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Wonderful Excerpts Of SPN Member Confused Ji's Post
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<blockquote data-quote="Archived_member14" data-source="post: 163496" data-attributes="member: 586"><p>Harry ji,</p><p></p><p>I am a bit confused about this. I had saved your post in word to respond to later, but apparently it is not the same one as above.</p><p></p><p>I will send my response which I wrote off-line, anyway, and come back to the other parts later.</p><p></p><p>You wrote:</p><p>My non belief in past lives does not mean that past lives do not exist. I have to keep things simple for myself, otherwise such beliefs would/could corrupt my thinking.</p><p></p><p>Confused: Are you saying that although you do believe in the possibility of past and future lives, that it however is not helpful to think about it? And what about karma? Since understanding karma is the basis for belief in life beyond this one, what do you think about karma?</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>I can see the sense and the positives from a belief in past lives, but it also makes the picture a lot bigger and in my view detracts from the importance of this, our one and only life.</p><p></p><p>Confused: Confidence / faith in the workings of karma increases as wisdom repeatedly attends to the present moment while at the same time moving away from the tendency to think in terms of the past and future. Your thinking that it detracts from the importance of this life must therefore be due to your own misunderstanding. And since you do not really understand karma, the thinking in terms of this life alone must be a proliferation no different from that which you object. In other words you are still caught up in the idea of a “me” existing in time, it doesn’t matter how long that time is and spans over how many lifetimes or just this one.</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>If you are to say that you believe in past lives, then I agree and support you fully, I respect this idea, and am happy to retain the concept as a possibility, just not one that I am 'betting on'. </p><p></p><p>Confused: You are saying that belief in past and future lives detracts from the importance of understanding this life, but the fact is that this happens due to causes other than the belief itself. And if you fail to identify the real cause and continue to give the wrong reason, invariably the same mental phenomena will influence your own thinking.</p><p></p><p>A belief can be the result of ignorance or of understanding. If it is ignorance, almost invariably there is wrong understanding and attachment accompanying, and if it is understanding, attachment can arise afterwards, but not necessary. The problem is ignorance, attachment and wrong understanding.</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Quote: I am glad to hear you say that it is not a Sikhi yardstick, since what you express appears to be all about “self”. No doubt there must be some kindness and generosity involved, but then ambition and conceit come in to direct the show. </p><p></p><p>Harry:</p><p>I accept your description, but I would like to think I follow the maxim of the english philosopher Edmund Burke who said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’,</p><p></p><p>Confused: I think you know that with only some exceptions, for example criminals, everyone else thinks that he is doing the right thing. And we have this other saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.</p><p></p><p>I’m not sure what Edmund Burke has in mind, but if he is suggesting a proactive approach, I consider it very wrong, since it would be coming from within maya / the world and its values. It is the thinking of the social activist and not of a religious person.</p><p></p><p>The suggestion starts off by judging a section of the population as evil and this is not what kindness would perceive. How can anything good proceed from this then? It is the kind of perception which leads people to all sorts of wrong actions done in the name of good, right and justice, including declaring wars. And here is no compassion, no morality but instead much conceit, re: “I / we are good” and “he / they are bad”. </p><p></p><p>Besides what is it to win over evil out there? Is not hatred won by kindness, miserliness by generosity, envy by sympathetic joy, immorality by morality, ignorance by wisdom and so on? </p><p></p><p>I remember hearing once when I was young, that Guru Nanak said to the effect that “looking into his own mind, he saw no one more evil in the world”. I see this as conveying the idea that the negative judgments towards other people comes from one’s own evil tendencies. This is why a wise person will not be moved by the kind of perceptions E. Burke appears to have.</p><p></p><p>That said, of course good intentions can arise and we should not waste any opportunity to do good, however these need not be preceded or followed by conceit and attachment. The motivation need not involve the kind of judgement which contrasts one group of people with another. Should kindness after all differentiate between this or that persons, if this in fact does happen, would that not indicate attachment and aversion rather than kindness?