I've committed one bad action in my life, I was 7 years old and I pushed my younger brother off an indoor trampoline because it was "my turn" - he hit his head on the edge of a door and had to get stitches for his lip, couldn't eat well for a few days due to pain.

Recently, after moving to my current place, I've been suffering from unexplainable debilitating depression, something to do with the place I live, it wouldn't go away no matter what I did, I begged to move back in with my parents because the depression wasn't there when I lived with them, but no luck. I figured out that maybe it was karma, and I remembered back to the only bad action in my life that I had done, then I figured out that I could go with a My Name Is Earl -attitude and try to amend my wrong deed. For the first time in my life I offered some help for my little brother, and the depression immediately went away and hasn't returned. (Unfortunately) he doesn't need that much help, but I've found I can eliminate some past bad karma just by praying for him.

Following the karma theory I figured that everything I suffer from stems from past wrong acts, so then I applied this thought to tension headaches that I had, and it took me a while but I somehow traced them to my younger brother being in operation to get the stitches (I used some meditation help to perceive something to do with a bunch of metal instruments and figured it might be the operation). So I prayed a bunch of things, imagining what might be a good act to make up for the operation, and my tension headaches vanished.

Anyway, I've been cooking up an (old) theory that all your suffering stems from past wrong acts, karma, and found karma to be pretty much true in my own life beyond this example too. 

Who is that continuous and separate entity that supposedly is being punished? 

(Just to be clear, this is NOT what I meant when I said that it might be a good idea to consider connections between posture-related pain and the five hindrances that you aim at letting go of.)

You could extend this idea to the Buddhist path -- if the reason we suffer might be due to past wrong actions, then wrong actions happen due to craving, and ceasing to crave would eliminate all suffering.

Correlation and causality are only one dimension to the word. The suffering you experienced is not something so severe though... it is guilt and the unequivocal aversion to it sounds like a classic matter of running away from something and unknowingly running towards it.

The Psychosomatic case; your attitude shapes the way your body reacts:
The mind controls the nervous system, and the nervous system controls x, therefore the mind greatly influences x

Innovation in functional MRI's and CAT scans allow us to observe living brains, and you can show that placebo & nocebo responses are associated with particular activity in certain brain centers.
(That helped make "the mind" real to the scientific community)  

"Bad Karma": A lot of people who get injuries in their backs aren't actually suffering the injury itself, but the muscle spasms being generated by the brain in expectation of pain, this is even after the injury has recovered. It's not all in your head, it's in your head & your muscles. The Mind associates particular events, or in this case movements, with danger in order to avoid them. Muscle spasms are created by the mind and the problem with them is they cut off the blood supply. With the mind out of the way, the blood can flow naturally.
Moving out must have been your trigger because memory is always there, lingering.

"Good Karma": We are like super atoms. Our actions and energy reverberate out and impact us all the time. An audacious sense of unwavering positivity, unfounded optimism, and undue confidence can have beneficial and tangible effects in the real world because how you act with other people influences that person's reaction, therefore things go smoother for you. 


The roots of Karma go beyond good and bad, action & result as mentioned are only the surface depth. What karma really means is information & memory. The memory in your mind has been gifted with too much significance. There is memory written in the DNA. So even patterns of behavior developed over the course of one's life are passed on in the form of genetic expressions. 

More on that if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO8QzMWZbN4

Yep! But there is nothing wrong emotion, or enjoyment. In fact suppressing emotion and enjoyment is a mistake - a dead end.  But the clinging and the craving, the burning of needy desire for 'other' things.  Those are the problems.  So calm down current craving, purify the karma/formations that give rise to that craving, learn to understand the craving process, and then pull up the craving process by the roots.

Ah, so that's what happens when I move energies to take away the pain. Makes sense.

Yes, you're beating the right drum here. The rhythm might be a little off but it's still funky!

Thoughts, speech and actions leave impressions in the mind/body and resurface from time to time based on some later corresponding conditions. (I could delve with some depth into that but I don't want to). The critical theme I want to follow here is 'time'. Consciousness creates time in this way through our experiences and the energy that keeps this rolling on is of the order of mental, vocal and physical. Time itself is the very substrate from which the movements of karma operate and the movements of karma are the very substrate from which time revolves; they are both interdependent and thus instrumental within the grand creation of samsara. No time, no samsara and no karma.

Furthermore, through practising mindfulness or awareness karma should cease becoming a theory. It should become a standard view of phenomena and when one experiences the workings of karma in this experiential way it massively informs your own practice. You become very conscious of your own actions for fear of falling back into lower levels of stupefied simplicity and automation. Mindfulness in this respect has a threefold effect leading to a manifold understanding of the universe of karma: 1) morality 2) sustained attention 3) wisdom.

Hello Linda. We haven't crossed paths for some time but I've been trawling through your practice logs (not in a sensual way!) and found them quite intriguing.

I'm guessing that your question here is pointing rhetorically to something with which cannot be located although it appears that we experience the effects of its phantom-like existence - usually of the nature of suffering and other regular unsatisfactory whatnots. 

Personally I prefer to think of it as dependent origination rather than karma, because the latter is so commonly viewed as some sort of punishment. Everything that occurs has consequences because nothing exists independently, but it isn't about some cosmologic justice. It's more about sawing seeds and building infrastructures and probabilities. 

