Questions about Buddhism
Sunshine Sammy
Hi. I am studying the religion of Buddhism and I stumbled upon a few
questions. Can anyone enlighten me with answers to them.
1. In order to attain supreme happiness, one must overcome desire, ill
will and ignorance. So in order to attain the supreme happiness that
the Buddha experienced, we must let go of our desires to listen to good
music, watch television shows, eat good food, to raise a family, etc.?
If I let go of all these things, when I reach the state of supreme
happiness, what will I be happy about?
2. I have seen a couple of drawings and pictures of the Buddha and he
is depicted in a colorful scenery, while sitting down and meditating,
is the colorful scenery a place that an enlighten person might go to
during meditation? If not, does the colorful scenery represent or
symbolize something else. For 3 examples of these pictures, go to
http://member.netease.com/~zengzhen/buddhalife/buddha.htm. The pictures
are loaded on top of the page.
--
In Jesus Christ,
Sammy
" My imperfections and my failures are as much a gift from God
As my talents and successes are. I lay them both at His feet"
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
HMartin740
Sammy>>
Sammy, Buddhism is not a religion as you suppose in your first statement. It
is a way of life. You ask:
Sammy: >we must let go of our desires to listen to good music, watch television
shows, eat good food, to raise a family, etc.?>>
The goal of the Buddhist, Sammy, is to
escape the cycle of death and rebirth and achieve Buddhahood.
If you let go of all these same things you list as a Christian, and your sig
line indicates you are a Christian, what would you have to be happy about?
As to the drawings of the Budda, there are many pictures of Christ in settings
with colorful scenery. Does not everyone enjoy beautiful scenery?
Qiuyin
il...@angelfire.com
Sunshine Sammy <sunshin...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi. I am studying the religion of Buddhism and I stumbled upon a few
> questions. Can anyone enlighten me with answers to them.
>
> 1. In order to attain supreme happiness, one must overcome desire, ill
> will and ignorance. So in order to attain the supreme happiness that
good
> music, watch television shows, eat good food, to raise a family, etc.?
> happiness, what will I be happy about?
>
> 2. I have seen a couple of drawings and pictures of the Buddha and he
> is depicted in a colorful scenery, while sitting down and meditating,
> is the colorful scenery a place that an enlighten person might go to
> during meditation? If not, does the colorful scenery represent or
> symbolize something else. For 3 examples of these pictures, go to
> http://member.netease.com/~zengzhen/buddhalife/buddha.htm. The
pictures
> are loaded on top of the page.
>
> --
> In Jesus Christ,
> Sammy
>
> " My imperfections and my failures are as much a gift from God
> As my talents and successes are. I lay them both at His feet"
>
You can start practicing Buddhism RIGHT AWAY, without reading
books or wondering about it. (You don't have to convert either.)
Try this Website:
http://www.itsmysite.com/yourpage
Once you realize you have been driving a square peg (YES-or-NO type
approach) in a round hole (true reality), you will be able to answer
all your questions yourself.
Good luck.
-- ilgu
il...@respublica.fr
http://www.itsmysite.com/yourpage/ (Home page)
http://live.altavista.com/clubs-zenzen (Zen club site)
http://www.respublica.fr/ilgu/findex96.htm (Page d'accueil)
Dean Crabb
Sunshine Sammy wrote:
> Hi. I am studying the religion of Buddhism and I stumbled upon a few
> questions. Can anyone enlighten me with answers to them.
>
> 1. In order to attain supreme happiness, one must overcome desire, ill
> will and ignorance. So in order to attain the supreme happiness that
> the Buddha experienced, we must let go of our desires to listen to good
> music, watch television shows, eat good food, to raise a family, etc.?
> If I let go of all these things, when I reach the state of supreme
> happiness, what will I be happy about?
