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Lal:
Thanks for your reply on the Jhana and Magga Pala topic. I am
posting here in line with your request.I have been looking forward to discourse #2, checking for it often, but I will postpone listening to it until the evening when I am relaxed.
The reason I have gone to such lenghts on this topic of dana is because I have been developing it for many years, having since years now reached, to my mind, of course, a level beyond which I do not see how I can go. And having come across, first, that sutta at Accesstoinsight some five or six years ago, and only last year across Puredhamma, I felt the need to ‘reconcile’ the two. It would be perhaps too much to say that I am expecting a sort of ‘assessment’ of the stage I am at by the ‘touchstone’ of Dhamma, for I feel this is the way I should go – scriptures or no scriptures,Buddha or no Buddha, Puredhamma or no Puredhamma. You will no doubt intuit the rest.
Ever grateful for all your efforts,
y not
Lal:
Great. Thanks.That is what I am here for.
As the All-Perfected One preached in a country, langauage and culture alien to what we now call the West, the meaning , moreover, the hiddden
meaning of words in the Pali is CRUCIAL. That is one other reason why I appreciate so much what you are doing.To clarify things: by ‘It does not explain how giving dana by itself cannot lead to the Anagami stage.’ Are you sure you do not meean ‘It does not explain how giving dana by itself CAN lead to the Anagami stage.’? There is a difference. And, finally, would it be reasonable to understand that if giving with the thought ‘ this is an ornament for the mind, a support for the mind’ leads to the Anagami stage, then, not being attached even to that motive, i.e.not having any motive whatsoever, doing whatever needs to be done just because it is there to be done (it could be somebody else, makes no difference to one), what the Gita calls Niskamakarma, would lead, by extension, to an even higher destination. I know it is not stated per se, it is just an implication that came to mind.
Please appreciate I have been delving into and reflecting on these matters for decades; coming across Puredhamma added fuel to the flame of inquiry. So I have perhaps taken more of your time than I should have.
y not
Lal:
I just checked again the link you gave for good measure:
Danamahapphala Sutta AN 7.52: on Suttacentral and in the English version at least, the six Kamaloka realms ARE mentioned. Or does the content of texts on the internet differ according to location? I am not joking!! Or else, either you, I, or the two of us are not quite right in th head. I copy and paste some lines from the English version:
– he reappears in the company of the Four Great Kings.
– he reappears in the company of the Devas of the Thirty-three.
– he reappears in the company of the Devas of the Hours.
…and so on right up to the
– he reappears in the company of the devas who have power over the creations of others.As to ‘ When they are removed with magga phala, they do not come back even if one is reborn in another galaxy or anywhere in this world, if that is what you were asking’ – no Lal, I was not ASKING that. What I
wanted to know right at the beginning is whether I read the meaning of the suttas correctly, specifically whether the English translations of the key Pali words are correct, for that tells me whether my ‘world view’ accords with Buddhadhamma’y not
Lal:
Thanks. It turns out that Suttacental does have the full text after all!
You say: ” even if one may not be thinking about “getting something in return”, that sanna (Vipalassa) is with that person” How is this? If for many years one has seen and LIVED THE FACT that expecting something in return will result in having to come back to this world or some other to reap the fitting reward, be it even a gross material planet where the humanity is not only technologically, but spiritually ahead of this one here, of which there are many in this one Galaxy alone,AND HAS ALSO SEEN that any life anywhere puts limits and constraints on one and is limited in duration, and is in the end only a burden and a delusion- then,THEN
one seeks only for Perfection. But to earn that Perfection one will have to become perfect oneself.Perfection, or the Ideal of Perfection is one other meaning of ATTA that I see implied in some suttas.Now is this not in fact anicca put in layman terms? DukKHA and Anatta follow as a matter of course. Everything is seen to be imperfect, unsatisfactory, not yielding what it promises, a disappointment, not fruitful, a delusion: a-nicca……from the contemplation of which follows pain, sorrow and many kinds of suffering, and even more of it if one sees that there is no way of stopping it in any future, here or elsewhere in material, however fine, existence: dukkha and dukKHA…..leading to the realization, I call it even a ‘revolt inside oneself’ that dukKHA cannot be the final destiny of Life (is ANATTA) ,that Perfection in the most comprehensive sense of the word exists somewhere (ATTA) and that some do perfect themselves and out of compassion show the Way.*
*The full implications of this taken with the fact of the infinite number of inhabited worlds in the numberless universes, the appearing and disappearing of which is a process that has never had a beginning,will be mind-boggling to most. So I shall refrain.
y not
Lal:
I knew that but thought you would know that Accesstoinsight has it. Heading: Generosity- dana, caga. Subtitle:manyy motives, many fruits.
