Khoo, Very interesting and well-written post. Thank you very much.
While it is appreciated that understanding is difficult, the practice hard, > please bear in mind that being Eastern does not make it any less difficult. > Access to Buddhist centres, temples, teachers and fellow practitioners may > be better, but one's progress depends how far one has come on the journey > than the actual circumstances of the moment. > You seem to grasp this better than most so perhaps you could elaborate on a passage in my reading that confuses me somewhat: "In the Hindu Katha Upanishad scripture, a famous simile illustrates the relationship between the soul and its earthly vessel. It is not the simple Western mind-body split that one finds after Descartes. Rather it asks us to imagine a horse-drawn chariot. The chariot represents our physical body, and the chariot driver is symbolic of our intellect, which has hold of the reins. The reins, representing our mind, are connected to the horses, which stand for the senses. Finally, the rider and owner of the chariot, sitting relaxed behind charioteer, is the symbol of atman--the soul within us. Samsara happens when the soul gets out of one broken down chariot and finds a new one. Atman is the god within you, according to Hinduism. But since atman, the chariot owner, is supposed to be pure and permanent, like an unscratchable diamond in a dung heap, it's hard to see how karma would ever arise from it or stick to it. Atman is the ultimate Teflon. For that matter, it's had to see how any personal history would be remembered by your atman in your next life, because the mind, the sense, the intellect, and the body are all discarded at death. The Buddha couldn't make sense of it either, which is why he dumped the whole idea." And my question is, did the Buddha dump the whole idea? And if so, why then do so many of his followers cling to that which he dumped? Thanks, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
