|
|
Post by merrick on Apr 30, 2013 4:34:01 GMT -5
From the record, it seems pretty evident his suffering ended. And it seems pretty evident that for some following what he taught, suffering ended. However, I don't consider that the end........(and that's why I'm not a Buddhist). sdp The end of what? I would say it's not the end of learning. Merrick |
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Apr 30, 2013 19:35:53 GMT -5
From the record, it seems pretty evident his suffering ended. And it seems pretty evident that for some following what he taught, suffering ended. However, I don't consider that the end........(and that's why I'm not a Buddhist). sdp The end of what? The end as in what Jed calls Done (Done as in there is no further). Merrick is sort of right, learning, but it's more than that. I think we're essentially a seed, capable of growing into a different level of being, as in capable of taking in more of what is. sdp |
|
|
|
Post by merrick on May 1, 2013 5:51:02 GMT -5
The end as in what Jed calls Done (Done as in there is no further). Merrick is sort of right, learning, but it's more than that. I think we're essentially a seed, capable of growing into a different level of being, as in capable of taking in more of what is. sdp Yes, that's what I mean. Learning implies that to me. Merrick |
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Apr 18, 2015 18:30:51 GMT -5
..........~ bumped for silver as this subject came up recently ~...........
|
|
|
|
Post by silver on Apr 18, 2015 19:32:06 GMT -5
Thanks, dusty. I'm still unable to figure out if all Buddhists believe in Karma, even after spending lots of time on the Buddhist forum. And everybody has a slightly different take on it - sure, I suppose it's to be expected, but there are vast differences in understandings. It's sort of one of those slippery words that defies a solid definition...If only it could be as simple as "what goes around, comes around."  |
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 7, 2016 7:31:44 GMT -5
........bumped for aflio......I think this is the thread I was referring to....but seems it didn't get very far....
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2016 9:10:22 GMT -5
........bumped for aflio......I think this is the thread I was referring to....but seems it didn't get very far.... my take on the karma thing--just one more prison to lock yourself up in- mental justification for fears which have nothing to do with the idea of karma. once i realised that, i no longer concerned myself with such questions. we may assume an evolutionary progress, the descent of consciousness into matter. Individualisation of consciousness is,logically speaking, a possibility.That "individual" may travel from life to life. If i had past lives, i will become aware of them when the time is right. I am open to the idea. There are some compelling documentaries which show that children know about the lives of people who are now dead. That is seen as proof of reincarnation, but i say that it is not necessarily proof at all.It only proves that some folk can know what others have done in the past without knowing those others physically.There can be plenty other explanations for that, all outside the reach of current scientific knowledge. very few have found their soul, the part that supposedly travels the worlds and is master over time and space, and even less live from it. But who knows, maybe we can incarnate into the past too.Maybe we all get to be jesus, and hitler, as part of our souls progress. a good book on the topic that wipes the floor with the standard idea of karma, is "rebirth and karma". by Sri Aurobindo. BewarenBewaren |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2016 17:08:05 GMT -5
www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/16/0049_e.htmfree download rebirth amd karma Karma and Justice What are the lines of Karma? What is the intrinsic character and active law of this energy of the soul and its will and development of consequence? To ask that question is to ask what is the form taken here by the dynamic meaning of our existence and what the curves of guidance of its evolving self-creation and action. And such a question ought not to be answered in a narrow spirit or under the obsession of some single idea which does not take into account the many-sidedness and rich complexity of this subtle world of Nature. The law of Karma can be no rigid and mechanical canon or rough practical rule of thumb, but rather its guiding principle should be as supple a harmonist as the Spirit itself whose will of self-knowledge it embodies and should adapt itself to the need of self-development of the variable individual souls who are feeling their way along its lines towards the right balance, synthesis, harmonies of their action. The karmic idea cannot be – for spirit and not mind is its cause – a cosmic reflection of our limited average human intelligence, but rather the law of a greater spiritual wisdom, a means which behind all its dumb occult appearances embodies an understanding lead and a subtle management towards our total perfection. (::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: