When there is no balance to suffering...

[davidsun]

Does something have to be 'balanced' to be accepted and embraced as (potentially at least) leading to something 'good' or 'better'?

Here's a discussion of 'suffering' wherein the subject of 'balance' (in the sense of 'fairness') does not enter:

http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...d.php?t=130621

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by davidsun

Does something have to be 'balanced' to be accepted and embraced as (potentially at least) leading to something 'good' or 'better'?

Here's a discussion of 'suffering' wherein the subject of 'balance' (in the sense of 'fairness') does not enter:

http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...d.php?t=130621

When one is all one sided then yes. You can accept your lot and believe that’s it.

A person who sees ‘no light’ within the darkness necessitates a feeling of balance to see their is light. If one can’t feel or see, their more inclined to live by that view and feeling, sealing what is.

Originally Posted by JustBe

See yourself as the world balanced from within. Then you see the world as it is.

Is that like close my eyes and whistle in the dark and it will all go away?

[Shivani Devi]

There is also the stubbornness which comes from allowing oneself to be caught up within an existing dogma.

For example, the "Father" does not only "Art in Heaven", but the Divine Beloved exists everywhere and all at once, including the heart...and He/She/It doesn't want anything...has no expectations...not even to be loved.

The concept of Divinity is totally different in Christianity vs Hinduism...yes, God can be "evil" according to the consensus of mankind and even the demonic realm....He sorta needs to be that way, so even the Asuras, the demons and Satan will totally respect Him and worship Him too!

So, God can be anything from a being of endless Love and light, to a dark, malevolent being who destroys the wicked and unjust in the name of Divine Retribution and Righteousness (which is seen as "evil" by naive humans) to who we are at our very core...the Atman.

You see, my friend, this is aimed at you...at Matt... two young gentlemen between 27 and 30...both water/earth signs...both under the influence of a Saturn Return in Capricorn.

God DID create suffering because He created humans which created the suffering...just like how He created peace, because He created Humans to know the peace...just like how, in the Christian ethic it is said that God can only be known through Jesus, in the Hindu ethos, we say that Shiva can only be known through Shakti...or the creator can only be known through His creation...the unmanifest can only be known through the manifest...etc..

For you see, God doesn't conform to the "Sky-Daddy" image...or as a big "Judge Judy" waiting for us to die to send our souls to heaven or hell...we decide whether we are in heaven or hell while we are still alive...the choice is ours (and yours) to make, like JustBe has said in this thread...and too many people make the wrong choices...so yeah, then God intervenes by sending a global cataclysm or a series of them...which is seen as being "unfair" and "evil" and "malevolent" by humans, which only serves to reinforce their own ignorance for the necessitation of that Divine Intervention in the first place.

So why can't God wave a magic wand and enlighten everybody?

Lord Brahma tried that once...

His first attempts at creating man and womankind without suffering was totally disastrous!

They were so blissed out on the Divine nectar, none of his creation wanted to do a gross thing like breeding and procreating... none of them wanted to work and till the soil so they could eat, because the physical body was not important...none of them cared about anything else but staying high in God-bliss...they only lived for a week or two before their physical body perished.

So this is why God had to hide the reality of existence in a place where nobody would look ..inside ourselves, so as to give the human race incentive to propagate itself...with all the propaganda that entails, so the species, as a whole, will not totally die out unless God wills it...call it a "failsafe mechanism".

This is the answer to you, Matt and everybody else from the Hindu Vedas.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by ImthatIm

Is that like close my eyes and whistle in the dark and it will all go away?

Close your eyes and whistle if you wish. Nothing goes away while we entertain it as being so. Set in stone rules often apply to the most disheartened, the most extreme..why? Because they don’t know any different YET

Originally Posted by JustBe

Close your eyes and whistle if you wish. Nothing goes away while we entertain it as being so. Set in stone rules often apply to the most disheartened, the most extreme..why? Because they don’t know any different YET

This is all fine, that you feel this desire within yourself to be wise with words.

I have not a clue what you are even going on about.

My question was to you, I have no desire to whistle in the dark.
I was just asking what you are going on about? I have no idea.

Do you feel I wrote something you disagree with?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by SlayerOfLight

First of all, I have no use for your pity. So pwease *puppy eyes* keep it to yourself. And in the name of allfather Odin and the very foundations of Asgard itself, be a little bit more creative than bringing karma into it because I don't believe in karma. I'll say what quite a lot of you are eager to hear; I'm not a good person. But the fact is, there are people out there that make me look like the holy virgin Mary, yet they get away with everything they do. That's enough evidence for me that karma isn't real.