>
> 2. I have seen a couple of drawings and pictures of the Buddha and he
> is depicted in a colorful scenery, while sitting down and meditating,
> is the colorful scenery a place that an enlighten person might go to
> during meditation? If not, does the colorful scenery represent or
> symbolize something else. For 3 examples of these pictures, go to
> http://member.netease.com/~zengzhen/buddhalife/buddha.htm. The pictures
> are loaded on top of the page.
>
Excuse my poor attempt to answer your questions.
1. Life!! Without all the crap we add to it or try to add to it - eg.
music, TV, good food, etc. And not just this life but The Life. How
simple, how divine. Imagine just simply being with life as it is. Then
all the extra things are just a bonus. But most of the time we act as if
all the extra things aren't even enough!!
2. I'd call that art. Not sure if it represents anything but a nice
picture. And no, an enlightened person can meditate anywhere, in fact
anyone can meditate anywhere.
Dean
Evelyn Ruut
Sunshine Sammy <sunshin...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8oc1rk$7l8$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>
>
> Hi. I am studying the religion of Buddhism and I stumbled upon a few
> questions. Can anyone enlighten me with answers to them.
>
> 1. In order to attain supreme happiness, one must overcome desire, ill
> will and ignorance. So in order to attain the supreme happiness that
> the Buddha experienced, we must let go of our desires to listen to good
> music, watch television shows, eat good food, to raise a family, etc.?
> If I let go of all these things, when I reach the state of supreme
> happiness, what will I be happy about?
Dear Sammy,
It is highly unlikely if you go around questioning buddhists, that you will
find any who have totally succeeded in achieving such a level of detachment.
Most of us are not looking for that at all. We strive for a bit more
modest result, like a bit more sanity, peace, clarity, wisdom and
understanding in our "normal" lives.
> 2. I have seen a couple of drawings and pictures of the Buddha and he
> is depicted in a colorful scenery, while sitting down and meditating,
> is the colorful scenery a place that an enlighten person might go to
> during meditation?
The colorful scenery is simply an artists way of imparting a sense of peace
and harmony to the subject matter.
I am including a talk by Lama Yeshe which explains what sort of unattachment
buddhism is REALLY about! I hope it helps you understand a little more
about it. Enjoy! (you may want to save this one!)
*******************
Attachment is the biggest problem on earth
By Lama Yeshe;
I often talk about the shortcomings of attachment and how it's the biggest
problem on earth; how we are always manipulating our environment or running
here and there in an attempt to escape our dissatisfaction. But whatever we
do, wherever we go, ego and attachment are our constant companions and we
never find the peace we seek. Therefore, we have to recognize that the ego
and attachment so deeply rooted in our mind are the source of all our
suffering and problems, and face and destroy these internal enemies.
As long as we are driven by attachment, everything we do becomes very
superficial. Even when we try to be religious by generating compassion,
making charity and so forth, it's all on the surface and an insufficient
answer to our problems.
If you check up honestly what you really mean when you say that you love
someone, you'll find that your "I love you" actually means, "I want to take
advantage of you." Of course you don't say these words intellectually, but
if you check deeper within yourself, you'll find that expectation lies
beneath your expressions of affection. You look at somebody and if you see
that you can get something from that person, you say, "I love you."
This is very poor-quality love. From the Dharma point of view, we don't
even consider that to be love at all. True love comes from understanding
that others' problems derive from the attachment deeply rooted in their
minds and is based on correctly realizing the nature of other people's
problems. This profound logic gives you a deep reason, a universal reason,
for helping others. Ordinary love is narrow, closed minded and fickle. As
long as your love is ordinary, your narrow mind will keep singling out one
object: "You're the only one for me; my only object of love and
compassion." There are countless atoms in this earth, but you choose only
one: "I love this atom." That's such a silly mind; completely silly.
There are countless atoms throughout all of space, but tied by attachment,
your squeezing mind chooses only one. Then, when you encounter another
atom, you feel insecure. "I really love my atom. I'm not so sure about
this other one." This is how your mind is. You fix on one atom and
mistrust the rest.
