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How about this, Lal? After submitting, I checked whether my post showed on the main Forums page.
Only the participant’s (y not) name showed but not the post. Seconds later even that was gone !Thanks for helping out, as you ever do.
Sybe,
If they live in luxury it can only be because they themselves had created the causes for that in their OWN past. If they have problems, ditto. Kamma is not transferable. The father’s (mis-)deed brought about the conditions in which THEIR OWN kamma vipaka could take hold – for better or for worse, for better AND for worse. Nothing unfair or ‘undeserved’ can happen at all.
Lal has explained it in pure Dhamma terms along with the workings.
In that case, where ‘they meet with all kinds of problems?’ that could be so only if it was their kamma to experience those problems. Nothing happens to us that we do not deserve.
That is, if their father, the politician, did not commit the crime, the childrens’ kamma vipaka would have remained latent.
Hello KNDS,
What you say about Dhamma and its effects on anxiety I have experienced. It is clear you have too. However, the troubles with the body remain; if anything, they increase in number, but one knows those last only as long as the body lasts.
In my experience, towards the end a host of physical conditions rear their head (past kamma) but now that does not lead to anxiety. They come together and queue up, as it were, while there is still time, to manifest the unexpended kamma vipaka. Deterioration of the body as a whole can be managed only to a negligible degree. Not so the mind. And a lucid mind is necessary to grasp and to contemplate the Dhamma.
So I urge anyone who has come across the Dhamma to go into it with all that they have; tomorrow may not come. In my case I made it ‘just in time’. My struggle now is to re-charge and use the mind, if only for Dhamma time.
It may be more than belief and intuition, which we all possess to one degree or another. Would it have to do, rather, more with the ‘level of wisdom’ of a Boddhisatta? ….since it is an intimation of Nibbana that the Bodhisatta must have had.
The Jataka provides many instances of the Bodhisatta’s wisdom in his previous existences.
But even when the gandhabba is successful in getting into a zygote, sometimes it leaves that zygote after maybe several weeks or within a couple of months. Barring, of course, the mother having an accident of some sort – a fall, for instance – it may well be that the gandhabba ‘found out’ that there was or would be something defective in the development of that zygote, well beyond its power to ‘rectify’, so it departs. For I cannot see how the gandhabba could have made a ‘wrong choice’ of zygote in the first place.
It is good to see this sense of appreciation from participants. When the reality of the 31 realms really sinks in, then it becomes Gratitude, an Infinite measure of it.
See… once one sees the operation of cause and effect, action and reaction (kamma and kamma vipaka) and that that must apply even to the mental world, then it will be natural to accept also the existence of the 31 realms since in the human realm itself we see that causes may have snowball effects – the consequences appearing far too disproportionate to the causes from which they arose. I allude here to cubibobi’s reference to hell. But the ways of Nature cannot be ‘unfair’ – in the long run. Dhammata works that out perfectly well.
As to ‘good births’ above the human, they may be experienced as nicca and sukkha (the Buddha compared the treasures and pleasures even of kings as insignificant therewith) but there is no way of getting around their anatta nature. Death will see to that. So even those good births will count for nothing if one had not gone for Refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and the Sangha after ‘getting a kick in the rear end’
Everyone seems to want to get a kick out of life these days. Here what one gets is a kick out of many a life of suffering.
yann,
You make a statement, flatly, like ‘mankind wasn’t always around, man existed for less than a million year’ and others you have, based on what the scientific view is at present. Another heap of bones excavated somewhere and that will change to two millions years, or three. And so it will go on, people accepting the latest scientific view as established fact.
Now I am alright with that, because this is the function and scope of science, to discover bit by bit, gradually. For that reason science does not have the complete picture, the ultimate ‘worldview’. So that is quite in order, as far as science goes.
‘So the 31 realms division isn’t valid anymore and wasn’t valid 2 millions years ago. But you don’t have the answer obviously” You are right; based on the ASSUMPTIONS you make, there is no answer. But the Buddha made no assumptions, arrived at no conclusions (even the right ones!), formulated no theories; He SAW these 31 realms, and saw also that they have always existed, and not only with regard to this solar system, but to innumerable others reaching out to infinity and dating back without a beginning.
Now to get to your point: consider the case of an exoplanet which is labelled as uninhabitable – but such must the Earth have looked like 15-30 billion years ago (when in its phases of destruction and formation). And before that not even a solid planet, or a star, for that matter, – just a mass of dust clouds and gas that were formerly a planetary system, on the way to forming a (re-)generation of it. So science cannot say which planets are inherently uninhabitable. Those that (would) harbour life will also have a ‘local humanity’ there at some point, and repeatedly, along with the other 30 realms.
