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Distinguishing inferior superior?
shanyin
Novice YoginSault Ontario Veteran
"It is actions that distinguishes beings as inferior or superior".
(I watched a monk on a video read most likely a sutra in which the Buddha is quoted there.
Mabye I just need to put more thought into this but is he saying that beings can be inferior or superior?
If so in what way?
(I watched a monk on a video read most likely a sutra in which the Buddha is quoted there.
Mabye I just need to put more thought into this but is he saying that beings can be inferior or superior?
If so in what way?
0
Comments
To say one's behavior is the true judge of character so to speak, was revolutionary and would have been hard to swallow for many during that time period.
So in essence, this statement was more about setting these new teachings apart from the traditional teachings all around him.
For instance, one person may not ever "get" thought as an object that has a fictitious symbolic content, while its reality as a simple sensory phenomena is affirmed. Another person may take to that like a duck to water.
What constitutes superior actions? Right actions, right mind etc. (the whole 8FP she-bang.)
I think this is a very important point. Would regarding someone as inferior than you be just another way of feeding your ego and your sense of self? I think it would.
Quiet_witness is on to something when he says WE aren't superior, our actions and abilities are, and that's a big difference.
heeding a caste attitude, whether social, pshyological or spiritual in nature, is being heedless of the buddha-nature of all things, and thus born of ignorance... and so must be abandoned....
\\the reason why buddhas and accomplished buddhists are so venerable is because they have realized their true nature, and that facilitates it... but ordinary beings are in the darkness of ignorance and though deserve equal reverence, cannot be because their nature has been clouded by defilement.
Only difference (stuck in form)
Only No-difference (stuck in emptiness)
Difference/no-difference (Bob wears a size 8 shoe, Pete wears a size 10, Bob and Pete are equal)
We can also not state that Buddhism is the superior religion; rather, we can state that it is the superior path to Enlightenment (a fact made possible by the unique circumstance that it is the *only* religion to teach the path).
inferior and superior are hierarchy, whereas acknowledging, appreciating, acting accordingly with difference is still egalitarian in spirit, just treating things as they are
like not using a toilet as a refrigerator, you wouldn't treat a criminal as a buddha, in its physical sense, its suchness
but ultimate love for each is, or should be, the same, a toilet still does what it does perfectly and a refrigerator does too, absolutely
buddha is a cockroach!!!
Its a tough one. You see there may be kids in a class room with a wide range of capacities for say math. the teacher may use the "pod" system which streams the students according to capacity. some have a ....better... facility with math than others. This does not mean some children are inherently better than others. i took my kid to a birthday party not long ago where everyone participated in some good natured competition? In order to be egalitarian every body won a a ribbon that said "winner". The kids agreed, nobody won. Difference, being "better" at some things and "weaker" or "having a struggle" with some things is ok. If there were not painters far superior to me, we would all be quite lame-ass.
That why in Mahayana it state when the Dharma ( Law ) is superme, the people who spread the Dharma ( Law ) arre also supreme, as both of them shared it.
That's why in Mahayana , there is a common term of Buddha-Bodhisattva - this term refers one who realised and also one who took actions to benefit other , protect the purty of the Dharma and actualized the teaching in our reality
the Buddha mock the Brahmins of this time, he revealed that a true Brahmin is not by his birth , but solely by his virtues he accomplished
<!-- /#content-header --> <!--paging_filter-->We are what we do.
By Andrew Olendzki
The Nerve Center of Our Massive Corporation, Elif Soyer, 2005, digital print, 10 x 10 inches © Elif Soyer
Karma is a word one runs across more and more these days. It’s too bad it is almost always misused. Somehow in English it has come to mean “fate” or “destiny” (American Heritage Dictionary). This is an unfortunate, if inevitable, distortion, because in its original Buddhist context karma is a concept of unparalleled profundity and significance.
The word karma simply means “action” and is derived from the verbal root kr which mean “to do” or “to make.” There are three distinct senses of the word here, and what renders the concept unique is that all three are inseparable aspects of the same process. We may be used to thinking of (1) the decision to do something as one thing, (2) the action carrying it out as another, and (3) what we make thereby, or the result of the action, as being something else again. But in Buddhist understanding these three are parts of the same whole. Intention is the leading edge of karma, directing the activities of body, speech, and mind to act in ways that accumulate, at its trailing edge, karmic formations or dispositions. Action, in other words, is preceded by a sort of “doing” in which decisions are made and results in a sort of “making” in which a unique personality is constructed. The main idea behind karma is thus the relationship between what we choose to do and what we thereby make of ourselves.
