Steve, A Tibetan monk (I don't remember who) was incarcerated, facing a torturing jailer. He practiced tonglen, giving away his good karma, in exchange for the jailer's bad deeds. After a while, the latter relented and gave him better treatment. Eventually, the monk was released and came to live with Dalai Lama in India. He was lucky enough to be dealing with the second/third generations of Chinese officers, who no long had to fight hard to gain control of the country. When the situation changed to a Khmer Rouge jail in Cambodia, no matter how much tonglen the prisoner did, he would not escape or lessen the torture and end up in a mass grave. We are in a lucky position of sitting quietly, discounting everything as illusion. Does that work to lessen suffering such as hunger, death, cancer pain etc? Anthony
--- On Thu, 3/2/11, SteveW <[email protected]> wrote: From: SteveW <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] Re: Eightfold Path To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, 3 February, 2011, 11:37 AM --- In [email protected], Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote: > > Steve, > > Thank you for releasing me from a constant fear of being attacked by > enlightened beings. As regards 'tonglen', it is supposed to give away one's > good luck, in exchange for taking others' bad luck. This is a great > bodhisatva's practice. However, the Buddhist principle is that you can only > work on your own karma by yourself, and it is impossible to have others > influence your karma. Of course, they can guide you toward creating good > karma. Is tonglen in conformity with Buddhism? > > Anthony > > Hi Anthony. This is another one of those questions of dispute among Buddhists. From the Theravada view-point, it is certainly impossible. Many Mahayanists would say that parinamara, or transfer of merit, is simply a metaphor for letting go of self-interest. However, it is taken quite seriously in Pureland. While seemingly contradicting the law of cause and effect, parinamara does make sense if, as I believe, reality is one seamlessly interwoven Whole. That is why I said in an earlier post that our common- sense notions of cause and effect may, in fact, be illusiory. Steve
