The Unborn Buddha-Mind
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Originally posted by Herzog_Zwei:
If you breathe, you can be the cause of a Hurricane that killed thousands due to the butterfly effect. But how long can you hold your breathe? Constant mindfulness cannot help, but death can help end the cycle of cause and effect.Unintentional deeds such as what you said is not blameful as it is done out of need and not an unwholesome intention to kill others. Whatever harm is totally unintentional. Nobody breathe with the intention to kill thousands of people, I'm sure.
A group of monks avoided bathing for many days or months because the area is full of insects and they didn't want to harm them.
Buddha told them to bathe, but try to clean up the area a little first.
There probably will still be insects killed, but they are blameless.
Also, when we walk on the streets, we will surely kill many ants and insects along the way unintentionally. But blamelessly.
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Unintentional deeds such as what you said is not blameful as it is done out of need and not an unwholesome intention to kill others. Whatever harm is totally unintentional. Nobody breathe with the intention to kill thousands of people, I'm sure.
A group of monks avoided bathing for many days or months because the area is full of insects and they didn't want to harm them.
Buddha told them to bathe, but try to clean up the area a little first.
There probably will still be insects killed, but they are blameless.
There is an intention of living on. -
Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Likely ending up in lower realms, otherwise, even if he becomes a human he will commit suicide in many more lifetimes when he feels stressed due to past life habit.
no wonder the suicide cycles are endless.
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Originally posted by Herzog_Zwei:
There is an intention of living on.The intention of living on is not an unwholesome intention, it is not an unwholesome karma.
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By abiding in tranquillity and insight, I shall aspire to achieve enlightenment, and in doing so that I may help endless beings for the cycle of samsara. Do you not have to die, to be reborn again causing bad karma, seek the Three Refuge, and turn you existence to good karma!
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
The intention of living on is not an unwholesome intention, it is not an unwholesome karma.
It is unwholesome for it causes further suffering for oneself and others. -
Originally posted by Herzog_Zwei:
It is unwholesome for it causes further suffering for oneself and others.I'm saying, the intention isn't unwholesome. Unless you intend to live to cause harm and suffering to others.
For many Buddhists, our whole purpose is to gain enlightenment and help countless others attain enlightenment, liberation and the highest bliss. Like what Weychin said.
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Originally posted by Weychin:
By abiding in tranquillity and insight, I shall aspire to achieve enlightenment, and in doing so that I may help endless beings for the cycle of samsara. Do you not have to die, to be reborn again causing bad karma, seek the Three Refuge, and turn you existence to good karma!
Even in enlightenment, as long as one is a living being, then one by its own nature will still commit bad karma. -
Originally posted by Herzog_Zwei:
Even in enlightenment, as long as one is a living being, then one by its own nature will still commit bad karma.Someone who has reached liberation cease to create bad karma due to the end of afflictions. Without greed, hatred, ignorance, there's no way to create bad karma.
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This is my last post for the day, what you take as nature is actually deluded, enlightenment is seeing past all bad karma, good karma. Don't discount if you have not tried it. I am going to sleep,please tell then how much bad karma I've committed while I'm sleeping after I've woken up!
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Someone who has reached liberation cease to create bad karma due to the end of afflictions. Without greed, hatred, ignorance, there's no way to create bad karma.
You are refuting yourself. -
Originally posted by Herzog_Zwei:
You are refuting yourself.?
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being a living being is just one of the many conditions for the creation of karma. and there are probably no hard and fast rules how so called bad karma can be arised.
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However, by associating tendencies also as nonconceptual and self arising, one must realize correct awareness may arise, so it is also true if baser emotions as anger can also arise. Both takes place without fore thought.
Dear Weychin,
If you should investigate, you will find that anger arises due to forethought. It arises after an intepretation of an event by the mind :)
Metta_(|)_
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Yes well said. Reminds me of a post I made 3 years ago based on what my Taiwanese teacher said:
Anyway I was reminded of something Teacher Chen mentioned when reading your post... he taught that our everyday reactions to the external world can be summarised in four steps.
1) I see a mass of things
Because the 'thing' you saw is still distant away and you cannot see clearly, you also do not know that you are looking at. There is just the Sight, and it is the functioning of our Buddha Nature, Pristine Awareness. There is no mental reactions whatsoever (yet), nor labeling.
