--- In [email protected], "llundrub" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> woolgathering
Main Entry:
wool·gath·er·ing
Pronunciation:
\-ˌga-th(ə-)riŋ, -ˌge-th(ə-)riŋ\
Function:
noun
Date:
1553
: indulgence in idle daydreaming
Possibly. But how do you feel now, after posting
that one word, as opposed to how you felt before
you pressed Send?
I'm asking because you claim to be from a Buddhist
tradition, and what I wrote about is a traditional
Buddhist teaching, one that is still taught by
some teachers. I think it's a valuable teaching.
But you are free to think whatever you want, and
to react to it however you want. IMO what happens
to your own state of attention when you *do* react
either verifies or disproves the teaching. Watch
the rest of your day, and compare it to yesterday
or the day before, and get back to me, eh?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Behalf Of TurquoiseB
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 2:42 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why should being good and attaining
> enlightenment go together?
>
> > > > So, you had
> > > > better be sure you're doing the right thing or you will have
> > > > adverse karma as a result.
> > >
> > > ...so it's still a crapshoot.
> >
> > Not entirely, nature gives us two resources to 'check'
> > behavior, One is scripture and the other is intuition
> > or 'conscience', which is an expression of intuition.
>
> There are at least three. :-) Another taught in
> some Buddhist traditions involves assessing one's
> *own* state of attention as a measure of "right"
> and "wrong."
>
> That is, one is trained in discerning the minute
> variations in state of attention as it fluctuates
> day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. Your
> state of attention changes all the time; it's just
> that most people haven't ever gained the discrim-
> ination to notice how *much* it changes from minute
> to minute. The training involves discerning which
> shifts in state of attention are "up" (meaning one
> has shifted to a higher state of attention) and which
> are "down" (shifted to a lower state of attention).
>
> Then, after having become somewhat practiced at
> this, you just watch your *own* state of attention
> as you act and make your way through the world.
> If you perform Action X, in Context Y, and your
> state of attention goes "down," you can pretty
> much be sure that your choice of action in that
> context was "wrong," or at least not as "right"
> as it could be. Similarly, if you perform Action X
> in Context Y and your state of attention goes "up,"
> then you did the "right" thing.
>
> This -- for those who can practice it -- is actually
> looked upon as a more efficient method of determining
> "right" and "wrong" than either scripture or intuition.
> Scripture has the drawback of being "fixed" and unaware
> of *context*, so a "rule" that says "Never kill pigs"
> might be inappropriate in the case of a crazy pig
> about to kill a young toddler. And intuition is a hit-
> and-miss proposition for most seekers; sometimes it's
> right on, sometimes it's not.
>
> But watching one's own state of attention, once you've
> gotten the hang of it, never fails. The reason is that
> there is a long-term aspect of karma that says that if
> you do something wrong ALL of the negative energy your
> actions produce will return to you. That's "long-term"
> because it may take lifetimes for all that energy to
> return to you. But there is also an *instantaneous*
> aspect of karma -- do something "wrong* and your state
> of attention goes "down." Immediately. Do something
> "right" and your state of attention goes "up." Immed-
> iately. Thus you can use your own fluctuating states
> of attention as a guideline.
>
> The drawbacks of this approach are two. First, the
> discrimination necessary to practice it can only be
> taught via transmission -- by "broadcasting" states of
> attention to the students and then varying them some-
> what and asking them what they perceived when the
> shared state of attention changed. The second, of
> course, is that when you do "wrong" you only really
> find out about it *afterwards*, as you state of
> attention has started to slide "down." The latter
> becomes less and less of a problem as you become
> used to the discernment. You *start* to act a certain
> way, get an instantaneous "readout" that you're going
> the "wrong" way by realizing that your state of atten-
> tion is lowering, and thus you correct your path and
> go a different way. The whole process is that fast;
> you can make such decisions in microseconds.
