Best Of

You are not the same as or different from
Conditions on which you depend;
You are neither severed from
Nor forever fused with them—-
This is the deathless teaching
Of buddhas who care for the world.

When buddhas don’t appear
And their followers are gone,
The wisdom of awakening
Bursts forth by itself.

Nagarjuna-Verses From the Center

@Jeroen said:

@marcitko said:
Just an addition to my OP since I believe I was not clear enough: I do not hold the belief that I am JUST negative, but ALSO negative. It's more of a case of holding "saint" and "sinner" beliefs/egos at the same time and (I believe), deep down, not having a balanced neutral/middle-way belief/ego.

If you try and identify with both those sets of beliefs, you may end up rather divided internally and at war with yourself. Unifying these to create a melded middle way seems to me a difficult path.

It may be better to identify with being a witness to all that passes in front of the senses, and just letting what comes come, and letting what goes go. This is a path more of acceptance.

It is said that “enlightenment is the state of being in total acceptance with what is.”

Observing the stars a moment ago, I saw your point. Sometimes this comes, sometimes that. I am not what comes and goes.

@marcitko said:

How might we approach such a belief from a Buddhist perspective? Do you also have such a core belief / wound? If yes, how do you deal with it?

Thanks!

Just sit with it, see beliefs for what they really are ...

just thoughts...nothing more nothing less...

@marcitko said:
Just an addition to my OP since I believe I was not clear enough: I do not hold the belief that I am JUST negative, but ALSO negative. It's more of a case of holding "saint" and "sinner" beliefs/egos at the same time and (I believe), deep down, not having a balanced neutral/middle-way belief/ego.

If you try and identify with both those sets of beliefs, you may end up rather divided internally and at war with yourself. Unifying these to create a melded middle way seems to me a difficult path.

It may be better to identify with being a witness to all that passes in front of the senses, and just letting what comes come, and letting what goes go. This is a path more of acceptance.

It is said that “enlightenment is the state of being in total acceptance with what is.”

@marcitko said:

From my perspective, if you are in a good place emotionally it does not matter much what you say, since people will pick up primarily your feeling. Some Christian saint said: "Love and do what you will". For this purpose we could change it to: "Love and say what you will".

Very wise. Since speech comes naturally to us, it can be a good looking glass into the heart. And by conscientiously practicing Right Speech, or Lobster's "Right Speechless" we can run the chain in both directions, and gradually train the heart to follow the words. Making this change requires ADKAR: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. In other words, it's not a change you make by switching one day, it's an ongoing project, with prerequisites and ongoing attention.

@lobster said:
The best right speech or the most noble (as in golden) is silence. However we can also use skilful or compassionate speech when enabled.

If we speak with integrity and not just blindly harming ourselves and others through ignorance of our own lack of skill and/or oblivious or uncaring of the effect, we may be telling the truth but will be ostracised, socially awkward or just considered down right rude …

This is absolutely right on. If we tell it like it is -- uninvited -- then we certainly won't convince anyone of the correctness of our view, though we may well establish a reputation as an irritant. As the self-righteous unskillfulness of youth clears and recedes, this wisdom becomes more clear to us (though not to all of us in the current lifetime). Every now and then we may be actively invited to tell it like it is. This does not mean we should; not all opportunities should be seized.

Every moment might offer you a different answer to this question.

There are few forces as slippery and tenacious as karma. Not even death slows it's momentum. Our ego, selfish self, adversarial tendencies, or that which innately has us feeling apart from the rest of existence, are just descriptions of how each of us enables its inertia.
The degree to which we can transcend how we continually recreate our ego, selfish self, adversarial tendencies, or that sense of being apart from others, is the same degree to which we can address the causes of that Karma's continence through us.

The 4NT & 8FP through the lenses of a consistent meditation practice, has been my journey back to where ever I have clung to, rejected or ignored another, where the opportunity exists to re-experience the events again but this time beyond the limitation of my past attachments and ignorance's.
This is not even an act of intention.
It is as if everything that I've ever become attached to, remains held within me, subtly affecting the course of my life, until my continuing grasp upon them softens enough to let them go.
The machinery in this process seems to be simply about a mind that has usurped much of the data feeds of the other sense gates in a propagation of it own fiefdom.
Compared to a practice of returning the autonomy of those data feeds to the other sense gates so that all get a more equally shared space of life's stage.

Here, even the darkness has it's place.