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Thread: Dukkha is more than suffering.

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    f a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive,” he said while laughing and scrunching up his face. “People, I think, prefer not to see that face.”

    When the interviewer pointed out that the Dalai Lama’s emphasis on looks seemed strange for a man who preaches tolerance and inner confidence, he doubled down, saying both inner and outer beauty are important in Buddhist teachings.

    He then stressed that he supported women’s rights and equal pay in the workplace.

    The Dalai Lama has spoken about this before, telling the BBC in 2015 that an unattractive female Dalai Lama “would not be much use.”

    The Dalai Lama has a vested interest in the matter since Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lama can personally pick the body of their next incarnation.

    The Dalai Lama’s comments about women weren’t the only ones attracting attention. The Buddhist leader responded to a question about letting refugees resettle in Europe by saying a “limited number” is “OK.” But he added, laughing, that the idea of Europe becoming Muslim or African is “impossible.”

    He then echoed a far-right talking point: “Keep Europe for Europeans.”


    The Dalai Lama has made similar comments in recent years.

    The Buddhist leader also slammed Donald Trump for his “lack of moral principle.”
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dalai...b07f6ca57c75b8

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    Buddha came to his own Self-Realization and ‘enlightenment,’ without the prior guidance of his own Dharma, Satipatthana Sutta, etc., couldn’t we do the same? Do we really need past scripture/teachings from Buddha,
    Lao Tze, Jesus or any other ancient enlightened master to abide in our own true nature?
    To come to rest in whatever ‘level’ of conscious enlightenment this Life has in store for us?

    No, we don’t. We are already one with our natural state, with Reality, whether we realize it or not, whether our temporary illusory identification with our seemingly-separate ego identities temporarily appears to blind us to That. There is nothing to attain.

    Contemplate this:
    What if Buddha and all the other ’enlightened’ masters had never lived, and never offered a single discourse,
    teaching or guidance?

    What if you never heard a single line of teachings on enlightenment, what it (supposedly) is,
    and how you might ‘reach’ it?

    What if you never even heard the words enlightenment, self-realization or ‘spiritual awakening?’

    And yet, in your lifetime, you still noticed there seemed to be an awful lot of suffering, lack of meaning and lack of wisdom about the true purpose of life, and you wondered if there wasn’t something more, something deeper,
    some ‘living awareness’ of what we Are, in addition to all that?

    And you decided to go seeking for this, for these ‘ultimate answers’…not only intellectually,
    but to embody this true purpose or true Is-ness?

    What would you do? Where would you go? Remember, you’ve got no scriptures, no gurus, no Buddhas,
    no reference points whatsoever. Still, you are determined to uncover the true Reality and live it fully,
    be One with it.

    What would you do?

    Why, you would likely walk a path very similar to what Buddha did. Without any guidance except life, suffering, change, loss and death. You would learn from Life Itself.

    And that’s not just how it should be, that’s how it must be. Each of us must make this seeming ‘journey’
    (from Nowhere to Right Back Where You Started:-) alone, totally alone. It seems so wonderful & useful to have these scriptures, sutras, bibles, and great living and dead masters, ‘attainers of enlightenment,’ to transmit there discourses & knowledge and guide us Home.

    Except that Home is discovered to be One Thing, One Reality, no duality, no separation having ever existed, and “we” discover there was no one out there, no gurus or masters talking to us or exemplifying the ‘path.’
    The true We was just talking to Itself. “God pouring God into God” as Herman Hesse once said.

    So each of “us” approximately 250 billion humans that have lived on Earth can go forth and ‘seek enlightenment,’
    an end to their suffering, and the true meaning & purpose of Life, with or without past Buddhas or present gurus or written/recorded learned discourses or Quora (lol!) and it will seem that very few, even the ones totally committed to Buddhist or other ‘path,’ will ever ‘reach’ it. At least 249.999 billion will not. Or it will seem that way.

