Tag: Enlightenment

buddhism, Cause & Effect, Karma, Mental Health, Musings, personal

Drawn Back to the Bodhicaryāvatāra

“The Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra or Bodhicaryāvatāra translated into English as “A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life”, is a Mahāyāna Buddhist text written c. 700 AD in Sanskrit verse by Shantideva (Śāntideva), a Buddhist monk at Nālandā Monastic University in India which is also where it was composed.”

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To anyone who studies {and enacts} Buddhist philosophy it quickly becomes obvious that many of the foibles of modern life are not considered to bring enlightenment. Self-promotion, greed, gossip, attachment to worldly goods and gonadal corporeal acts are considered to be hindrances to attaining bodhi-mind. One could say that the ambitious “cut and thrust” of modern society is at odds with Buddhist thought and society actively discriminates against anyone who practises and embodies the precepts.

To use a metaphor; if you do not blow your own trumpet sufficiently loudly you will never get promoted up the greasy pole. Buddhism does not promote such trumpet blowing.

Modern western society discriminates against people who are not forceful, nor demanding, ambitious or manipulative. People who won’t play the itchy back game do not advance in our society as it currently manifests. If you can’t be bribed with some desire, some wish, then you are not to be trusted. If you do not want there are no levers to apply. If you don’t bullshit and hype like everyone else, but are accurate and modest, then you can appear as a nothing, a no-hoper.

People in general do not like it if you reject their ethos and mores. They are likely to judge you and condemn you if you renounce their ways of being, this is especially so if you look like them and talk like them. {I can, for real, talk reductionist science better than your average human.}

I have an ongoing joke, if I wore Buddhist robes instead of black Levi’s 501s people would cut me more slack for my apparent “eccentricities”. If I tipped up at a UK science conference in Saffron or Magenta, people would metaphorically shit a brick, especially those who once had my acquaintance.

But I am not a clown, nor do I do tricks.

Similarly, if one practises Christianity as per Jesus and not the church, there would be conflict with what modern society deems to be dandy.

If what I was “told” is correct then in two previous lives I did indeed wear Buddhist robes and in another I was a Christian priest. I have been “told” that this is my very last incarnation on this planet.

When you look at all that stuff which people largely unthinking engage in, you can’t help but wonder why. Humanity is not happy, satisfied and at peace. There is precious little equanimity and a horde, a host of drama. There is a mental health crisis, allegedly.

Something in the way of life is not working…maybe it will one day lose its gloss…

 Anyway, today I am drawn once again to Śāntideva and the Bodhicaryāvatāra…

It is a candle in a dark and often petty world…

Personal Development, Quotations

Light Quotes

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in while, or the light won’t come in.

Alan Alda

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People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

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Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth

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He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

William Blake

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I live and love in God’s peculiar light.

Michelangelo

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Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.

Thomas Fuller

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The burden which is well borne becomes light.

Ovid

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What is to give light must endure burning.

Viktor E. Frankl

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Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

Albert Camus

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Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

Rabindranath Tagore

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As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Carl Jung

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Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Anton Chekhov

buddhism, Quotations, Zen

Menju 面授 Face to Face Transmission

Shōbōgenzō

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵, lit. “Treasury of the True Dharma Eye”) is the title most commonly used to refer to the collection of works written in Japanese by the 13th century Japanese Buddhist monk and founder of the Japanese Sōtō Zen school, Eihei Dōgen. Several other works exist with the same title (see above), and it is sometimes called the Kana Shōbōgenzō in order to differentiate it from those. The term shōbōgenzō can also be used more generally as a synonym for the Buddha Dharma as viewed from the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism.

Shōbōgenzō as a General Term

In Mahayana Buddhism the term True Dharma Eye Treasury (Japanese: Shōbōgenzō) refers generally to the Buddha Dharma, and in Zen Buddhism, it specifically refers to the realization of Buddha’s awakening that is not contained in the written words of the sutras.

In general Buddhist usage, the term “treasury of the Dharma” refers to the written words of the Buddha’s teaching collected in the Sutras as the middle of the Three Treasures of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. In Zen, however, the real treasure of the Dharma is not to be found in books but in one’s own Buddha Nature and the ability to see this Correct View (first of the Noble Eightfold Path) of the treasure of Dharma is called the “Treasure of the Correct Dharma Eye”.

