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Lal:
I see what you meant exactly now by “Samphassa ja vedana” .
So in what terms would the suffering caused by one person to another be described? If A hurts B, then it would be B’s turn to hurt A in this life or in a future one. Even should B refuse to hurt A back now in this life, is it possible to make a strong determination for when the cuti-patisandhi moment comes in order to carry that determination over to the next life in which B meets A again, to prevent oneself (B) from hurting A back? Otherwise, will this cycle of ‘tit-for-tat over lifetimes’ ever be terminated?
y not
Lal, Akvan, Johnny:
Lal said: ‘The mental pain that you talk about in the fourth paragraph is “samphassa ja vedana”. That is not due to previous causes’.
How so? Or, more correct to ask, How always so? There is a difference between the suffering when one just ‘feels down’ or falls into a sad mood for no apparent reason and when that sadness surfaces due to an event that took place in the past that involved another person, for instance. Here ,clearly, there is a cause and one can point to it as the cause: ‘If that did not happen, this would not be happening now.’ And as I see, this sorrow or sense of regret about the course of those past events leading to mental pain now would need, now or later, the other person too for the elimination of that pain,(no inner ‘spritual effort’ works) for ‘trying to forget all about it and moving on’ does not work, only the ‘moving on’ does, and that only because life must go on somehow, otherwise…..
It may be a ‘mind-made concept’, as Lal has it, but it is more of a ‘mind-retained’ concept; the cause was an event or events in the past, and the mind registered it.It did not create it. Or did it, if one goes deep enough? Please elaborate on this.
The other point I would like to comment on is the apayas. I come from a Catholic background, or environment is a better term in my case(for I never felt that what was I was being taught made sense, it never ‘clicked’), one of those teachings being the concept of an eternal hell. It seemed to me to be too much of a punishment, overly disproportionate to condemn someone to suffer forever, however many and however heinous the crimes committed. I feel the same about the apayas. Why should someone suffer for so long, millions of years, and in intense, unimaginable agony for just one act, however odious, and however many and full of hatred in the mind the days that led to the crime. Had anyone else but a Buddha said it, I would reject the teaching outright. Of course, I have no problem with the scale or proportion or disproportion of the cause to the effect when it comes to the rewards in the deva realms!! One short life here generating a deva bhava results in a deva birth lasting millions of years. Comments on this please.
y not
Embodied:
That is precisely why I said I can do no better (leaving some one
else to supply a comprehensive answer.) for to me ‘the All’ means something else, as I explained.And had you specified which’All’ you are refering to, quoting a sutta, I would not have replied at all. There are others who are up to that.
No disrespect to you at all, Embodied. As you put it, it would appear that the ‘All’ was YOUR description of the 5 senses + the mind.
y not
‘The “All” being the 6 senses/aggregates ( 5 senses + mind )’ ??
Try to formulate the question better.
For a start, it is the 31 realms that include within them this “All” you are refering to (the salayatana)and how many of them and which will vary according to the grouping of those realms.
I can do no better here where the All is taken to be just the salayatana. I reserve the term ‘the All’ for the whole of Existence, both as container and the contained, Nibbana included. And, truly speaking, infinite Existence cannot be described by the word container, as a container has a limit or border, while Infinite Space has none.
Try to reserve your hyperboles for where they are due, otherwise it comes, in a subtle way,to a disrespect for that All.y not
Embodied:
In that case you will not be ABLE to take the leap.Do you get me now? And incorporating/integrating the corresponding Dhamma truths (into your gati, you mean)comes as a matter of course once you have seen the inevitability of those truths. You do not even make the effort to ‘drive them home’,as it were.
The important thing is to know that progress has been made. As to how far and to what Stage, there will be many indications but the Stage reached, as a title or a tag is of no importance, to yourself or to others, unless, in the latter case, one is intent on teaching.
y not
Embodied:
No, Embodied. Read into it better. Taking the leap you let go of things
you are not quite willing to yet.y not
Tobias wrote:
- ‘Kama raga will keep one bound to kama loka, that is to say with a heavy body, sickness, aging, physical ailments, the need to work-‘
But the kama loka realms above the human one are free from all these discomforts. These go only for the human and lower kama lokas.( I know Tobias knows this and said it only inadvertently.) A Sakadagami still has kama raga in the form of klesha kama and enjoys pleasures, though not of a coarse and selfish kind. It is more of an emotional oneness, freed from the fires of selfish lust so dominant in relationships here.
And klesha is not the correct qualification for this type of kama either,rather it is a longing for that which you know you already have.-‘ Sooner or later he/she will see the dangers even in kama raga and also lose interest in more and more sense pleasures … Sakadagami stage follows inevitably. This is at least my experience’.-
One will have to get to the Anagami stage for that. A Sakadagami is not free from sense pleasures, though the ones he craves are of higher, finer type. ‘When he sees the danger even in (this type of) kama raga and also lose interest in more and more sense pleasures(of this type too)’ … Anagami stage follows inevitably. And the big leap is between Sakadagami and Anagami. This is my experience.
The fact becomes more significant if they smile or laugh FOR photos(that is, if they pose), as distinct for them being ‘caught’smiling or laughing on photos.
y not
hello drs8!
Welcome
What comes to my mind is: have these masters stated specifically that they have attained one or other of the 4 stages of Nibbana?
I ask this because if they have,and declared it because they honestly believe that they have, then,at the worst, they are only postponing their stay in samsara by not grasping the true Dhamma. If they are lying,and know that they are lying, then the consequences will me much much worse for them than they can ever be for adherents of the Tradition who accept it.
y not
The distinction, and the most important point to consider, as I see, between the Upanishads, Vedanta (especially Advaita Vedanta)and Hindu thought in general and Buddha Dhamma is that only in the latter is found a way out of life’s sufferings.