As for myself – this is just my opinion here – I feel that there is nothing in Nature that is without a purpose. Life is everywhere, unbounded, timeless, and where there is sentient life, Nature applies the scheme of these 31 realms. The Buddha’s word, not mine.
When you take the time to examine the Teaching seriously and profoundly, you will see the absolute reasonableness of It. The INEVITABILITY of It. All other theories will seem like passing video games..’what shall we play next?’ That is where faith in the Buddha happens. Not a blind faith born of convenience and intellectual laziness, but born OF intellectual endeavour and introspective searching. The search is also an inner one. And that will be only the start.
Seeing INwards, rather than outwards. Where there is a connection there, where the matter had been pondered before, than that is insight. At times “suddenly a jump appears and the understanding appears” Then we are on the fast track. But as to Dhamma, for many it is not so.
There is a sutta where five followers were in attendance when the Buddha was delivering a discourse. One looked up at the sky, another did something else, yet another something different; only one listened. The Buddha later gave the reasons(s) why each did what. The last one, the one who listened attentively, had heard and attended to the Dhamma before (in previous lives).
Ended up here…indeed. But, lucky? Those here have earned their place, cubibobi, like yourself.
‘Ended up here’. You say more than you perhaps intended: ENDED up here. The SEARCH is ended. And we read that whoever knows that the search is ended in finding the Budddha’s Dhamma has come to right view (are diṭṭhisampannā, AN 10.63). You will conclude the Path either in this realm or after leaving it. That means you are ON the Path now.
Let us all therefore be ever grateful to Lal for setting up the Site and to all those whose have in any way contributed to it with benevolent intention.
May you attain the Deathless
Sumbodhi,
You are right there.
People starting out to explore ‘the vast expanse of Buddhism’ reading all that leads to its refutation- just as you say. Once that is done, then there in no longer any point dwelling on these alternative views. That is what I meant.
Perhaps I should have added ..from my, or from that standpoint.
Christian,
mn136 sujato: Mahakammavibhangasutta.
towards the very end is the resume’:~Now, Ānanda, take the case of the person here who refrained from killing living creatures … and had right view, and who is reborn in hell.
They must have done a bad deed to be experienced as painful either previously or later, or else at the time of death they undertook wrong view.
And that’s why, when their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell.
But anyone here who refrains from killing living creatures … and has right view experiences the result of that in the present life, or in the next life, or in some subsequent period.
So, Ānanda, there are deeds that are ineffective and appear ineffective. There are deeds that are ineffective but appear effective. There are deeds that are effective and appear effective. And there are deeds that are effective but appear ineffective”On reflection, the meaning behind the words bhabba/abhabba (translated as ‘effective /ineffective’ by Sujato) seems to be more in the sense of: bhabba, with a cause, a seed already existent, and ‘fit’ for the effect to manifest (in the absence of stronger kamma beeja to manifest in those conditions AT THAT TIME). Abhabba, though the deed is there, the conditions are not right because stronger kamma beeja take precedence AT THAT TIME. Is this indeed the meaning of bhabba/abhabba?
‘Immediately effective’ would have been much better because all deeds have the potency for the effect sooner or later, are ‘effective’ (for 91 mahakappas or until Arahanthood is attained within that time).
FastEST track ‘Buddhism’ is Zen. The master hits you on the head and, hey presto, you ‘see’, you are enligntened.!! It is just as Christain says, as far as I can see.
The ‘non-oral transmission’ that Sybe mentions refers to Bodhidharma, who introduced ‘buddhism’ when he travelled to China. That in time gave rise to the various Mahāyāna schools in China, Korea and Japan.
Have devas ever been known to come and listen to Mahavira? Were Vens. Moggallana and Sariputta formely not his disciples?
Anyway, I do not see any value in going this to any lenght.
yann,
Before you acquire at least a reasonably good idea of the Buddha’s Teaching, you are in no position to even have an opinion on whether “it is very safe to assume that they do not resemble 100% the original teachings”. Read the sections on the Site as Lal suggested. Then, THEN, ‘one should be able to think for himself and examine carefully what he believes’ By all means examine the Teaching, doubt It even, but be sure you have the main facts first. I too harboured this doubt at one time, so it is not condemning, as long as one is bent on resolving the issue.
The Teaching was written down by Arahants. They are the model, the very personification of Perfection, excluding, of course, a Buddha Himself. Once you see who or what an Arahant is, it will seem to you absurd,inconceivable, that Arahants could in any way twist the truth, or be agents of that, even unknowingly.
Once you get a good picture of the Teaching, examine it, reflect on it and based on that you SEE: ‘Here is what Reality is all about. At last! This is the Way. This is what I will pursue my whole life through’, you have gone for Refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. You are free of the apayas.
May you attain it soon. How soon is entirely up to you.