    Because enlightenment is not a state or achievement of anyone’s ‘individual life.’ Enlightenment is Life Itself. All of It. And you are already That. We are already Home.

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    Billionaire donates $100 million to compassion research after conversation with Dalai Lama
    by Lilly Greenblatt| July 25, 2019
    https://www.lionsroar.com/banking-bi...he-dalai-lama/

    Banking billionaire Denny Sanford has donated $100 million to UC San Diego (UCSD) for the scientific study of empathy and compassion. Sanford said that the donation was inspired by a private meeting he had with the Dalai Lama in 2017, when His Holiness gave a commencement address at UCSD.

    “I have been inspired by the work and teachings of the Dalai Lama, whose interest in the intersection where science and faith meet is deep and profound,” Sanford said in a statement. “I have had the opportunity to see how grace, humanity and kindness can change people and the world. This gift extends that vision.”

    Dr. David Brenner, the vice chancellor of health sciences at UCSD, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Sanford’s gift was influenced by this meeting. “The Dalai Lama said that we must show that there is a scientific basis to empathy and compassion,” Brenner said. “That’s what Denny’s gift will help scientists do.”

    The research funded by the gift will look at how to cultivate empathy and compassion in medical professionals. “Doctors work in a world where compassion is essential, but often lost in the harsh realities of modern medicine. If we can help medical professionals preserve and promote their compassion, based on the findings of hard science, the world can be a happier, healthier place,” said Sanford.

    The gift will allow for research to help understand empathy and compassion and how to use these qualities effectively. So far, researchers have lacked the tools needed to undertake such research.

    Most of the research will be conducted through the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at UCSD, where researchers say they “will conduct innovative research into the neurological basis of compassion, establishing the empirical evidence required to design a compassion-focused curriculum for training new generations of medical professionals and developing new methods to protect and promote the well-being of current clinicians and their patients.”

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    What is karma, according to the Buddhist teachings?

    Bhikkhu Bodhi: Perhaps we could begin with the description of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience as given in various sutras in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Pali, Majjhima Nikaya). This gives a very concise statement of the early Buddha’s understanding of karma.

    The Buddha’s enlightenment unfolded by way of what are called the Three Higher Knowledges.
    The first of these is the Buddha’s knowledge of his past lives—recollecting his previous lives going back hundreds of thousands of eons. The second is his knowledge of the death and rebirth of beings, which involves understanding how beings transmigrate according to their karma. Perhaps I could read a passage describing this from the Bhayabherava Sutta:

    “When my concentrated mind was purified, bright and so on, I directed it to knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings. With the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, I saw beings passing away and being reborn, inferior and superior, bare and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate. I understood how beings pass on according to their actions thus:

    “These beings who are ill-conducted in body, speech and mind, revilers of noble ones, wrong in their views, giving effect to wrong view in their actions, with the breakup of the body after death, have reappeared in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower worlds, even in hell.

    “But these worthy beings who were well conducted in body, speech and mind, not revilers of noble ones, right in their views, giving effect to right view in their actions, on the breakup of the body after death, have been reborn in a good destination, even in the heavenly world.


    “Thus, with the divine eye I saw beings passing away and being reborn and I understood how beings pass on according to their actions.”



    Finally, the third knowledge is described as the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. But preceding that comes the understanding of the chain of dependent origination or dependent arising. This involves understanding the dynamics of how karma, in conjunction with the basic defilements of ignorance and craving, brings about rebirth.

    Jan Chozen Bays: As a physician, I teach karma from a scientific point of view, because what I love about karma is that it is rational. Karma is like the laws of physics. It’s almost mathematically precise, and there is a great relief in that. Because if you understand karma, you really understand who and what you are, and you understand the rest of the universe too, because the laws of karma are universally applicable.

    When I teach about rebirth, I ask people to consider what happens to the physical elements of the body after they die. I ask them, if we buried you in the ground with no preservatives and dug you up in a week, would we recognize you? Yes. If we dug you up in a year, would we recognize you? Maybe. If we dug you up in ten years, would we recognize you? No. So what happened to the elements that made up the body? They all dispersed and became other things.
    If you die angry, what happens to that energy of anger?