2) "Wah, Money!"
When we got closer to the object at the distant, we instantly recognised what it is - money. The reason why we recognised it as money is because we have seen and used the money before and many times, the currency is also familiar to us, we have planted the 'seed' of 'money' in our 8th consciousness and therefore, when the conditions are present, we spontaneously recognised it as "money".
3) "I came first, this is mine"
Due to our ignorance and habitual defilements, we 'personalise' the situation by making a stance that the money belongs to me, I came first, etc. Also known as 7th consciousness. There starts to be grasping and seeking, desire and lust.
4) Sin committed, resulting in either landing up in jail or rebirth in hell
You took away the money you are not supposed to take away and share with those around you, thereby committing a very heavy karma. The money could be used to save other people's life or for other important reasons, but somehow out of ignorance you cannot resist the temptations, and for that you will suffer karmic effects by ending up with a jail term and a horrible afterlife.
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So moral of the story is... do not wait until Step 4, it is too late. When 'Step 2' happens, we must instantly recognise it with mindfulness, and the thought is self-liberated. Otherwise we will go on seeking and grasping, leading to step 3, and step 4. Step 2 is the Cause/Seed, and Step 4 is the Effect. Step 1 is merely the functioning of our pristine awareness, buddha nature. -
Hi Emanrohe! My contention that anger, or other emotional outburst for that matter, is non conceptual, is that it does not arise during point of engagement, but it arise from condition in reference to "I". I may have "learnt" dislike someone, but if do not think or the someone, anger does not arise. Remember, emotions are a primal response"good" or "bad" in relation to self. Anger manifest as initially as irritation, as it builds, impatience and finally a lost of mental control and if unrestrained maybe physical violence. When "self" is threatened or reaches one's level of emotional IQ, ones loses composure and becomes irrational. Anger is a lost of control that preconditioned and triggered when a stressor is applied. Predisposition, in this instance, personality inherent and not acquired. Ever realise that every new born baby has a personality? Some are placid and content, others curious and very inquisitive, some insecure and required constant attention and still others highly irritable. This are inborn traits which not conceptual, they simply are, thus forming the one basis of relationship. The conceptual or awareness of "I" does not develop until much later. Preconditioning with the basis of one personality in contact with one's environment and persons in contact, further develops one's personality. However, at or around the onset of puberty, one start consciously wonder one individuality and tries different persona to develop or finds one's identity. While is it true that sometimes, especially kind do not know in certain situations. Once if there is a reference "I", a response is forthcoming.
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Amend the last 2nd sentence, while is is true that sometimes, especially kids does not know how to react in certain situations . If there is a reference to"I", response is usually forthcoming.
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Dear Weychin,
If you talk abt the reference to "I" then you are spot on :)
Metta_(I)_
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I wrote: I think 'What is it' is a powerful koan and pointer. Whatever you say isn't It (it's your interpretation of It, which thus is not It), you can only 'know' it by becoming ONE with it. Actually there is not even a becoming one, there is only actually IT, our mind merely projects separation.
When we experience Awareness directly without using our thoughts, everything is experienced as having a magical, alive, shimmery, fresh, amazing and blissful quality to it. Life is not not the 'boring and ordinary' as the mind interpretes it, even the most ordinary things rings of 'awesomeness'. You will be naturally attracted, pulled towards the pristine awareness than to stressful thoughts. The ego will melt in the wonder and majesty of awareness. Awareness will literally blow your mind away
One moment I was just dreaming stressful
thoughts, the other moment I 'woke up' and was
totally drawn to
Awareness itself... there was no compulsion for
me to go back to
the dream. It's just such a huge contrast.
Sometimes it's so
blissful that people around me wonder why I'm
smiling. But surely
I'm not mad... it's mad to not notice Life...
hahaha-----------
I was reading this interview by Eckhart Tolle just now and thought to myself "Oh my god, that's exactly the same order as I have experienced it". First I was lost in suffering thoughts, then I had a compulsion to transcend the thoughts as I can't stand them and what I did is precisely the same: asking Who am I? Then everything was dropped off and what remained was just this I AM, this beingness that doesn't have a form but is clearly present. Afterwards I'm just absorbed in this formlessness and next there was just this amazing clarity and experiencing everything as if like a miracle with almost no thoughts, like he said, 90% of the thoughts gone. There's just no more interest in the thought, I'm just basking in wonder of pure awareness, everything ordinary becomes wonderful. I'm only interested in 'feeling' everything than thinking about it.