In the legends of the Zen tradition, the Shōbōgenzō has been handed down from teacher to student going all the way back to the Buddha when he transmitted the Shobogenzo to his disciple Mahākāśyapa thus beginning the Zen lineage that Bodhidharma brought to China.

The legend of the transmission of the Shōbōgenzō to Mahākāśyapa is found in several Zen texts and is one of the most referred to legends in all the writings of Zen. Among the famous koan collections, it appears as Case 6 in the Wumenguan (The Gateless Checkpoint) and Case 2 in the Denkoroku (Transmission of Light). In the legend as told in the Wumenguan, the Buddha holds up a flower and no one in the assembly responds except for Arya Kashyapa who gives a broad smile and laughs a little. Seeing Mahākāśyapa’s smile the Buddha said,

    I possess the Treasury of the Correct Dharma Eye, the wonderful heart-mind of Nirvana, the formless true form, the subtle Dharma gate, not established by written words, transmitted separately outside the teaching. I hand it over and entrust these encouraging words to Kashyapa.

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Here is an extract of the Shōbōgenzō by Dōgen which is reported as being a part of a lecture at Yoshimine Temple in 1243.(!) This comes from “Moon in a Dewdrop” edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi

ॐ, Esoteric Psychology, Karma, Musings

The Externalisation – Some More Comments

Within the “blue books” much hope is placed upon the USA and UK helping to make a better world after the second world war. They share a common Soular ray {Love-wisdom} but have different personality rays Will to Power UK and Idealism and Devotion USA. The latter ray is the ray par excellence of polarisation and true to this ray the USA is one of the most polarised countries in the world. There are haves and have nots, people who think abortion is a sin and yet are happy to have a concealed carry pistol for the purposes of killing. They do not see that the thinking here is confused! People in the UK cling to power by any means, think Boris….it is all about the power.

These two countries are behaving in a separative manner, and one could say appallingly. In the land of the free the ex-president undermined the entire electoral system!! Now Boris is changing the rules so that he does not have to resign. Honour? Nah. Decadence and decay? Yes…

It smells more than a tad.

I’ll state that neither of these two countries is Soul infused, they are stuck stubbornly in their personality and the UK still believes it has power. It might want to get off its unicorn

Imagine then initiates of the spiritual hierarchy are incarnating so as to usher in the Aquarian Age. These may be from first degree to fifth degree Master and even beyond. Where might they migrate to?

One obvious place would be to centres of learning, perhaps religion. Places like the so-called UK golden research triangle.

Who is the least likely to believe in such an externalisation and some hippie-trippy tree-hugger stuff?

“It is all about the rays, man.”

Those who hold positions of power and monopoly of high-end education.

The materially obsessed would not want anyone challenging their materialism even if they were technically a buddha, an enlightened being. In the accounts of Siddhartha, he was largely welcomed, but that was 2500 years ago and in the then spiritual India. Christ got whipped and crucified.

Since the days of the blue books higher education has changed from a privilege to big, big business. There are a number of UK universities with more than a £ 1 billion annual turnover. It is not the same. It not about education anymore it is about the size of the research budgets. It is about money!!

Someone seeking to usher in the New Age and change the practises of the status quo, is very unlikely in our day and age, to be welcomed. Enlightenment is not good for business, there isn’t a buck in it. Enlightenment does not bring physical plane power, it renounces it.

I’ll make another supposition.

People in power and with influence are not, in general, believers in karma. They are believers in exercising their power and influence to self-advance.

So, what would such a being do in they encountered an initiate of high degree?

They would probably treat them like anyone else because an initiate of high degree is an imaginary being. They would assume that because of their power and influence they would be in control of the situation. They may even try to supress the activities of the initiate especially if he was a “troublemaker”.

Hence there would be considerable and sustained resistance to any form of externalisation.

They would not consider the extensive and profound karmic implication both for them and the nation for treating an initiate of high degree poorly.

Where might one find the highest per capita density of those who have self-diagnosed omniscience?

Well amongst those who hold positions of power and monopoly of high-end education.

Obvs…

There is an obvious problem here, the very purveyors of education are those who are most likely to be resistant to the New Age!!

They have a vested interest, methinks…