Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering: in short the five categories affected by clinging are suffering.

There is this Noble Truth of Suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

This Noble Truth must be penetrated by fully understanding suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

This Noble Truth has been penetrated by fully understanding suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

Question: Is physical pain a greater form of suffering than the mental sate of desire and greed?

Depends, sometimes yes sometimes no. Sometimes you're in pain and you don't even know it.

Everyone suffers. But the fact that everyone suffers does not in and of itself bind us together. Suffering no more binds you to other sufferers than having brown eyes binds you to other brown-eyed people. Or being hungry binds you to others who are hungry. Or being sad binds you to others who are sad. I think that there is something more at work.

"There is no salvation without compassion for all living beings ~Buddha"

Everyone suffers. But the fact that everyone suffers does not in and of itself bind us together. Suffering no more binds you to other sufferers than having brown eyes binds you to other brown-eyed people. Or being hungry binds you to others who are hungry. Or being sad binds you to others who are sad.

I think that there is something more at work.

Oh, I just read your last post. I don't believe in karma or reincarnation. When we die,we are dead. Although I'm willing to look at evidence to the contrary

yes... the Noble Truths (are inconvenient) suck.

It is (almost) impossible to get around them.

Yes, there is "something more at work" here. But they are one in the same. We ARE all connected. Every life form on this planet shares the same DNA.

From the Fish in the Sea's to the Birds in the Sky, we all wish for the same thing. To care for each other, love each other, have compassion for each other.



We as humans are very special in this respect. We have the mental capacity to love, cherish, provide compassion and protect life in all of its' forms. We are the most fortunate ones of over 4 billion years of evolution.

I can go on, and on, and on, and on...

Getting late in the evening now. Let me end tonight by saying that the Earth is NOT the center of the Universe. It is not the center of our Galaxay, nor is it even the center of our own Solar System.

Tyo - I am very much looking forward to discussing this topic with you. Thank you for engaging me. Your previous posts on the "Spiritual" are wonderful. Like you, I too know there is more than has been revealed through Theological views.

Talk to you later.

Namaste

It's good to see you again Myoho

But not totally impossible?

You can see that the First Noble Truth is not an absolute statement because of the Fourth Noble Truth, which is the way of non-suffering. You cannot have absolute suffering and then have a way out of it, can you? That doesn’t make sense. Yet some people will pick up on the First Noble Truth and say that the Buddha taught that everything is suffering.

It is important to reflect upon the phrasing of the First Noble Truth. It is phrased in a very clear way: "There is suffering", rather than "I suffer". Psychologically, that reflection is a much more skilful way to put it. We tend to interpret our suffering as "I’m really suffering. I suffer a lot - and I don’t want to suffer." This is the way our thinking mind is conditioned.

"I am suffering" always conveys the sense of "I am somebody who is suffering a lot. This suffering is mine; I’ve had a lot of suffering in my life." Then the whole process, the association with one’s self and one’s memory, takes off. You remember what happened when you were a baby...and so on.

But note, we are not saying there is someone who has suffering. It is not personal suffering anymore when we see it as "There is suffering". It is not: "Oh poor me, why do I have to suffer so much? What did I do to deserve this? Why do I have to get old? Why do I have to have sorrow, pain, grief and despair? It is not fair! I do not want it. I only want happiness and security." This kind of thinking comes from ignorance which complicates everything and results in personality problems.

To let go of suffering, we have to admit it into consciousness. But the admission in Buddhist meditation is not from a position of: "I am suffering" but rather, "There is the presence of suffering" because we are not trying to identify with the problem but simply acknowledge that there is one. It is unskilful to think in terms of: "I am an angry person; I get angry so easily; how do I get rid of it?" - that triggers off all the underlying assumptions of a self and it is very hard to get any perspective on that. It becomes very confused because the sense of my problems or my thoughts takes us very easily to suppression or to making judgements about it and criticising ourselves. We tend to grasp and identify rather than to observe, witness and understand things as they are. When you are just admitting that there is this feeling of confusion, that there is this greed or anger, then there is an honest reflection on the way it is and you have taken out all the underlying assumptions - or at least undermined them.

Well Tyo... maybe I should have stated that a little differently. No living being can escape the reality of the Four Noble Truths.

Maybe I jumped the gun and stated that "suffering" can be avoided. That is not what I was driving this conversation towards. All living beings experience suffering.

Through exploring our own minds, studying and meditating on the holy Dharma and practicing regularly we can acheive Enlightenment. We can even achieve Enlightenment within this lifetime. If we don't, we can expect to rebirth in to this realm. More than likely not as a Human being. To be reborn as a Human being again would take Kalpas and Kalpas of lifetimes as something less. Although this is not our last chance, why waste this time? I for one intend to use THIS life to ensure a successful rebirth. Maybe even enlightenment.