</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>I have little interest in the self from this point of view, my actions are those that in my view, any reasonable human being would do, </p><p></p><p>Confused: Attachment to self is rooted in ignorance and when one “believes” in doing the right thing, wrong understanding may be the driving force. This comes across to the person as right, which means that the real motivations are hidden. It takes wisdom to know what the reality is at the moment, and if this does not happen, how can we be sure that what arose was in fact a wholesome or an unwholesome state of mind. </p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>You say the result is delusion, but the result is also that certain people are receiving the help that they need, a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but should we be hard on such a person, although they may be kidding themselves, actions are still taking place that are good and right.</p><p></p><p>Confused: There is no reason to be hard on oneself or anyone about anything. The fact is that what has arisen has already passed away. But we do need to point out the Truth with the understanding that it may help that person sometime down the road. </p><p></p><p>I don’t think that you should measure the effect of any mental or physical action on how it has affected the other person. You may consider the situation ‘before’ taking any action, but once it is done, how it affects anyone else, this does not change the nature of your own action which has already gone. If evil intention has resulted in the good of another, this intention does not somehow turn to good. If good intention has caused others to take it wrongly, the good does not change to bad. The focus should always be on one’s own mind, and it is the cause and effect within the bounds of each individual’s moment to moment experiences which is what should be considered. This is how you come to understand what karma is.</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>I would like to think that we both have an understanding as to why certain actions should take place, and they have nothing to do with 'pleasing god' or 'confirming our own goodness' but just that they are the correct things to do in respect of the Universal Truth that we subscribe to. </p><p></p><p>Confused: I’m not sure about this; you refer to “Universal Truth” yet talk as if this is relative when suggesting that you subscribe to one and I to another. But I’ll not debate this here. </p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>Yes, I fully agree, I think when one thinks one is good, one has lost already, or even to do good deeds with the thought that this will make me good, are all concepts that will lead to the wrong path, there is only one reason to do good, and that is the deed itself, although from a personal viewpoint, one should look at the consequences of the deed also, whether it would encourage reliance or not. </p><p></p><p>Confused: Yes, it is always better if wisdom were to arise to assess the situation. But this is very hard to come by, instead the assessment if happens, is usually done with ignorance and attachment.</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>Deathlike living, the living death, the inability to feel excitement, dread, fear, the rush of blood to the stomach, to get turned on, to feel attachment, where every experience is experienced in a state of calm and acceptance, this is what I would call the living death, and also what is lauded in Sikhism. </p><p></p><p>Confused: Well, one might look at it the other way, namely that only with mindfulness and understanding is one said to be awake to life. Otherwise with ignorance, it is as though one is asleep.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, according to Buddhism, there are four stages of enlightenment, each having eradicated particular set of unwholesome tendencies. The first and the second stages have no more wrong understanding, doubt, envy and miserliness, and therefore if they happen to be householders, still live the life with sensuous attachments, hence some degree of excitement. Only at the third and fourth stages are there no more attachment to sense objects and therefore no excitement towards anything.</p><p></p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>If one is to accept that this life is all we have,</p><p></p><p>Confused: You may not see it, but this statement reflects what in Buddhism is called “self-view”. It is assuming “ownership” where in reality there is no owner and nothing to be owned. </p><p></p><p>There is ever only a fleeting moment of consciousness arisen to experience and object, therefore no place for thinking along the lines such as “I was in the past, I am in the present and I will be in the future”. As I pointed out earlier, your identification with this life alone is essentially no different from someone else’s identification with having had past lives, since both are driven by self-view and accompanied by attachment. This is why I reject the idea of reincarnation which assumes the existence of soul or atma lasting in time, but instead think in terms of rebirth with reference to conditioned mental phenomena.