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Are we simply waiting it out?
Karma will run its course, and we'll have to go through it. And once it's exhausted, we won't return. So are we basically waiting it out? All activities - worldly and spiritual - are simply about making this 'waiting' a little more pleasant, is that it?
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So maybe in nirvana there is an exhaustion of karma but that doesn't occur simply by waiting it out.
But we still live out remaining karma while we live out the rest of this life. Since no new karma is made though- we don't have to come back again.
As far as I understand.
but then, some things are beyond me, other than dealing with current stuff as best I can. That's exhausting enough without worrying about exhausting Kamma....
But striving for enlightenment may indicate that we are closer to the end of suffering. So it is better to strive.
But striving for enlightenment may indicate that we are closer to the end of suffering. So it is better to strive.
I believe there is a process, the striving is a realisation that there is a problem with life, it is full of suffering. Then one strives to become cured, however you then need to realise that striving to get cured makes you still sick, so I think it is best to start striving and then getting to a point where you see clearly that it is not skilful.
To me, saying:
Yes I agree ThailandTom. Sounds like I'm saying it like a mach*... wait, forget it.
I'm not looking down on you.
*machine
Because we shy away from an experience there is an 'it out there' and a 'me in here'..
If you crack that nut it all comes apart and the Buddha qualities such as love take over.
I found these explanations immensely helpful:
From Khensur Rinpoche:
"Without overcoming the mind of ignorance all the mental afflictions that derive from it cannot be overcome, so one will continue to create karma and be born in cyclic existence." (Khensur Rinpoche, commentary on the Heart Sutra, Somerset, England on 17 -20 August 2007)
Yangsi Rinpoche:
"And if we are to discuss liberation, it is first essential that we have a clear idea of what liberation means. The three realms--the desire, form and formless realms--are the realms of cyclic existence, but they are not cyclic existence itself. Liberation from cyclic existence does not merely mean liberation from these places.
Nor does liberation merely mean liberation from delusions and karma. This is part of it, but not the totality. Liberation from cyclic existence means liberation from the bondage of the continuum of our aggregates, which are created by delusions and karma...
Liberation must be attained within our very own minds, as what binds us to cyclic existence also exists within our very own minds. Cyclic existence ends when we cut the continuum of the bondage of delusions and karma by the direct realization of emptiness. This is the only antidote powerful enough to achieve this result." (Yangsi Rinpoche, Practicing the Path)
From the Dalai Lama:
"Once we gain a direct realization of emptiness, we no longer accumulate karma to propel rebirth in cyclic existence. As we gradually deepen our direct realization, so that it permeates our entire experience and destroys the afflictions, we eventually eliminate the root of grasping at intrinsic existence altogether and the continuity of rebirth in cyclic existence is cut. This is true freedom, or liberation, where we no longer create new karma through ignorance, where no conditions exist to activate past karma, and where the afflictions have been destroyed at their root." (XIV Dalai Lama, The Middle Way: Faith Grounded in Reason)
you just stop creating new karma.
at the point of death, that is when the karma is exhausted.
this entity called I is then completely extinguished.
If Buddha kept adding good karma to the pot after his awakening, I can only hope we all strive to do the same.
If not for us then for the rest of us... Seeing as how there is no real difference.
I focus on the here and now. One day at a time.
What there is to do it not just sit there and wait, but to turn off the spigot! And you turn off the spigot by practicing and removing ignorance, greed and hate from your mind. Only then can the spigot be turned off. The only way to stop this whole thing is not to wait, but to get enlightenment.
What about the Ahrant? I have read that they are still subject to past karma...
Yes, that's what he said..
Early Buddhists, however, did think that kamma was tied to lifespan, so to account for living arahants, they surmised that one aspect of kamma that had to play itself out after awakening was that which determines, influences, or supports the length of one's present life. For example, in addressing whether kamma ripens for an arahant, Phra Noah answers (from a typical Theravadin point of view): So, in that sense, I suppose there could be some 'waiting,' but I don't tend to see it that way, as if one is just waiting to die or something. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu is often prone to saying, "We're not committing spiritual suicide here."
The reality is that without developing wisdom and insight, we are not likely to accidentally establish new patterns of behavior which accidentally generate increasingly-good karma.
As soon as we're really able to sit and wait, there is nothing more to wait for.
thank god, something you can't be blamed for.
Bob Dylan
Without using the good attitude as a support for wisdom practice, though, without cultivating insight, that good attitude just means we'd bob around endlessly--maybe with a good attitude, but not ultimately helping ourselves and others all that much. If you add genuine practice developing wisdom and insight to your good attitude, though, then you could be a really happy person, and one who is helping others to become happy--and most importantly, helping yourself and others become enlightened.
There could be cheerful tolerance, but no ultimate happiness to be found bobbing around; eventually it becomes obvious that something more needs to happen. Once you develop wisdom and insight, you begin to realize that cheerful bobbing utterly pales in comparison to even the most beginning taste of ultimate liberation.
The cheerful bobbing is probably close to the idea of being in a god or demi-god realm; soaking in pleasant feelings, but mistaking those for liberation. It's like an old Hocak tale of an ant living under a log; he jumped high one day--no other ant had tried this--and bumped his head on the bottom of the log, prompting him to opine, "Only I, only I, can touch the sky!" He thought that was the sky, but it was only his limited experience of the bottom of the log. Exciting, but not the sky.
More worrisome, the tide--which is only our karma from previous actions--is not guaranteed to keep us bobbing in pleasant circles. Karma increases, and even the slightest negative karma from the past or present can be expanding into something heavy, and then you are bobbing not-so-cheerfully again. We are always flirting with disaster, and the chances of accidentally bobbing happily for multiple lifetimes are very low.
A more applicable metaphor, given the rarity of human life and other lives that afford opportunity for practice, might be doing cartwheels at the edge of the Grand Canyon. The chances of messing up are significant
Whatever's compounded,
wherever a state of becoming's obtained,
all that has no one in charge:
so says the Great Seer.
Whoever discerns this,
as taught by the Awakened One,
would no more grasp hold of any state of becoming
than he would a hot iron ball.
I have no 'I was,'
no 'I will be.'
Fabrications will simply go out of existence.
What's to lament there in that?
For one who sees, as it actually is,
the pure arising of phenomena,
the pure seriality of fabrications,
there's no fear.
When seeing the world with discernment
as on a par with grass & twigs,
finding no 'mine-ness,'
thinking, 'There's nothing of mine,'
he feels no sorrow.
Dissatisfied with this carcass,
I'm unconcerned with becoming.
This body will break up
and there will not be another.
Do as you like with this carcass.
From that I will feel
neither hatred nor love.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thag/thag.16.01.than.html