Best Of
Re: Unexpectedly bored during meditation
With breath meditation, my understanding is that all manner of thougts will arise and our practice is the same: gently return to the breath. It should be the same with body scans, gently return to scanning the body.
The mind will conjure up endless tricks to suck us in. 'What does boredom during meditation mean?' is just one such example.
marcitko
Re: Can the mind be conditioned into enlightenment?
Been playing with Chat GPT and thought to ask a question along these lines. The two points that stood out to me, and reflect my own learning.
Ontology vs. soteriology: The question mixes two angles. Ontologically (what is enlightenment?), many Buddhist traditions teach that awakening is the recognition or removal of ignorance about the true nature of mind and phenomena — it is a seeing of what already is. Soteriologically (how does one become enlightened?), awakening happens through a causal process: ethical conduct, meditation, wisdom — i.e., conditions and effort.
And then the Madhyamika understanding of emptiness and its relation to enlightenment. This is the tradition I developed my sense of Buddhism in.
Madhyamaka: Emphasizes emptiness. Enlightenment is the experiential realization that all phenomena lack inherent existence. This realization is not a “thing” that’s created; it’s a correct cognition that arises when ignorance ceases.
Practical summary: Buddhism generally resists the notion that enlightenment is an invention or addition to a self. It’s better described as the cessation of ignorance and the direct realization (revelation) of reality — a change that occurs through causes and conditions, not creation ex nihilo. The upshot for practice is the same either way: cultivate the conditions (ethics, meditation, wisdom) that allow the revealing to occur.
person
Re: 6 karmic realms
The whole idea of the realms seems odd to me. Who could have explored them, or reported on them? Perhaps it was a teaching device?
Jeroen
Re: 6 karmic realms
@Jeroen said:
The whole idea of the realms seems odd to me. Who could have explored them, or reported on them? Perhaps it was a teaching device?
Yes, it does kind of go back to older days when it was believed it was more possible for people to have visions, or even travel directly, of these places.
But there is plenty there to view it through a modern lens as a teaching device with everyday parallels. People living in their own mental hell or hungry ghost realm. I see the god and demi god realms as that of billionaires and millionaires, yes millionaires are doing well, but are often still envious of those who have more.
person
Re: Funny Stuff
I really appreciate it when a tradesman really perfects his craft and brings to a larger market...
person
Re: Can the mind be conditioned into enlightenment?
@Jeroen said:
Since the human realm is part of the desire realm, don’t we all have intimate knowledge of it?
Indeed.
We all have predominant 'tendencies' and also insights throughout life. We also can move in a different field of experience, untainted by our past, present and future. A condition of how it is possible to be 'In the world but not of it' as some of the Gnostic Christians state it...
lobster
Re: Meditation as a state of mind
I woke this morning after a dream about our house being broken into.
AND the emotion/Mind stayed in fear. Much to my surprise. An arising. That was not calmed by meditation but physical exercise.
In Buddhism the Mind includes feeling and sensations. As most of us know.
The experience we have is the Mind. This is what we practice and try to integrate with using tools we have gained. 
lobster
Re: Buddhist View of Justice
"All tremble at the rod. All fear death. Comparing others with oneself, one should neither strike nor cause to strike.
All tremble at the rod. Life is dear to all. Comparing others with oneself, one should neither strike nor cause to strike.
Whoever tries to seek happiness through hurting others, cannot find happiness.
Whoever tries to seek happiness without hurting others, can find happiness.
Speak not harshly to anyone. Those thus addressed will retort. Painful, indeed, is vindictive speech. Blows in exchange may bruise you.
If, like a cracked gong, you silence yourself, you have already attained Nibbana: no vindictiveness will be found in you.
As with a staff the heardsman drives his cattle to pasture, even so do old age and death drive out the lives of beings.
So, when a fool does wrong deeds, he does not realize (their evil nature); by his own deeds the stupid man is tormented, like one burnt by fire.
Whosoever causes pain to the innocent ones will himself suffer quickly from one of the following ten states.
He will get sharp pain or injury of the body, or get serious illness or become mad.
Or punishment by the kind, or being accused of doing wrong or death of relatives or loss of treasures.
Or his house will be struck by lightning or after death, he will be reborn in Hell."
Meditation as a state of mind
I came across a passage in a book which said,
“Deep in you, meditation is already the case. So whenever it happens that your day-to-day turmoil is a little bit less…. Maybe you are watching a sunset, and watching the sunset your constant chattering mind has become quiet, the beauty of the sunset has made it quiet, and then you feel meditation come to the surface”
This struck me as something that was very likely, that in order to connect to meditation we just need to let it surface by encouraging the mind to be quiet. I woke up in the evening last night, and in my mind was the word “Prashant”, which is a common male name in South Asia and means patience, calm, quiet, or tranquil.
To be calmly aware is an excellent state. Often awareness has an element of searching to it, of shifting attention from place to place. These things are good to examine while waiting for quietness of the mind. But meditation as a state of mind implies that we can’t really do it, we aren’t actively making it so, at most we can make conditions favourable for it to arise.
Jeroen
Re: Buddhist View of Justice
@RobinH said:
It's a comic, it's cheap in the sense that it aims to portray a pleasure-oriented mindset in relatable ways and it's not afraid to go down in the mud and get dirty. It's using entertaining qualities to lure the reader in for the deeper content as it aims to be about how the sexual fantasies and behaviors people develop often have roots in trauma or are otherwise coping mechanisms that the more one understands about the more they can do to become independent from their harmful effects.
It definitely has some Buddhist aspects and would be worthy of a topic in its own right. Sometimes people who are addicted to pleasure turn to religion as a way of solving their problems, it might be an interesting counterpoint in your story.
Jeroen