I see that we were writing simultaneously. Does my post above answer your question? 

Precisely, dependent co-arising gives phenomenal detail to the workings of cause and effect. Dependent co-arising is astonishingly deep! Cause and effect is neither one thing nor the other or, as you say "good or bad". It is, in its basic form, part of a limited consciousness bound-up in the human mind (there are different types of cause and effect circumstances). In order to gather a purchase into different areas of mindfulness we are forced to face our past, present and potential actions.

Additionally, I wholeheartedly agree. There is no justice but the illusory one you apply to yourself. When you draw in your last breath the energy from your actions concertinas into a moment of consciousnesses and this is where you become your harshest judge. It determines your next landing so you place yourself squarely in this universe. In the physical form you were always your own worse judge, why would that change after your body has perished? You are the creator of it all. You are the decider and you can be the finalizer.

Then we are on the same page.

That's kind of the unique idea I'm presenting, karma as full cosmological justice, but I guess not everyone believes in it -- it would've been hard for me in the past to believe it, but I've also seen magical bad consequences happen to people who've wronged me. Have a good day though 

If you accept the cosmological view of karma, the Buddhist path can be seen as maximizing good karma -- one sets off into homelessness, losing everything but the essential possessions, which is the good act of giving away everything. Meditation might be a way to not crave for those possessions, being satisfied with nothing. The rest of the path might be losing the bases of clinging so one can never really "own" anything, so that one develops no negative karma by not craving for things of others -- one essentially loses the self that owns things, losing the base for karma altogether.

Not having a self that owns things, one perceives that any possession, say food, is thus come and thus gone -- it doesn't last in one's own mouth but moves away, impermanent, as it is gone to somewhere else. Perceiving it as impermanent, one does maximum effort to give away pleasing sensory experiences off to somewhere else, and in this way due to never having pleasing sensory impressions one develops no positive karma. Due to not craving for impermanent sensory pleasures, one does not perform wrong acts, but say due to injustice, would rather give away the pleasing sensory experiences to the wrong-doers. 

Not having a self that owns things, all pain is suffered by the same human continuum, so one naturally develops good acts, and thus experiences no negative karma. 

It gets a bit weird here -- the released sensory impressions develop another body that gives great fortune for one. Due to releasing sensory impressions one becomes destined for another world, one with ease and comfort, because one finds a way to suck in new pleasing sensory impressions, because it just happens accidentally in this world, not via a being's own actions -- one automatically guns for all of the pleasing sensory experiences the world has to offer. So one experiences fortune without any foundation for karma, due to no action.

The only way to relinquish suffering, bad past karma, is to suffer deeply. One can suffer deeply by relinquishing control, accomplished by not knowing, accomplished by being ridiculous -- repenting. If one murdered someone, one needs to be ridiculous and make it up to the person's family, by being ultra-ridiculous and dearly praying for the one who was murdered, by being ridiculous and crying for the person who was murdered.

I don't need the idea of cosmologic justice (which is not that unique, by the way) to want to do the right thing and to let go of craving. The risk of punishment is not what motivates me. I just want for the world to be loving and compassionate and peaceful. If you need to punish yourself, sure, go ahead, but self-compassion is usually more effective if you want to let go of hindrances. 

Why would relinquishing control mean suffering? You do know that the Buddha was all about the end of suffering, right? 

The primary idea is that one just needs to suffer deeply, and by the theory, relinquishing control might be just one way to suffer deeply -- first way that popped to my head. You can also suffer deeply by giving away everything, so perhaps letting go of all possessions and becoming homeless can be a way to repent. By the theory, repenting is a way to end suffering -- the whole thing is based on buying into the idea of cosmological justice in the first place.

Thanks for replying 

Well, the point of the path is to let go of control in order to end suffering. 

Is it? (I'm not amazingly well-versed in the path yet, having only read half of the Pali Canon, not knowing much). In that case, reading Buddhism from the point of view of cosmological karma might have fascinating results.

I also just had another idea -- the teachings of Jesus from the point of view of the time. If Buddhism is space and the end of suffering, the teachings of Jesus might be the time and happiness. 

A sin might be the enjoyment of a poor time, say mocking someone, hating. As a consequence one might enjoy a poor time in the future, of no enjoyment. A good time of loving might be met with also a good time. 

Time will come when justice will be done, so it's good to have faith that evildoers will be punished and righteous ones saved -- to not let go of goodness, of innocence. 

Yes, minus the paper but abundant in the luminescence of hypertext markup language. 

(Or something)

Justice is a figure of speech that describes the fruit of your own actions. Faith is a figure of speech to describe your grasping at future outcomes. Punishment and righteousness are figures of speech that describe the fickle imposter that governs your every perception - separating, dividing and fragmenting.

Loving-kindness meditation is a good remedy for such mind ailments. :-)

Yeah, I actually also perceived that the evildoers might wind up in heaven with one, if one keeps faith. 

My dharma faculties are dwindling as I contemplate what karmas are over there in heaven. 

I'm thinking there's karmic heaven and maybe something Jesus spoke of, distinct from it.

