--- In [email protected], Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote:
>
> Steve,
> Â
> Neither I nor my demon are responsible for your karmic misfortunes. No bribes
> can alleviate your problems. BTW, do you believe in karma? If not, what rules
> this universe?
> Â
> Anthony
>
> Hi Anthony. If everything is "One Bright Jewel" as Dogen put it,
then all this talk of "my" karma and "your" karma is meaningless.
For that matter, if the arrow of time is an illusion and everything
is Here and Now, then karmic cause-and-effect is also an illusion.
You think that the past causes the future, but there is no reason
not to say that the future causes the past! (There have been physics
experiments demonstrating this aspect of quantum weirdness.) When
Nagarjuna wrote his famous Negations, he wasn't, imo, trying to
give us an ontological explanation of reality, but nobody can
that. So everybody tries to turn Emptiness into a fixed view-point.
As I have said before, the basic Buddhist teachings on karma, the
12-fold chain of Dependant Origination and the teachings on
impermanence and no-self are useful expedients for practice, but
cannot be taken for a final and absolute explanation. I refer you
to The Mahaparanirvana Sutra and the Dzogchen literature on this.
The fact is that it will always be a Mystery from our finite,
relative, rational view-points, because we cannot step outside
of What Is in order to look at What Is. But we can rest in that
Such-As-It-Is peacefully. So I really can't answer your question,
Anthony, and I suspect that neither can anyone else. Gotama wasn't
trying to explain reality to us. He was just giving us a skillful
medical prescription to cure us of our Dukkha. But, as Nagarjuna
said, those who try to turn Emptiness into a fixed explanation of
reality are incurable. IMO.
Steve
>
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