Steve, You say, "Nagarjuna said, those who try to turn Emptiness into a fixed explanation of reality are incurable." So we should not discount everything as illusion. You also say, " Gotama wasn't trying to explain reality to us. He was just giving us a skillful medical prescription to cure us of our Dukkha." When you have acute pain, e.g. from cancer, you would have big trouble convincing yourself that it is just illusion. Gotama also says the world is like a man hit by a poisonous arrow. The first thing to do is to pull it out and cure the disease. Then, I think, we should think about why he was hit by an arrow. It includes the question of karma. Anthony
--- On Thu, 17/2/11, SteveW <[email protected]> wrote: From: SteveW <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] Re: Experience Merit To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, 17 February, 2011, 2:01 AM --- 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 >