This can perhaps best be seen when the word for action is used simultaneously as a verb and a noun, as in the expression sankharam abhisankharoti (Samyutta Nikaya 12.51). There are many ways this can be put into English, such as “one forms formations,” “one constructs constructions,” “one creates creations,” or “one fabricates fabrications.” You get the idea. When action is enacted, so to speak, it involves both the activity of building something and the product of that activity, something built. An image sometimes used to convey this in the texts is of a potter at his wheel. The potter is engaged in the creative process of shaping the clay according to his will, and when the pot is cut off the wheel and fired in a kiln it remains as an enduring artifact of that activity. So also our character, our personality, our very self, is viewed in Buddhist thought as a gallery of ossified karmic relics, the accumulated residue of earlier dynamic processes of intention and action.
With the outward focus of most Western thinking, we are used to the idea of making choices in response to shifting worldly circumstances, and to the fact that our actions result in changes to our environment. From this perspective, a great emphasis is placed upon what it is we do, and on whether or not our actions are effective in bringing about the external changes we intend. The Buddhist tradition, however, is more interested in the internal dimensions of action. Here the more important questions include “What effect on our own well-being are our decisions having?” and “How are we being changed by our actions?” What we do, from this point of view, is far less important than how we do it. Karma is primarily concerned with how we shape ourselves, and how we are shaped by ourselves, through action.
The self is plastic, a malleable clay being molded each moment by intention. Just as our scientists are discovering not only how the mind is shaped by the brain but now, too, how the brain is shaped by the mind, so the Buddha described long ago the interdependent process by which intentions are conditioned by dispositions and dispositions in turn are conditioned by intentions. The actions that make up the tangible expression of our lives are merely a go-between, as the world we construct is a mere offshoot, of who we are ever re-becoming.
In a moment of anger, for example, whether acted out, verbalized, or merely seething unexpressed within, one trains oneself to become angrier by laying down a thin layer (there’s the verb and noun again) of angry disposition. A person so disposed to anger will more and more easily erupt in anger anew at any provocation. But in a moment of kindness a kindly disposition is deposited, and one becomes incrementally more disposed to kindness. The attitude with which we respond to an object of experience, with anger or with kindness, will therefore not only influence the causal field outside ourselves but also progressively reshape our very nature.
The secret of who we are is thus found in what we do; yet even what we do is only one phase in a larger cycle of becoming. We inherit our karma from our past, from previous moments of existence in the form of a self—a bundle of dispositions, more precisely— and that past shapes how we understand and construct our present intentions. Yet every moment we also have our future karma in our own hands, as we shape a response to whatever is arising in present experience. This response, which may be more or less wholesome or skillful, is what determines what we will inherit downstream in the flow of consciousness.
The crucial factor influencing how well we can respond in any given situation seems to be the level of mindfulness we can bring to bear upon the moment. If we don’t care to be present, unconscious decision-making systems will function to get us through to the next moment, albeit in the grips of (often flawed) learned behaviors and conditioned responses. If, on the other hand, we can increase the amount of conscious awareness present by manifesting mindfulness, we expand the range of our possible responses. Even if disposed to anger, we can choose to act with kindness. This is the essence of our freedom in an otherwise heavily conditioned system.
So karma is not something outside ourselves that happens to us (as we in the West are so used to thinking of everything being) but is something far more intimate and even, although I hesitate to use the word, personal. As the Buddha put it, “Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.” (Majjhima Nikaya 135) ▼
Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., is executive director and senior scholar at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the editor of Insight Journal.
Majjhima Nikaya 135
Culakammavibhanga Sutta
The Shorter Exposition of Kamma
<hr>1. Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Savatthi in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's Park. Then Subha the student (brahmin), Todeyya's son, went to the Blessed One and exchanged greetings with him, and when the courteous and amiable talk was finished, he sat down at one side. When he had done so, Subha the student said to the Blessed One:
2. "Master Gotama, what is the reason, what is the condition, why inferiority and superiority are met with among human beings, among mankind? For one meets with short-lived and long-lived people, sick and healthy people, ugly and handsome people, insignificant and influential people, poor and rich people, low-born and high-born people, stupid and wise people. What is the reason, what is the condition, why superiority and inferiority are met with among human beings, among mankind?"
3. "Student, beings are owners of kammas, heirs of kammas, they have kammas as their progenitor, kammas as their kin, kammas as their homing-place. It is kammas that differentiate beings according to inferiority and superiority."
rest of the "speech" is here......
http://www.mahindarama.com/e-tipitaka/Majjhima-Nikaya/mn-135.htm
"It is actions" is referring to one's disharmony mind started to distinguish neither from the beginning nor ending. It is not referring to a particular being or group of beings.:rockon: