Please Casino King don't post here so I can get answers!
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I recently posted the post below but it's quite hard to get answers because everyone keeps getting distracted by CK's arguments ...
Nothing against CK at all, hope I'm not being rude, just hoping someone could answer my query
Thanks
Lapine
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Thank-you all for taking the time to post replies.
To some extent I understand the whole "flow" thing of a mental continuum, how I am a different self every moment, etc. At one level that makes sense.
But at another level it doesn't fit with what I have been telling myself in order to encourage myself to practise the 5 precepts. When I am tempted to do stupid things like speak unkindly I tell myself "That's just my ego or whatever wanting to show off, whereas my mental continuum is the real, important bit, the bit I will carry over into the next life ... so it is more important to avoid accumulating negative karma". I have found this way of thinking helpful ... but am I ultimately wrong to think this way then?
I really still don't think I understand it because surely even if my self is just flow and ever-changing, it is still true that if what I do in one moment affects the subsequent moments/even lives then there is some permanency in that ... like for example if I accumulate some positive karma it is like a permanent investment because it increases the future likelihood of more positive karma/good rebirth/even Enlightenment eventually? -
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Hi la lapine blanche,Originally posted by la lapine blanche:I recently posted the post below but it's quite hard to get answers because everyone keeps getting distracted by CK's arguments ...
Nothing against CK at all, hope I'm not being rude, just hoping someone could answer my query
Thanks
Lapine
_____________________________________________________________
Thank-you all for taking the time to post replies.
To some extent I understand the whole "flow" thing of a mental continuum, how I am a different self every moment, etc. At one level that makes sense.
But at another level it doesn't fit with what I have been telling myself in order to encourage myself to practise the 5 precepts. When I am tempted to do stupid things like speak unkindly I tell myself "That's just my ego or whatever wanting to show off, whereas my mental continuum is the real, important bit, the bit I will carry over into the next life ... so it is more important to avoid accumulating negative karma". I have found this way of thinking helpful ... but am I ultimately wrong to think this way then?
I really still don't think I understand it because surely even if my self is just flow and ever-changing, it is still true that if what I do in one moment affects the subsequent moments/even lives then there is some permanency in that ... like for example if I accumulate some positive karma it is like a permanent investment because it increases the future likelihood of more positive karma/good rebirth/even Enlightenment eventually?
I might not be able to provide you the answer you want but I hope the aspect on the luminosity and the emptiness nature of consciousness can help.
The clear knowingness that creates the deeply rooted sense of ‘Self’, the agent before birth and after death, the sense of permanency will first be experienced. When a practitioner first experienced this ‘Self’, it is not uncommon to get overwhelmed by this/ experience and conclude this ‘Self as the ultimate core of our Beingness. The result of this experience is partly due to the luminous nature of consciousness and partly the habitual tendencies of our current mode of enquiry. First we must understand that Consciousness need not fit in nicely into the structure of “what, who, where, why and how” which is merely one particular system of enquiry that assumes reality is made up of isolated objects. Although this is currently the ruling mode of knowing the phenomenon world; it is by no means the only way or the best way. Imagine what if consciousness is not an object of anything and cannot be bounded within a space-time continuum? Will such mode of enquiry that is strictly based on grouping, categorization, measurement and comparison understand the essence consciousness? If not what other modes of knowing are available? In Buddhism, mindfulness is a preferred mode of experiencing reality as it is. It goes beyond symbols, labels, thoughts and ‘see’ reality in a raw and undefined mode. By going beyond this layer of abstraction, one is able to perceive without any in between intermediary leading to the gradual dissolving of illusionary categorization and division. ‘Self’ dissolves too as it can only lives in symbols. Only then we are equipped with the condition to understand more about our true nature. This is a pre-requisite.
Next, if we merely think that the flow is only a chain of thoughts, emotions, mental states in a series of self1, self2, self3 changing from moment to moment, we still missed something valuable. It is not just so.
When a mind reaches certain level of clarity, thoughts subsides and before perception arises, what happened to the series again? Does it cease to interact and stop becoming a flow, a flux of becoming or a stream of moments? Has each of the moment of the self series (self1, self2Â…selfN) ever appear to us that it is the light of the sun, the blue color of the sky, the taste of the food?
The purpose of all teachings and all sutras are provisional means to bring us to the intuitive insight of the immediate moment. In lightning flash moment, the vividness, the color, the sound, the texture and the fabric of reality are manifested and instantaneously it is gone. All karmic propensities and the entire mystery of life and death are in this instantaneous moment of arising and ceasing. It is not else where, it is the depth of clarity that matters. It takes the perfect mental clarity of the Blessed One to penetrate to the deepest depth of this moment. Do not overlook it.
My 2 cents.
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Originally posted by la lapine blanche:
hihi,
To some extent I understand the whole "flow" thing of a mental continuum, how I am a different self every moment, etc. At one level that makes sense.
But at another level it doesn't fit with what I have been telling myself in order to encourage myself to practise the 5 precepts. When I am tempted to do stupid things like speak unkindly I tell myself "That's just my ego or whatever wanting to show off, whereas my mental continuum is the real, important bit, the bit I will carry over into the next life ... so it is more important to avoid accumulating negative karma". I have found this way of thinking helpful ... but am I ultimately wrong to think this way then?
I really still don't think I understand it because surely even if my self is just flow and ever-changing, it is still true that if what I do in one moment affects the subsequent moments/even lives then there is some permanency in that ... like for example if I accumulate some positive karma it is like a permanent investment because it increases the future likelihood of more positive karma/good rebirth/even Enlightenment eventually?
if i understand ur query correctly and to put it in simplify form.
"If i am empty of self-nature, what for do i need to do good deed or practice?" And what for do i need to stop doing bad deed?
it's a very good question.
since u mentioned that it is a mental continuum; and that of ever-changing. so let say, good deed is associated with happy mood and bad deed as angry mood.
then how long does it take for an angry mood to CHANGE to a happy mood and let along Change to a Peaceful mood? Normally It takes Time.
karma is kind of like mood swing ,like habit, like a momentum. without practice of controling it, it's not very easy to quit something that's been habitual for quite sometime.
Cultivation is to purify the mind. happy mood(good deed) is although better than angry mood(bad karma). But we are to cultivate Pure mood (pure karma, a form of karma that's neither good nor bad).
reference:4. Kamma which is neither black nor white, with results neither black nor white, which leads to the cessation of kamma: This is the intention to transcend the three kinds of kamma mentioned above, or specifically, developing the Seven Enlightenment Factors or the Noble Eightfold Path.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/9280/kamma1.htm#Kinds
The Kamma that Ends Kamma
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/9280/kamma5.htm
imho,
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Thanks for these replies, I am thinking a lot about them.
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kind of think of it, the hell beings (which are associated with anger/fear) takes quite some time before they can calm down their mood(or purify their negative karma). hence their rebirth are normally step by step toward better karmic conditions, from hell to hungry ghosts(greed) or animal(folly) or to human(doubt) to asura(envy) to heavenly realm(happy) to form realm(no desire) and so on. but of course there are exceptional cases where they can skip some 'steps'.
and those heavenly beings when in happy mood, they are not easily angry in a short period of time. most asura beings are reborn into hell realms, just as it's easier to get angry when we are in a state of jealousy.
one can contemplate on people's mood swing to somehow see how rebirth/karma works.
imho,
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