    Appreciating this, people begin to understand that on the physical level there is a endless chain of energy that passes through a series of changes. Then if you apply the same principle to our mental and emotional energy, you can also ask where it goes. That energy is also not destroyed, though the energy that was “you” will transform.
    https://www.lionsroar.com/panel-the-...c79d46&mc_eid=[UNIQID]

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    the Buddha acknowledged two key facts: Enlightenment or Awakening is an intrinsic capacity of every human being. And some people, without finding teachers, do Awaken through their own natural or intensive efforts. The term the Buddha used for such people is Pratyeka-Buddha, which means “self-awakened.” The Buddha simply meant that a person might find the Way on his or her own without a Teacher, and this was legitimate enlightenment.

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    Buddhism can be a religion but it doesn't have to be. Buddhism is a set of principles and practices that demonstrably improve your life. No faith is necessary. You can believe in another religion or be an atheist and it still works.

    The Four Noble Truths

    1. Life means suffering and struggle
    2. The origin of suffering and struggle is attachment
    3. It is possible to end suffering and struggle through...
    4. ...The Eightfold Path

    The Eightfold Path

    1. Right View (The Four Noble Truths)

    2. Right Intention
    a. Renunciation:
    Resistance to desire
    b. Goodwill:
    Resistance to anger and aversion
    c. Harmlessness:
    Compassion,
    Don't think or act cruelly, violently or aggressively

    3. Right Speech
    a. Tell the truth
    b. Don't gossip
    c. Don't use offensive or hurtful language

    4. Right Action (The Precepts)
    a. Don't harm other living beings
    b. Don't take things not freely given
    c. Don't engage in sexual misconduct
    d. Don't engage in false speech
    e. Don't abuse drugs or alcohol

    5. Right Livelihood
    Don't work in a job that violates The Precepts

    6. Right Effort
    a. Create, preserve and increase healthy states
    b. Prevent, eliminate or decrease harmful states

    7. Right Mindfulness
    a. See things clearly
    b. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
    Be mindful of:
    - body
    - feeling
    - state of mind
    - phenomena

    8. Right Concentration
    a. Meditation
    b. Concentration on healthy thoughts and actions

    Buddhist Virtues (The Four Immeasurables)

    1. Compassion: The intention and capacity to relieve the suffering of oneself and all other living beings.

    2. Loving Kindness: The intention and capacity to bring joy and happiness to oneself and all other living beings.

    3. Empathetic Joy: Rejoicing in the happiness and virtues of another living being

    4. Equanimity: Accepting loss or gain, praise or blame, success or failure with detachment. Regarding all living beings equally. Being clear-minded and tranquil but not dull.

    The Three Poisons (The Roots of All Suffering)

    Anger/Aversion/Hatred
    Craving/Attachment/Greed
    Delusion/Ignorance


    The Three Jewels (The Credo of Buddhism)

    Buddha: Mindfulness, your highest spiritual potential
    Dharma: The teachings of the Buddha and the practice of those teachings
    Sangha: The community that supports that practice


    I take refuge in the Buddha,

    the one who shows me the way in this life

    I take refuge in the Dharma,

    the way of understanding and love

    I take refuge in the Sangha,

    the community that lives in harmony and awareness

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    In Zen, what is suchness? -Is it the nature of emptiness? Did the Buddha talk about it?


    Suchness is the physical reality. Take a look at a fallen leaf. It is what it is. That’s how it looks like. No amount of meditation or psychedelics will make it look any different, maybe only temporarily.
    That’s reality.