</p><p></p><p>=====</p><p>Harry:</p><p> and given that even if I were to accept the ideal of reincarnation, it would not change the fact that at my death, all I know, all I love, all that is me will be dead, will be gone, I will have no recollection or memories of this life, then in fact we are both singing from the same song sheet. </p><p></p><p>Confused: In reality they exist only as objects of consciousness that forms part of your own experience. This means that they in fact are given birth by your own thinking and die each time that you stop thinking about them. That you insist on seeing them as lasting over time, this may be due to your own attachment. But this is an understanding peculiar to Buddhism which sees the fault in ignorance. </p><p></p><p>If on the other hand what you express comes from seeing the harm in attachment, it could well be what is called “recollection of death”. This is not particularly Buddhist, but is wholesome thinking and involves detachment of a corresponding level. </p><p></p><p>So no, we are not singing from the same song sheet. ;-)</p><p></p><p>=====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>The only difference is that a belief in Karma can assist in the understanding of this life, maybe..</p><p></p><p>Confused: It is the other way round, understanding reality here and now increases confidence with regard to the workings of karma. This means that if one resists the concept of karma, no real understanding is being developed. </p><p>====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>Karma operates on a very simple manner if taken as a view of one life and one life alone, If one studies, one can get a good job, if one kicks a dog, one will get bitten, if one pets a dog, one gets love,</p><p></p><p>Confused: Harry ji, I think it is better that you just say that you *do not believe in karma*. Since you know how karma is used generally, why do you wish to give your own spin? Call it something else if you wish, but don’t call it karma.</p><p></p><p>Karma is moral cause and effect. It is a relationship between one type of mental reality and another type of mental reality. Generosity as a mental phenomenon leads to pleasant experiences through the senses (or rebirth in a good plane of existence). This *cannot be observed*, but understood through study of the characteristics of different mental phenomena, some being of the nature of cause and some being resultants. </p><p></p><p>The kind of observation you make requires thinking conditioned by memory and believing that this is actually what has taken place. It has nothing to do with any kind of understanding, and is something any Ambarsaria, Confused and Harry will agree with when pointed at. Indeed it is what “learning from experience is all about” and is present not only in human beings, but animals as well. It is a story within the conventional world which is useful for functioning and survival, but if taken as determinative of the way things are, goes at the expense of understanding with regard to what actually happens at the level of consciousness experience. Even within conventional reality, it can be seen as going at the expense of other possible interpretations and this happens by sheer force of attachment to a particular story line, and wrong understanding about cause and effect.</p><p></p><p>Let’s take the example of kicking a dog and being bitten. </p><p>Kicking a dog is a volitional action; the intention which drives this is karma. The dog may or may not bite, so clearly there is no direct correlation between what the dog does to your own “intention”. The dog biting you is another volitional act conditioned by the particular intention. It may be asleep and not actually feel hurt but only enough to wake up. On being bitten, because perhaps you are wearing a thick pair of jeans, the dog’s teeth do not sink in and therefore you don’t feel any pain. So again, your insistence on seeing the correlation between the two acts must be due to sheer force of thinking conditioned by ignorance and attachment. Besides, you may have good intention to kick the dog in order that it move away from impending danger, but the dog bites you anyway and you are hurt. Would it make sense to say then that good intention has led to a bad result?</p><p></p><p>Like I said, this is how everyone thinks about cause and effect and even animals respond by the same mechanism, one which involves memory, conditioned response, volitional activity and thinking, driven mostly by ignorance and by attachment. And this is how the wheel of existence continues to spin and hence the significance of enlightenment, where Truth / reality comes to be known, including karma.</p><p></p><p>Back to the situation of a dog being kicked. </p><p>If I had an intention to kick a dog, this could be known for what it is including that it is conditioned either by good or by evil roots. Having the expectation of what the response of the dog might be, I can know at the time, the reality of “thinking”. When considering that the kick will cause hurt, I know that it is to be expected due to the fact that when earth element touches the body with a particular force, it causes unpleasant feelings. </p><p></p><p>And in thinking about the dog’s possible reaction, here I know that generally, beings react to unpleasant bodily sensations with aversion, and in this case, should be expected. But I do also understand that this would depend on so many conditions coming in place, one, that the kick was hard enough, two, nothing else distracted the dog and three, whether the dog was at the time enjoying something else such that in being kicked, it is going to react even more strongly. More importantly however, I know that the dog’s anger is there only because the accumulation of anger exists in it. This means that if on the other hand I was to kick, say and enlightened person, there would not be any anger arisen in response. </p><p></p><p>Do you see what I’m trying to say here Harry ji?