Yes, but how do I get to enlightenment?

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Vas Bana from the Bhikkhu Sangha at LABV

The Buddha with florid wall depicting celestial devas and guardians (Dboo/flickr)

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Wisdom Quarterly has to stay aware of [operative] Netanyahu and the CIA's atrocities, maintain yogic attention bringing together body and mind with the bridge between them, spirit (breath). The world and ourselves in it is all well and good, but what about enlightenment?

 

According to the Buddha's message about the understanding of the nature of disappointment (unsatisfactoriness, suffering) should be the main purpose of an intelligent person with the rare opportunity to be reborn as a human being.

As the result of listening to the Buddha's message a person can understand the nature of the suffering we face in day to day life. If someone knows 

1. the real nature of suffering, one knows
2. the cause of suffering,
3. the cessation of suffering, and
4. the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.

Therefore, the understanding of the Four Noble Truths pivots on understanding disappointment. This understanding conduces to getting rid of it and attaining real happiness.

What is the CAUSE of all kinds of suffering? When some experience arises through our senses with the combination of mind and matter, if we have no real knowledge or understanding, we take it as permanent and we delight in it. Then when it changes, ceases, or disappears -- which it must inevitably do -- we suffer because of our ignorance into the true nature of phenomena and the nature of causes and effects, the way things come to be and fall away.

But if someone knows the situation as it actually is, one tries to avoid becoming involved in it -- delighting, craving, then clinging -- and finds release from disappointment/suffering.

One reflects on experience as it actually is just as it is. The experience arises and passes away at that moment without remaining as anything to cling to. One is free to enjoy it without being fooled as to what it is or is not. And unconfused, unperplexed, one experiences pleasure and pain with equanimity, not falling under the spell of delusion, wrong views, or ignorance.

A path to the further shore (Satorinihon/flickr)

Here we have a real path to make an end of suffering, to overcome disappointment, to heal pain and sadness, a Noble Eightfold Path.

This is central to Buddhism. All teachings taught by the Buddha to the world can be summarized under the Four Noble Truths, of which the path-of-practice may be the most important. As much as we may strive for knowledge, courage, compassion, or confidence, we can practice the path to enlightenment and get the result in this very life if we are kind, honest, and intelligent.

What is the first step of the path? CONTINUED IN PART 2

Alan Watts: Karma, Time, Meditation (audio)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Western Zen teacher Alan Watts "Way Beyond the West" via Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org, Pacifica Free Speech Radio, Berkeley, California)

Science maps the brain, while Buddhism maps consciousness (thinkprogress.org)

 

"Mind" (citta) is heart

Karma does not mean "cause and effect." That is an unfortunate translation, a misleading oversimplification based on wanting to show that Buddhism is "scientific."

Buddhism is more than scientific. We will not experience most science we are taught, but we can personally experience all the important things Buddhism teaches.

Science class says "cause and effect," and a budding Buddhist says, "Hey, that's like what Siddhartha said!" That's very superficial and separates past from present as if they were separate. They are quite connected and unbroken, like a snake's head and tail.

Cool cats (Dee McIntosh/deemac/flickr.com)

What is the right view on this matter? Karma means "action," based on kri, "doing." What happens is our doing. What is happening to us, we are doing. It isn't happening to us. Our actions are.

• (What comes to fruit in the future and present, like it did in the past, is intentional-action). 

But this is a deep insight fraught with risk as we try to bring it into conventional language: "You mean, I did it? I'm to blame? Yada, yada, yada." Alan Watts explains it beautifully. Karma is action.

• (The tangible karmic-fruit, the phala, and the mental-resultants, the vipaka, are distinguished from the action, the karma, by the Buddha. But this is for the sake of understanding a process; in reality, they are inseparable).

• AUDIO: PLAY (download) (May 15, 2014, 10:00 am, MP3)

The Science of LUST (video)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanatiloka Thera, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines

(Discovery/Extraordinary People) "The Science of Lust" full documentary. [NOTE: Remove annoying annotations from screen using "gear" icon.]

CRAVING (tanhā, literally "thirst") is the proximate root of disappointment (unsatisfactoriness, woe) and of the ever-continuing Cycle of Rebirths.

 

"What is the cause of disappointment? It is that craving which gives rise to ever-fresh rebirth and, bound up with pleasure and lust, now over here then over there, finds ever fresh delight. It takes three forms:

• sensual craving,
  
• the craving for existence,
  
• the craving for non-existence" (DN 22).
  

It is the eighth link in the formula of Dependent Origination. Corresponding to the six kinds of sense-objects, there are six kinds of craving: craving for sights, sounds, fragrances, flavors, bodily impressions, and mental impressions (MN 9, DN 15).

 

Chanda (zeal) can be "good desire"

Corresponding to the three spheres of existence, there are three kinds of craving -- for sensual existence, for fine-material existence, for immaterial existence (DN 33).

 

There are 18 "thought-channels of craving" (tanhā-vicarita) induced internally and 18 induced externally. Because they are counted as occurring in the past, present, and future, they total 108. (See AN IV, 199, Vibh., Ch. 17, Khuddakavatthu-Vibhanga).

According to causal links of Dependent Origination, craving is conditioned by sensation. Of craving for existence it is said: "No first beginning of the craving for existence can be perceived, O meditators, before which it was not and after which it came to be. But it can he perceived that craving for existence has its specific condition. I say, O meditators, that craving for existence also has a condition that feeds it and is not without it. And what is it? 'Ignorance' one has to reply" (AN X.62).

Oh my Gratitude, I love the smell of Nature!

Ignorance (delusion) and craving for existence (becoming) and are called "the outstanding causes that lead to happy and unhappy destinies (courses of existence)." (See Vis.M. XVII, 36-42).

 

The most frequent synonyms of craving are lust (rāga) and greed (lobha), one of the three roots of unwholesome karma.