I like to delve into some zen from time to time. You reminded me of this beautiful zen story. Enjoy...

A university student while visiting Gasan asked him: “Have you ever read the Christian Bible?”

“No, read it to me,” said Gasan.

The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: “And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these… Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

Gasan said: “Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man.”

The student continued reading: “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

Gasan remarked: “That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood.”

It's a nice koan.

Karma is bad feelings -- you can fix your own suffering, regarding a person one wronged, by giving good feelings to every suffering they went through, or by giving good feelings to them now, say being on their side.   

Karma is basically being mothered -- if you think this thing, then you'll suffer this. If you feel this way about something, then you'll feel terrible. If you want to cause something, then you'll feel this. 

Regarding a wrong act, one can think that I don't think it was fine, because the person I hurt actually did a kindness to me -- one can reverse the motives around a bad action, and subsequently develop highly good motivation toward the other person, wishing to give them more. This might ease karmic suffering. 

Maybe if you wished that the self was good. One can do practices, say regret, to make the self good.

Karma, goodness of self, is hidden. The self exists as a pure individual in the world. The goodness of the self arises from marks left on the world. Leave bad marks on someone, the marks direct the self on a far worse path. The world is a seed-ground, and leaving bad marks on it leads to bad fruit, so the entire world along with its beings is one. Marks are based on intentions, they cause us to register things poorly and sadly due to hatred of ourselves displayed by makers of bad marks, and hatred is a sense that things are unlasting. What one makes last produces good fruit, because a good mark (intention) is seen and felt with one's heart, they immediately lead to fruit due to seeing the better way of lasting things, and the marks one makes is the path one travels, downward or heavenward. Heaven is ultimately seeing that things do last.

The Buddha might exist in a perennial heaven, disconnected from Earth, something ever-lasting. To take only what one needs is to produce ultimate lastingness of the self, to conquer craving. 

The mark-maker gains new ways to involve energy with good marks, and the lasting structures naturally lead to prosperity. Giving to the poor, one finds new ways to employ the power of the poor, and one yields great fruit as a consequence. Bad marks lead to ways to lose energy, thus, hurting another, one loses the energy of gaining, so one is forced to sideline into other activities, bringing great misfortune on one.

Maybe one can, in this case, purify bad marks by rejoicing for the hurt person's gains, thus gaining access into this form of energy, no longer sidelineing activity and experiencing illness from lack of energy. It's essentially hoping for the speeding-up of the one who one hurt, opposite from hoping for their deterioration, which was the original impulse. 

I have more on Christianity:

The world is where one lives. God bestows new dreams at the edge of it. The world is good when things go according to plan. The world is bad when things don't go according to plan. One produces a good world by causing nothing, this lets the world to come, unhindered, perfect. If one never causes anything one just might exponentially face an eternity of things coming to one. So one needs to have faith that things will reach one, not go and lose it in face of disasters but keep hoping for the best. Prayer is to put full faith in the Lord to produce the best, and this faith is the way to lose sorrow over what one has created by causing something in the world, mainly to not wish for the best.

all human beings are conscientious, they have this tiny conscience that have 3 signs called Anatta, Anicca and Dukha

Dukha means suffering and your suffering because you hurt your brother. Just like me, I almost killed my brother when I was young and naughty and since then he suffer a strong fear inside him due to almost being dead

since then I have suffered from mental illness and I cant forgive myself and nothing seem to be enough to be done by me to liven up his life. He subconsciously is wishing me to be alive for longer than him because that is human nature when they have given up hope for themselves.

I am sadden because of this and my mental illness is worsen and I wish I could die for him so that he can get back his childhood with a better older brother unlike me, but nothing can be changed by my death and it is just a wishful hope. My death wont exchange him anything but a longer suffering for him because he is expecting me to take care of our parents when he is dead because he suffered stroke recently

It is not easy for me to realise this and my family has been suffering deeply due to abusive father and my mother suffer from depression because of how I cant fit myself into her heart and blame her over her greed and fear of death because she almost get killed by my grandfather after pushing her down to a pit where she almost fall down

My family is problematic and sad, and I realise nothing is really going to change other than changing myself to refrain from negative or impulsive reactions and endure my problems and try hard to show them care and compassion

Only by changing how myself perceive the suffering of others by letting the feeling to flow that all suffering will eventually cease to exist when people is awaken or enlighten, only then I realise that the true way of life is to awaken others from their ignorance into Buddhahood in order to severe the cycle of suffering (samsara).

To undo a bad deed, one's heart needs to change, to mind the wronged one. 

aloha lasse,

   In chinese philosophy, the confucian view holds that the human being is essentially benign, and is motivated by love. The cradle of this love, as it were, is the family.

   Confucians speak of "the five relations." The original three primary relations are the mutual love of  husband and wife;  the mutual love of elder and younger siblings; and the mutual love of parents and children. The two extended relations are the mutual love of the citizen/subject for the political leader/monarch, reflecting love of parents and children; and the mutual love of one's neighbor, reflecting love of siblings.

   Your life is a dream, and in this dream your brother symbolizes all of humanity. Depression, in your case, may be due to your soul (as opposed to your self-interested ego) recognizing at some level that having compassion for the "other" relieves your unhappiness.

