Best Of
Re: The Elephant in the Room
What it all comes down to is that people think these things are so important: what language you speak shouldn’t make such a difference, its not a big deal to learn multiple languages? If people were more forgiving, less inclined to be ruthless, more heartful, kinder. The world could be a better place.
Jeroen
Re: Killed half a dozen flies, have I broken my lay-precepts?
I had a similar experience recently with ants I had killed in my kitchen. It made me question how many were too many. I think I reflected on my reasoning and determined I killed them out of emotion. I live my amends through mindfulness of the new ants and various bugs in my home, by finding some balance and extending myself a little further to not cause harm from emotion going forward.
When I keep my kitchen a little cleaner, they don't flood in any more. Just a few small search parties from time to time. I think we can both live with that.
Re: Killed half a dozen flies, have I broken my lay-precepts?
Did you intentionally kill these flies or were their deaths accidental?
If it was intentional then trying to address the causes for that killing intent is just as important as a purification restoration of that vow.
Screen doors?/ parting bug screens for doors?/pet doors?/live-fly capture & a safe return for them outside?/ limiting open food, water & fly odor attractants?/or being as tolerant of the fly's comings and goings as you are of your other pets.
Not intending to kill, restores a not killing vow. Understanding and mitigating where possible all the causal factors behind why this vow ended up being broken in the 1st place will go a long way toward not repeating the same type of vow breakages in the future.
how
Re: Killed half a dozen flies, have I broken my lay-precepts?
Yes, you can do purification prayers. If you practice Mantrayāna, ask your guru as primary opinion.
Re: Great Western Vehicle
@FleaMarket said:
What is the action involved in not taking someone at his word? Is he tested? Is there a traditional process for vetting another's attainments?
Traditionally, the Saṃgha would vet claimants to these sorts of things internally. Sorry I've not yet been able to answer. There is more to say, but I can't say it now.
Re: Where am I?
what are we?
We are adaptable
Very much tied to our sense gates (Buddhism says) or body.
We seem to be very much at the point of our changing awareness.
lobster
Re: The Elephant in the Room
It is sad how social media is spreading hate so fast. I know a few UKRAINIAN Russian-speakers who are afraid to speak Russian. In a village -cannot disclose- Jewish Ukrainians were calling for the death of Russians just for their supposed ethnicity, and its "obvious" ties to evil. Identity politics are confusing and can generate a lot of abstract nonsense. Also the reason I mention that they are Jewish, is not to pin point them as the evil enemy, but as an example of how even groups that you would suspect of having certain "immunity" to this barbarism are not safe. Let's recall how Ukrainian nationalism actually took sides with Nazi Germany during the war. In other words, total delusion.
Also...if Putin wanted to "protect the Russian people living in Ukraine " he has done a lot to give the anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine -which started growing particularly after the Euromaidan protests in 2014- a lot of back-up and "evidence" to feed the flames of hate. He has done very well.
My partner is Ukrainian, Russian-speaking too. She says it was terrible the build up to this. How everything related to Russia was being deleted and this nationalistic ideal based on Russophobia is getting deeper and deeper.
In Spain, we have something in a "similar" vein (not as extreme of course). Cataluña -eastern region which speaks a different yet similar language, Catalan- has some issues regarding what language should be used and a lot of people are literally advocating for the end of Spanish because of this same rhetoric -generalising all Spanish speaking people as "oppressors, killers, fascists, resentment for Franc's dictatorship-. This has even led to what should've been a resolution to this issue. The Judicial system provided the following guarantee people in Cataluña: if requested to the school authorities, they had to provide 25% of the school hours in Spanish, the rest in Catalan.
While this still needs work to be done and it is far from a resolution to the Catalan question, there was a case where a boy from a village (called Canet del Mar) was openly targeted by adults as an enemy and calling parents to not allow him be friends with their children and isolate him JUST BECAUSE his parents had requested that his son received 25% of the school hours in Spanish.
These are examples of DELUSION. But if you give DELUSION more material to feed on, like invading a country or sending anti-riot police to beat people up (like in Russia and in Cataluña), you won't end it.
Peace!
Kotishka
Re: Mahayana vs Theravada Buddhism
@Vimalajāti
Thank you for your elaborate answer!
Edit: If you mind sharing any further reading -I tend to enjoy these scholarly subjects- please do so. I've read very few Mahayana texts. The Heart Sutra, The Diamond Sutra and the Record of Linji and some bits and bobs of Dogen.
I also sense here there's a difference between Nirvana according to Mahayana and Theravada. I mean, from what I understood, Theravada sees it in a much more dualistic way. You either in or not in Samsara, you either in or not in Nibbana. No other way around it.
Good day!
