Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Is this correct?
cook99
Explorer
Is this correct?
The law of karma means that if a person stops doing bad things and start doing good things ie being kind, generous, loving etc he will become happier and more peace ful.
0
Comments
Maybe, maybe not ... but it's certainly worth a try.
If his/her heart's in it, yes. If s/he's only doing it to earn "karma points", then it won't work.
Pick one day in advance and no matter how you are feeling that day, act as if you were happy and as if you want to help others be happy. Hold open a few doors. Be mindful of how you may be perceived.
Pick another day in advance but be grumpy and look for reasons to mistrust, fear or be angry at others. Hold open no doors. Be mindful of how you may be perceived.
Compare how you feel at the end of each day.
@cook99
The law of karma, means that your intent is a major contributor of the consequences that you are subject to.
If ones intent manifests as greed, hate or delusion, then you will be subject to inertia of that greed, hate or delusion following you.
If ones intent manifests as compassion, love or wisdom, then you will be subject to the inertia of that compassion, love or wisdom following you.
Do you think that you would be happier and more peaceful being followed by suffering's cause or by walking the path towards suffering's cessation?
Yes.
Oh, there's all sorts of technical hair splitting you can do, but in the end it boils down to what you said. I can't find anything wrong with your understanding at my end.
I can.
As @how explained, the Intention is a very important factor.
What's your motivation? That's what you need to ask yourself.
Are you being good/kind/generous/loving for the good of others, or for your own good?
Yes.
Even if the intent is selfish. Most of us as a generalisation need the good karma of Śīla (skilful behavour) more than the setbacks. Bad unskilful behavour is easy, it comes naturally for most of us.
Eventually and this is quite advanced, we have to overcome the drawbacks of doing good, that tends to be a lot easier . . .
I recommend sham 'being kind, generous, loving etc'. It leads in time to the real thing. Think of it as the benefits of diplomacy and courtesy over the alternatives . . .
If you have a better feasible and appropriate plan, be glad to hear it
Remember the Twin verses of the Dhammapada:
"If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."
Skillful actions, skillful results. Unskillful actions, unskillful results.
A pear tree never bore an apple.
what is wrong with doing it to earn karma points?
correct me if i am wrong, only arahants are free from greed, hate or delusion.
Karma is not a game or is it! Look at the bhavachakra...
OK so it looks like a pretty good game-board layout, but where your avatar (for those who play monopoly - I like to be the old boot or the wheelbarrow) lands is entirely up to your doing (that's karma); really it is all up to you. You can only go so high before having to descend again; and you can only go so low before you can only rise up. Things go in cycles.
Remain alert in this life and teach alertness to others and you may find a spot, lets say the centre, where the world of things and events revolve about you and yet you can in that spot be untouched by those things, or you can decide to have an experience and move on out toward the edge and experience the full force and momentum of living on the edge of a world that keeps on turning, with you as the driving force!
I'm heading back to the centre. Where are you right now?
For your eyes only @cook99
MY Very considered response:
Bollocks!
Sorry if the language offends but sometimes meaning is conveyed in words - refer to my previous response, and see that you cannot make less suffering for others. Really, I am so upset by the way people think that buddhism offers a complete end to suffering, because it can't, the world is not full of buddhists! It is full of islamists, christians, judaists, scientologists, atheists, etc etc etc. And all live together in a big hodgepodge!
The majority of people on this site are not monastics and that video was not for me or other people who live in the world of non-monastics; we are lay people and this is another realm of being- it's called the middle human realm in the bhavachakra - crowding in near the centre is my guess for warmth and comfort.
I would love to get up at dawn, ding a bell and watch the sun come up and then do my monastic chores ding a bell and watch the sun go down, but I'm not living that life am I? And I guess neither are you so what is your karma - what are you really doing?
