| Mar 24 @ 9:47 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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March 24
For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future.
This is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death. This life is the only time and place we can prepare in, and we can only truly prepare through spiritual practice: This is the inescapable message of the natural bardo of this life.
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| Mar 24 @ 9:59 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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uncrazy
Posts: 1,539
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In Gary Renard's book Disappearance of the Universe, he speaks of seeing that all about us is an illusion, even we are such. I like to consider the meanings for illussion and delusion...illusion seeing something that is not really there, and delusion not seeing what is truly there.
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| Mar 25 @ 8:48 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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"But the practice....not attachment to the practice....will get us out of the Wheel of Samsara."
Why "practice" at all? I thought the whole idea was to just simply sit and "be?" Doesn't "practice" just get in the way of sitting and being? 12 laughs at people who practice.
No I do not! What is "practice"? This is the problem when people conceptualise everything and miss the point or the teachings.
What does "practice" mean, anyhow? Does it have steps, stages?
Hmmm...a real puzzler. If you say, "No, there are no steps or stages because simply sitting and being is sufficient to become enlightened, and building in conceptual steps and stages is counterproducive to that process," then you are saying that there is no need for methodical practice based on conventional concepts, which contradicts your statement above that practice is the key to liberation.
No, I did not say that at all! Martin, please stop inventing and causing harm. Go back and read what I DO say or better still take moms suggestion.
On the other hand, if you truly believe that practice is the key to liberation--as you said above--then such an active approach waters down the usefulness of just "sitting and being," which numerous times here on these threads has been described (not by me!) as being sufficient unto itself.
Yikes! What a pickle!
Please go back and read again and take moms suggestion to understand better. In this way you will not disrupt and mislead the thread so much, one only hopes.
There are many ways to practice dharma, some ways better than others, quicker, harder, easier or what other way.
There are no pickles! Except of your own making. We have practice, even sitting relaxed is a practice. But, remembering that all "phenomena" even practice is illusion, a concept, no inherent independence and substance. When one is drowning in water, one uses the water to swim above it. In this case using phenomena to understand the nature of phenomena will realise you from it. Once you realise its true nature.
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| Mar 25 @ 9:06 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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yashaenka
Posts: 4,639
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Practice is just a differing form of attachment! One does not need practice if one lives in the Now moments, from moment to moment, in all that he does.
The experience of life in a Now moment is not practice, it just is.
Enlightenment is not about gaining anything, it is about the letting go of concepts without trying, to let them dissolve on their own as the situation arises.
Even Original Zen a tool should be let go once you attain an Awakening [enlightenment] for it is no longer needed.
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| Mar 25 @ 2:19 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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uncrazy
Posts: 1,539
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Yash,
Many pathways too enlightenment do lead.
Any debate is not with others but a inner fight with conceptions of self.
Direct experience is intuitively grasping that which the conceptual and intellectual mind cannot grasp.
Reading on page one I found this in a previous post. I suspect that the greater the debate of a position exposes a more intense inner fight, sensing a loss of position would create a sense of losing the personal power that seems t come from holding my concept of self as truth. Then we might see claims of being persecuted...not by others but by holding onto a concept that is not sustaining us.
In recent posts about methods to discover the kingdom within, I see an answer in your line on "direct experience". This can occur from an act of will to choose, naturally it will required a disciplining of the mind to move it into quiet for surely the ego will attempt interruption. For me discovery of the kingdom is what others call enlightenment and awakening to the essence of All There Is hidden deep within.
Thank you for your thoughtful post.
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| Mar 25 @ 5:15 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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March 25
Enlightenment for Gautama [the Buddha] felt as though a prison which had confined him for thousands of lifetimes had broken open. Ignorance had been the jailkeeper. Because of ignorance, his mind had been obscured, just like the moon and stars hidden by the storm clouds. Clouded by endless waves of deluded thoughts, the mind had falsely divided reality into subject and object, self and others, existence and non-existence, birth and death, and from these discriminations arose wrong views—the prisons of feelings, craving, grasping, and becoming. The suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death only made the prison walls thicker. The only thing to do was to seize the jailkeeper and see his true face. The jailkeeper was ignorance. . . . Once the jailkeeper was gone, the jail would disappear and never be rebuilt again.
THICH NHAT HANH
 HMMmmmmm.....ignorance.
What a concept.
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| Mar 25 @ 5:23 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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uncrazy
Posts: 1,539
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My ignorance will keep me from seeing that my separation from All That Is never ever occured...to believe the world in front of me is real I had to forget the truthof eternal unity with All That Is and bury it deep in my subconscious. I alone made it hard to find the truth.
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| Mar 25 @ 5:24 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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I alone made it hard to find the truth.
And you alone can find the Truth. 
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| Mar 25 @ 5:27 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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uncrazy
Posts: 1,539
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Namaste' Bandtmom
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| Mar 25 @ 5:28 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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And back too you, Uncrazy.
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| Mar 26 @ 8:17 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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March 26
It is extremely hard to rest undistracted in the nature of mind, even for a moment, let alone to self-liberate a single thought or emotion as it rises. We often assume that simply because we understand something intellectually, or think we do, we have actually realized it. This is a great delusion. It requires the maturity that only years of listening, contemplation, reflection, meditation, and sustained practice can ripen.
