To LayDhammaFollower.
I think I understood some of the notes you attached. So I write it down.
I’d like to have it checked when you have time. I don’t use mention function because don’t want to rush you.
Anyway, reading your notes, I remembered what happened a few years ago.
One of my friends said, he had never been beaten by his parents.
So I thought that he would be happy. But he was not.
He said that he felt inferior when he saw relatives of his age.
I asked “why?” wondering.
Then he said, many of his relatives are attending to prestigious universities in USA.
However, his limit was going to the best university in Korea. That’s why he felt inferior!
It was absurd to hear that, but now I understand the structure he and all of us suffered, a little, by contemplating your memo.
As long as the pañcupādānakkhandhā exists, we will bind to suffering.
But without jati, there is no pañcupādānakkhandhā!
Thank you!
I will contemplate about that until then. Thanks very much for your help.
With metta.
That’s what I admired @LayDhammaFollower !!!
You said,
“Because, world works on laws of causality not as per our wishes.”
This sentence gave me a lot of insight. It was explained in more detail in #39349 .
In #39349, LayDhammaFollower said,
Without birth one would not form any attachments.<br /><br />
Without attachments one would not have birth.I think it has a profound meaning. So I could only understand a little bit.
I’d like to have my studies checked.
My understanding is as follows :
Attachments are a waste of energy. Because it is key factor to suffering, not what one desires.
Let’s say there’s a man who wants to build muscles.
Man’s cravings to muscle are not causes of muscle production!
When he wants to bulid muscles, he must have to train his body! Not just craving!
If he doesn’t exercise and just wants muscles, he can not get muscles.
So we have to remove attachments. It is useless. Cravings are waste of mental energy.
However, we often misunderstood that cravings are cause of what we want.
Why?
I think it’s because we’re used to use pīḷana as a fuel of sankhara.
But pīḷana is just a source of abhisankhāra. It is not the main cause of what someone wants.
So we have to remove attachments.
Ironically, when we remove attachments in this world, we do not need to be reborn!
Did I get it right?
1.
I felt cuti-patisandhi moment’s dangerousness.
I want to describe my new mindset about sansara.
This kind of feeling could very different for each person, so I want you to read this kind of post as relative, not absolute.
2.
Let’s imagine you’ve been working hard all day. You must be very tired.
But you have to work out tomorrow, because it is week days!
So you set an alarm and get ready to sleep. Thinking like this :
“I don’t want to get up again.”
But you have to get up tomorrow! Because you have to work!
3.
“You don’t want to get up, but you have to get up.”
This was the horrible point that I realized.
I extended this viewpoint to the to the whole of sansaric journey, I’ve got a rough understanding of a very terrible fact!
So far, we’ve rarely rested our mental activities for an infinite amount of time…
Of course, there are exceptions like born in asanna realm(500 maha kappa), but it is a very small bit.
To compare sansara to a workplace, we have never retired from a job, just went on vacation rarely.
I hope my experience could be helpful to others _()_
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