What a waste of time this life would be without knowing our place in the Universe. Unable to escape the bonds of Samsara and never to meet other Bodhisattvas and Buddhas and learn from them. Not able to traverse the Multiverse at will... but instead, be doomed to rebirth again and again in blood and suffering, as a plant, an animal, a human, a god (although God's live a great while, they too must rebirth eventually. They still require worshipers and from time to time still kill them). That is why I said that "Belief in One God would be nothing more than being trapped in a Guilded cage. There would be no escape.

To be born as Human is the hight of the Evolution of life in this world. We are the only beings on this planet who can see beyond. And fortunately the Buddha discovered the path out of Samsara and to Liberation once and for all. Lets put Buddhist cosmology on hold for now and discuss this First Noble Truth.

True. And suffering can be but is not necessarily something that binds us. Seems to me like sometimes those who are suffering the most are the most indifferent to the suffering of others. And sometimes the opposite is true. I don't see a hard and fast rule here.

The basic problem here is that you accept that reincarnation or rebirth happens. I do not.

This life is not a waste of time. It's all we've got.

I know my place in the universe is both supremely important and infinitesimally insignificant at the same time. I accept it and I don't feel the need to escape from it. Not that I could if I wanted to

We can not see beyond. If we could we wouldn't need faith. What lies beyond is only speculation. For me the most logical speculation is that nothing lies beyond. And that's what I'm going with

Question: Is physical pain a greater form of suffering than the mental sate of desire and greed?

I read of three other absolute truths concerning the ego of man. first, to be all powerful, second to feel no pain, and lastly to know with absolute certainty that One is doing the Will of God. Seems the ego wants to assume the role of the Creater, if one believes in God. That would eliminate just about all the conditions as being human.

I read of three other absolute truths concerning the ego of man. first, to be all powerful, second to feel no pain, and lastly to know with absolute certainty that One is doing the Will of God. Seems the ego wants to assume the role of the Creater, if one believes in God. That would eliminate just about all the conditions as being human.

Seems the ego wants to assume the role of the Creator

"'Now my body is dead. They will carry this body, motionless, to the cremation ground and burn it. But do I really die with this body? Am I merely this body? My body is now motionless. But still I know my name. I remember my parents, uncles, brothers, friends and all others. It means that I have a knowledge of my individuality. If so, the "I" in me is not merely my body; it is a deathless spirit.' ~ Ramana Maharishi

Very interesting indeed

The problem with the writing is that the author would have to die to experience those things whether there is awareness of self and a history on earth. Mediums contact the dead but is that the soul of the dead or sort of a record of that person left on earth ? I have no clue.

I onced asked an Arab Teacher what is ego. He said to me that it is everything of man and not of God. So he inferred as man acts out on ego needs, those higher ordered actions by man or doing the Will of the Creator are neglected.

There are two sayings that come to mine, "Of myself, I am nothing" and 'Humility is the want of nothing". So in theory a human being could have food, clothing and shelter as rights being a child of God. Or as the Christian Bible states, look how much God gives to birds like feathers, seeds and nest, don't you think he would do more for mankind ? Now most humans are dependent on family and community to meet all needs of the individual so of myself I am nothing. Turn on a light and realize that maybe it took something like 2000 people and energy resources in order to light up that bulb.

Greed, could just be a sick ego, an insecure individual, someone who just can never feel a point of satisfication. The imbalance is that this person is taking the rights under God away from another individual. As hoarding rice could leading to the starvation of others. And so the ego says to the individual more of what I crave, ignoring those which are left to starve. I know that in the case of an addiction the sick mind and body will crave a substance to a point of destroying the body. One man I met, a veteran by the way, was nearly dead to alcohol addiction when he told the Administration that if he could not eliminate the disease then he would eliminate the host, suicide. He finally got the help he needed and deserved through a display of desparation, and lived to pass that story on to me.

I really don't comment on duality because I believe there is only one plain in reality therefore the other must be a hoax.

All that we seem to be are defilements on the Universal Mind. We are then all of one source - the Universal Mind (One Mind) - in that we all arise due to processes of the Universal Mind.

Then said Mahamati to the Blessed One: Pray tell us, Blessed One, about Universal Mind and its relation to the lower mind-system?