When you look at the atom you have chosen, what you see is just a relative
projection painted on to that object by your ego. Your ego projects that
this is a good object, something you can trust, and believing this
appearance to be true, you choose that object to be yours. Then when you
see other objects, you don't like them and make up all sorts of reasons for
your dislike; "I don't like its color, I don't like this, I don't like
that." When you get attached to one thing you automatically feel hatred for
others.
Of course if I use the word "hatred" you're going to interpret it
emotionally, but that's not how I'm using it. One of the factors in your
mind is dislike. Dislike causes you to disdain certain objects, to close
your mind off from certain things. The basic nature of that mind is hatred.
You have these experiences because your mind is unbalanced, unequal. Your
internal world is constantly being thrown out of balance by the two extremes
of attachment and hatred. Your attachment makes you choose one particular
atom; your hatred makes you feel that the other millions of atoms are
against you. Perhaps I should use a more psychological term than "against"
here, but I'm not sure what it would be. "Rejection" might be better.
Because of attachment, you have the extreme mind of acceptance, and because
of hatred, you have the extreme mind of rejection; automatic rejection of
other. These extremes of thought make your mind unhealthy.
When we function normally as human beings, we communicate well with each
other and seem to be quite healthy. However those two sick minds - the
extremes of grasping acceptance and blind rejection - are always with us.
When the conditions are right, they surface and make us clinically ill. I'm
not trying to scare you, but you have to be aware of what's lurking in your
mind, just waiting to come out. Therefore, it's most worthwhile to
constantly check your mind. If you do, you'll never have any reason to
freak out.
Normally what happens is that you just go along, never observing your mind,
and when emotions suddenly arise, you freak out. Sometimes you don't even
understand what's happening to you. All schizophrenic mental defilements,
personal problems and the suffering of all universal living beings, comes
from attachment.
Sometimes you think, "People don't trust me." Perhaps they don't. But
other people's mistrust of you comes from your own attachment. They don't
trust you because they pick up on the bad vibrations of your selfish
attachment. If you didn't give off the vibration of attachment, others
would see you as easy to get on with and not be afraid of you.
If you have a neighbor whose gross mind of attachment is strong, you're
likely to be afraid of him. You avoid going near his house, and if you have
to, you do so cautiously, afraid of what he might do. Others avoid him too.
This is a common situation; we're all familiar with it.
When people don't like you it's because they can feel the vibrations of your
gross emotions. Even the members of your own family might like each other,
but not you. All this comes from your own attachment.
If you are going to learn only one thing from your Dharma studies, it should
be that every problem on earth comes from attachment. If you can realize
that, you won't have to worry too much about deficiencies in other areas:
"I don't have good concentration." Anyway, concentration alone is not
enough. Dividing the entire Buddhadharma into wisdom and method,
concentration comes more from the wisdom side of the teachings, while
recognizing the faults of attachment and changing your mental attitude comes
from method.
To discover the everlasting peaceful realization of enlightenment, ultimate
inner freedom, you have to practice wisdom and method together. When you
do, it's like a powerful elevator and electrical energy to come together.
To reach the everlastingly peaceful penthouse, you need to practice both
wisdom and method.
When people talk about evil, they always make it sound as if it comes from
outside of themselves. There's no such thing as outer evil. Mahayana
Buddhist art might depict horrible looking demons, but we never believe that
evil is external. Evil is nothing other than a manifestation of ego and
attachment. Attachment is evil; ego is evil. If you want to know the words
for evil, they're ego and attachment.
Every happiness and benefit you have ever experienced has come from others.
When you were born, you came from your mother's womb with nothing. You didn
't even have any clothes. Your parents gave you clothes, milk, care and
attention. Now that you have grown, you have clothes and many other things.
Where did they come from? They came from the effort of other sentient
beings. Maybe you think it's because you have money. You can't wear money.