And I too felt that I needed to write it down "in case it leaves me or I lose it", and that is why I wrote it here. The experience isn't equally intense in all moments of my life, but this 'peak experience' is actually not a distant experience but is something accessible at any moment (there's only One) Right Now in the Present Moment, Pure Awareness is the ever-present shining sun that can never be lost. It just becomes temporarily obscured as we become fixated on thoughts, or become distracted... if we just turn the light around we discover this state is our natural state and never leaves.
The thought that Eckhart Tolle's intro chapter in The Power of Now was a little similar to mine did came to mind on that night as I was writing the post, but it never occured to me that the order it all unfolded was actually similar.
Excerpt from his interview:
http://www.inner-growth.info/power_of_now_tolle/eckhart_tolle_interview_parker.htm
Yes. I was about twenty-nine, and had gone through years of depression and anxiety. I had even achieved some successes, like graduating with the highest mark at London University. Then an offer came for a Cambridge scholarship to do research. But the whole motivating power behind my academic success was fear and unhappiness.
It all changed one night when I woke up in the middle of the night. The fear, anxiety and heaviness of depression were becoming so intense, it was almost unbearable. And it is hard to describe that "state" where the world is felt to be so alien, just looking at a physical environment like a room. Everything was totally alien and almost hostile. I later saw a book written by Jean-Paul Sartre called Nausea. That was the state that I was in, nausea of the world. [Chuckle] And the thought came into my head, "I can't live with myself any longer." That thought kept repeating itself again and again.
And (then suddenly there was a "standing back" from the thought and Looking at that thought, at the structure of that thought," If I cannot live with myself, who is that self that I cannot live with? Who am I? Am I one—or two?" And I saw that I was "two." There was an "I," and (here was a self. And the self was deeply unhappy, the miserable self. And the burden of that I could not live with. At that moment, a dis-identification happened. "I" consciousness withdrew from its identification with the self, the mind-made fictitious entity, the unhappy "little me" and its story. And the fictitious entity collapsed completely in that moment, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What remained was a single sense of presence or "Beingness" which is pure consciousness prior to identification with form—the eternal I AM. I didn't know all of that at the time, of course. It just happened, and for a long time there was no understanding of what had happened.
As the self collapsed, there was still a moment of intense fear—after all, it was the death of "me." I felt like being sucked into a hole. But a voice from within said, "Resist nothing." So I let go. It was almost like I was being sucked into a void, not an external void, but a void within. And then fear disappeared and there was nothing that I remember after that except waking up in the morning in a state of total and complete "newness."
I woke up in a state of incredible inner peace, bliss in fact. With my eyes still closed, I heard the sound of a bird and realized how precious that was. And then I opened my eyes and saw the sunlight coming through the curtains and felt: There is far more to that than we realize. It felt like love coming through the curtains. And then as I walked around the old familiar objects in the room I realized I had never really seen them before. It was as if I had just been born into this world; a state of wonder. And then I went for a walk in the city. I was still in London. Everything was miraculous, deeply peaceful. Even the traffic. [Chuckle]
I knew something incredible had happened, although I didn't understand it. I even started writing down in a diary, "Something incredible has happened. I just want to write this down," I said, "in case it leaves me again or I lose it." And only later did I realize (that my thought processes after waking up that morning had been reduced by about eighty to ninety percent. So a lot of the time I was walking around in a state of inner stillness, and perceiving the world through inner stillness.
And that is the peace, the deep peace that comes when there is no longer anybody commenting on sense perceptions or anything that happens. No labeling, no need to interpret what is happening, it just is as it is and it is fine. [Laughter] There was no longer a "me" entity.
After that transformation happened, I could not have said anything about it. "Something happened. I am totally at peace. I don't know what it means." That is all I could have said. And it took years before there was some "understanding." And it took more years before it evolved into a "spiritual teaching ."That took time. The basic state is the same as then, but the external manifestation of the state as a teaching and the power of a teaching, that took time. It had to mature. So when I talk about it now to some extent, I add something to it. When I talk about the "original experience" something is added to it that I didn't know then.