A Few Questions
Posted: Tuesday, January 17, 2012
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
What religious story will you believe? Will you believe the story that was burned into your heart when you were young? Or the story that sounded better than all the rest when you began searching? Or the story that was told by a very powerful teacher? Or the story that challenged you to find the truth yourself? Which story will you believe?
Does it matter which story you believe as long as long as it fills that empty spot inside your heart that you cannot seem to fill from the outside? Does it matter which story you believe? Can Christ save you just as well as Buddha can save you? In your mind, what difference does it make?
Are you satisfied with that? Will that initiate a fundamental shift in your consciousness that changes you irrevocably? No more anger, no more judging, no more greed, no more fear?
Can you believe deep enough what someone else has said or written so that you are able to surrender yourself 100%, where you disappear and there is only that? Can you do this, or will this be only another temporary emotional experience that eventually succumbs to the reality of what you are?
What practice does your story suggest - a journey inward or a journey outward? A clear comprehension of what you are right now or a projection of what you should be? Which will enable you to see the truth of what is? And does that truth change you?
Do you know yourself? Do you live just to eat and sleep? Or do you live just for sensual pleasure? Do you live totally within the physical body of the senses and actions, or do you live in the astral body of emotions and desires?
Do you live for power – in business, politics, family and religion – living totally in the mental body of ideas and concrete thought?
Or do you live for the arts to express your creativity?
Or do you live to discover that which transcends physical, emotional and intellectual pursuits - do you live in the causal body of abstract thought?
And after dissolution of the physical body, will you attain the higher vibrational realms of the causal body, or will you merely repeat your kamma of senses, actions, emotions, desires, ideas and thought and repeat over and over your habit patterns lifetime after lifetime in a physical body? Or perhaps even sink into the ghostly realms of confusion, the results of a life of carelessness?
Will you set goals for yourself, or will you understand the futility and misdirection of goals that prevent you from seeing what you are right now, where you are right now? Will you chase expectations in order to ignore reality, and project an illusory future onto what is the actual fact right now? Will this illusory future mistakenly become your realty?
Will you ever get beyond what you are right now by ignoring what you are, and instead placing yourself in a fairy tale? Is it possible for you to stop replacing the present with the future - replacing reality with a dream state?
When you no longer see the realty and only see the dream, are you aware of how you are living in images? Can you ever change yourself by wanting to change, by using all your energy to change and never putting forth energy to see exactly what you truly are?
Always wanting more; more pleasurable experiences, satisfying each and every desire – physically, mentally religiously, spiritually. Never ending action and reaction, ambition and striving.
Can we disassociate with the one who is striving? Can we become dispassionate toward the more? Can we just be?
Can the more ever be captured, or is it always a moving target? Do we do this because we are disappointed with what life has to offer? Do we think that we have just not got it right yet, but when we do, then . . .?
Is life only so much? Do our expectations exceed what life can offer? When we see this as a reality, will we then set our goals higher?
Or will we drop our goals completely?
When we see what it is that sets and attains goals, will we trust that part of us with our future? Is that part of us real – or just another projection?
This now becomes a different ball game.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Hello sir. It is a pleasure to be at the end of your pen's wit's end. Isn't accepting what we are a part of accepting who we are? Isn't the search for an alternative state of mind just another way of not accepting who we are? Can't we just get along with ourselves by accepting that reality is what it is whatever that may be, and wouldn't that be different for everybody and everything?Hi David, good to hear from you. What we are is obvious, a psycho-physical body made up of earth elements. In a way, we are just an extension of the earth, same elements, mostly water. And to the earth this body will return either as ashes or mold! (haha). Who we are is the projection of a self. Is this not true.What is our self? have you looked into it? Other than a brain that perceives, identifies, feels aversion or attachment, thinks about how to relieve pain and insure pleasure, experiences consciousness, where is the self to be found? Is the self just an illusion based on the compilation of these psycho-physical reactions to stimuli, or is the self something much deeper? Is there a soul? What would that be? All questions that men have asked down through the ages. Not all men (and women,) only those who have an inquiring mind.In the Buddhist belief (story! LOL) those that don't inquire will be reborn into life similarly to what they experience now. If you are happy with that, (and wait until the end to make that judgment!), then inquire no further, just live. That's okay. It does however become increasingly more difficult to inquire as we age - you know, illness and Alzheimers!