Kotishka
Re: Video games that changed your life
I will talk about one genre of games I like that doesn't involve slaying monsters but rather puzzles and thinking. The first of these games I played with my family together including my cousins and they were text based adventures. You type in a command and see if the game even recognizes the command and then see what happens if it does recognize. For example "Go east" and the game will recognize that command but it might say back "you cannot go that way because it's blocked by overgrowth". If you say "open the drawer" it might say "you slide the drawer open and find a machete". Or if you say "contemplate the universe" it might say "I do not recognize that command" etc. I can't remember the brand of text adventures we used but we had great fun. I was under the age of 10. There was no going online to find the answers either. Me and my Dad to this day sometimes reminisce and talk about "the purple worm" which was a monster blocking our progress that we never figured out how to defeat. I read about it later and it was not beatable and was a decoy puzzle that was unsolvable and not necessary to solve to beat that game.
Some brands I remember (don't remember the ones I played with family): Moonmist (another text only), the Kings Quest series (now with dated graphics), Maniac Mansion, Myst, and Riven.
Jeffrey
Re: Mahayana vs Theravada Buddhism
@Kotishka said:
Also, a question arises, when a Bodhisattva reaches his ultimate state, how can he remain and practice without being deluded again when he experiences re-birth? If there is no self, what then becomes Enlightened and leaves the rest behind?
One could also say, if there is no self, what then transmigrates and is reborn in saṃsāra? Your version of the question is, if there is no self, what then becomes enlightened and leaves saṃsāra?
The only answer I have for you is an empty scholasticism. I don't know the secrets of dependent origination, anātman, and Nirvāṇa anymore than anyone else who listens to the monks teach and reads a lot. "What transmigrates," like "what feels," and "for whom are there saṃskāras" is a question that the Buddha often declines to answer. In the Avijjāpaccayasutta at SN12.35, the Buddha has a dialogue with a bhikṣu whose name has not been preserved in the current redactions of the Buddhist texts:
“Venerable sir, what now are volitional formations, and for whom are there these volitional formations?”
“Not a valid question,” the Blessed One replied. “Bhikkhu, whether one says, ‘What now are volitional formations, and for whom are there these volitional formations?’ or whether one says, ‘Volitional formations are one thing, the one for whom there are these volitional formations is another’—both these assertions are identical in meaning; they differ only in the phrasing. If there is the view, ‘The soul and the body are the same,’ there is no living of the holy life; and if there is the view, ‘The soul is one thing, the body is another,’ there is no living of the holy life.
(from the translation by Venerable Bodhi)
In the Mahāyāna, Nirvāṇa is said to be non-abiding. What "non-abiding" means here has to be unpacked however, because I'm going to be saying in a second that the Buddhas "abide" in Nirvāṇa, seemingly contradicting myself.
Please keep in mind that this is all my own opinion, and that I am not speaking with the doctrinal weight of an established scholastic opinion behind me.
In the teaching of the Mahāyāna, the Buddhas are not said to be destroyed by extinguishment, nor are they eternally existent in an all-encompassing realm of Nirvāṇa, as if gone to a mysterious abode. There are similes and metaphors that speak of "the city of Nirvāṇa," but these in my experience are not to be taken literally (i.e. as if there was a great Nirvāṇa-realm populated by the Buddhas that existed outside of time and space or something like that). Similarly, Nirvāṇa is extinguishment only because it is the extinguishment of the three fires of greed, ignorance, and hatred. It is for the sake of pointing out the extinction of these three things that it is called "extinguishment" and "extinction," nothing more nothing less.
In "Śrāvaka Buddhism" (i.e. "non-Mahāyāna Buddhism") the Buddha disappears into Parinirvāṇa, never to engage with the world ever again. Now, that's quite a sweeping statement, and when we read it, we should remember that Mahāyāna Buddhism has a history of sectarian polemics with non-Theravādin continental schools of Indian Buddhism. Either way, accurately or not, the general Mahāyāna tradition has a tendency to understand the Śrāvaka as believing that he will enter into a kind of death with Parinirvāṇa. The Mahāyāna rejects this framing of things. Whether this is a strawman is an entirely different conversation.
So what does it mean for Nirvāṇa to be "non-abiding?" Ironically, it means that Nirvāṇa is "always abiding" for the Buddhas. "Above, he holds on to the root of mysteries; [and] below, he reaches out to lift the weak and the forlorn" (Venerable Sēngzhào 肇論 Zhào's Essays T1858.158a4). It is a Mahāyāna teaching that the Buddhas always abide in Nirvāṇa, even when appearing to interact with and engage with the world. All of the mental activities that the Buddha manifests in order to teach the world are nothing more than the pure samādhis of the Āryans, but he makes a show of entering and exiting the dhyānas and the samāpattis for the sake of edifying living beings.