(penultimate section). English onlyregards,
y not
Lal:
I make a connection here to Danamahapphala Sutta AN 7.52 (AN 7.49) where the attainment of the state of Anagami is also the final and highest ‘reward’ of Dana (albeit after a stay in the Brahmakayikanam devanam realm), just as it is with the Pathamanakarana.
It is Sariputta who is asking the questions, but note that it is ‘lay followers’ who are in attendance – and they were led there specifically
by Sariputta to listen to the desana. After the first six motives of Dana with their particular rewards in the 6 realms immediately above the human one are enumerated by the Self-Perfected One, He states the seventh motive to be : ‘with the thought: this is an ornament for the mind, a support for the mind’ – cittalankaracittaparikkharam- leading after death first to the realm of the retinue of Brahma and to Anagami
after that. No mention of Ariya Jnanas here – the sequence of attainment is the same as in the case of the Pathamanakarana; here, however,with
the neceessity of entering the first Jhana.A word about the intended meaning of the motive, as that may be very relevant. Most readers on other websitestake take ‘an ornament, a support for the mind’ as an attainment, therefore something to strive for, something even better to have than the motive just inferior to it,, that of ‘joy and satisfaction arise’,which leads only to the highest
of the kamaloka realms. However, my understanding is that this ‘ornament, this support for the mind’ only strenghtens the sense of
‘I and mine’ – because, whose mind is thus being adorned and supported? It is the same mind that has been the cause of all this wandering-on. The core message, as I see, is to do away with all motives.
Thus, when the motive to gain’ adornment, support for the mind’ arises, it should be pushed aside..But is it in fact pushed aside?
Because if it in fact were pushed aside, one would then be an Arahant. Embracing the thought ‘this is an ornament,a support for the mind’, one still has mana – one is actually strenghtening it. So it leads to the Anagami stage, not the Arahant stage.Correct me if I am wrong anywhere.
y not
Siebe:
It is as if I myself posted this. Some days ago I had it, in my own words of course, as a draft on my e-mail compose folder. But I never posted it. The reason is that Reality will remain as it is whether we understand the nature of Nibbana or whether we don’t. We cannot change Reality. What we CAN change is the nature of our existence in that Reality in the future,namely the elimination or reduction, at least, of the suffering that awaits us if we do nothing about it NOW…..and getting an answer to this question will not help in that direction at all. The Self-Perfected One emphasized this over and over again, much as Lal is doing now …’ it does not lead to unbinding, it does to lead to release’ etc,to quote some conventional English translations of the words.Personally,since when I was a boy I tend to lose myself in philosphical speculation and hard reasoning, especially when it has to do with Infinity and Eternity, but now I realize that I must guard against this tendency of mine, because that will be of no consequence to the IMPERATIVE task at hand – the elimination of DukKHA, or its gradual reduction. It is in fact a hindrance. Try to get a bit deeper into this. I myself am no one to offer advice – there are those who are prepared to do this,because they have been preparing themselves for it.It is clear, however,that Nibbana cannot be utter non-existence. One does not suffer in so many exsistences and strive hard to attain – non-existence! It cannot be so. And Dhamma cannot contain anything that does not make sense.You write: ‘ in what way is this not the view of eternalism and atta or the idea of an eternal soul’ I share your question here. See my post on ‘The Infinity Problem’ Feb 6th 8:11 am for my view on atta and anatta. I suggest you do it at once Sybe: I suspect that whole topic will be deleted soon, and understandbly too…as may this one as well.
Saket: How is it that ‘following the logic of infinity, if samsara has no beginning then there must have been AT LEAST ONE past life of X (among his infinite number of past lives as a human) in which he was NOT endowed with those six “bad qualities”. I do not see how you arrived at this conclusion (i.e that there must have been AT LEAST ONE past life just because times stretches back infinitely.