If other people hadn't made the fabric, you wouldn't have any clothes. The
cake you enjoy is also the result of the effort of others. If others hadn'
t put effort into making cake, you wouldn't have any. It's the same with
all your other samsaric enjoyments; everything comes from other sentient
beings; from other people's giving it to you.
Is this difficult to believe - too much for you? Think of everything you've
done today. The milk you had this morning - it wasn't yours was it?
Similarly check in detail everything you have. It has all come from others.
You were born with nothing. Other people are so kind. Without the kindness
of others, you would find it impossible to live.
Don't think that you've come up through society - studying, working, making
money - and now you're doing everything yourself. This is just the
intellectual way society has developed in order to run more smoothly. But
you can't survive without an organized society. How do you get milk from
the farm and fruit from the orchard to the city or wherever you live?
Society has arranged all this to preserve and make your life and everybody
else's easier. Society is also kind.
Another example of the kindness of others is that of reputation. You're
very attached to having a good reputation, of being well liked. How can
this happen if you're alone? How are you going to have a good reputation
without other people? Praise - "you're good, you're kind, you're this, you
're that" - comes from other people. Reputation, food, clothing, all your
enjoyments, come from other sentient beings. Forgetting their kindness and
thinking "I did it" is a completely mistaken attitude, totally unrealistic.
Check up. All the food in the supermarket comes from other sentient beings'
effort. You can't do everything yourself. Other mother sentient beings
expended their own energy; brought the food to the supermarket and made it
available to you. I'm sure that your ego and attachment have never let you
think that other sentient beings are kind. For such a long time, that
thought has never crossed your mind. As I talk to you about this, perhaps
you're thinking, "Oh that can't be. It's just Lama's thinking." But you
really check up. It's important. Truly, I'm not joking.
If you don't check things deeply, your religious practice will just be
emotional. You'll only have a vague idea of what religion is, so whatever
you practice will be just empty ritual done according to custom. Religion
is nobody's custom; Dharma has nothing to do with custom. The practice of
religion, the practice of Dharma is the gaining of understanding
realizations.
The problem with us is that we are so ordinary that when we look at
religion, or Dharma, we do so with our senses. Dharma is not a sense
object. Dharma has nothing whatsoever to do with sense perception. Dharma
is the view of the wisdom mind, what wisdom sees.
Seeking the nature of attachment and realizing that all your pleasures and
your life itself come from the kindness and effort of other sentient beings
do not demand that you be a member of this religion or that. Dharma
practice needs no partisanship: "I'm a this, I'm a that." Just do it; just
realize.
Otherwise you hear some artificial idea, pick it up and try to practice it -
Buddhism, religion or whatever else you call it - and it all becomes
artificial and superficial. You have no understanding; whatever you do is
of poor quality, almost hypocritical. Instead of being of benefit and
solving your problems, that idea pollutes your mind.
Just look at what's happening around the world, with Communists, for
example. The idea is radical change, external change. Trying to change the
external world without first changing within is simply asking for trouble.
I'm not talking politics; I'm talking human psychology. Don't just have a
superficial view of human problems. You can't change things that way. Look
deep, look wide, and don't be content with mere ideas.
You hear some idea and think, "Wow, that sounds good." This is common,
especially amongst Westerners. They are so intellectual; they so love
ideas. They don't care what it is. As soon as they hear something they
like they're out trying to put it into action: "Oh what a great idea! I
love that idea!" But they don't know how to fit the action and the idea
together, which is much more important than simply the good idea itself.
Otherwise the idea is like the sky and you're like the earth; the two never
meet. Be realistic.
It's very difficult to equalize things without changing people's mental
attitude. You can't force everybody to be equal. It's impossible. Without
changing your mental attitude of attachment it's equalize everybody. What
you can do, however, is completely change your internal world. You can
achieve total inner equality and transform your too - extreme mind into a
perfectly balanced one, without the need of a radical external change. This
is very logical.