</p><p></p><p>=====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>but to carry out actions in the hope that life will deal a better hand is a very dangerous road to go down in my opinion. In the same way, those that do bad deeds, that steal, that rape, their own guilt will constantly put them in a state of fear of being discovered, and that is their own hell that they will have created.</p><p></p><p>Confused: I remember thinking this way many years ago when like you; I was trying to give my own spin to the idea of Karma. At the time I thought that I was being realistic but it is actually, simplistic. This is because fear and guilt are not results of karma, but are from accumulated tendencies which when arisen are of the nature of “cause”, not resultants. So really, the initial deed will bear fruit in the form of unpleasant experience through the senses, and his we don’t know which ones and when and should not even try to find out. The guilt and fear arises because we continue to be moved by ignorance and craving and no wisdom has arisen. And these would themselves give rise to more negative results in the future. So in fact we react to wrong with more wrong, instead of with wisdom. And this is exactly how we are caught in the cycle of existence with no hope of getting off it. </p><p></p><p>=====</p><p>Harry:</p><p>If every deed that is not a bad deed, is seen as a good deed, then one lives in a state of no fear, of not being discovered, without guilt, this, in my view, is a pleasing state to be in. </p><p></p><p>Confused: And this is the stuff of attachment. ;-)</p><p>You see Harry ji, if you misidentify / misunderstand the nature of these experiences, invariably there is going to be attachment to what you conceive of as being the result. Only with wisdom which understands the reality now, is there a degree of detachment. </p><p></p><p>Allow me to take the example of Buddhists who meditate. It is a common perception amongst these, that while they are engaged in the activity, that this is to not be involved in any bad deeds, hence by default, what they do must be a good deed. But this is wishful thinking and very wrong. </p><p></p><p>Firstly good deeds, such as giving, morality, kindness, compassion and such, have very specific characteristic and proximate cause and meditation is not one of them. Secondly, what they do is actually wrong practice (amounting to rites and rituals) conditioned by self-view and wrong understanding. Thirdly, it needs much attachment to maintain and must also involve a good degree of conceit. In other words all three proliferations of attachment, conceit and wrong view exists in what they do. So where is the good!!? </p><p></p><p>Besides Harry ji, not feeling guilty is not necessary a sign of having lived a life without wrong deeds. Guilt is another conditioned reality and this means that if there are no conditions for it to arise, it will not. And I believe that some serial killers for example, go through their lives feeling little or no guilt at all for what they do. So here again we have a mistaken idea about cause and effect…..</p><p></p><p></p><p>Ps: Sorry about the long posts. I guess in this sense I am like my younger son, whose hyperactivity comes in the form of incessant talking. Although I’m very quiet otherwise, when writing such messages, I just go on and on. :-/</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Archived_member14, post: 163496, member: 586"] Harry ji, I am a bit confused about this. I had saved your post in word to respond to later, but apparently it is not the same one as above. I will send my response which I wrote off-line, anyway, and come back to the other parts later. You wrote: My non belief in past lives does not mean that past lives do not exist. I have to keep things simple for myself, otherwise such beliefs would/could corrupt my thinking. Confused: Are you saying that although you do believe in the possibility of past and future lives, that it however is not helpful to think about it? And what about karma? Since understanding karma is the basis for belief in life beyond this one, what do you think about karma? ==== Harry: I can see the sense and the positives from a belief in past lives, but it also makes the picture a lot bigger and in my view detracts from the importance of this, our one and only life. Confused: Confidence / faith in the workings of karma increases as wisdom repeatedly attends to the present moment while at the same time moving away from the tendency to think in terms of the past and future. Your thinking that it detracts from the importance of this life must therefore be due to your own misunderstanding. And since you do not really understand karma, the thinking in terms of this life alone must be a proliferation no different from that which you object. In other words you are still caught up in the idea of a “me” existing in time, it doesn’t matter how long that time is and spans over how many lifetimes or just this one. ==== Harry: If you are to say that you believe in past lives, then I agree and support you fully, I respect this idea, and am happy to retain the concept as a possibility, just not one that I am 'betting on'. Confused: You are saying that belief in past and future lives detracts from the importance of understanding this life, but the fact is that this happens due to causes other than the belief itself. And if you fail to identify the real cause and continue to give the wrong reason, invariably