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Hello firewns:
I just woke up and the brain wheels are still clogged. I will get to your question(s) after my coffees.
For now I cannot resist commenting on the ‘sponsoring the printing of Dhamma books for free distribution’ Could it be that you may be serious about this, not just using the idea as an illustration in your question ? !! I had the idea before myself. I wonder how many others have. I recall Inflib (Donna) on one occasion offered to support the site financially (Lal of course declined)
Consider now this case:
Kathy is in a bad financial situation. Aware of this, a friend, Tom, offers to lend Kathy money, as much as she needs, even without her having to ask, because Tom sees her need. Kathy is ready to sign a document binding her to return the money, but Tom, wanting to show her that he takes her for a trustworthy person, says her word will do and he hands her the money.
Now suppose Kathy betrays Tom’s trust and does not pay back what she owes him when she later does have the money to do so. How is Tom to take this? :
1) Any wrong-doing here lies with her.
2) It is only my fault. It was I who trusted her word.
3) Since she did not pay it back, it can only be because I was indebted
to her somehow, and this was the way the debt was settled. She has done
no wrong.That is: 1) and 2) are both undone if 3) applies.
Student,
Welcome to the forum
Allow me to contribute my bit here; I must emphasize, not in the way of a teaching or even a guidance, but rather in that of my views and experience of ‘this world not made for good people’.
I myself have had that feeling since childhood and after that sought to learn what ‘all this is all about’ from books, avoiding as much as possible all contact with the ‘bad people’ out there, whom I saw as forming the great majority. A mistake – one born of juvenile idealism and utopic dreams. Life, the world out there, is made up of both good and bad people, and the meaning of those two qualities are wide indeed.. This reality is driven home, forced home even, soon enough. Life itself is the lesson.
Now if you want to become a monk, probably no one can prevent you. But do you have to? This is what Lal is saying. Following the Path is the result (in my case, at least) of having seen the unsatisfactory, the unfruitful, the detrimental in this world made up of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people. Even if the world were made of ‘good’ people exclusively, this anicca nature would still be a fact. From anicca, dukkha is the result, and there is then no way out (Anatta) The deva worlds, for instance, are the habitats of beings who are benevolent, generous and ‘good’in more senses than one, yet they have to experience viparinama dukkha followed by death. Only if they attain magga phala for a still higher plane of existence or for Nibbana itself before the end of their stay there will they be able to avert that.
Yes indeed, ‘thrown in at the deep end'(AND THERE ARE MUCH DEEPER ENDS) we struggle to crawl our way up out of suffering. At least from this end, ONLY so much deep (it turns out), we CAN crawl out of suffering. This is what IT is all about. Whether through monkhood or otherwise, no one but you yourself can decide.
However that may be,
May you progress on the Path
and in time attain PeaceMetta
Hello there Eric
“Maybe also a case of too much brain, not enough heart?”
“…and fill my head with pure dhamma for about a half-hour?”I am glad to see that you are making progress, albeit it seems to be on-and-off, sporadic, if you like. Still, now at least you know what should be done, that some measure of control is necessary, even though you know quite as well that that will not always be possible. Being sincere with yourself is the first step.
Now I see a connection between the two quotes above. That is why I am writing.
We know that the seat of the mind and that of the heart lie very close together. For this reason, when I find myself in an emotional state, which is most often the case with me, I connect this with a dhamma concept and take off from there. In my younger years I was ‘all head’ with the heart sealed and the key tossed away somewhere I cannot remember. Moreover, whenever I am in neutral mode (the bhavanga state) for a stretch of time (this is where the allure of the senses have their field day, hence the danger ! I am sure you know EXACTLY what I mean by that)) and therefore am off dhamma completely for a couple of days, it is easier to connect to the heart through some emotional experience one had lived than force the intellect button ‘on’.This is only my experience. With others it may not work, or some other way would instead. I say it in the hope that it may connect with something that you can work on.
Metta
Thank you Lal.
