Bill Wrote: "The way back to the Garden is to not to memorize some Holy List of Do's and Don'ts; it is to recognize the forbidden fruit (dualism) for what it is - illusion, and severe your attachments to it". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- You'll be surprised to find out how many people in the world would be lost without a list of that. When I first came to Scotalnd I was taken aback by things that in Spain are taken for granted while in here wasn't. Conclusion: Lists are there for one to choose to use them or not to use them. But it's good that they are there for the ones who need from those lists. Mayka
--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Bill! <[email protected]> wrote: From: Bill! <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Zen] The Nature of Right-Mindfulness: a Theravada Perspective To: [email protected] Date: Monday, 23 May, 2011, 2:48 Daniel et al, My responses/comments are embedded below: --- In [email protected], "empty0grace" <empty0grace@...> wrote: [Daniel] I would say based on both my experience and the teachings that I have observed, that amorality is very close to immorality in that without the clear presence of moral rectitude there is nothing to prevent immoral intentions from arizing when unwholesome states arize in the mind. [Bill!] This is a bogus argument on it's face. Amorality is no closer to immorality than it is to morality, except for those who have already accepted the dogma that morality is good, and everything else is bad. Also moral rectitude itself does not prevent immoral intentions from arising. Moral rectitude only serves to identify them (classify them as immoral) and then direct the self to resist or surpress them. [Daniel] If Zen, as Bill proposes it were actually "direct awareness that occurs BEFORE the rising of and post-processing activites of the discriminating mind." He would be able to observe the actual presence and absence of moral rectitude in the mind, and see how these affect the actions that spring from intentions. The words are added later so we can speak about it, but absolute realities do not disapear for lack of words. [Bill!] Daniel's conclusions are half-right. Buddha Nature is aware of dualistic concepts (illusions) such as moral/immoral, good/bad, high/low, etc... as they arise in the discriminating mind. These illusions come and go. The important thing is to recognize them as illusory and transitory, and not to become attached to them. Attachement is the cause of suffering. As far of the rest of this paragraph Daniel errors in that for Buddha Nature there are no actions, no intentions - Just THIS! Actions and intentions presuppose a self. Buddha Nature exists before the dualistic split of self/other is created. [Daniel] The natural condition of the mind is immoral: greed, hatred and delusion are our birthright as human beings, not Buddha nature, which really does sound like a religious assertion to me. [Bill!] Daniel! You now sound more like a Christian, Jew or Muslim than a Buddhist! What you say is entirely backwards! Buddha Nature is our birthright. Are sparrows immoral? Are sharks immoral? Are trees immoral? No! They are ammoral (and by that term I mean that the dualistic concept of moral/ammoral is not applicable.) All those conditions you mention above are illusory - products of our discriminating mind - and it's the attachments to these that cause suffering. [Daniel] What you see, is what you get, and what we see when we look inside is greed, hatred and delusion (unless you cultivated the eightfold path). [Bill!] I agree that 'what you see is what you get'. When I look inside me I don't see greed, hatred, delusion, etc... Or to be more precise when I do see these I know they are illusions and that they come and go. I am not attached to them (at least this is my practice). [Daniel] These are the wellsprings of all unwholesome mindstates that lead to wrong intentions that in turn lead to wrong actions. Unless the this is specifically corrected with training in moral intentions, samadhi and right understanding, the mind remains as crooked as the day it was born. D. [Bill!] It's seems to me you have surfaced the most fundamental difference between us - and perhaps between all religions such as Theravada Buddhism and zen. What you're suggesting seems to be to be that that humans (or all beings? all life?) are inherently evil and that it is only through the learning of some dogma (lists of do's and don'ts) that you can overcome this inherent evil. (And just for the record even if you were to do this would not make you 'good' or 'pure', you'd only be avoiding evil - there's a big difference.) I'm saying that the all life is just as it is. It is neither good nor evil. It just is. It is only humans (of the beings I know) that create good and evil. They do this by creating dualisms such as self/other or good/evil. A more poetic way to say this is humans have obscured their original nature (aka Buddha Nature) by 'eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil'. By doing so they have created the dualistic split of self/other, or more poetically put 'have been banished from the Garden where they lived in constant communion with God'. The way back to the Garden is to not to memorize some Holy List of Do's and Don'ts; it is to recognize the forbidden fruit (dualism) for what it is - illusion, and severe your attachments to it. ...Bill!
