Wednesday, September 17, 2008
If you get angry, you are not enlightened?
Anger is often deemed as personality or spiritual weakness. Many people in Buddhism also believe that all greed, hatred and ignorance are extinct for people who become enlightened or an arhat. A common and lowest kind of anger is the one that erupts when not being externally provoked, but mainly due...
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Monday, August 18, 2008
Is Sitting Meditation necessary?
Sitting meditation, meditating in a cross-legged position as you would see from a Buddha statue, is a commonly recommended means of meditation method. Though there are a variety of versions of the leg positions including the half-lotus or full-lotus ones, etc., they all require you to sit for an...
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Monday, August 11, 2008
Is Sluggishness and Stagnancy impossible for Enlightenment?
Episode of a relevant gongan (Case of enlightenment): "A Chan master Laiguo, about a century ago or so, was meditating so intensely within daily life that while in lunch hour of a Chan meditation retreat he was completely absorbed and became totally stagnant while holding his bowl of rice and...
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Sunday, August 10, 2008
Is Enlightenment definable from the Outside or Inside?
Many people who do not really know what enlightenment or spiritualism is would try to define some criteria from the outside, from external behaviors in comparable to a certain standard. Enlightenment, as evidenced from the records of experience by tens and tens of thousands of meditation...
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Thursday, August 7, 2008
Concentration or Enlightenment?
Some descriptions of so called "enlightened mind" that would seem to fit better as descriptions of deaf and dumb people are actually for people who are at the pre-enlightened concentration stage. While in meditation with form with intense focus at the meditation task, the mind may be so focused that...
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Wednesday, August 6, 2008
On Fear of Death: Does Enlightenment Preclude Reflex or Conditioning?
It seems that some Buddhist thinking, may be the Theravada tradition, thinks that an enlightened person such as an arhat, should be completely emotionally immune to any fear of personal death or harm. When people showed any signs of shock, surprise or conditioning fear of events involving likely...
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Tuesday, August 5, 2008
How Best to Ascertain Moral Right from Wrong?
In the Mahayanna Prajnaparamita ideas, the Middle Path, which is absolute emptiness, is the key is the truth. In the Heart Sutra, it says "There is no suffering,..., or the cessation of suffering." The Prajnaparamita Sutras usually confirms that every Buddhist truth can be empty and ultimately it...
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Monday, August 4, 2008
Apathy is not Non-attachment
Non-attachment is not to ignore our feelings or not to allow us to express emotions. It is like a good doctor's mind in treating or operating on a patient with severe illness. One can be sympathetic and caring, but without being hampered by the possible adverse outcome of the event and instead...
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Sunday, August 3, 2008
Attachment is Suffering; Non-attachment is Liberation
Whenever we suffer, except those from some pure physiological sources, it can be traceably to some psychological attachment or craving we have on ourselves or the world around us. If we look at the central message from the Buddha's personal speeches on the way to get emancipated from suffering, it...
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
"Pray without Ceasing" and Chan (Zen)
Imagination is surely important to help us sail through a largely unknown and mysterious journey of spiritual quest. Analysis and reasoning can make the connections and provide understanding of essentially the maze of religious truth. Some practices of very different religious traditions may in fact...
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