    The nature of emptiness is not suchness, the nature of emptiness is the dreaming mind, the unreality. Your self-image, what kind of person you think you are or want to be, how you relate to other people, your goals, aspirations in life, your emotions, your struggles, your pride, your accomplishments, your hatred, your love, your fear, your anxiety, your longing, your relationships, your gender - this whole intricately complex inner world which you inhabit is empty, and is ultimately self-created.
    All spiritual practices and methods are designed to bring all this stuff to the level of consciousness, see it, experience it and let it go.
    All spiritual experiences, however scary, blissful or profound they may be, also happen in your mind, not reality. Just like dreams.

    The total and complete destruction of this inner world is the process of spiritual enlightenment,
    and the realization of suchness lies at the very end of the spiritual path.

    (Yahoo)

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    In some way, or by some means, whether it be through sitting still on the floor for ten years, or an episode of intense suffering, you have to clearly see that the ego-self that you feel yourself to be cannot actually do anything about your situation as a human being.

    In other words, it has to become viscerally apparent to you that every atom and every electron in this universe is in a constant state of flux, and there is absolutely nothing you can hold on to. You have to realise in the pit of your soul that all your attempts to grasp at, resist or control this universe are about as futile as trying to make bricks out of water. There is nothing you can ultimately do about change and decay.

    If you really get with this, then, what happens is that you realise that the feeling of yourself as a fixed observer of the changing tides of experience was always just an illusion. It's just a fear reaction created by the reflective capacity of the human mind. This separate 'me' that feels confronted by a changing organism and a changing world could never do anything about these things because it never actually existed in the first place. There is only the stream of change, and you are that. So you might as well swim with the current, because, in the end, there really is no other option. Enlightenment is as simple as that.

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    What is Buddha’s realization?

    Lord Buddha realized the noble truth. In the sense, it is the ultimate truth anybody can realize about the world.

    The Noble Truth is of four parts.

    The ‘suffering’: There are several categories of suffering Lord Buddha has explained. No matter how hard you try, no one can escape from it unless you follow the path revealed by Lord Buddha. There is a concept in buddhism;

    ‘Pancha (Five) - Upadhana (grabbed by desire) - Sakanda (Masses/ Entities)’.
    Lord Buddha explained, having this ‘Five-Entities-Grabbed by Desire’ itself is the ‘suffering’. In brief, these five entities are as follows. When you grabbed these five entities by your desire, so comes the suffering).

    The physical body (Ruu.pa)
    The nature of the mind (or thoughts) of experiencing something (it can be joy, sadness or neutral) (Vee.da.na)
    The nature of the mind (or thoughts) of identifying something (like how you recognize your father by seeing him) (San.gna)
    The nature of the mind (or thoughts) that generate when doing/ going to do things (either by mentally, orally or physically) (San.ka.ra)
    The mind itself (Vin.gna.na)

    The ‘cause of suffering’: Lord Buddha explained the immediate cause of the suffering is the ‘desire’ (Than.ha).
    But, one important thing to understand is ‘desire’ is not the only cause to ‘suffering’ and it is the immediate cause only. Therefore, it is very important not to misunderstand that, vanishing ‘desire’ itself is not the path to cease the suffering.
    Because, you cannot vanish ‘desire’ itself. You will see that when I briefly explain the fourth part of noble truth.

    The ‘cessation of suffering’: Lord Buddha realized there is a end for these sufferings by creatures;
    That is the ‘Enlightenment’ (Nir.va.na). In very simple sense it comes when you realize and able to see all four noble truths through yourself.
    Not simple read, memorizing or understanding will grant you this. As I said, realization and able to see it through yourself.

