 |
Siddhartha
Gautama
gave his dharma to
mankind,
so
humans can awaken into
enlightenment.
To awaken one must only pay attention to daily
life,
the middle way.
Continually feeling gratitude and
awe
in one's present existence brings
enlightenment.
Three Marks of
Existence
(three basic truths about the condition of
life)
Anicca (Sanskrit anitya) defined as "impermanence".
Dukkha (Sanskrit duhkha) defined as "suffering".
Anatta (Sanskrit anatman) defined as "egolessness".
impermanence
"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but
it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Imagination grows by
exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in
the young.
The only thing that makes life possible is
permanent, intolerable
uncertainty; not knowing what comes next." - Ursula K. LeGuin
"If you suffer, it is not because things are
impermanent.
It is
because you believe things are permanent.
Remaining aware of
impermanence you become compassionate and wise.
Impermanence is an instrument for
True Liberation.
It is safe to enjoy what is around you and within
you as long as you are aware of its nature of impermanence.
When you are thirsty, there is nothing wrong in
enjoying a glass of water.
In fact, to truly enjoy it, you have
to dwell in the
present moment.
When a flower
dies, we don't cry. We know it is impermanent.
If we practice
awareness of the nature of impermanence, we will suffer less and enjoy life
more.
If we know things are impermanent, we
cherish them in the present
moment.
We know that our loved ones are of an impermanent nature, so we
do our best to make them happy right now." - Thich Nhat Hanh
The
first mark of existence, impermanence, points to the fact that everything,
every thought, emotion, relationship, or situation, everything that has a
beginning, also has an ending.
Typically, in our search for happiness we do not live as if
impermanence were true.
"When we are attracted to something we tend to
exaggerate its qualities." - Tenzin
Gyatso
If
we examine our motivation we
find that we are always
attempting to hold onto what we
adore and get rid of what we
abhor.
If our situation is
basically acceptable to us we feel secure and good.
We feel betrayed by
our relationships or life itself when our situation changes in a way we didn't
want or expect it to.
We feel circumstances
are preventing us from being happy.
Every moment brings arising
thoughts and feelings and then they fall away.
The simple truth is
that the only certainty following gain is eventual loss.
The happiness or joy we expect
to experience in life cannot depend on holding onto gain if it is to be a
true sustainable gain.
True
sustainable gain we need to find within.
We age,
we become sick, we die. Pain is
unavoidable.
When we
refuse to embrace emotional pain, we
unwittingly screen out a large range of emotional experiences that occur in the
process of living.
A person who is
alive and sensitive will
feel sorrow.
This
is so because of the amount of
unnecessary suffering produced by the imperfection of social arrangements and
because of the reality of existence.
Sentient beings are aware of the gap between
aspirations and
actualities.
In this light we understand emotional pain
is inevitable.
We
tend to believe that the opposite of feeling good is not feeling bad.
To keep
ourselves from not feeling bad we condition ourselves to not feel.
Everyday emotional pain,
open heart wounds, is
where compassion is born.
In Sanskrit awakened compassion
is called Boddhicitta or Awakened Heart.
egolessness
charlatans see egolessness as a depersonalization
disorder
"When we take a step on the green earth,
we
are aware that we are made of air,
sunshine,
minerals, and
water, that we are
a child of earth and sky,
linked
to all other beings." - Thich Nhat Hanh
There is a moment to moment recognition of ego caused by the
struggle to stay happy by holding onto that which we
adore and attempting to prevent that
which we abhor.
We perpetuate
our emotional suffering by believing that we are a fixed entity who needs to be
saved, protected, and freed from emotional suffering.
Emotional suffering will persist as long as we
avoid at all costs the fear at the heart of it -
we may not be saved or protected and may
suffer emotionally.
Rather than
experience the fear directly
we attempt to dismantle the fear by con-vincing ourselves that the fear is
unjustified - that we will be saved,
protected, and freed from
emotional suffering.
People are
terrified that
they may be unable to tolerate a
reality that they have so very
little control over - the culture, nature and the course of
events.
two stages of
egolessness
"No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of
true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on
earth. The flame of utter
detachment consumest veils of idle learning, that
are current amongst men, canst thou behold the resplendent sunrise of
true knowledge." -
Bahá'u'lláh
The first stage of egolessness is
characterized by the recognition of "the Observer" signified by
a sense of emotional
detachment from passing thoughts and feelings.
In the second stage
of egolessness the notion of "the
Observer" is dropped and there is no longer any effort to
detach from
our impotence in the face of the awesome
power of what is.
We experience life "vividly" by direct immersion
in the process of living.
We cultivate
a practice of living based on direct and
immediate feeling.
We
can tolerate a tremendous range of emotion, and ultimately we must.
This understanding marks
the transition from using
spiritual
knowledge as a remedy or cure for emotional suffering to developing
the courage to experience life as it
is.
When we imagine what
spiritual awakening must be like we tend to imagine
a dramatically relieving
experience.
More
often what usually occurs is a humbling, a wearing down of the
ego.
(If you experience
a dramatically relieving
mystical experience in Western culture and attempt to share it
you will be
diagnosed schizophrenic.)
When we acknowledge that we are in
emotional pain and simultaneously acknowledge that we are whole,
we become available to others and
are able to meet them compassionately.
Great emotional pain creates great
tenderness leaving the ego peeled raw reminding us to let go of a need to
control things which are beyond control.
Great emotional pain is
not punishment for being bad.
This is a potent opportunity to have
hearts open up and burn with
fire.
Finding that we can tolerate more emotional pain than we
imagined possible we find a previously unrealized depth and breadth of
being.
four noble truths of
suffering
1
birth is suffering;
illness is suffering;
aging is suffering;
death is suffering;
desire thwarted is suffering;
union with what is displeasing is suffering;
in brief, these are seven amalgamates of
tenacious suffering.
2
the origin of suffering
3
the cessation of suffering
relinquish desire
cessation of desire
freedom from desire
nonreliance on desire
4
moral action
respectful speech
conscientious opinion
virtuous effort
laudable mindfulness
meritorious concentration
Right understanding: Understanding the Four Noble Truths.
Right thought: Determining and resolving to practice Buddhist faith.
Right speech: Abstaining from slander, gossip,
lying, and all untrue speech.
Right conduct: Adherence to nonviolence (ahimsa).
Right
livelihood: Not engaging in activity
that violates life.
Right mental attitude: Bypassing combustible
thoughts and emotions.
Right mindfulness:
A clear sense of mental state and
bodily health.
Right concentration:
Meditation to reach the Integral
Consciousness. |
|
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a
new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based
on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme
leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not
occur at the point of a gun.
American
social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as
the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power
rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through corporate media
by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population
through prior corporate media psychological operations. The results have been
the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do
not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world.
Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the
population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt
international elite that further consolidates their power and which further
their purposes.
All views and opinions presented on this web site are
the views and opinions of individual human men and women that, through their
writings, showed the capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful
and unpopular thought. All factual information presented on this web site is
believed to be true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in
print media which may or may not have originally presented the facts
truthfully. Opinion and thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected,
redacted, combined, added to, re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion
and thought has been throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the
original writer with the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions
clearer and relevant to the reader in the present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal
justice, human rights, political, economic, democratic, scientific, and social
justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For
more information see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to
use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|