   The sense of separation caused by identifying with the ego is the root of depression in otherwise organically healthy people. The feeling that we are all in this together is a relief. 


terry



He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
(The Hollies)

The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where
But I'm strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother
So on we go
His welfare is of my concern
No burden is he to bear
We'll get there
For I know
He would not encumber me
He ain't heavy, he's my brother
If I'm laden at all
I'm laden with sadness
That everyone's heart
Isn't filled with the gladness
Of love for one another
It's a long, long road
From which there is no return
While we're on the way to there
Why not share
And the load
Doesn't weigh me down at all
He ain't heavy he's my brother
He's my brother
He ain't heavy, he's my brother, he ain't heavy

Songwriters: Bob Russell / Bobby Scott

   The idea that you have only committed one sin in your whole life is also symbolic. Thus made a unity, you can atone for the whole business in one go. As long as you recognize that "the wronged one" is a symbol for the collective other, and ultimately all being(s), including you.

   Compassion goes both ways.

t 

Ahh... what an enlightened wordings,
When time and space is not relevant anymore.
Punishment is for beings, not the non-entity.
Switching from existence to activity is the key.
You are the world and the world is you afterall.

[quote=Mista Tibbs


So even patterns of behavior developed over the course of one's life are passed on in the form of genetic expressions. ]






    This notion, aka lamarckism, is not widely accepted in biology. At least, not since darwin.

t

Epigenetics is a rising new field putting forth a lot of concerns that are currently not accepted. It deals mainly in gene expressions apart from DNA alteration. Animals unfortunate enough to participate in lab experiments have shown traits and behaviors linked to genetic expressions directly influenced through the germline.
A lot of progress and re-writing of literature has happened and is going to keep happening since Darwin's time. We cant hold on to the cemented understanding just as we shouldn't be attached to contemporary knowledge. New insights will continue to be made

[quote=Bardo Cruiser




]
Yes, you're beating the right drum here. The rhythm might be a little off but it's still funky!

Thoughts, speech and actions leave impressions in the mind/body and resurface from time to time based on some later corresponding conditions. (I could delve with some depth into that but I don't want to). The critical theme I want to follow here is 'time'. Consciousness creates time in this way through our experiences and the energy that keeps this rolling on is of the order of mental, vocal and physical. Time itself is the very substrate from which the movements of karma operate and the movements of karma are the very substrate from which time revolves; they are both interdependent and thus instrumental within the grand creation of samsara. No time, no samsara and no karma.

Furthermore, through practising mindfulness or awareness karma should cease becoming a theory. It should become a standard view of phenomena and when one experiences the workings of karma in this experiential way it massively informs your own practice. You become very conscious of your own actions for fear of falling back into lower levels of stupefied simplicity and automation. Mindfulness in this respect has a threefold effect leading to a manifold understanding of the universe of karma: 1) morality 2) sustained attention 3) wisdom.










aloha bc,

    I wonder if time is truly primordial. 

   Identifying as subjects, we project objects, and find them nearer or further from our point of view. From this, upon reflection we create space and time as abstractions, and further attenuate them through measurement.

   Samsara, the cycle of existence, and karma, the law of cause and effect, are likewise not primordial. More like theories; metaphysics. Notions. Useful notions, but thereby blinding, concealing.

   Samsara is a whirlpool. In the taoist metaphor, one may learn to use the energy of the whirlpool and swim at one's ease. Karma relates to objects: the objects, always, of desire. Aristotle said that all objects have their causes: this involves the ancient paradox, if god created everything, who created god? As with the similarly paradoxical big bang, every thing, even the universe, must have a beginning and an end. Yet, to ask after the original cause is perhaps the same as asking, what is north of the north pole?

   Even in the context of buddhism, with karma we are dealing with different levels of perception of phenomena. The notion that all things have causes and effects is superseded by the notion that all things are subject to dependent origination.

   Leibnitz asked, "why is there something rather than nothing?" Short answer: there isn't.

   Anyhows, I have a question for you:


     Is the enlightened person subject to the law of cause and efffect?    


    (wink)


terry



Blending with the wind, 
Snow falls; 
Blending with the snow, 
The wind blows. 
By the hearth 
I stretch out my legs, 
Idling my time away 
Confined in this hut. 
Counting the days, 
I find that February, too, 
Has come and gone 
Like a dream.

~ryokan

    You want to end suffering, bra, not prolong it. Don't be ridiculous. (wink)



t

 (sound of pot cracking)

Hey terry, great to see you back!

(bows)

Buddhism = suffering. One suffers due to guilt. Fix suffering by not being guilty. 

masochism...

(laughs)

Causing suffering comes back because you do something, you cause yourself to exist for a single moment. You then become responsible for the other person's bodily experiences; guilt. So now their experiences are a part of you, karma. You need to not have acted on anyone's behest; dispassion.

aloha lasse,

   So, you are guilty in that you "cause yourself to exist." As an existent being, you confront "the other." This relationship to the other is one of being responsible for them.

   If the other is really yourself, then you can only be responsible for yourself. If the other is really other, then they are responsible for themselves. Karma due to ignorance may arise in either case, but not necessarily guilt. So, where does guilt arise? Not simply from the sense of responsibility. Even if I fail in my moral duties, should I feel guilty for what I did in a "past life"? 

