Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
– (#1): Is this so definitive? Or may it apply to some wrong views and not others?
” When one has removed the ten types of wrong views, one has avijja” ???
If one admits to the reality of kamma and kamma vipaka and to opapatika births, including the apayas especially, is this not an indication of having seen, to some extent at least, the dangers in the rebirth process, and therefore has right view there? There is no avijja, at least in those respects.
Again, if one sees the merits of generosity, of reciprocating good words and actions coming from others, is this not because one believes in rebirth – because it is obvious that the results of both often are not seen in the present life.
“One may get annoyed with a fly (some can bite too!) because of its persistence.
– So, one may actually “hate the fly” for being annoying!”True. However, it is possible for anger to be independent of hatred. Annoyance and anger may be at objects or with regard to particular situations where no living beings are involved.
I am in the kitchen and accidentally tip the oil over. (“S**t”!). The oil spills onto the floor. Temperature rising now. I go to fetch a floor cloth, only to find that I had thrown the worn one away the last time I used it. Despair. In the rush of how best to improvise a floor cloth, I hit my toe against a chair leg. Bad language. Very bad language. Uncontrollable anger. At that moment the doorbell or the phone rings! It is some one I love dearly. Now I feel deeply hurt as I see that anger directed at that loved one as I am answering, which is not the case at all.
I have experienced such situations. I am sure others can relate as well. Hatred was not there towards anyone at any time. It was just the obstacles in the way. Whatever harm was done there was done to myself alone. But what if a living being came in my way at that moment?? So there was the harm to myself, and the POTENTIAL harm to others as well.
Dhamma (in its sense of Dhammata) takes care of all this.
Lang states that at the very end, but, in my case, the bit about relatives, children coming in the way does not apply. All my (mundane) responsibilities in that direction were already fulfilled by the time I entered the Path. Where there are still those responsibilities to contend with, it is certain that Dhammata has the solution. Have no fear.
Again, Lvalio, how to proceed if I “have lost attachment to this human world, became a…” but I CAN simply let myself die (because my duties to those to whom I owed dues have been fulfilled.) So it makes no difference to me whether I die tomorrow or today and be rid of human existence once and for all. Important is to ever keep mindfulness, even if passively,if the energy is not always there.
“Things will be taken care of naturally”: It is not that those attachments need to be severed or loosened IN ORDER to advance on the Path; rather, progress on the Path itself will see to that. And the elimination or the weakening of attachment will itself be an indication of that progress. Yes. I see.
Now, any defilement is a form of either greed, hate or delusion, or any pairing of the three, or of all three, to varying degrees. Would attachment then fall under a combination of mild greed/delusion? I am asking this because that has to do with those samyojanas that are weakened at the Sakadagami stage. This is what it is all about. Hate is of course out of the question. There is none of that.
I see these attachments arising more out of delusion than greed. (Leaving aside in this context all considerations about the paying back of debts).
Thank you
Thank you for the overview.
By emotional attachment I mean to individual persons.
Where there is emotional attachment there is love of one kind or another. Let us leave romantic love aside, since that is a product mostly of Western culture that has been made much of, unrealistically so too.
Consider love for sons and daughters. That is universal. Here love and attachment are one. If attachment be a subtle form of greed, do we conclude that love is a form of greed? ! For, when one considers that that attachment, that love, also gives us pleasure – it is a pleasant feeling to love and be loved – is that love not also a means towards a pleasant feeling, pleasure? Is it therefore a subtle form of greed ?
I am not talking about Arahants or Anagamis.
“One first gives up (voluntarily) those activities related to hatred and excess greed.”
Those are gone, Lal. That goes for envy as well. With hatred, I had to work on those isolated instances where I have been hard done by, and a few lingering ‘ghosts’ about racism and class distinctions. The Dhamma came to my rescue there. BUT:
One thing where I am stuck is emotional attachments. What is more, I cannot see myself letting go of those. Is this a very subtle form of greed?
It augurs well, Lvalio.
With me it is a little different. I still turn on the tv for the news,for instance. Or for a football match. But I am not interested. I cannot ‘engage’ there at all. I do it just out of habit. Dhamma is always ‘on the back burner’. And that is the reason why I cannot engage in hardly anything mundane.
Then, with effort,sometimes days of effort, I manage to push myself in going into Dhamma actively.Like now. Once there, hours pass unnoticed. Not ‘lost’ anymore about what to do next that is meaningful and absorbing.
May you progress on the Path
“Actually, there is an account in the Tipitaka where a seven-year-old attained Arahanthood”,
Lal (April 24, 2020 at 3:48 pm).Dhammapada Verse 110
Samkiccasamanera VatthuJust came across this verse here:
“With the bhikkhus, there was also a young samanera by the name of SAMKICCA, who was sent along with them by Thera Sariputta. This samanera was only seven years old, but had already attained arahatship”
(Now it looks it was not just the odd one, though still very rare by all accounts !! )
The approach of the Supreme One was a direct one- at once inviting attention, inspection and reflection. I do not read of any other approach in the whole of the Tipitaka. What better example to follow? Ven. Nagasena’s was the same in answering King Milinda’s questions. Is there any need of looking for alternatives?
Can you imagine the Lord Buddha cracking jokes?! There are many types of ‘theros’ (lower case intentional), and so-called ‘masters’ (again).
“to keep the audience entertained (and thus attentive”)?? I do not get it.
Should the intention of the listeners, to be AT LAST FREE FROM ALL FUTURE SUFFERING, not be enough incentive to maintain attention? Or else, they are not fully aware of that.
Bonjour, Grenier!
Besides in the sense of fun or amusement, the word humour may also carry the meaning of a state of feeling, a ‘mood’, like in ” You seem to be in good humour today”. That does not mean, or even imply any notion of, amusement or merriment.