When you achieve mental equilibrium beyond the two extremes, your inner
nature is even and peaceful instead of conflicted. The experience of inner
equality also gives you a vision of beauty when you look at the outside
world. You can see that beauty lies deeper than the human surface, that
human beauty lies within the person, beyond the form your sense perception
apprehends. This extremely realistic view gives you a warm feeling for
others.
How can you exist without relating to other human beings? It's impossible.
You can't live without relating to other people. Throughout your entire
life, your mind and brain relate to others. Therefore, other people have a
great influence over what comes into your mind. That's why most human
problems come from other human beings. We imitate each other. Human
problems don't come from some far off place. To stop them, your attitude
and behavior have to become humane.
When you realize how kind other mother sentient beings have been, instead of
seeing them as repulsive or undesirable you'll see them as beautiful.
Instead of rejecting them you'll have space in your mind to feel true love,
profound, deep love, for all sentient beings, and these feelings will be
based on deep, not superficial reasons. You'll feel inner equilibrium
instead of your usual extremes of attachment and aversion.
The logical reason for feeling that all sentient beings are equal, is that
equally, all sentient beings seek happiness, and not one, yourself included,
wants to be unhappy. Think, "All sentient beings want to be happy and no
sentient being, myself included wants to suffer. Whenever I experience an
unpleasant feeling I want it to stop immediately. Although basically, all
sentient beings equally desire happiness and freedom from suffering, out of
countless millions of atoms, my fickle mind selects one to make happy and
forgets the others. When I encounter a being who agitates me, I see it as
an enemy and want to give it harm, and when an enemy finds good fortune, I
get jealous." Such a mind is unrealistic, unbalanced and too extreme.
It's as if two hungry and thirsty people come to your door. You look at
them both, but then choose just one. "You can come in," while telling the
other, "You can't come in. Go away." You know that they're in exactly the
same predicament, that they're both extremely hungry and thirsty, but your
extreme, narrow mind picks one - " Come I, I love you; put on some nice
clean clothes and eat and drink" - and completely rejects the other. This
is the action of a narrow mind, a silly mind, an extreme mind. It all comes
from the misconception of attachment, an unbalanced mind acting in
unrealistic manner that certainly has nothing to do with Buddhism or any
other religion. Even if you check from the scientific, materialistic point
of view, it's unrealistic; even if ordinary non-religious people looked into
it, they too would easily see that this kind of mind is ridiculous.
So what am I talking about here, telling you to generate a feeling of
equality with all living beings in your mind and to concentrate on it?
Well, the way to do the Mahayana equilibrium meditation is to do analytical
meditation first, intellectualizing a little on the equality of all sentient
beings, as I mentioned above. Then, when you reach the point where at least
intellectually you see their equality, let your mind remain in that feeling.
Enjoy it. It's a remarkable experience. And maintain that feeling of
equilibrium in your meditation session breaks - walking, eating, whatever
you are doing.
It's very important to recognize that all desire hatred and other delusions
and the problems they bring come from attachment and ego. Actually of the
two, attachment and ego, it's ego that comes first. Delusion starts with
ego: attachment follows. How is this? The concept of ego builds a
projection of "I" and paints that polluted projection with a veneer of
qualities. Then when the "I," which is really superficial, artificial, and
illusory, starts looking at the pleasures of the sense world, it labels
certain objects as desirable. Then attachment arises, sticking, or clinging
to these attractive objects. This, very briefly is the evolution of
attachment.
The moment your ego says 'I,' you automatically identify your 'I' as totally
separate from other atoms, other people. On the basis of this view of two
different things, you automatically see 'I' as the most important one.
Then, with attachment, your narrow mind chooses one particular atom as a
source of sense pleasure. This then makes you view all other atoms as
either irrelevant or objects of hatred. This is the way it all starts.
