Fwd: Buddhist Prattle About The End Of The World

[Guest guest]

GuruRatings , Joyce Short <insight2 wrote:

 

One night while the Buddha was meditating,

the Deva Rohitassa came for a chat. Poor

Rohitassa was a bit bothered. He had for

eons and eons had been walking and walking,

trying and trying to reach the End of the World.

 

 

The Buddha smiled and told the Deva quite kindly

that he had been wasting his time and was a bit

of an idiot. The Deva asked the Buddha why

he was saying this and the Buddha, who enjoyed

paradox, replied that it was not possible to reach the

end of the world by walking, but, in order to reach the

end of suffering, the Deva had to reach the

end of the world.

 

 

Deva Rohitassa was puzzled, as anyone would be,

and asked the Buddha for an explanation.

 

 

The Buddha told the Deva that the 'world', (fancy world for it is

'loka')

really means the world of our experience, as we experience it, not

the geographical, out-there-somewhere kind of world

that the Deva had been traveling around in. The world

of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, emotion,

feeling. . . that's it - any world, my world, your world.

 

 

The Buddha made his point that as long as the Deva

was creating a " world out there " and " me in here " , then

he is stuck with subject and object and dukkha. The

Buddha said many things about this world within

the Deva's mind, but mostly he suggested to Deva

Rohitassa that only when his world comes to an

end, meaning that it's otherness comes to cessation,

when he stops creating sense objects as absolute

realities and stops seeing insubstantial thoughts and feelings as

solid

thingies, will the world, and suffering, come

to an end.

 

 

When we realize that our world has its beginning and end right

Here, then its thingness ceases.

 

-=-story first told by Amaro Bhikkhu

 

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