‘..If he/she does not attain Arahanthood there, he/she will be born in a higher realms(s) and attain Nibbana in the future,…’
that is, depending on his /her striving in the future (after that deva bhava). I understand. Not that that deva bhava will be his/her last bhava in sansara ,having of necessity attained Arahanthood there.
Boundless gratitude for all your compassion,
y not
It is said that a Sakadagami returns to the kama loka ( in a realm above the human) only once more, that is, to ONE more bhava in an appropriate deva realm. Does this mean that he may attain a rupa or an arupa existence during or after that according to his striving there, or that he inevitably attains Nibbana directly after that deva existence?
I ask this because the Buddha on more than one occasion stated that such-and-such a person has ascended to a particular realm ‘and will attain release from there’. Can the attainment of that release be a gradual one, first through still higher states before attaining Nibbana…..or is it implied that he (in this case,the Sakadagami) will automatically attain Nibbana directly, that is, either during that bhava (through magga phala anantariya kamma ) or right after it is ended.?
Good one Lal:
Take heart, I got into trouble with my (ex-) wife and for quite other reasons.
‘ For another person, a close friend may come much closer, for example.’There you have it
Ever so grateful
Lal,
…In this life, we are mostly indebted to our parents, children, extended family and friends, etc in that order….
I notice that one’s spouse ( the ‘other half’ responsible for the birth of those children) does not feature anywhere in all of this. He/she would be closer to parents/children yet not so far removed as extended family/friends, as the blood line gets weak with extended family, and with friends it is non-existent (as is the case with one’s spouse, for that matter.) Do I have this right?
Ever grateful
Tobias:
“But “ku+sala” means to get rid of kilesa (lobha, dosa, moha”
As I understand it, kusala kamma involves and is the PROCESS of getting rid (in time)of the kilesas, not that being rid of the kilesas in the first place is the condition on which one performs kusala kamma. If it were so, kusala kamma would be reserved for Arahants.
Note that it says ‘ to get rid’ (a process), not to ‘be rid'(a state of being)
So yes, as I see, ‘So one can do punna kamma without getting rid of moha, i.e. without cultivating panna.’
………..’Before I contribute my bit…’
Now it turns out that what I did contribute WAS my bit.
Thank you Lal
Thank you firewns for bringing these questions up.
Firewns:
Before I contribute my bit, what do you make of:
‘8. Therefore, one can do kusala kamma without getting rid of amōha, i.e., without cultivating paññā: most people engage in giving, have compassion for others, etc. This is a key point to remember.’
Should it not be…’without getting rid of moha’ rather than of amoha? ..since ‘without getting rid of amoha’ = retaining (cultivating) amoha, therefore ‘i.e. without cultivating panna’ does not tally; ‘without cultivating the opposite of, or that which preceded, panna (amoha) does.
How do you see this? Or is there something wrong in MY understanding?
Thank you firewns:
As a further illustration of what I meant, take Lal’s post above, where he refers to the WEIRD view that – ‘There are many people even today, who believe that the world around them is all made up by the mind…’ of course, denouncing the idea declared a wrong view by the Buddha.
But we know that in truth all is made up of mind, first nama (intangible)and then rupa (material, gross or fine). And Lal knows that, no need to say. So what he meant was that the ‘weird’ view is such because those people hold, that precisely because all is made up by the mind (which is non-material) then all that is created by it is only imaginary, unreal, illusory.
It is another example where sometimes we inadvertently may give rise to an interpretation we did not intend at all.
Lal please correct if I mis-read you.
Metta
Hello firewns:
I went through your post twice to be sure I understand correctly what you are getting at.