I would appreciate if you elaborate.Afterthought: I am pressing the Submit key only becuase the heading is specifically about Infinity; otherwise I would think better of it, being aware that the subject in itself is steering me, for one, away from the immediate and paramount task: that of striving only to prevent future suffering, and not in indulging in all this philosophical speculation, although it is related, but not diectly so, in my opinion.
y not
Your point 2: Precisely! It seems you did not get me right. By ‘there is no unchanging entity’ I meant there is indeed an entity,and one that persists all through sansara and Nibbana taken as one unbroken stream of existence – but it is changing all the time, as yet, but will no longer do so on reaching Nibbana.
As to your point 1: I have given a lot of thought to this too. Now if Nibbana exists, it must exist outside the 31 realms, necessarily implying that the ‘Sphere of Space’, as it were, is not infinite, for the realm of Nibbana would lie outside of it, and Infinity means that which comprises EVERYTHING, with no limit to it. Or otherwise, Infinity would comprise Nibbana as the outermost ‘shell’ enveloping the sphere of the 31 realms, much like the higher realms of any inhabited planet envelop those below them. A more difficult point to consider is your notion of’….with individuals who all attainded Nibbana’. It is said by some that individuality is lost on attainment of Nibbana, because it was individuality, the seperateness, the exclusivity of personalized existence which had given rise to the ego in the first place, and ego divides the one from the many…this is for the most part the fruit of Mahayanist literature, to be sure, but the point is: If all these Arahants, from beginingless time, attained Nibbana, then their number would be infinite, and if all had shed their individuality, their charachter, so to speak, there would be no distinction between one and another, they would the be more like inert, becuase devoid of any marked charachteristics, clones. No…individuality, the being as distict from any other being, must perist even into Nibbana.
As to why their number must be infinte, even though an Arahant is difficult to come by, say one in a million years on this one planet:
imagine a line of marbles,say,of infinite lenght. The number of marbles would be infinite. Now I colour one very 10 marbles black, or one every
thousnad, or every million, or every highest number you can conceive of, and see that the number of all these uncoloured marrbles is not greater than the black ones – just because the line is infinite in lenght, both set of marbles are equal in number. Both are infinite. In mathametical parlance we could say that a fraction of infinity is equal to infinity itself.And just because of that, the number of those who have attained Arahantship, though it be the rarest of attainments indeed,must be infinite.When it is said that beings have been in sansara from a ‘beginingless time’, I take it to mean that any individual being living now has been in sansara from a beginingless time, and not with reference to ‘this humanity’,though that too, in its collectivity, has ever been before. When we read that whales, for instance, have been around for millions of
years, it is with reference to the species and certainly not to any individual specimen alive now. For any being here now there is then eternality in the past, and on attaintment of Nibbana there will be eternality in the future following that attainment.The one who has suffered up to now without a beginning is the one who stops the suffering and is also the one who will reach Nibbana and abide there
or in that State for ever after. How then can it be said that there is no abiding entity? There is no UNCHANGING entity – that much is granted.
Some have been trying to forcibly and uselessly convince themselves: there is no Self, I am not ,all is illusion…thereby throwing themselves into more illusion leading to utter delusion. The one who suffers is the one who strives, and the one who strives is the one who attains. There IS a ‘One’, and moreover an abiding One. Why try to deny this? The illusion is ‘ I as I am’ am abiding. Calling it a being, an entity, a manifestation, a self, a lifestream, a gandhabba or whatever, the fact of a core persistence in the being cannot be denied.When Vaccha asked the Self-Perfected One: Now then, Is there a Self?.. Is there then No-Self? “atthatta’ti ? …..n’atthatta’ti? ,the idea intended to be conveyed , as I see, was: Is this, I as I am, of any true essence, of any ultimate meaning, of any intrinsic existence, valuable ,worthy of clinging to, to safeguard and cherish? If a Yes answer were given, Vaccha would have been led to think he was already atta, and had no need.to strive any longer ……….if a No answer were given, he would have been confused thus: formely I had essence, I was valuable , I had meaning, now I am no longer that – I am nothing! The reality is that we as we are, trapped in a gross material body ridden with aches, diseases and mental defilements and all leading only to death, as we are also not yet perfected in the higher realms, are anatta; on attainment of Nibbana we become atta. So either a Yes or a No answer to the two questions as put was impossible to give.