This commercial and mathematical accountant is sometimes supposed to act with a startling precision. A curious story was published the other day, figuring as a fact of contemporary occurrence, of a rich man who had violently deprived another of his substance. The victim is born as the son of the oppressor and in the delirium of a fatal illness reveals that he has obliged his old tyrant and present father to spend on him and so lose the monetary equivalent of the property robbed minus a certain sum, but that sum must be paid now, otherwise – The debt is absolved and as the last pice is expended, the reborn soul departs, for its sole object in taking birth is satisfied, accounts squared and the spirit of Karma content. That is the mechanical idea of Karma at its acme of satisfied precision. At the same time the popular mind in its attempt to combine the idea of a life beyond with the notion of rebirth, supposes a double prize for virtue and a double penalty for transgression. I am rewarded for my good deeds in heaven after death until the dynamic value of my virtue is exhausted and I am then reborn and rewarded again materially on earth. I am punished in hell to the equivalence of my sins and again punished for them in another life in the body. This looks a little superfluous and a rather redundant justice, and, even, the precise accountant becomes very like an unconscionable hundred per cent usurer. Perhaps it may be said that beyond earth it is the soul that suffers – for purification, and here the physical being – as a concession to the forces of life and the symmetry of things: but still it is the soul that thus pays double in its subtle experience and in its physical incarnation. The strands of our nature which mix in this natural but hardly philosophic conception, have to be disentangled before we can disengage the right value of these ideas. Their first motive seems to be ethical, for justice is an ethical notion; but true ethics is dharma, the right fulfilment and working of the higher nature, and right action should have right motive, should be its own justification and not go limping on the crutches of greed and fear. Right done for its own sake is truly ethical and ennobles the growing spirit; right done in the lust for a material reward or from fear of the avenging stripes of the executioner or sentence of the judge, may be eminently practical and useful for the moment, but it is not in the least degree ethical, but is rather a lowering of the soul of man; or at least the principle is a concession to his baser animal and unspiritual nature. But in natural man, born before the higher dharma and more potent and normal as a motive to action, come two other very insistent things, kāma, artha, desire and pleasure of enjoyment with its corresponding fear of suffering, and interest of possession, acquisition, success with its complementary pain of lacking and frustration, and this is what governs most prominently the normal barbaric or still half barbaric natural man. He needs to some not small extent if he is to conform his close pursuit of desire and interest to the ethical standard, a strict association or identity of result of virtue with some getting of his interest and pleasure and result of sin with some loss of materially or vitally desirable things and the infliction of mental, vital or physical pain. Human law proceeds on this principle by meeting the grosser more obvious offences with punishment and avenging pain or loss and on the other hand assuring the individual in some degree of the secure having of his legitimate pleasure and interest if he observes the legal rule. The cosmic law is expected by the popular theory of Karma to deal with man on his own principle and do this very thing with a much sterner and more unescapable firmness of application and automatic necessity of consequence. The cosmic Being must be then, if this view is to hold, a sort of enlarged divine Human or, we might say, a superior anthropoid Divine, or else the cosmic Law a perfection and magnitude of human methods and standards, which deals with man as he is accustomed to deal with his neighbour,– only not with a rough partial human efficacy, but either a sure omniscience or an unfailing automatism. Whatever truth there may be behind that notion, this is not likely to be an adequate account of the matter. In actual life, if we put aside the rebirth theory, there are traces of this method, but it does not work out with any observable consistency,– not even if we accept an unsatisfactory and hardly just vicarious punishment as part of the scheme. What surety have we, then, of its better or its faultless working out in rebirth except for some similar partial signs and indications and, to fill in the blanks, our general sense of the fitness of things? And again where does the true nature of ethics come in in this scheme? That more elevated action, it would almost seem, is an ideal movement of less use for the practical governance of life than as one part of a preparation for a fourth and last need of man, his need of spiritual salvation, and salvation winds up finally