   How can one be considered guilty for another's "bodily experiences"? It happens, of course. In the emergency room we would get sick children, women, old people, and occasionally some fellows would bitterly blame the patients, who could scarcely defend themselves, for foolishly acquiring their illnesses. It stresses the er staff (not to mention the patient) when some poor sick child is blamed for getting sick and inconveniencing their elders and all these professionals. It adds insult to injury, and inhibits healing. The opposite of tlc.

   Guilt and shame can be confused. Guilt is self-hatred due to vanity in that we expect more of ourselves and we feel we fail to measure up. Shame is self hatred due to vanity in that more is expected of us and we are made to feel that we fail to measure up. Guilt is self-imposed, shame is other-imposed.

   I get the sense that you have not gotten over some aspects of christian dogma. In buddhism, suffering is self-punishing, and no additional burden of shame or guilt is imposed. The buddhist may die to ego, but the ego is not tortured to death. The zen buddhist saint falls into an abyss; the christian saint dies slowly by crucifixion, is burned by fire, or eaten by lions. Transfigured by suffering. Hair shirts, self-flagellation, bodily neglect, all in service to vanity, desires for mastery and status. The buddha established the middle way between self-indulgence and asceticism as a core teaching. He notably achieved enlightenment by abandoning asceticism cross the board, accepting a nourishing meal from a pretty woman. Refreshed and restored, enlightenment followed.

   Besides, if god is involved, what is her responsibility? She's the all powerful, all knowing one, why should I feel guilty? Maybe I am doing what I must, and doing the best I can. Who, then, is inadequate? If god is ultimately responsible, what is the point of judging, or blaming?; assigning shame or feeling guilt?

   You may be right enough in feeling that the ego has to go, that the act of existing is tantamount to original sin. But let me assure you that the universe is immediately prepared to forgive you, and doesn't require any long period of suffering as atonement. Your suffering is atonement enough. Let it go. You cling to suffering, compelled to repeat the cycle of samsara from sin to atonement to forgiveness, from demon to human to godling. 

   Compassion for the suffering of self and other is not in itself suffering, and is not a product of self-hatred. Not a product of guilt and shame.

   What good are guilt or shame? The moralistic think others should feel that way too. And therein is the price of vanity. If you impose guilt or shame, that is, self-hatred, on yourself, you will equally impose it on the other. You will see others as guilty and shameful, and hate them. Yes they suffer, but they deserve going to hell for defying the lord, so shame on them, they are guilty of sin, and god will punish them (and I can help). The wages of sin are death and torture. It's no wonder that this (living) god is dead (to us).

   God wants to forgive you forthwith, bra. She does not want you to suffer first, don't be ridiculous. You are created in her image; in the image of god created she you. Don't torture christ, don't blame him; dry his feet with your hair, annoint him with oils. "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your lord." 

   Be careful with that old bible. If you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Himself is likely to comfort you with a rod and a staff.

terry


from the rubaiyat of omar khayyam, trans fitzgerald


53
A moment guess’d — then back behind the Fold
Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll’d 
Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.



75
What! Out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!

76
What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what he lent us dross-allay'd;
Sue for a Debt we never did contract,
And cannot answer? — Oh the sorry trade!

77
Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round
Enmesh me and impute my Fall to Sin!

78
Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Eden didst devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd — Man's Forgiveness give — and take!



89
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men’s Eye much wrong,
Have drown’d my Honour in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a Song.

Hi -- I'm not saying one needs to feel guilty, I'm saying that actual guilt to someone's suffering is the cause of your own physical suffering itself, a pretty magical idea. That is, you would get actual headaches to actually being Guilty to someone's suffering, real cosmological justice. I believe this and am now trying to think of ways to reverse the physical suffering one would experience due to bad deeds. I'm trying to figure out why it even happens in the first place. 

Another addition (I keep thinking of new ideas):

Goodness with suffering is to ease it. If one hasn't eased it one needs to patch up the world.

I am trying really hard to understand what your saying. I think I understand. You said "Fix suffering by not being (feeling) guilty"

There are other reasons why someone would suffer besides guilt. You said one would get headache because of guilt? Yeah I would said this does happen, but it isn't the only reason people get headaches. One might get a headache due to cause and effect, and this doesn't HAVE to cause suffering.

There is a differents from natural bodily pain and what your calling suffering.

Nobody actually knows why headaches happen. Nobody has explained the reasons one person gets migraines and another does not -- nobody knows how migraines work. My idea of the way that the body works is karma. 

Ah I see. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I have no further questions.

Another idea: physical experiences that others go through (who one hurt) leave a trace. The trace goes away with healing, healing of distance. The trace happens because you relive the experience. If you heal them, you start to relive that.

I followed this idea and developed a surprising feeling of ease in my stomach. 

Edit: Terrible acts might traumatize one, so an operation to get stitches would traumatize one to experience a mild headache. This trauma is kept internally. One needs to untraumatize with good acts.

Trauma is why physical suffering would happen, say if one killed someone, the trauma from this would lead to uncontrollable bodily shaking, a hell. If one spoke lies about someone when angered, the trauma from this might lead one to hear voices. The trauma happens when things calm down and one realizes what a nightmare-ish realm one has produced through wrong deeds.

