Life is suffering / World and its sufferings

[Guest guest]

Hallo Barney,

If you are still here, let me see if I can shed a little light on

the matter.

The sleep analogy is not unique to Ramana, its an old way of talking

in Jnana yoga circles. Youfll find it used a lot in the Yoga

Vasishta for example.

 

To understand it, you have to look at sleep, waking from a vedantic

rather than western angle. In Vedanta the Self is called the Fourth.

Its said: there are the three relative states of consciousness of

Waking, Dreaming Sleeping. While these states are constantly

shifting and arising and ceasing in cycles everyday there is a

gfourthh absolute state of conscious which is the self awareness

that witnesses the three relative states. Sleep is defined as the

state of least awareness, yet where the mind is almost entirely

dormant. Therefore itfs a state of low awareness but tremendous

stillness. Waking is defined as the most aware of the three states

but is also the state most dominated by activity and thus the mind

(and therefore the ego) is in the state of greatest activity. In the

fourth state we know the pure awareness of the Self, a gstateh of

awareness uncovered by the activity of the mind. The cognition of

that pure awareness renders the mind entirely quiescent. Thus the

mind is as if asleep while the awareness is established in its own

wakefulness.

 

When one contacts this pure awareness repeatedly it gradually

becomes more accessible in and out of formal meditation. When a

person while in activity finds that the mind remains entirely

quiescent and he or she is firmly established in Self awareness,

that person is said to be asleep while awake. If the mindfs

impressions subside completely then the world which the mind

formally projected outwards as a real, separate entity subsides with

it and the practitioner experiences all objects to be of the same

nature of existence-awareness. It is said in the language of Vedanta

that the world no longer exists for that person.

 

Is this at all a helpful hint for you?

 

Try not to blow a gasket in any case, it sounds painful

 

N

[Guest guest]

I believe Barney has quit the group. We wish him well.

Harsha

 

Narayana wrote:

>

> Hallo Barney,

> If you are still here, let me see if I can shed a little light on

> the matter.

>

[Guest guest]

its great to hear from you

 

 

for all those humans who live in illusions life is misery because

death is the end and

all joy and happiness is accompanied by the natural contrary

 

having discovered this truth is in the humble opinion of michael one of the great deeds of "Buddha"

 

 

in deep respect and love in GD

 

 

yours sincerely

 

 

michael

 

Wim Borsboom <wim_borsboom (AT) (DOT) ca> wrote:

Life is suffering???I hope nobody thinks that such a suggestion came

from the Buddha!No realized enlightened being can ever have said

that, not even - andespecially not - the Buddha!The Buddha came with

a few "bang on" statements, but that "life issuffering" was not one

of them. Many of his commentators may have putit that way, just as

much as they called his statements - according tothe parlance of

those days - The Four Noble Truths. Noble Truths?Instead of the words

'exalted or noble truth' - 'ariya sacca' - theBuddha may have just

simply used the word 'sacca' which stands for'expressing a clear

observation', 'a saying containing an obvioustruth' and even a

'stating a fact'. 'Sacca' (pronounced as `satcha')is comparable to

Jesus saying "Verily, verily, I say unto you......"We have a similar

expression, when one

agrees with something and says"I say!!!" or "That's a fact!!"There are

modern scholars who suggest that it is not certain that theBuddha

actually used the word sacca when he listed his 4 mostimportant

observations. Anyway sacca points to a clear evidential thing... e.g.

the evidenceof humans suffering 'dukkha' (usually translated as

'suffering'). The Buddha listed the following facts:Fact 1. Suffering

exists! (When we trace the history of human suffering we can

see why and when it arose from conditional conditioning.) Fact

2. Suffering has an origin! (When we trace conditionality, we

see how the installation of fear and desire keeps the

existence of suffering arising again and again.)Fact 3.

Suffering can cease!

(What has at one point been started can also be stopped.

When we understand the dynamics of the origination and the

continuation of suffering, suffering will cease.)Fact 4. There is a

way to return to our original free state of being human.

(We can reclaim our innate freedom. E.g. by following the

eight-fold path.)The Buddha saw what he saw... but he saw nothing

especially noble oreclectic in his discoveries. In fact, he wanted

his listeners tobecome as quickly as possible aware of sacca number 3

and 4, insteadof dwelling overly long on number 1 and 2. There is a

problem with the usual translations of some Pali words -the language

in which the Buddha's teachings have come

to us.The Pali 'dukkha' is usually translated as 'suffering', and

aseveryone has his or her own personal connotations around that word,

itwould be good to find out what the original meaning of dukkha is.

'Du'means 'difficult' and 'kha' means 'to endure', so dukkha simply

pointsto something that one has difficulty with enduring, e.g.

life.But that does not mean that 'life per se' IS hard to endure, it

meansthat people can have - or tend to have - difficulty with it.

Humanscan have a hard time enduring life. A specific type of human

`indirect conditional conditioning' (asdistinct from `direct natural

conditioning') is the reason for that. Indirect conditional

conditioning was invented about 11,000 years agowhen it started the

transition from the hunter-gather society to theagricultural one and

had some great bona fide evolutionary reasons,but it came with some

adverse side-effects... unfortunately most of usare now suffering

from those `mala fide' side-effects. It is important to see the

difference in emphasis between the Buddha'sview on life and the

common commentators' view. Life is notsuffering, but humans have

been led to suffer life. Hardship is notintrinsic to life, but it

became ALMOST intrinsic to humans who forsome reason (the adverse

side-effects of indirect conditionalconditioning) at some point lost

their original freedom to accept lifeas it came. This is not the

popular understanding of suffering in the more commonBuddhist

context, even some modern Buddhists and some very eruditecontemporary

Western commentators maintain that `at best' suffering isa thread that

runs through the fabric of the universe, or `at worst'that suffering

is the thread that the whole fabric of the universe isspun of. Well,

they may think that... but ... sacca!... that is not what theBuddha

saw.If he would have seen that, he would have

quickly advised everyone tocall it quits, rather then urging his

followers to work diligently onclaiming or reclaiming their freedom.

(His last words.) The Buddhaactually did not put much emphasis on

exiting this plane of being,just as little as he addressed the idea

of god or afterlife. It is notfor nothing that for a bodhisattva

nirvana can wait. A bodhisattva isactually not even interested in any

discussion of nirvana, especiallywhen it is understood as some

other-worldly nirvana..."Nirvana is Samsara properly understood."

(cerosoul)Oh gosh, the commentators really botched it up...So the

Buddha saw suffering as coming from some inadvertent

humanconditioning, brought about by a conditioned `problematique'

toaccepts life AS IS, thus leading anyone affected to wish life to

bedifferent from the way it is here and now. (Ah, so good for

themaneuverings of politics as well as consumerism.)The Buddha

traced suffering very quickly back to the illusive gamesthat humans

play, and truly... sacca!.., illusion plays strongly inthe "If...,

then..." conditionalities of the usual way human dealwith each

other. You see, indirect conditional conditioning is notvery reliable

when applied in human nature, it works better in theworld of nature

where it is more a "When.., then..." rather than an"If..,

then...)Acca! Accepting life as is, returns us to bliss, not

accepting lifeleads us astray - via desire and illusion - to

suffering.Wim/join

"Love itself is

the actual form of God."Sri RamanaIn "Letters from Sri Ramanasramam"

by Suri

Nagamma

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