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.
The roaring of a lion
Carameltail
UK Veteran
http://www.soulwise.net/99lionro.htm
"We live like sheep when we are in fact lions. We live in poverty of spirit and
heart when we are in fact Buddhas, waiting to recognize, in the mirror of
primordial awareness, our own reflection. The Master is the old lion, and being
dragged is the path. Insight is recognition. Liberation is the lion's roar. "
5
Comments
"...being dragged is the path". Why does that have to be so true?
Luckily we can learn not to live in poverty of spirit, even if in real life we do live off meagre means.
Some of the poorest people in the world, deliberately so, are happier than one could imagine.
It's a hard wrench to be left bereft by circumstance, yet still possible to reside serenely in the deprivation, and ride the storm.
But I agree, @person, that's one heck of a line....
It reminds me of an old debate I had on the forums many moons ago. We were discussing what karma is, and I was trying to figure out how Buddhist karma differs from the Hindu version.
In a nutshell, a person with good karma would react to his circumstances in a positive manner, whether said circumstances were good or bad. So in adversity, he would see opportunity. In contrast, a windfall would be received with generosity. Someone with poor karma would bemoan their fate in the case of adversity, and receive the windfall with suspicion that someone would take it away from him.
Tee Hee!
Well said @nakazcid.
We all experience adversity/suffering/dukkha/trumpy thinking ...
but it is in our karmic ability lion/Buddha roaring to frighten the wool off the sheep.
There are positive and negative ways to relate to karma.
We may not understand what past actions brought us to our present conditions, but there is much we can do to make sure that future effects spring from the right present causes.
Our choices make us morally accountable for our actions.
Or the other way around.
After all, cause and effect are like an ouroboros biting its own tail.
Most of us need to be baptised stream entrants to stop dragging our spiritual side stepping tootsies. Now that I bow to the Buddha in the river, there tends to be more spluttering but less bubbling ...
Us people sure are attached to our life drags, fortunately we can dissolve and resolve our smoking drag king rough edges.
“Till my enlightenment I take refuge in Buddha, all Enlightened beings and my own Buddha Nature;
I take refuge in the Dharma, the universal truth and the path towards enlightenment;
I take refuge in the Sangha, the community of those who are ahead of me on the path.”
http://contemporarybuddhism.com/universal-refuge-prayer/
As the old adagio goes, some people are so poor, all they have is money...
karma, being the effects of past causes, changes as we change the causes. Hence, we control our karma. if I allow my problems to control me, that become my karma. If I take on the problems as opportunities to grow and change, that become my karma. The Buddha is here. Do I choose to awaken the Buddha or not. I choose, with my Lion's Roar, to awaken the Buddha.