the same mental phenomena will influence your own thinking. A belief can be the result of ignorance or of understanding. If it is ignorance, almost invariably there is wrong understanding and attachment accompanying, and if it is understanding, attachment can arise afterwards, but not necessary. The problem is ignorance, attachment and wrong understanding. ==== Quote: I am glad to hear you say that it is not a Sikhi yardstick, since what you express appears to be all about “self”. No doubt there must be some kindness and generosity involved, but then ambition and conceit come in to direct the show. Harry: I accept your description, but I would like to think I follow the maxim of the english philosopher Edmund Burke who said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’, Confused: I think you know that with only some exceptions, for example criminals, everyone else thinks that he is doing the right thing. And we have this other saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I’m not sure what Edmund Burke has in mind, but if he is suggesting a proactive approach, I consider it very wrong, since it would be coming from within maya / the world and its values. It is the thinking of the social activist and not of a religious person. The suggestion starts off by judging a section of the population as evil and this is not what kindness would perceive. How can anything good proceed from this then? It is the kind of perception which leads people to all sorts of wrong actions done in the name of good, right and justice, including declaring wars. And here is no compassion, no morality but instead much conceit, re: “I / we are good” and “he / they are bad”. Besides what is it to win over evil out there? Is not hatred won by kindness, miserliness by generosity, envy by sympathetic joy, immorality by morality, ignorance by wisdom and so on? I remember hearing once when I was young, that Guru Nanak said to the effect that “looking into his own mind, he saw no one more evil in the world”. I see this as conveying the idea that the negative judgments towards other people comes from one’s own evil tendencies. This is why a wise person will not be moved by the kind of perceptions E. Burke appears to have. That said, of course good intentions can arise and we should not waste any opportunity to do good, however these need not be preceded or followed by conceit and attachment. The motivation need not involve the kind of judgement which contrasts one group of people with another. Should kindness after all differentiate between this or that persons, if this in fact does happen, would that not indicate attachment and aversion rather than kindness? ==== Harry: I have little interest in the self from this point of view, my actions are those that in my view, any reasonable human being would do, Confused: Attachment to self is rooted in ignorance and when one “believes” in doing the right thing, wrong understanding may be the driving force. This comes across to the person as right, which means that the real motivations are hidden. It takes wisdom to know what the reality is at the moment, and if this does not happen, how can we be sure that what arose was in fact a wholesome or an unwholesome state of mind. ==== Harry: You say the result is delusion, but the result is also that certain people are receiving the help that they need, a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but should we be hard on such a person, although they may be kidding themselves, actions are still taking place that are good and right. Confused: There is no reason to be hard on oneself or anyone about anything. The fact is that what has arisen has already passed away. But we do need to point out the Truth with the understanding that it may help that person sometime down the road. I don’t think that you should measure the effect of any mental or physical action on how it has affected the other person. You may consider the situation ‘before’ taking any action, but once it is done, how it affects anyone else, this does not change the nature of your own action which has already gone. If evil intention has resulted in the good of another, this intention does not somehow turn to good. If good intention has caused others to take it wrongly, the good does not change to bad. The focus should always be on one’s own mind, and it is the cause and effect within the bounds of each individual’s moment to moment experiences which is what should be considered. This is how you come to understand what karma is. ==== Harry: I would like to think that we both have an understanding as to why certain actions should take place, and they have nothing to do with 'pleasing god' or 'confirming our own goodness' but just that they are the correct things to do in respect of the Universal Truth that we subscribe to. Confused: I’m not sure about this; you refer to “Universal Truth” yet talk as if this is relative when suggesting that you subscribe to one and I to another. But I’ll not debate this here. ==== Harry: Yes, I fully agree, I think when one thinks one is good, one has lost already, or even to do good deeds with the thought that this will make me good, are all concepts that will lead to the wrong path, there is only one reason to do good, and that is the deed itself, although from a personal viewpoint, one should look at the consequences of the deed also, whether it would encourage reliance or not. Confused: Yes, it is always better if wisdom were to arise to assess the situation. But