When you have a piss in the toilet, which bubble should not be there, can you decide, I have a real pronlem because I become fascinated with a particular bubble, but cannot understand why that particular big bubble appeared - you created and shaped those little bubbles, by the way you stood, what you had drunk and eaten ( the more protein in your diet creates more bubbles! its a fact), but it doesn't matter because all those wonderful bubbles you just created just got flushed away! Bubble appeared and disappeared - life and death!
The buddha did not say life is about suffering, he said there is suffering, and there is an antidote - forget karma - go back to the 4 noble truths, when you understand that properly then present a view of karma,
FMEO
FYEO:
I think you left out just one thing.
You need to tell him a way to reach you when he understands the 4 noble truths properly so he can see if he got it right.
Actually, it's something we can all look up to.
Perhaps not be completely free, but strive in every action to have a little less of each one.
Otherwise, what would be the point of treading the path?
if you look at the background of monks esp those from the west,
they were doing various things before becoming a monk. and more importantly
they didnt know they will become a monk.
so bollocks , maybe you will be a monk this time, next year.
ajahn Brahm, 1st class hons in physics, Cambridge, teacher.
Ajahn summano, successful entrepreneur, divorcee, chicago.
Ajahn Pabhakaro, former us soldier, suffered from PTSD.
Ajahn sripanno, student oxford univ.
Reply to @anataman
Love it, I cracked up when I saw this.....
I slightly agree. It's true, but we have to be careful how we act when we are being kind generous and loving, because it may not always work out the way that it should. Sometimes non-action is better.
Do the two have to be mutually exclusive? I always aim for win win!
The arahants were supposed to be free from defilements, according to the sutras. I suspect a bit of "our honored forefathers" worship had crept in by the time these were written down. They certainly don't paint a picture of behaving any different than normal people. Except for Ananda, who was supposedly the only one of the bunch that wasn't declared to be an arahant until after Buddha's death.
One of our problems is that we almost have two Buddhisms that even monks have argued over for a thousand years. We have the Buddhism of the enlightened elite and small group of (male) monks capable of being enlightened and the rest of us are doomed to be reincarnated again and again, and the Buddhism where everyone is already enlightened and they don't know it, and anyone can be a Buddha.
Two different parts of the same elephant.
But are there any Buddhist traditions which claim that enlightenment is easy?
Double post, oops.
Maybe we should make one up.
"Easyana" ?
Easyana meditation 101,
>
No, not at all... but one has to take care to take the Middle Way... too much "Jeesh I feel so good!" and the Ego is trippin'....
"Too much "I am doing this entirely for 'you' not 'me'..." smacks of self-sacrificing martyrdom.... which is also an aspect of Ego.
Certainly we deserve to acknowledge our own beneficence, but it's a fine balance.
Some I know, have it just right....
Easyana - I like it; but The Middle way is Mahayana, the great vehicle...
And I'm here to promulgate it - because once you've got it, well you've got it!
And like a famous Western philosopher once said: 'when your right, your right!
Good night!
I started to answer this twice and erased my remarks both times to start over. An old Zen Master is looking over my shoulder right now, telling me, "If you say it's easy I will hit you thirty times. If you say it's hard I will hit you thirty times. What are you going to say now, smart guy?"
There is a school of Buddhism that says it's not hard. That's not the same as saying it's easy. And if that Zen Master doesn't stop looking over my shoulder I'll take his stick and give him thirty-one blows!
Do you understand?
Some traditions such as my own say that it is so obvious and simple that it is unbelievably hard!
do you agree with richard gere?
I wonder how much of this is to do with presentation. It's psychologically more appealing when something is presented as being accessible and not incredibly difficult to achieve.
Something like "Nobody said simple was easy"
Simple doesn't mean 'easy'.
Often the most difficult things to accomplish, are extremely simple in their concept.
I think we have a 'block' in that humans believe the apparently insurmountable also needs to be difficult.
It would be nice to be able to wash that belief out of our brains....
What that's old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall?
I dunno.... before my time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/nyregion/29fyi.html?_r=0