our karma and casts away the economy along with the very thought and will of life. Desire is the law of life and action and therefore of Karma. To do things above the material level for their own sake and their pure right or pure delight is to head straight towards the distances of heaven or the silence of the Ineffable. But this is a view of the meaning of existence against which it is time for the higher seeing mind and being of man to protest and to ask whether the ways of the Spirit in the world may not be capable of a greater, nobler and wiser significance. But still, since the mind of man is part of the universal mind and reflects something of it in a however broken or as yet imperfect and crookedly seeing fashion, there may well be something of a real truth behind this view, though it is not likely to be the whole or the well understood truth. There are some certain or probable laws of the universal working which are relevant to it and must enter into the account. First, it is sure that Nature has laws of which the observance leads to or helps well-being and of which the violation imposes suffering; but all of them cannot be given a moral significance. Then there is the certainty that there must be a moral law of cause and consequence in the total web of her weaving and this we would perhaps currently put into the formula that good produces good and evil evil, which is a proposition of undoubted truth, though also we see in this complicated world that evil comes out of what we hold to be good, and again out of evil disengages itself something that yet turns to good. Perhaps our system of values is too rigidly precise or too narrowly relative; there are subtle things in the totality, minglings, interrelations, cross-currents, suppressed or hidden significances which we do not take into account. The formula is true, but is not the whole truth, at least as now understood in its first superficial significance. And at any rate in the ordinary notion of Karma we are combining two different notions of good. I can well understand that moral good does or ought to produce and increase moral good and moral evil to farther and to create moral evil. It does so in myself. The habit of love confirms and enhances my power of love; it purifies my being and opens it to the universal good. The habit of hatred on the contrary corrupts my being, fills it with poison, with bad and morbid toxic matter, and opens it to the general power of evil. My love ought also by a prolongation or a return to produce love in others and my hatred to give rise to hatred; that happens to a certain, a great extent, but it need not be and is not an invariable or rigorous consequence; still we may well see and believe that love does throw out widening ripples and helps to elevate the world while hatred has the opposite consequence. But what is the necessary connection between this good and evil on the one hand and on the other pleasure and pain? Must the ethical power always turn perfectly into some term of kindred hedonistic result? Not entirely; for love is a joy in itself, but also love suffers; hatred is a troubled and self-afflicting thing, but has too its own perverse delight of itself and its gratifications; but in the end we may say that love, because it is born of the universal Delight, triumphs in its own nature and hatred because it is its denial or perversion, leads to a greater sum of misery to myself as to others. And of all true moral good and real evil this may be said that the one tends towards some supreme Right, the ṛtam of the Vedic Rishis, the highest law of a highest Truth of our being and that Truth is the door of the spirit's Ananda, its beatific nature, the other is a missing or perversion of the Right and the Truth and exposes us to its opposite, to false delight or suffering. And even in the perplexed steps of life some reflection of this identity must emerge. This correspondence is, still, more essentially true in the inner field, in the spiritual, mental and emotional result and reaction of the good or the evil or of the effects of its outgoing action. But where is the firm link of correspondence between the ethical and the more vital and physical hedonistic powers of life? How does my ethical good turn into smiling fortune, crowned prosperity, sleek material good and happiness to myself and my ethical evil into frowning misfortune, rugged adversity, sordid material ill and suffering,– for that is what the desire soul of man and the intelligence governed by it seem to demand,– and how is the account squared or the transmutation made between these two very different energies of the affirmation and denial of good? We can see this much that the good or the evil in me translates itself into a good or an evil action which among other things brings about much mental and material happiness and suffering to others, and to this outgoing power and effect there ought to be an equal reaction of incoming power and effect, though it does not seem to w
|
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 27, 2016 12:35:02 GMT -5
I only read the OP again, but, quinn, this is the thread I remembered.