this is very hard to come by, instead the assessment if happens, is usually done with ignorance and attachment. ==== Harry: Deathlike living, the living death, the inability to feel excitement, dread, fear, the rush of blood to the stomach, to get turned on, to feel attachment, where every experience is experienced in a state of calm and acceptance, this is what I would call the living death, and also what is lauded in Sikhism. Confused: Well, one might look at it the other way, namely that only with mindfulness and understanding is one said to be awake to life. Otherwise with ignorance, it is as though one is asleep. Anyway, according to Buddhism, there are four stages of enlightenment, each having eradicated particular set of unwholesome tendencies. The first and the second stages have no more wrong understanding, doubt, envy and miserliness, and therefore if they happen to be householders, still live the life with sensuous attachments, hence some degree of excitement. Only at the third and fourth stages are there no more attachment to sense objects and therefore no excitement towards anything. ==== Harry: If one is to accept that this life is all we have, Confused: You may not see it, but this statement reflects what in Buddhism is called “self-view”. It is assuming “ownership” where in reality there is no owner and nothing to be owned. There is ever only a fleeting moment of consciousness arisen to experience and object, therefore no place for thinking along the lines such as “I was in the past, I am in the present and I will be in the future”. As I pointed out earlier, your identification with this life alone is essentially no different from someone else’s identification with having had past lives, since both are driven by self-view and accompanied by attachment. This is why I reject the idea of reincarnation which assumes the existence of soul or atma lasting in time, but instead think in terms of rebirth with reference to conditioned mental phenomena. ===== Harry: and given that even if I were to accept the ideal of reincarnation, it would not change the fact that at my death, all I know, all I love, all that is me will be dead, will be gone, I will have no recollection or memories of this life, then in fact we are both singing from the same song sheet. Confused: In reality they exist only as objects of consciousness that forms part of your own experience. This means that they in fact are given birth by your own thinking and die each time that you stop thinking about them. That you insist on seeing them as lasting over time, this may be due to your own attachment. But this is an understanding peculiar to Buddhism which sees the fault in ignorance. If on the other hand what you express comes from seeing the harm in attachment, it could well be what is called “recollection of death”. This is not particularly Buddhist, but is wholesome thinking and involves detachment of a corresponding level. So no, we are not singing from the same song sheet. ;-) ===== Harry: The only difference is that a belief in Karma can assist in the understanding of this life, maybe.. Confused: It is the other way round, understanding reality here and now increases confidence with regard to the workings of karma. This means that if one resists the concept of karma, no real understanding is being developed. ==== Harry: Karma operates on a very simple manner if taken as a view of one life and one life alone, If one studies, one can get a good job, if one kicks a dog, one will get bitten, if one pets a dog, one gets love, Confused: Harry ji, I think it is better that you just say that you *do not believe in karma*. Since you know how karma is used generally, why do you wish to give your own spin? Call it something else if you wish, but don’t call it karma. Karma is moral cause and effect. It is a relationship between one type of mental reality and another type of mental reality. Generosity as a mental phenomenon leads to pleasant experiences through the senses (or rebirth in a good plane of existence). This *cannot be observed*, but understood through study of the characteristics of different mental phenomena, some being of the nature of cause and some being resultants. The kind of observation you make requires thinking conditioned by memory and believing that this is actually what has taken place. It has nothing to do with any kind of understanding, and is something any Ambarsaria, Confused and Harry will agree with when pointed at. Indeed it is what “learning from experience is all about” and is present not only in human beings, but animals as well. It is a story within the conventional world which is useful for functioning and survival, but if taken as determinative of the way things are, goes at the expense of understanding with regard to what actually happens at the level of consciousness experience. Even within conventional reality, it can be seen as going at the expense of other possible interpretations and this happens by sheer force of attachment to a particular story line, and wrong understanding about cause and effect. Let’s take the example of kicking a dog and being bitten. Kicking a dog is a volitional action; the intention which drives this is karma. The dog may or may not bite, so clearly there is no direct correlation between what the dog does to your own “intention”. The dog biting you is another volitional act conditioned by the particular intention. It may be asleep and not actually feel hurt but only enough to wake up. On being