Not seeing the trauma one creates is not-seeing, ignorance, operating without seeing the trauma, but it's responsible for one's whole physical being. Not-seeing the trauma leads to suffering -- constructing activities around the torture one faces. This activity leads to wariness -- sensations of the sense organs and body. This leads to movements of the body in seeking things, name and form. This leads to contact with new stimulations. This leads to experiencing these things, this leads to attachment, this leads to dying, dying leads to birth, birth leads to dying -- so the physical body is born.

Nirvana then is the complete stilling of the physical body. This is accomplished by seeing the physical trauma one creates, the suffering one creates, this created trauma being hidden deep inside the body. The trauma is seen with serenity. 

(written yesterday)


aloha lasse

   Having "actual guilt" involves the vanity of thinking you have sole responsibiity for someone's karma. What you feel guilty for and want to "patch up" has its own necessity and perfection, if only as a mistake requiring correction, and a lesson learned.

   Changing the future is seems more difficult than changing the past. We alter memory all the time, as nietzsche said, "Memory tells me I did it. Pride tells me I didn't do it. Eventually, pride wins."

   Saying you are sorry doesn't change the past, it only provides a basis for going forward. We are not things, we don't "patch up" or "get fixed" - we heal. And are forgiven. Mistakes are made and we need the humility to acknowledge them, as well as the power (virtue) to move forward.

   Obsessing on karma you live in the past. Confess your sins, be forgiven, enter a state of grace, live in the present. Be here now. Free. Not, "prometheus unbound" of titanic aspiration, but a new shoot under the sun, a child, an infant beginning to smile for the first time. In the moment. Wonder at the newness of the mystery. Free to learn, free to unlearn preconceptions. Non-identification never gets old, sick, or dead.

   Ease is dualistic. Seeking ease makes things difficult. Nothing is easy; seek nothing, be at ease. Give up obsessing with karma and karma will give up obsessing with you. Seek beauty and love, and love and beauty will seek you. You are what you seek; be careful what you wish for. If you think suffering is what you need, expect more of it.


terry




from "love's ripening; rumi on the heart's journey" by rumi, ed helminski



We stood together hand in hand in primordial time;*
now at last, we are one again.

We are all of one soul struggling along one path,
and all drunk with the same wine.

From among the two worlds we chose Love alone;
except for that Love there’s nothing we adore.

What bitterness did our souls suffer from separation!
At long last, we are free from separation.

A ray from the Sun came in through an opening
and raised us up in dignity, however low we were.

O Sunlight! Don’t withhold Your loving radiance from us!
Aren’t we sitting in the robes of your radiance?
 
By Your radiance we are transformed into rubies;
it is because of You that we exist.

Dancing like particles before You;
in our yearning for You, we abandon all our chains.

Divani Shamsi Tabrizi 1761

I'm going to be rude.

Lesse you know very little about Karma and you know even less about Nirvana. I would recommend you ask some questions, but you would not be able to hear the answers.

You are most welcome to stay and talk here, understand this, very few are going to buy what your selling them.

Nirvana is the complete cessation of suffering. I'm trying to figure out something to understand it better, what Buddhism very precisely is. I'm not selling anything, I just have ideas related to it. 

That's exactly what I'm saying, that one would physically suffer due to headaches due to wrong acts, I believe this which is why I'm obsessing over how to alter the wrong deeds. It's done either via the classic Buddhist path, what I'm trying to figure out, or via changing the karma.

That's what you got out of what terry said? Really?

Yeah, wondering at the newness of things would be a great thing to do, if I wouldn't be suffering due to a wrong act to begin with -- that is, the wrong deed actually comes back, and no amount of learning to let go of it will do anything unless the karma is altered. That's what I'm trying to figure out, altering of bad karma, which even the Buddha didn't seem to talk about, unless the Buddhist path itself alters bad past karma somehow. I am speaking of Goodness, that wrong actions do really come back, and can somehow be mitigated by being Good.

I'm not speaking of suffering in terms of mental suffering, I'm speaking of it in terms of physical suffering. Mental suffering might be a whole other story to what I'm talking about -- I don't think of guilt as a mental suffering, but being guilty to something as the cause of physical torment, caused by a universal Mother.

I don't experience guilt itself, I am speaking of actually being guilty to something as a more fascinating way to say that you've committed a wrong deed.

I wonder if bad karma involves the opinion one had when doing the act, in the case of my original post, that I thought my little brother were insignificant. In that case, maybe by believing that they are not insignificant and acting according to it, bad karma might be mitigated.

Also thanks everyone for responding, I like having some opinions to my thoughts. 

Edit: the entire gist of what I'm saying is karma. If you don't think that karma happens then there's no use in replying to me. But things like mindfulness, Buddhist meditation, Nirvana, also include karma as a foundational tenet, so you're going to be very confused if you follow Buddhism without accepting that karma happens. In fact, the rest of the Buddhist practices might directly deal with karma and do nothing else. That's what I'm basically saying. 

you said it...

(smile)

   Or some thoughts to your opinions. You seem to be saying that, if we don't agree with you, there is no use replying. Remember this is a public forum and we are speaking to each other.

