Comment below: **
--- In [email protected], "claudiouk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Both of you are looking at the Relative in a rather upbeat way, > perhaps reflecting transient (for most mortals) blissful moods (maybe > states or permanent stations in your cases??). Doesn't help the > wilderbeast being tormented to death by lions or some innocent 16- > year old in Pakistan having acid thrown in her face because in love > with a Hindu or not wearing full Islamic dress. Take a snapshot of > the WHOLE of Nature and all there is, 99.99 of it, is suffering. So > where is the expansion of happiness in that? Maybe the flaw in Unity > is an inherent madness - well, who would NOT go mad in total > isolation? Put anyone in solitary confinement with sensory > deprivation and they will hallucinate and create nightmares for > themselves. That's the real story perhaps - a madness without cure. > It goes on FOREVER because even when it transcends time it ends up > recreating it all over again. There is no sense in a creation which > just gives suffering to everyone. Either God is mad, bad or just a > fool - so much (supposed) intelligence in the geometry and sequence > of laws of nature but then making a total mess with the experiment. > There are states of matter, because of laws of nature, which are not > permissable. For instance H2O, at a given temperature and pressure, > is always water. If Unity truly wanted to expand happiness also in > every phase of the Relative, all you'd need is some corollary laws > concerning suffering. Make one step towards goodness, Unity etc = 1 > million times stronger than one step towards badness, anti-Unity. > Then Unity can safely wander into diversity without resulting in > suffering for no-one. That is what MMY says is going to happen NOW, > right? So why not have that as an invariable law in the first place? > We would be deprived of many experiences yes - but do you mind > terribly if you don't taste the experience of being a torturer? or a > victim of torture? What about free will? Where is the free will when > all the probabilities are stacked in favour of you ending up > suffering, even when you chose bliss? Sorry, but there IS a flaw with > Unity and the supposed "expansion" of happiness via the Relative. > I've never seen a convincing argument to the contrary... Wish there > was one though!! > **snip to end** You're right, there is no convincing argument to negate the apparent ubiquity of suffering. But as Buddha pointed out (along with many others, including Maharishi), there is an end to suffering and that is by removing one's perspective (attention) from the plane of existence where suffering is always present to another (you could say higher) plane where no suffering can possibly exist. On the plane of the movie story, Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining is always going to go stark raving, and homicidally, mad each and every time you watch it. But on another (arguably more fundamental) plane, that movie is just colored light dancing and flickering on the screen in whatever theatre, CRT, LCD, or plasma device you're catching it on. Of course, if your attention is just on the flickering light then not only do you not get the pants scared off of you, but you miss all the great parts of the story and the acting and the cinematography, etc. It's not denying that suffering exists, but that it only exists to the degree you put your attention on it. Some events in our lives (in our stories) draws attention more or less forcefully to the suffering, and without a doubt, if I was subject to having my head sawed off by a religious fundamentalist who thought that the most appropriate way to address his or her own suffering was by making mine even worse, then I'm positive that it would be an extremely overshadowing experience. But even then, at some point during that process, "who" is having that experience? Who is that guy? Who is dying, me or the body? When the body is defunct and no longer able to draw attention, what happens to the attention? Wasn't the birth of the body the factor that drew the attention in the first place? And if so, then doesn't that raise the issue that Attention (in some latent state) was there as the primary condition? And That really is all that there is and That You Are (already and always). It's really true what "they" all say.