Be well my friend.........e .
Hi e.
David posed some of the questions I had in response to what you wrote, so I'll have to check back for the answers.
My goodness, though, a whole article with only two sentences that were not a question. I didn't think that was possible. Very clever and very compelling.
Hugs,
DianneHey Dianne, please feel free to ask the deepest questions you can come up with. I probably can't answer them ( lol) but questions in many ways divulge one's spiritual understanding.
Best........e
Thank you for your response Mr. Rock as I greatly admire your opinions and positions on many issues. I agree, as if you need my agreement, ha, but I wonder now would not some physical conditions such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases for instance and there are many more that are worse in my opinion such as narcissism or various degrees of epilepsy, etc. for example that would prohibit to some extent or another one's ability to inquire or rationalize these internal processes that would prohibit them from ever obtaining these higher degrees of self? If this is so it would seem that nature has sentenced them to an eternity of being reborn into life similarly to what they are experiencing now, or are you suggesting that at some point in their rebirth's that they would shed these particular impediments and regain the ability, if they so wish, to obtain the inquisition necessary to obtain this sense of nirvana, if this is the correct term to be used here? Thank you sir.People always have free will, kind of. For example, a person right now could decide to go inside and investigate reality, but they choose not to because of their underlying kamma or habit patterns which can’t see any reason to do this. So they will be reborn into similar circumstances for thousands of rebirths until the habit patterns that keep them locked in delusion start to subside.
The catalyst for wanting to change their direction is usually a situation when their suffering in one lifetime or another becomes so severe that they look for an alternative to physical existence, a plane that is fraught with dangers from the moment of conception to the moment of death, such as illness, physical pain, torture, murder, starvation, thirst, etc., and always eventual death. A physical body made up of all its tubes with liquids squishing here and there is very susceptible to things going wrong! This is the ever present danger of physical existence.
So it is suffering (“Suffering is a blessing!) that usually opens eyes. The problem is, in order to shift consciousness away from physical existence to a non-physical realm takes time. And by the time suffering gets to the point of one wanting out, it is usually too late to do anything about it.
In Buddhism, everything in existence is constantly changing. This includes all material and even non-material forms. If you were able to penetrate the delusion of self to some degree, your rebirth would be at a higher plane. This means that there would be very little if any suffering. Because life is so cushy in these exhaulted planes, there is no reason to want to change circumstances so one does not continue to uncover the delusions there. After a while (perhaps millions of years or even hundreds of Big Bangs) the good kamma that initially sought this exhaulted plane of existence burns out, and the kamma then falls back to a human type existence. This is a blessing in disguise because the human realm has a little bit of pleasure and a little bit of suffering, enough suffering for some to again search within for a way out.
The Buddha of course said that there is no permanent way out except Nirvana. Then the kamma is completely destroyed and there is no further coming or going.
In the case of one who is born with no cognitive abilities or eventually loses them, the negative kamma that caused this birth will eventually burn out as well, and in a future birth the kamma will seek a form with more cognitive abilities.
Mind is required to look within. The senses and the brain are the only tools one has. When these are gone, there is no more progress until next lifetime.
This is all part of the Buddhist story which is just a story until you can see for yourself. The Buddha said that one should never believe anything they hear unless they prove it true for themselves. In order for one to prove it true for themselves they need a catalyst – either curiosity regarding the meaning of life, desire to experience enlightenment, horrible suffering, or some reason to shake them out of complacency.
Buddhists never proselytize because they know that each person has to go at their own pace. Real Buddhists generally do their own practice and make themselves available for anyone who wants a technique to go inwards. It’s up to them.
Hope this helps.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Metta……e
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