   Every kid treats their sibling as a rival. In a contest to see what children would most like to hear their parents say, the clear winner was, "Tell your brother to come here this instant!"

   Who teaches you to be ashamed of what is inescably human? Does maturing as a human being necessarily involve guilt and shame? Surely not.

   In clinging to your karma as you (one-sidely) see it, you are in the case of one "feeling bad about feeling bad." This is not karma but a pathology you can grow out of, emerge from. Try to accept your shadow side without guilt or shame.

terry

   

Instant Karma (We All Shine On)
(John Lennon)

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead
What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin' to do
It's up to you, yeah you
Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin' at fools like me
Who in the hell d'you think you are
A super star
Well, right you are
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Ev'ryone come on
Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Ev'ryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you're ev'rywhere
Come and get your share
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Come on and on and on on on
Yeah yeah, alright, uh huh, ah
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
On and on and on on and on
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

Songwriters: John Lennon

Everything I say relates to karma. If you don't believe in karma, and dissect my posts anyway, the result is retardation. 

It just doesn't relate to karma according to the Buddha and so it doesn't fit with the Buddhas teachings, or with the experiences of advanced meditators or even meditators in what Daniel refers to as spiritual Kindergarten, that is, stream entry.

I say this out of a desire to help, not insult, but you seem to have intellectually come to a conclusion about karma and are thinking of justifications for that conclusion versus just practising to find out the truth directly. Thinking won't get you there.

I have a questions Lasse. 

1. How do I know, if I act with good intention, my action will result in good karma. How can I judge before I act.

2. Does making as much good karma as I can lead me to the end of suffering?

3. If I get to the end of suffering, does that mean I will no longer feel pain in my body? (like headaches)

4. How do I get rid of my bad karma?

5. If I do nothing at all, can I stop making good and bad karma for myself?

I'm trying to figure out what to do directly within the framework of karma taught by the Buddha. I recognize it's not all what the Buddha taught directly, which is why I'm curious as to what Buddhist teachings like meditation and Nirvana have to do with karma. Amending wrong deeds works in my case to eliminate unexplained physical suffering, but perhaps the Buddha's other teachings show a better way, what I'm exploring also -- how it functions within the realm of karma. Using this framework I previously also gave an alternative way of speaking of the twelve nidanas, a Buddha's teaching.

The Buddha must have taught something about how to eliminate the effects of bad karma. Given that karma relates to physical suffering like the Buddha experiencing great pain on the head due to a wrong deed, and the Buddhist path being about the cessation of suffering, meaning that all practices by the Buddha direct at doing something with karma. If karma is not the case, then my goal would shift into explaining physical suffering and what to do with it without involving Buddhism, but I believe karma is responsible for physical suffering, therefore what the Buddha taught becomes relevant.

I'm actually doing the reverse, not trying to justify this idea but thinking about what to do within this framework of karma, if one believes that physical suffering is caused by karma. It's a new way to read Buddhism, by assuming that all meditative practices etc do something with karma, distinct from what a modern assumption might be, that these practices do, well, nobody knows what they do -- Daniel M. Ingram for instance seems to suggest that these practices produce something akin to bipolar disorder and then won't fix it. 

1. My assumption is that good acts just come back. I have limited experience with how. Good acts are obvious, like giving someone money, a massage. I've given away like 2000 bucks worth of things recently because I fully believe it comes back -- it's a lot for me because I don't work (yet) due to a weird life situation. 

2. No, it leads to good things but in order to end suffering something needs to be done with wrong acts, is my assumption. Still figuring out what it is. Amending wrong acts seem to help. I believe that the Buddhist path might be aimed at somehow eliminating the negative karma arising from wrong deeds, but not sure how. 

3. I'm not sure. According to Buddhism, you should still experience pain and pleasure. I believe conditions like headaches will vanish. 

4. Still figuring it out. Amending your wrong deeds is a definite way to do it, but difficult. I wonder if meditation and Nirvana are somehow related to it.

5. Not sure. How Buddhism works within the framework of karma is a fascinating question. 

Buddhism is probably a religion, and religions are focused on goodness. The idea of goodness is that good behavior comes back and bad behavior comes back. Different religions might deal with different types of goodnesses, for instance Hinduism might deal with goodness regarding fear -- if one causes fear to others it comes back. Fear involves having done something. In order to minimize fear one can do yoga, which is to develop physical power and control by stretching so that this energy leads to feeling less fear. One needs to remain stalwart, dependable, and this can be the focus of a Hindu meditation practice. 

Islam might be goodness regarding anger. This is to never cause anger by being absolutely fair, to never take more than the rest of humanity for instance, to not even have undeserved possessions like perhaps even a bed, unless one works for it. If one is fair one gets to experience a lot of bounty, if one is unfair one loses bounty. Islam might be involved with mental suffering. For instance, when I was younger I believed that some hard-working people don't necessarily deserve the best possessions out there, that one has to aim at a high education in order to deserve them, which is a massively unfair thought because these people work immensely hard and surely deserve as much as higher-educated people. The consequence of this is that I experienced no way to "make it" in life, because I had pushed away all the low places in the world where one could have a place where one could "make it", and I experienced a colossal existential crisis at one point, involving a terrible panic attack. Similarly, if one say believes unfairly that some people belong to prison, this would come back as one experiencing terrible emotions. Something like this is my theory. 