In other words, when you perceive the hallucination of the self - existent,
independent 'I,' you immediately accept the existence of other. That other
then appears, totally separate from you. If there were no 'I,' there would
be no appearance of other. But you build up that separateness, and this is
where all the problems of samsara spring from. All this is the work of
ego, which is a product of ignorance. Ignorance causes ego.
Lord Buddha demonstrated this graphically when he created the wheel of life.
You must have seen Tangkas of this; they're very common. There are many
details, but at the center, there's a pig with a chicken's tail feathers in
its mouth. The chicken's beak holds the tail of a snake, while the snake is
shown biting the tail of the pig. The wheel of life is not just some item
of Tibetan culture, it is a deeply symbolic teaching as was created by Lord
Buddha himself.
Once some disciples were looking for a gift to send to a neighboring
non-Buddhist kind. Lord Buddha told them how to make a painting of the
wheel of life and suggested they send it to the king simply as a work of
art, without any other explanation. After receiving this gift, the king
kept looking at it, until one day he realized what it represented. The art
itself spoke to him. He realized that ego, attachment and aversion were the
greatest poisons, and the cause of all problems. If you too, keep Dharma
art in your room, it can have a similarly beneficial effect on your mind.
It works the other way as well: with movies, for example. Sometimes what
you see on the screen makes you so sad that you cry. It's not reality; it's
an illusion. Nevertheless, without discrimination, the mirror of your mind
takes in and reflects whatever garbage appears before it. Things you see
can have a strong effect on you. Therefore it's important that you remain
aware of how the people and things around you are affecting your mind.
Check up. Are they stimulating attachment or hatred? If you are
psychologically alert you can easily tell, but usually you ignore your
internal world. Your ego might be in there making a toilet of your mind,
but you think it's okay; you don't care. On the other hand, if someone
tried to build a bathroom on your property right next to your house, you'd
completely freak out. It's so silly. You don't know what really makes you
happy.
In the wheel of life then, the pig symbolizes ignorance, the chicken,
craving, and the snake, hatred. It is a perfect external demonstration of
how, starting with ignorance, delusions evolve in the mind, and has nothing
whatsoever to do with any Eastern trip, Lama trip, or any other kind of
trip. It applies equally to all samsaric beings and is simply a scientific
explanation of how everybody's internal world evolves.
Now you can see why Lord Buddha always emphasized abandoning ignorance and
developing understanding. He wasn't the slightest bit interested in
religious games, rituals or theory. His teachings always stressed actions
based on wisdom as the only solution to problems. His key discovery was
that the pollution of ignorance is the root of all problems and from
ignorance comes attachment, craving, desire and hatred. Therefore, he
always emphasized that only an integrated understanding mind could overcome
mental defilements. You pretend as much as you like that everything's under
control, but if you don't have understanding, you can't stop any problem.
If you can conquer your worst enemy, the internal enemy of attachment, you
can control all external energy, all other people. If you try this using
just the power of your own ego, it's impossible. You think you can control
others, but you can't. There's no way to attain inner muni muni through the
power of ego. Remember Lord Buddha's mantra, Om muni muni mahamunaye soha ?
"Control, great control, greatest control." To realize inner muni muni you
have to conquer the inner enemy of attachment. If you can do that, you can
control anything.
When Lord Buddha was meditating to reach enlightenment, the maras declared
war on him and tried whatever they could to interfere with his meditation.
At one stage they attacked him with a hail of arrows. In response, he went
into single pointed concentration on equilibrium and universal love and
turned all the arrows into flowers. Nothing the maras threw at Lord Buddha
could hurt him; he controlled it all, with his inner atomic bomb of
universal love. With love, he conquered the whole world.
Gileht
Evelyn, what is the source of this text?
I found another different one with the same title and author at
http://www.cuenet.com/~fpmt/Teachings/attachment.html
Gileht
In article <8odj7a$1a4s$1...@node17.cwnet.frontiernet.net>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.