True, strictly speaking, we do NOT need a father and a mother to attain a human bhava – as you say, “A human bhava (existence) is grasped at the cuti-patisandhi moment…” I somehow anticipated that the objection, in this case, as it happens, from you, will come up. I will explain:
As is often the case ‘the villain of the piece’ is the distinction between bhava and jati. Even we on here sometimes interchange the two terms, taking it for granted that the distinction is understood IN THE CONTEXT OF WHAT IS BEING STATED. To clarify: jati or a series of jatis is what constitutes a human (or animal) bhava IN ITS MANIFESTATION, for which a mother and a father will be necessary, but the root cause of beings finding themselves in the human or animal realm, the seed, is the bhava as the indispensable precursor to that series of jatis. To wit: what will be the use of all the zygotes brought into existence by the union of (even if not-as-yet) ‘mother and father’, potential jatis, all over the planet if no gandhabbas (the result of one’s abhisankara, gati etc up to that point in time) were not there? Or, put still another way, we DO need a father and a mother for the FULFILLMENT or the working out of our human bhava because that is made up of a series of jatis.
So yes ‘I believe that we do not need a father and a mother to have a human bhava.’ We are at one on this, but now you can see why I said what I did.
I ,as usual, HOPE I have been clear.As to miccha ditthi, I never had a problem with any of them. They struck me as reasonable, even inevitable in the grand scheme of things, the first time I came across them. Thank you, firewns.
much Metta
Firewns,
This is my understanding:
“The world does not exist”
When we dream, we take whatever we are experiencing as real as long as the dream lasts. Only on waking up do we realize it was a dream. I recall on one occasion in my teens or early 20’s the dream felt so real that on waking up it took me some seconds to make the clear distinction which of the two states was the reality.
The ground for those who hold that the world (‘reality’) does not exist is that they equate the waking state (the world, reality) with the dream state as phenomena that arise and fall, that is,that have a beginning and an end, in both states of consciousness. And , if anything, the doubt that ‘the world’ does not exist, or is unreal, occurs to us only when we are awake. Doubts about the ‘reality’ of whatever is experienced never arises FOR AS LONG AS THE DREAM LASTS. Of course we realize that it was all a dream on waking up, and that whatever was experienced there was unreal, but the dream, as an experience, the experiencing, is real enough. We may find ourselves sweating or completely taken by the experience, in a pleasant or unpleasant way, depending on the nature of the dream.
All that in turn arose from the philosophy found in the Vedas that whatever has a beginning and an end is unreal. Now a distinction must be made between what exists/does not exist and what is real/unreal. It goes something like this: a cloud seen in the sky and one seen in a dream are both unreal because in both instances the cloud has a beginning and and end, appears and disappears. Yet it existed, either as condensed water vapour in the sky or ‘formed by the mind’ internally during dream. It exists only as long as it lasts. By this criterion, therefore, existence may be real (lasting, indeed, without beginning or end in time) or unreal (having a beginning and an end),all of which renders everything in the world, indeed, the world itself’unreal’ – and this is, to my mind, what is meant by those who assert that ‘the world does not exist’, because, surely, they are experiencing the world alright (it ‘exists’) but it is held to be unreal. Now, again on this criterion, the only thing that is ‘real’ is Infinite Space: it has neither a beginning nor an end, not only in time (so it is ‘real’) but also in space, cannot come to be, cannot be destroyed, cannot be extended or diminished, does no undergo change in any way whatsoever, is inside and outside of everything, that is, it pervades and encompasses everything,and is at once the container and the contained, without a boundary (and therefore no ‘centre’ can be located anywhere),Itself infinite and containing the infinite. So all objects,all phenomena, all experiences, all that is inside oneself and all that is outside. everything whatsoever is said to ‘not exist in reality’ because all are impermanent, ephemeral; therefore ‘the world does not exist’.
As to the view that ‘there is no special person as father or mother’, I do not see why you ask the question…..yes we are greatly indebted; through them we get the opportunity of a human bhava…think of it, we can attain a deva or brahma bhava solely through our own efforts in opapatika ‘birth’ which requires no father and mother’ but for the extremely precious human bhava we require a father and a mother
y not
Inflib,
.. I was thinking it might be “abhi” which is strong + “veda” ??? + “mi” which is “I”…
I do this -dissecting words – in all 5 languages I know and you hit it right no more than about 60% of the time, but if you get hooked on one that happens to be ‘off’ you get stuck there to no purpose. So now I look for the right meaning straightaway
Metta