bitten, because perhaps you are wearing a thick pair of jeans, the dog’s teeth do not sink in and therefore you don’t feel any pain. So again, your insistence on seeing the correlation between the two acts must be due to sheer force of thinking conditioned by ignorance and attachment. Besides, you may have good intention to kick the dog in order that it move away from impending danger, but the dog bites you anyway and you are hurt. Would it make sense to say then that good intention has led to a bad result? Like I said, this is how everyone thinks about cause and effect and even animals respond by the same mechanism, one which involves memory, conditioned response, volitional activity and thinking, driven mostly by ignorance and by attachment. And this is how the wheel of existence continues to spin and hence the significance of enlightenment, where Truth / reality comes to be known, including karma. Back to the situation of a dog being kicked. If I had an intention to kick a dog, this could be known for what it is including that it is conditioned either by good or by evil roots. Having the expectation of what the response of the dog might be, I can know at the time, the reality of “thinking”. When considering that the kick will cause hurt, I know that it is to be expected due to the fact that when earth element touches the body with a particular force, it causes unpleasant feelings. And in thinking about the dog’s possible reaction, here I know that generally, beings react to unpleasant bodily sensations with aversion, and in this case, should be expected. But I do also understand that this would depend on so many conditions coming in place, one, that the kick was hard enough, two, nothing else distracted the dog and three, whether the dog was at the time enjoying something else such that in being kicked, it is going to react even more strongly. More importantly however, I know that the dog’s anger is there only because the accumulation of anger exists in it. This means that if on the other hand I was to kick, say and enlightened person, there would not be any anger arisen in response. Do you see what I’m trying to say here Harry ji? ===== Harry: but to carry out actions in the hope that life will deal a better hand is a very dangerous road to go down in my opinion. In the same way, those that do bad deeds, that steal, that rape, their own guilt will constantly put them in a state of fear of being discovered, and that is their own hell that they will have created. Confused: I remember thinking this way many years ago when like you; I was trying to give my own spin to the idea of Karma. At the time I thought that I was being realistic but it is actually, simplistic. This is because fear and guilt are not results of karma, but are from accumulated tendencies which when arisen are of the nature of “cause”, not resultants. So really, the initial deed will bear fruit in the form of unpleasant experience through the senses, and his we don’t know which ones and when and should not even try to find out. The guilt and fear arises because we continue to be moved by ignorance and craving and no wisdom has arisen. And these would themselves give rise to more negative results in the future. So in fact we react to wrong with more wrong, instead of with wisdom. And this is exactly how we are caught in the cycle of existence with no hope of getting off it. ===== Harry: If every deed that is not a bad deed, is seen as a good deed, then one lives in a state of no fear, of not being discovered, without guilt, this, in my view, is a pleasing state to be in. Confused: And this is the stuff of attachment. ;-) You see Harry ji, if you misidentify / misunderstand the nature of these experiences, invariably there is going to be attachment to what you conceive of as being the result. Only with wisdom which understands the reality now, is there a degree of detachment. Allow me to take the example of Buddhists who meditate. It is a common perception amongst these, that while they are engaged in the activity, that this is to not be involved in any bad deeds, hence by default, what they do must be a good deed. But this is wishful thinking and very wrong. Firstly good deeds, such as giving, morality, kindness, compassion and such, have very specific characteristic and proximate cause and meditation is not one of them. Secondly, what they do is actually wrong practice (amounting to rites and rituals) conditioned by self-view and wrong understanding. Thirdly, it needs much attachment to maintain and must also involve a good degree of conceit. In other words all three proliferations of attachment, conceit and wrong view exists in what they do. So where is the good!!? Besides Harry ji, not feeling guilty is not necessary a sign of having lived a life without wrong deeds. Guilt is another conditioned reality and this means that if there are no conditions for it to arise, it will not. And I believe that some serial killers for example, go through their lives feeling little or no guilt at all for what they do. So here again we have a mistaken idea about cause and effect….. Ps: Sorry about the long posts. I guess in this sense I am like my younger son, whose hyperactivity comes in the form of incessant talking. Although I’m very quiet otherwise, when writing such messages, I just go on and on. :-/ [/QUOTE]
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Wonderful Excerpts Of SPN Member Confused Ji's Post
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