The Blessed One replied: The sense-minds and their centralized discriminating-mind are related to the external world which is a manifestation of itself and is given over to perceiving, discriminating, and grasping its maya-like appearances. Universal Mind (Alaya-vijnana) transcends all individuation and limits. Universal Mind is thoroughly pure in its essential nature, subsisting unchanged and free from faults of impermanence, undisturbed by egoism, unruffled by distinctions, desires and aversions. Universal Mind is like a great ocean, its surface ruffled by waves and surges but its depths remaining forever unmoved. In itself it is devoid of personality and all that belongs to it, but by reason of the defilements upon its face it is like an actor that plays a variety of parts, among which a mutual functioning takes place and the mind-system arises. The principle of intellection becomes divided and mind, the functions of mind, the evil out-flowings of mind, take on individuation. The sevenfold gradation of mind appears: namely, intuitive self-realization, thinking-desiring-discriminating, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and all their interactions and reactions take their rise.

I read of three other absolute truths concerning the ego of man. first, to be all powerful, second to feel no pain, and lastly to know with absolute certainty that One is doing the Will of God. Seems the ego wants to assume the role of the Creater, if one believes in God. That would eliminate just about all the conditions as being human.

Truth is not Dogma. There are no absolute truths.

Reality is always in flux. Suffering is only a concept in the minds of pompous primates. Suffering is something we create then abhorre.

Suffering only exists when we impose it on others and even then it is irrelivent if the reciepients simply do not care. "You cannot steal from me that which I will freely give you"

Suffering exist when Desire comes to the realm of the Present.

When Desire lives in the Future, it is an unreal thing in an unreal world.

But when it is in the Present, and clashes with reality, that clash is suffering.

"I will refrain from intentionally killing,' because our instinctual nature is to kill; if it is in the way, kill it. You can see this in the animal kingdom. We are quite predatory creatures ourselves; we think we are civilised but we have a really bloody history - literally. It is just filled with endless slaughters and justifications for all kinds of iniquities against other living beings - and it is all because of this basic ignorance, this unreflecting human mind that tells us to annihilate what is in our way.

The problem with the writing is that the author would have to die to experience those things whether there is awareness of self and a history on earth. Mediums contact the dead but is that the soul of the dead or sort of a record of that person left on earth ? I have no clue.

I onced asked an Arab Teacher what is ego. He said to me that it is everything of man and not of God. So he inferred as man acts out on ego needs, those higher ordered actions by man or doing the Will of the Creator are neglected.

There are two sayings that come to mine, "Of myself, I am nothing" and 'Humility is the want of nothing". So in theory a human being could have food, clothing and shelter as rights being a child of God. Or as the Christian Bible states, look how much God gives to birds like feathers, seeds and nest, don't you think he would do more for mankind ? Now most humans are dependent on family and community to meet all needs of the individual so of myself I am nothing. Turn on a light and realize that maybe it took something like 2000 people and energy resources in order to light up that bulb.

Greed, could just be a sick ego, an insecure individual, someone who just can never feel a point of satisfication. The imbalance is that this person is taking the rights under God away from another individual. As hoarding rice could leading to the starvation of others. And so the ego says to the individual more of what I crave, ignoring those which are left to starve. I know that in the case of an addiction the sick mind and body will crave a substance to a point of destroying the body. One man I met, a veteran by the way, was nearly dead to alcohol addiction when he told the Administration that if he could not eliminate the disease then he would eliminate the host, suicide. He finally got the help he needed and deserved through a display of desparation, and lived to pass that story on to me.

I really don't comment on duality because I believe there is only one plain in reality therefore the other must be a hoax.

Getting closer... what you are saying here is "awareness", but you still have a bit of dust in your eye.

Meditate on what you have written here.

I may or may not have a log in my own eye that prevents me removing a splinter from a neighbor's eye. I would certainly never profess to be a perfect human being. Nor would I assume that all there is to know about our universe has be revealed to date.

The Buddha was dependent on others to suffer for him so that he could sit on a mountaintop and contemplate the ways of life.

So every teacher in his pattern must somehow enslave students to serve their master on earth. I have no such master in my life and if the road is made somewhat longer or more painful because of that, so be it, at least I have walked my own road!

I don't expect followers or fellow travellers on this road because it was not made for mountaintop sitters.

My reality comes from the road behind me, the turf below me today, and hopefully wisdom that guides to the horizon and beyond

that which we all cannot possibly see.

I disagree. You can see it. Meditation is all that is required.

If, you can see the future then please share it with us as inquirying minds want to know.

Meditation...

That is all that is required.

Do you suffer? I do.

Dont mistake the finger for the moon!!

You are... Awake.

My favorite Mantra.. ala Jack Kerouac.. " I am empty,
I am awake"