    The ‘path to cessation of suffering’: Lord Buddha did not stop his journey and kindness just understanding it by himself. He taught others the exact path to follow. It is called Ar.ya (Noble) - As.tan.gi.ka (Eight-stepped) - Mar.ga.ya (Path).
    In brief, it is as below. There are many detailed ways and presentations of this path.
    Noble Vision (Understanding without myth (This is the most important. Meaning of ‘Myth’ might be different to what you think). (Samma Ditti)
    Noble concepts/ attitudes (Samma Sankappa)
    Noble use of words (Samma Waacha)
    Noble way of doings (Samma Kammantha)
    Noble way of living (Samma Aajiwa)
    Noble efforts (Samma Vaayama)
    Noble conscious (Samma Sathi)
    Noble concentration (Samma Samadi)

    As I said before, you will see from the above brief path, that the ‘desire’ is not the point to turn the suffering backward.
    it is not the point to stop suffering; but the correction for your vision is!
    This correction of your vision, in other words it need to change the way you see the world. In brief, you have to see how the world (not earth, world means, in and out side of you) is built when the reasons present, and how it is vanished when the reasons are gone.

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    śrotāpanna is a term in Buddhism known as Stream Entry.

    The stream is the process of removing ignorance which is initially glimpsed for a period.
    This ignorance is seeing a world that never existed at all…everyday existence (ordinary mind.)

    When the illusion of existence is seen through it cannot be unknown ever again.
    What is known is known. One can then never be out of the stream of liberation.

    This is also referred to as Awakening.
    There is basically experiential certainty that things do not exist as they appear to.

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    This world would be a very nice place if everyone genuinely cultivated and applied the ethical tenets articulated in the eightfold noble path, the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Hadith.

    Especially germane to most of the posters on obscure political message boards.

  12. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Cypress For This Post:

    dukkha (09-25-2019), Phantasmal (09-25-2019)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    This world would be a very nice place if everyone genuinely cultivated and applied the ethical tenets articulated in the eightfold noble path, the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Hadith.

    Especially germane to most of the posters on obscure political message boards.
    Why don't you practice what you preach the next time you start making false claims about those with which you disagree.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    This world would be a very nice place if everyone genuinely cultivated and applied the ethical tenets articulated in the eightfold noble path, the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Hadith.

    Especially germane to most of the posters on obscure political message boards.
    Other than the first 4 of the Commandments, the rest are nothing more than any reasonably moral person, including atheists, doesn’t recognize on their own.

    Honor your parents
    Don’t lie
    Don’t kill
    Don’t steal
    Don’t fuck outside your marriage
    Jealousy is a terrible emotion

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    Enlightenment’ in neither spiritual nor scientific. It’s simply what is.
    All ways of ‘considering’ it, whether from spiritual or scientific angles, are meaningless.

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    Enlightenment is an English translation of the quality of Buddha, which means one who is awake and aware.
    In particular, we are awake and aware to the relationship between our actions and our suffering.
    Then we apply common sense and we stop doing things that cause us to suffer.

    Everyone has some suffering in life.
    To be “enlightened”means to have a lot less because we don’t make more suffering for ourselves or for others.

    We do this by doing eight things, and meditation is only two of the eight things.
    These eight things are a very common-sense way of living called the eightfold path:

    1. Effective view. We look at life to see how it really works, especially inside ourselves.
    2. Effective intent: We intend harmless love; we want well-being for all. We let go of any other intentions, such as greed, fear, avoidance, or vengeance.
    3. Effective speech: We speak truth kindly in useful ways.
    4. Effective action: We perform deeds that are helpful, not harmful.
    5. Effective livelihood: We make a living without harming ourselves or others.
    6. Effective effort: We focus our free time on the work of learning how to eliminate suffering and eliminating suffering:
    7. Effective mindfulness: We meditate in that we pay attention to what is happening, and what the results of our thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds are.
    8. Effective concentration: We meditate more deeply, in deep stillness, so we are free to keep or let go of any thought or feeling.

    Having done these, we have self-control. We apply this in common sense with the four effective efforts:

    1. We don’t do things that cause suffering.
    2. If we are doing something that causes suffering, we stop.
    3. We start doing healthy, beneficial things.
    4. We do more healthy, beneficial things.

    In the awareness that arises from meditation, we gain the skill to carefullly select and tweak our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to create lives free of anxiety and suffering and full of healthy vitality, joy, and peace.

    That is “enlightenment.” https://www.quora.com/

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