@pegembara
Look again
On the surface, it appears obvious. But accepting yourself to be human goes beyond the physical manifestation. Ordinary human beings do not arise from a Buddha. Buddha arises from the ordinary human being.
Within you, me, all of us, is the potential to rise to Buddha or the fall the Demon King or anywhere between. You have the choice to polish your great gem, allowing it to shine, to brightly radiate it's light and warmth or to bury it, hide it from yourself and from the world.
To accept that you are human is to recognize and accept that you have the responsibility and the freedom to change your karma for the better and thus positively change your bit of the world as you do it.
It is as if you are on a ship being battered and knocked about by the Eight Winds like a cork upon the endless Sea of Suffering. Accepting you are human entails rising the sails and manning the helm, utilizing the Eight Winds (of seeming gain and loss) to navigate your ship across the same "Sea of suffering" to the great "Harbor of Tranquility".
Thus to bring out from within the life states of Bodhissatva or Buddha.
Another, less graphic way to put it is that to recognize you are human is to take control of your life from within, and choose to positively direct your life condition, regardless of exterior appearances/circumstances.
At any rate, I hope I have no thoroughly confused you with my word salad.
Peace to all
and to welcome @federica back ...
• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
If you wish to achieve Buddha, first you must accept you are human.
An existance to be honored
An adventure to be celebrated
A treasure to be valued
in all
Peace to all
Each of us is a Boundless Treasure Tower
Our lives each a treasure immeasurable
We are all as old as the Universe
And as young as the moment
Peace to all
It would seem Israel are a law unto themselves 😢
Ah ha! You survived covid (wave 1) and the Theravadin,
Are you now known as Agent/Ajahn 'J', like the interdimensional/intergalactic sanga in MIB? How many precepts are you on? What hardware are you using? Phone? Laptop? Desktop? Web page as available?
Thanks for telling us about your new projecting. We could probably do with your professional Dana/consultancy/sharing (still free?) that we're creating
Thanks for your presence/updates. As ever.
Oh, I dunno - around 60 -65 degrees F. perhaps, with a few warmer days. Rains a lot. Last year we got a few days up around 80, which may well be the warmest we've seen since we've lived here. I rarely see northern lights here - too much cloudy.
The other day I received an email in my inbox from a name I had not heard in a long time, from a place I had not visited in a long time, that being Lobster from Newbuddhist.
If you are newer you probably don't know me, but others may remember me from as far back as 14 years, first as Jayantha, and now as my monastic name.
I am building my own organization these days (www.maggasekha.org) https://youtube.com/@Maggasekha ) as an almost a senior monastic, so I don't spend much time at all in my old haunts of dhammawheel, r/buddhism, and this wonderful place. But I often tell people(especially new buddhists) of this forum and community as I have fond memories of a very chill community that doesn't fall into a lot of debating, arguing, and sectarianism.
I may end up disappearing again, but if you every want me to reply to a post on here, feel free to tag me or send me a PM. I have much gratitude for this place and wish to give back what I can .
For me the Dhamma is the gift that keeps on giving.
I have a decent-but-not-encyclopaedic knowledge of Buddhism, and there was a lot which I filed under “interesting but meh”, quite a few things which were clearly beneficial, and a few things which were great. It’s the great things which have applications several times a day, and which actively make life better.
Probably the number one is Ajahn Chah’s advice to “do everything with the spirit of letting go”. You never know how many burdens you carry, how many identifications you cling to, all the mental baggage you have, until you start looking, simplifying, relaxing, letting go.
It’s a big part of getting rid of all the things that conditioned you.