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| Mar 27 @ 9:27 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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Practice is just a differing form of attachment!
It need not be. Thats the problem. You are somewhere and you are doing something but what is it?
Of course this is Self. But to realise from Self then we need to use Self and hence conceptualise what you should be doing to understand it. Eventually the Path will dissolve. In time we realise there was no Self, no Path,.... no illusion or delusion.
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| Mar 27 @ 10:11 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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yashaenka
Posts: 4,639
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Very true and profound 12! We are filled with man made concepts from birth and those concepts differ between countries and theologies. When it comes to the Concept of the Ego and I, it seems that it as a concept is more universal than most other concepts.
For me what was most helpful was to realize [accept] that Ego and I, stem not from within as a Concept, but truly resides outside of us in the Conceptual world of humans. Once I accepted this the idea that the Ego and I, simply do not exist was much easier to grasp.
Practice is just a differing form of attachment! I should have said diligent or devoted practice where someone clings to an idea or system that will lead to an Awakening. Yes it can as a tool but suffers from being a more complex way so that the simplest of things have a way of eluding one who practices this way.
I often laugh at the thought that the most formally educated among us have a more difficult time of accepting something as simple as an Awakening. Maybe this is because being formally educated leads one more to thinking and rationalizing everything so their mind is more busy and they cling to the busyness of mind. Where others not so much formally educated can see the obvious easier.
I used to think and still do to an extent that Institutional forms carry with then a much more complex path then the teachings of the Buddha. Yet, the simplest of things to some are the most complex. So some of that which Institutions can provide is to break down those simplest things into baby steps that allow those with the busiest of minds to grasp and to see those simple things.
In Original Zen [or Taoist Zen] we hold that in daily living the hardest thing to accept is what is right in front of you all the time. But it is so Ordinary the mind automatically processes it without you actually being aware of it.
So conceptually the most Ordinary is the most complex to grasp.
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| Mar 27 @ 10:51 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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I have often heard it said that intellectualism is the greatest enemy of spiritualism.
However, I find it amusing. In my early years I studied and practised heavily into Buddhism, Spiritualism, Comparative Religions etc and even practiced the psychic skills. This led me on a scientific quest as I thought it would be a great "open" field of investigation. Hence, I studied at Uni in Theoretical Physics and a few other fields of research and do you know what? lol It led me back here having given up all this knowledge for the simple being in the NOW. I have learnt, realised and developed beyond these things. Turned circle. It has been a great experience. Also, this isnt to say knowledges arent of any use or not important. Just the View.
Amusingly I have often wondered what this planet would be like if we were all realised beings but wish to play here for a while.
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| Mar 27 @ 11:31 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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yashaenka
Posts: 4,639
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I have often heard it said that intellectualism is the greatest enemy of spiritualism. Yes and as a Buddhist or Zen Taoist we each hold this to be true from our own direct experience on the pathway to discovery.
We each started on our pathway by the acquisition of knowledge to understand the reality of things as they exist. We both chose Physics as the initial gateway for us.
Amusingly I have often wondered what this planet would be like if we were all realised beings but wish to play here for a while. That vision and reality resides within natures interplay for all to see, but then we have the Ordinary which most are blind too. If everyone was a realized being on a temporal holiday in this existence that which we would hear the most of is but laughter directed at our own mortal bodies Conceptual realities.
It reminds me of Dog saying it rains bones and the cat saying it rains mice  !
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| Mar 27 @ 11:48 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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It reminds me of Dog saying it rains bones and the cat saying it rains mice
Creation of heavens and hells.
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| Mar 27 @ 6:04 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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March 27
There is no swifter, more moving, or more powerful practice for invoking the help of the enlightened beings, for arousing devotion and realizing the nature of mind, than the practice of Guru Yoga. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche wrote: “The words Guru Yoga mean ‘union with the nature of the guru,’” and in this practice we are given methods by which we can blend our own minds with the enlightened mind of the master.
The master—the guru—embodies the crystallization of the blessings of all buddhas, masters, and enlightened beings. So to invoke him or her is to invoke them all; and to merge your mind and heart with your master’s wisdom mind is to merge your mind with the truth and very embodiment of enlightenment
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| Mar 28 @ 9:07 AM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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yashaenka
Posts: 4,639
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There is no swifter, more moving, or more powerful practice for invoking the help of the enlightened beings, for arousing devotion and realizing the nature of mind, than the practice of Guru Yoga. Mom do you hold this to be true or do you embrace other practices equally as powerful.
This is like a monotheist saying the one true God. Sorry but thats how I read it. But that does not lessen his message.
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| Mar 28 @ 12:32 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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Yash, this is a bit of a problem because Guru Yoga is part of the Tantric practices and not well understood due to the lack of information.
I rather not give information unless you find it on the web but will say that it is a practice of visualization of a Guru at the specific Chakra centre. In relation to your question, it isnt about God or a concept of God. The Guru is really an emanation of ones own Buddha nature. Any Guru is a representation of owns own true nature.
The practice helps to realise ones own Buddha nature.
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| Mar 28 @ 12:55 PM |
Buddhism - A New Beginning |
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uncrazy
Posts: 1,539
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Yash, 12Knots
I have often heard it said that intellectualism is the greatest enemy of spiritualism.
Ignorance is also a very powerful foe of Spiritualism
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