K, For a cancer patient, it is simple: take a pain killer. What use for arguing about pain being information? The question is your attitude toward others' pain. Do you care about it or treat is as none of your business? The story I quoted really happened. Again if a zen master was present, would he be another passer by, or do something to help? That is also a question of duality. Are 'you' and 'others' the same thing or different? Anthony
________________________________ From: Kristopher Grey <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, 11 February 2012, 7:30 Subject: Re: [Zen] What of God? On 2/10/2012 4:45 PM, Anthony Wu wrote: > > >You say, 'Better to drop this idea of "suffering".' >How can? If you are in great pain, e.g. due to cancer, can you 'drop' the idea? You pick through my words, hoping to find something that conforms to what you want to believe, while what I'm getting at slips through your fingers. Pain is information. Act on it (by simply being with it, and taking actions to ameliorate when possible). Suffering is disinformation. Cease creating it. Pain is sensation that arises. Suffering is sensationalizing what arises. Pain arises choicelessly. Suffering is the rejection of/attachment to that pain, falsely believing (out of hope/fear) we can chose something other than what is present. How many more ways does it need to be said? Look at it. In you, not others. There is only one mind you can use for this. >You alsao say, 'A master helps by pointing, and points by helping.' >In the case of an accident in China a few months ago, a toddler was run over >by a van, bleeding and crying. 18 people passed by without taking action. Then >would the master do enough by 'pointing'? You're spinning different stories (tragic, yes - but I cannot help you now by going into the past or potential futures). Each used to repeat the same thinly veiled accusations against imagined people not living up to your imagined notions of how a "master" is supposed to behave. The end of suffering is not realized by exploring such hypothetical pondering (of real or imagined situations). I was not being glib when I said "only your expectations can fail you" (this being yet another form of suffering). What a "master" does or does not do has no effect on suffering. They can only point to its nature, which when seen for what it is, makes it clear cessation the only path to ending it. This ending is effortless, a side effect of realizing the suffering was false/empty to begin with. Being free of suffering, allows us to deal with pain directly (be seeing we always were). Until you realize the nature of suffering, everything that arises will appear as some form of suffering (supporting the fundamental delusion of me/mine/not mine). End your own suffering (regardless of what pain arises), then worry about the suffering of "all sentient beings". Long story short: Try to see where I'm pointing, without getting stuck on this or that point. Be the answer. K