|
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 27, 2016 12:42:43 GMT -5
Why worry so much 'Pilgrim ... won't they just grow back every spring?...  That's the problem, they do grow back. |
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 27, 2016 12:44:27 GMT -5
Greetings.. Anybody here concerned about the relationship between a non-experience of nonduality (just trying to cover the bases here, as I guess an experience of nonduality would imply a self) and what remains after the non-experience? What constitutes self? At some stage we all experience self, doing this and that and making decisions, we all have suffered or are suffering, most of us have goals, aims and ambitions. In the East there is the idea of samskaras, karmic residue from doing stuff, and the stuff that results out of that doing, etc., etc., etc., IOW, cause and effect. The samskaras extend back to a former life, lives even, and if one doesn't break the chain of cause and effect, the samskaras will incarnate in the future (not, of course, 'us' as Tom, Harry or Sally, IOW, cultural self/ego). Does a non-experience of nonduality wipe out the karmic residue? How would one know if it did? Is this a concern to anyone? Anybody worried that if the samskaras are not exhausted in this life they will continue in another life and thus the pain and suffering continues? What is it that exhausts the perpetuity of the samskaras? ................Now, we can take this as all theoretical nonsense, irrelevant, but then, why are you here and not out enjoying life.....on Sugar Mountain.... (It's so noisy at the fair, but all your friends are there....ain't it funny how it feels when you're finding out life's real.....You can't be twen-ty on Sugar Mountain, for you know that you'll be leaving there too soon..you're leaving there too soon..........Neil Young, written at 19). sdp Cause: Let it go.. Effect: It's gone.. If you are buying into a 'Karma' belief, you will manifest a 'Karma' effect.. just let it go, it is a pointless distraction from what is actually happening.. 'Karma' is an attachment to a self-fulfilling belief, just let it go.. Be well.. No, if you merely let it go it will always come back. Karma doesn't just go away on its own. |
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 27, 2016 12:50:51 GMT -5
That implies that time is a primary factor in liberation. I think that's a concept that requires a lot of looking at. An early inspiration, discovered Socrates in 1970, "If I am wise, it's because I know that I know nothing". sdp When we say time is not required for liberation, we're pointing to the fact that truth is already the case and is not found at the end of some process that has to happen. We're pointing to the fact that time is not a requirement in order for you to be what you already are. If what we were saying is that time is not a factor, there would be no practices, no talk of karma and samskaras or conditioning, and no self inquiry.
One must exhaust his interest in other things. This is the direction in which everyone's life goes. "When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things."
Precisely. The question is how to do that. (Just getting the ball rolling...)... |
|
|
|
Post by quinn on Aug 27, 2016 12:54:18 GMT -5
I only read the OP again, but, quinn, this is the thread I remembered. Thanks, sdp. I'll get around to reading the whole thing a little later, but just for now this is what I wonder: (specifically a question for you) You've mentioned physiology before - neurons burned into the brain, neuro-plasticity, etc., and I get the feeling you see karma not just as an energy, but also having some attachment or relationship to a particular body/mind. You can correct me if needed, or maybe clarify. But my question is - do you think that when the body/mind dies that somehow that specific karmic thread survives? And if yes, what makes you think that? Why not some conglomeration of random karmic energy as opposed to 'my' particular set? |
|
|
|
Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 27, 2016 13:21:16 GMT -5
I only read the OP again, but, quinn, this is the thread I remembered. Thanks, sdp. I'll get around to reading the whole thing a little later, but just for now this is what I wonder: (specifically a question for you) You've mentioned physiology before - neurons burned into the brain, neuro-plasticity, etc., and I get the feeling you see karma not just as an energy, but also having some attachment or relationship to a particular body/mind. You can correct me if needed, or maybe clarify. But my question is - do you think that when the body/mind dies that somehow that specific karmic thread survives? And if yes, what makes you think that? Why not some conglomeration of random karmic energy as opposed to 'my' particular set? Oh absolutely, a specific karmic thread survives. Just briefly... Physical DNA is passed down from parent to child. A similar spiritual "DNA" gets passed down from life to life. When I was about 17 my mother knew I was getting interested in ~this kind of stuff~. My Dad had an uncle who was a Rosicrucian and the whole family thought he was nutty. So, my Mother forbid me to become a Rosicrucian (the mail order thingy). I had seen a similar magazine-ad organization. So I joined Astara, out of Upton, Calif. In their material was the idea of a seed atom (I haven't seen this anywhere else, not saying it isn't anywhere else). You have a physical seed atom, an emotional seed atom and an intellectual seed atom (maybe more, don't remember). But when you die these (sort of a "blueprint copy"/snapshot/DNA) leave your mind/body/organism/etc. and get ~stored~, and