Indian thought is a mix of the purely devotional, Vaishanavism or Bhakti on the one side and the stricktly metaphysical, from the Kevaladvaita of Sankara to the Bhedabheda of Bhaskara and Yadava to the ‘cosmological and eternal priciples’ of the Upanishads, and most of these last make absolute sense and are irrefutable by reason if one goes into them. When I remarked about this some weeks ago, Lal replied that those Yogis and Gurus resposonsible for these teachings actually retrieved them from fragments of the Buddha Kassapa sasana – of course, with their own views and other additions to it throughout the time since.
y not
It is said that all of us have been in the other realms during the beginningless samsara. Since the topic is about devas, I will stick to that realm specifically here.
It is also said that one attains those deva realms, 1: either strictly through the merits of some kamma in the past, in the case of a putthujjana or 2:on having attained the Sakadagami stage. The difference between the two cases is said to be that in the first case only will descent into the lower realms be possible in the future.
Now considering both these facts together it would appear that the ‘inhabitants’ of a deva realm, whether a particular one or in a general sense, will consist of both ‘classes’, riyas and Ariyas existing together, or will they be seperated into regions or sub-spheres, much like humans here are generally born into areas in line with their kamma, the well-to-do living decent lives in civilised countries while others struggle with malnutrition and lack of hygene in Asia and Africa?
Or will those Ariyas in the deva realm be unaware of the distinction (until perhaps until towards the end of that bhava), like those Sotapannas here who are unaware that they are Sotapannas?y not
Hello all:
A distinction should be made when talking of ‘supranormal seeing’ or clairvoyance, one that is relevant to the topic of determinism/ non-determinism
‘Seeing’ cards face down ,knowing what is happening in another place,even seeing what realm a being has attained(dibba-cakkhu) involve seeing the present, here or elsewhere. What of future events? As far as I have read that is not included in the 6 abhinna powers.
The foreknowing is accompanied by a sense of absolute certainty, the facts will later only confirm it ( to others; to yourself there will be no need of that), so, who is it who knows beforehand, someone else or something or some part of you or in yourself? And if it is known, then it follows that at least some events in what to us is the future have already happened ‘elsewhere’ or as far as somebody else is concerned. They are already ‘set’. Who is this who knows?
I can give one instance (the others have to do with local events). August 1978. A thought comes when I am fully awake. “The three popes
612”. Paul 6th dies within days, to be succeeeded by JP 1, in turn succeeded by JP2. There were three popes inside 2 months or so. Now I am not one into church things, far from it, so this struck me as quite a surprise. Had it been something to do with astronomy, for instance, something like : 3 planets Epsilon Eridani, that would have fitted in with ‘me’.Your thoughts please.
In response to Embodied’s:
‘– ANICCA : continuous change of condition, realising the evanescence in the 5 aggregates of attachment.’- yes.
And: ‘As for Anatta and Dukkha i’m still working on it’. Regard Dukkha and Anatta as two words to keep the mind OFF. Concentrate of Anicca alone, as deep and as constantly as you can. Life is all around, and Anicca is there. Dukkha and Anatta will follow as a matter of course, you won’t have to struggle with them. The three will in time be seen not only as connected, but as one.
y not
Perhaps it would help Embodied to consider it in this way:
1 Anicca – that nothing in this world can bring a permanent happiness in the long run.
2. Dukkha – despite our struggles, we will be subjected to much more suffering than pleasures if we remain in the rebirth process
3)Anatta – therefore, one is truly helpless in this struggle to attain “something of essence in this world”. That is just an illusion.1. DELUSION leads to
2. SUFFERING which
3. CANNOT BE WHAT ULTIMATE EXISTENCE IS MADE OF
(Nibbana)
..or, reversing the order and the terms into their positives:
PERFECTION is where there is ETERNAL HAPPINESS because there is
A PERMANENT SENSE OF SATISFACTION.
I struggled here not to apply the same English word for more than one lakkhana, and I did not do so in order to keep to the tradition of defining the three with different words. Otherwise, anicca is in fact suffering in our experience of it,and both it and dukkha taken singly or both together as one experience, cannot be Atta, cannot be (the essence of) the PERFECT STATE OF BEING. In the final analyss all is Anatta.So, as Lal has pointed out here and in other posts,more than one word or phrase can be found for any of the three lakkhana; they will be the ones that best embody one’s experiences of and reflections on life, they will vary according to the individual, so seeing into life itself as deep as one can go is the start without bothering about Pali words at all. The Pali terms will later be the guidance to see better -and correctly- into the Message of the Self-Perfected One; i.e. how to attain that Perfect State.
Hello all:
Tobias’ question: ‘How can a being get a birth in a good realm when the “main gathi” includes aggression or anger or “creating conflicts” like the asura devas?’ can be gone into when one sees what is meant by
‘a good realm’. Lal’s: ‘Human realm is also a good realm. Think about that.’ is at once a hint and the clue. A ‘good realm’ is such only in comparison with worse and much worse ones (the apayas), not only in the number of those realms (4) but ‘worse’ also in the long duration and the intensity of the suffering there.As such no realm is a good realm. In a deva and brahma realm the main gati will still be kama and patigha and in the arupa loka avijja. In the human realm one can work on the root aspects of all three: lobha, dosa and moha in order to be in time free of ALL realms.
‘Human realm is also a good realm. Think about that.’