Christianity might be goodness regarding sadness. This means to not make anyone Terribly sad. If one say uses unfair advantage to call someone an idiot, and thus produce Terrible sadness for them, this would be a sin. Prayer would work by the prayer not making anyone in the world sad, so that this becomes a True wish. Heaven is a place where there are no bad feelings.

Another thing to Goodness is love. Love involves all the contemplative experiences. For instance, the world being unknown to one would be an experience of love of before one could remember. Actual Freedom is an experience of love of there being no renowning entity in the world, but everything being exactly the way it is. I believe the centerlessness described in MCTB might be an experience of love. There are all sorts of contemplative accomplishments of love, there's one thing I've briefly experienced that I dubbed "no-subject" -- I don't remember how I experienced it but what I felt was some cap being taken out of visual sensations and imagination, so that all visuality felt gloriously infinite, and I remember skin pain producing no suffering, for instance if I burned my hand, the pain would be exactly the same as ordinarily, I might even scream because of it, but there would be no suffering at all regarding skin pain. Internal body pain remained the same however, things like muscle aches. So this shift would involve the elimination of a subject from a world, that of any -one- who would experience anything, many sensations becoming uncapped, experienced infinitely by itself. 

Some more ideas related to Buddhism:

We hurt exactly the way we make others hurt, if you imagine the act of intentionally punching someone in the face, you'd feel weakness at the stomach, miserable feelings. The intention is the persistant wrong feeling one feels inside, which causes a hell. The stress of wrong intention needs to be physically let go of. 

One needs to see beyond what one caused to one person, to what the act caused to other things. This way one can lose body identification, sense that one originated the act, and thus develop immense calm -- it unfabricates the body. So seeing the links of what one's wrong act did to other things helps to ease the act's power, because one no longer identifies with the act, one identifies with something larger. This practice leads to one hecoming kind-natured and lose stress associated with the individual act, this stress spreading into a larger pool.

The Buddha was all about empirical experience through meditative practice and very critical of religious beliefs. You are approaching this backwards. If you do the practice you will see that there is no self at the center of the suffering. 

You probably didn't see my previous post which I edited -- certain experiences of no self would be experiences of love, and Buddhism would be a "religion" focused on doing something with goodness. These experiences of love can eliminate or alter the experience of pain.

Goodness solves all problems, love makes it so that there are no problems that need to be solved. 

If you want to walk the path (I don't know whether that is the case, but if you do), it would probably be helpful for you to theorize less and practice more. 

The path offered in the Pali Canon is confusing and needs to be straightened out in order for me to follow it. When I'm done theorizing I can follow things, knowing where they even lead in the first place. Does the path lead to something akin to bipolar disorder as described in MCTB? Does it lead to complete cessation of physical suffering? Or something else? I'm learning to do meditation in tandem with theorizing, but the techniques are very hard when not properly understood what they even do. I'm thinking meditation might involve the investigation of the physical self, seeing how to develop goodness within the physical self. 

Sorry, I can't help you there. I'm on a quest for the truth, but I have only started the journey. If I already knew exactly where the path would lead, and how, I wouldn't need to make the journey, but that's just not how it works. All I can tell you is that so far the journey has been well worth it. It seems to go far beyond any theorizing, so in trying to figure it out intellectually, you are only wasting your time. As far a I understand, that is basically what the Buddha considered the wrong view, as he was all about empiricism.

Wrong views were karmic, leading to poor rebirth. Of course it goes beyond theorizing, but understanding how suffering works and how it is cessated, literally is the four noble truths. 

That is why one needs practice. That's the only way to get that kind of understanding. Theorizing won't take you there, especially not the kind that assumes that there is a separate and continuous self. 

If the practice does not lead to knowledge of past lives then it's a different practice to what the Buddha explained. There are multiple practices that lead to different things which is why how everything works needs to be straightened out. For instance, Daniel M. Ingram seems to have experienced something akin to bipolar disorder from his meditation practice -- I started doing meditation in 2014 and experienced a colossal existential crisis. I wasn't doing the practice as explained in the Pali Canon either, I was ultraconcentrating on sensations which was never described. So there is a lot of confusion as to what is the proper practice and what does it lead to. Worse, Hinduism describes meditation as well. Theorizing is necessary, else you just end up practicing a mental illness, or things that lead to not where you think they lead to, or things that lead somewhere but are not a solution to your problems, or things that lead to new problems which then need to be theorized. Nobody knows everything. Worst of all -- we are following Buddhist practices without involving things the Buddha described, like craving, past lives, karma. Therefore we are not following Buddhism, we are toying with something we have no idea, say how the brain works. 

Stream entry for instance is involved with rebirth. It has nothing to do with anything else. It doesn't do brain shifts, it is involved with the framework of rebirth. 

You are welcome to believe whatever you want, if that is important to you. I prefer to just do whatever works and see for my(not)self. Take care!

Byee

[quote=Lasse


Everything I say relates to karma. If you don't believe in karma, and dissect my posts anyway, the result is retardation. ]



evidently so...

won't happen again...

You can only lead a horse to water....