When in a good mood, there is an agreeable (and so a non-conflicting) attitude. In the instance that you quote, ”learning how to maintain good humour around the practice.” should be taken in this sense: with calm and composure, realistically, with equanimity. If there is hunger and tiredness today and no practice is possible, the right conditions will be there soon, perhaps even tomorrow. Where is the fun, the ‘humour’ here? There are days at a stretch when I cannot apply myself either to reading Dhamma or participating at the Forum, though maintaining mindfulness all the while. The energy is just not there.
The sutta you are quoting Thanissaro on is Kusīta-Ārabbhavatthu Sutta (AN 8:95). It is so, is it not? However, Suttacentral lists this as AN.80: Grounds for Laziness and arousing Energy. I cannot see how the Bhikkhu can read humour in the conventional sense here at all.
What the Buddha is saying is that all those excuses (though REAL) should be overcome by constantly reminding oneself of the Goal . “They rouse energy for attaining the Unattained, achieving the Unachieved, and realizing the Unrealized.” (Capitals mine). Again, no hint of fun or hilarity here at all. Who knows whether any bhikkhu, or lay person, you or me or anyone else will still be alive in 1 hour’s time, in 5 seconds time? It is not a humorous situation at all.However, there is a sutta where the Buddha actually smiles. It is when He saw some cows in the distance. I have been unable to trace the sutta for reference, so if you come across it you may read it for yourself. It will be worth it in distinguishing between the ways of a Buddha and those of ordinary humans.
A bhikkhu asked the Buddha: ” Lord, why have you smiled”. Now an ordinary person would smile on seeing cows either condescendingly, looking down on them, thinking: ‘Oh, poor cows. But I am human’ ,or, which is better, fondly: “What peaceful animals”. Or, if it is a cowman, their owner “Their milk is mine, their meat is mine, I own their lives” .
But the Buddha replies that each of those cows had been a King of the Devas. Now, if one pauses at this sentence before reading the next, one may think that the Buddha was showing compassion (Karuna) for the cows. But then He concludes that none of the bhikkhus there would ever be born a cow again (meaning they all had attained at least the Sotapanna Stage). So in fact, what that smile ‘gave away’ was the sympathetic joy, Mudita, for the bhikkhus.
With a Buddha even so much as a smile has great significance. Every act by body, word or mind is out of compassion. Teaching the Dhamma is no lighthearted matter. Much, much less a humorous one.
May the Blessings of the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha guide you to final Liberation.
The first perception that struck me about the word:
Sustained preoccupation with the bad (papa = pa) five (panca), and the resultant adverse consequences as a prolonged mental state of being. The five being, of course, the five sense doors to start with, their respective ayatana, then vaci sankhara…a kind of enforced and unpleasant type of vinnana, but a very persistent one.
I can make nothing specific of the saṅkhā part of the word except for the automatic connection to sankhara in some way, but approaching vinnana. A combination of (vaci) sankhara/vinnana would come close to what I mean.
The deva planes need not be feared by those who have attained Sotapanna or Sakadagami Stage. True, there will be death there as well, but there is no other way, unless they attain the Arahanthood here in this life – or else through attaining Anagami Stage and bypassing the kama loka altogether.
Attaining a HUMAN birth is to be feared. One should strive to make this human birth the last one. Once the suffering is seen and experienced; and once its SUPREME VALUE has been shown through the compassion of an Ariya or Ariyas, one need not come back to such a gross material, disgusting existence.
The Buddha, while ever reminding us of the reality of falling back to the apayas and the ultimate futility in pursuing a deva existence as an aim in itself, recognized its value for those on the way to Nibbana.
Lal,
I had not thought of the “to bear” meaning.
So we have:
– Dhamma in the sense of the Teaching.
– Dham-ma as ‘transcending the world’
– Dhamma as the things to be borne.
– Dhammā (created by the mind.)I made reference to a Vedic term (Rta, not Dhamma) only so that those who are familiar with that may get the idea at once. That it all dates back to previous Buddhas is one thing I am so grateful that I have learnt.
It is wonderful how much a word may reveal. These are terms used by a Buddha. Alas, my knowledge(?)of Pali is only as much as I have been able to grasp thanks to you.
–As far as I read, the Buddha allowed the eating of meat – as long as the kill was not carried out specifically for Him or the Bhikkhus. When the meat is there ready for consumption, the deed has already been committed.
But this needs going into a bit further. If there were no killing of animals – no slaughterhouses, no fishing, no hunting -many communities on the planet would die of starvation. A counter argument by the ‘pro-life’ activists goes: if everyone started refraining from eating meat as from tomorrow, the demand would not be there, so eventually neither will be the supply. End of the problem.
Yet the Dhamma takes Reality into account. It is in fact an account of Reality. People kill, even other humans. People steal, lie etc. So the Precepts address that which is real. Any kind of evil will always be around, as long as humans are around. That is, for ever. But Nature or Existence wastes nothing: it works even with the evil of humans to sustain them, bringing about kamma vipaka to those animals and paying back debts to the consumers in the process. And there must be other factors as well, of which I am altogether ignorant.
Axel,
I too am for all that you say there.
Yet the fact remains that all those who attained during the Buddha’s time, and even afterwards, did so on listening to a desana. The uncertainty that we face is because at that time the Tipitaka had not yet been committed to writing, to say nothing of printing. There were no options to compound the issue. No wonder the suttas are silent on the matter – the question simply could not arise.
But what about previous Buddha sasana (pl.)? It is altogether possible that writing, printing and other forms of communication had been developed in this and previous kalpas during a Buddha sasana. In such a case, a jati-Sotapanna who has developed the power to see into that past life could help!