upon the next incarnation they form the basis of the next body/mind/emotions. The ~next~ ego/personality/cultural self is completely new, completely newly formed from new learning/new experiences, but ~on the foundation~ of the previous samskaras (seed atom thingys). So in some sense one is reincarnated, in a sense not. The ~in a sense one is~ is enough for me to take it seriously. And this in a sense doesn't fit the Gurdjieff teaching (the teaching covers only one life and Liberation can happen in this one life which we obviously know about) but in a sense it does (but one pretty-much has to figure out/sort this out on one's own, it's sort of a test of understanding). So yes, the "personal energy" ~somehow~ moves from life to life. This is the only way to make sense of Buddhist teaching on karma and reincarnation (in Hinduism, no problem. The problem arises in Buddhism because of the idea of no-self. In "esoteric"/mystical Judaism there is also the idea of reincarnation, no problem there either). But the whole point is, if one doesn't ~get all this~ sorted out and understood and dealt-with in this particular life, ~you~ have to deal with it in the future (without going more into the meaning of ~you~ than I already have). We can explore it more later. But basically, if one (anyone who) doesn't have some sense of how all this operates, that inevitably means ~you're~ a good candidate for having the karma carried on. And if ~you~ thinks that's not ~your~ problem, you have a shortsighted view of what constitutes self/Self. (Which also means all the people who blast sunshine and tenka for the things they post about, probably have less understanding than they do. But then again, there are different kinds of knowing, the knowing of reason and the knowing of understanding). But this is also why I like James Swartz, what he teaches is inclusive of all this. |
|
|
|
Post by quinn on Aug 27, 2016 14:15:57 GMT -5
Thanks, sdp. I'll get around to reading the whole thing a little later, but just for now this is what I wonder: (specifically a question for you) You've mentioned physiology before - neurons burned into the brain, neuro-plasticity, etc., and I get the feeling you see karma not just as an energy, but also having some attachment or relationship to a particular body/mind. You can correct me if needed, or maybe clarify. But my question is - do you think that when the body/mind dies that somehow that specific karmic thread survives? And if yes, what makes you think that? Why not some conglomeration of random karmic energy as opposed to 'my' particular set? Oh absolutely, a specific karmic thread survives. Just briefly... Physical DNA is passed down from parent to child. A similar spiritual "DNA" gets passed down from life to life. When I was about 17 my mother knew I was getting interested in ~this kind of stuff~. My Dad had an uncle who was a Rosicrucian and the whole family thought he was nutty. So, my Mother forbid me to become a Rosicrucian (the mail order thingy). I had seen a similar magazine-ad organization. So I joined Astara, out of Upton, Calif. In their material was the idea of a seed atom (I haven't seen this anywhere else, not saying it isn't anywhere else). You have a physical seed atom, an emotional seed atom and an intellectual seed atom (maybe more, don't remember). But when you die these (sort of a "blueprint copy"/snapshot/DNA) leave your mind/body/organism/etc. and get ~stored~, and upon the next incarnation they form the basis of the next body/mind/emotions. The ~next~ ego/personality/cultural self is completely new, completely newly formed from new learning/new experiences, but ~on the foundation~ of the previous samskaras (seed atom thingys). So in some sense one is reincarnated, in a sense not. The ~in a sense one is~ is enough for me to take it seriously. And this in a sense doesn't fit the Gurdjieff teaching (the teaching covers only one life and Liberation can happen in this one life which we obviously know about) but in a sense it does (but one pretty-much has to figure out/sort this out on one's own, it's sort of a test of understanding). So yes, the "personal energy" ~somehow~ moves from life to life. This is the only way to make sense of Buddhist teaching on karma and reincarnation (in Hinduism, no problem. The problem arises in Buddhism because of the idea of no-self. In "esoteric"/mystical Judaism there is also the idea of reincarnation, no problem there either). But the whole point is, if one doesn't ~get all this~ sorted out and understood and dealt-with in this particular life, ~you~ have to deal with it in the future (without going more into the meaning of ~you~ than I already have). Would it be ~me~ though, or some random body/mind that got my samskaras? Thanks for clarifying. You didn't answer why you think this is true, though, other than seeing confirmation in some places. Is it that it makes sense to you as an explanation of why certain people act certain ways? Just to play devil's advocate (since I don't really have an opinion on this - just some skepticism), there are a LOT of theories on why people act a certain way; environment, genetics, diet, emotional blockages - to name a few. Here's my other thought - and maybe why I have some resistance to what you're saying: There is a particularly toxic way of living that involves setting arbitrary (and changeable) standards , striving to meet them, 'succeeding' for a while, and inevitably failing (because of the nature of impermanence). You're familiar with the voice in the head called The Task Master/Score-Keeper, right? This version of karma that you're describing sounds a lot like that. |
|