Now to get to the core: they say life is all about growing, learning life lessons, and to love yourself and as well others. That's even what a huge majority of NDEs talk about. But I really have certain issues with that. For one, yes I agree that suffering is necessary to a point so that you develop a better personality and be more kind and helpful to others. However, as everything should be perfectly balanced, so should the amount of suffering one soul is forced to undergo. When one's endless agony and suffering in life goes beyond the limit that is necessary, you'll become cold, emotionless, bitter, and apathetic. I know that because I'm one of those abominations. If there was something for me to learn from all this nonsense, well then I have either failed or simply learned the 'wrong' things. This is a good example of cause and effect. A disruption of balance and the severe concequences that it brings. Should there indeed be a higher force involved with our lives, then this thing many of you call God is evil beyond human comprehension. If there was a devil, even he'd be like: ''woah, chill out dude''. There truly is no word for this kind of unspeakable evil.

So now my simple question that I want to ask: what is the point of suffering if it goes beyond the necessary limits and brings the opposite results that God, angels, higher self, (or whatever floats your boat) was hoping for? Because I see it as totally pointless. I'm also aware that I contradict myself as a self-proclaimed atheist with this thread, but that doesn't stop me from asking this question to see what kind of logic spiritual people come up with. Because maybe, just maybe, there is a very tiny less than 1% chance that you'll prove me wrong. Unfortunately, one of my biggest curses in this life is that I never appear to be wrong. As fun as it sounds, it isn't. Trust me with that.

Hi.


This is an interesting post that touches on some interesting things.


Firstly, there is a strange irony in your name, so strange I suspect it was intentional irony. Your name Slayer Of Light has the initials SOL, which spells the Latin for sun, and that strikes me as a balance.


I never pity anyone. I have compassion and/or empathy, but pity is awfully condescending so I don't go there.


Kamma in Buddhist philosophy regards the volition, and it doesnt mean 'if you do bad stuff bad stuff will happen to you'. It means volition is the nexus of suffering in the sense that craving drives volition. However the volition is categorised into good will and ill will, the former generates vibes that manifest in beneficial thought/action being predicated on love and kindness. The latter generates bad vibes that manifest in harmful circumstanced being predicated on hatred and greed, and obviously, greed and hatred is shown to generate terribly adverse conditions. This doesn't mean hateful and greedy people have bad things happen to them. It just means the potentials of that sort of volition manifest in harmful outcomes generally speaking.


The suffering is like instant kamma, because craving, the dynamic tension between desire and aversion, disturbs the balanced equanimity of the mind with agitation. It all comes down to feeling, which in Buddhist vernacular is called 'vedana'. We might think we're disturbed by 'things that happen' but actually, 'things' arise with feelings in the body and we only react to our own sensations. For example, an addict thinks they need heroin, but really, they are only reacting adversely to the feelings of withdrawl while desiring the feeling taking heroin gives. Heroin is merely means to an end, and not the actual object of desire. The object of desire, and aversion, is vedana, and in Buddhist philosophy it is said, From feeling craving arises.


The self image, how we imagine ourselves, is just dreamed up. Like my brother would say, "It's just imaginary thoughts". I have a self story with good and bad sides to it, and the story affects my quality of life, but I also know its just imaginary thoughts, so I don[t take it to be true or give much importance to it. I simply know 'this thought' and the feeling it manifests as, also being aware it has no constancy, and changes momentarily, and the mind is creating a vibe can be felt as the manifestation of the body.


Then from that felt feeling, craving arises with the volition which produces vibe and/or feeling, and then reaction to that which is craving with volition, which generates a vibe/feeling, and the whole world is produced or perceived moment by moment by moment via that looped process. This is what the philosophy of kamma is about. It is not about what people deserve for the acts they perform. It is about the inevitable manifestation of the volition, which is any urge to move the mind.


The meditation is the cessation of that process. Hence one just watches it all simply because it is the way it is. The motive for trying to make it different ceases when one just stops to look at it. It's not a great spiritual thing, no gods and souls and so forth. It's just the plain truth of 'this is how it is', and it is not some other way.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by ImthatIm

This is all fine, that you feel this desire within yourself to be wise with words.

I have not a clue what you are even going on about.

My question was to you, I have no desire to whistle in the dark.
I was just asking what you are going on about? I have no idea.

Do you feel I wrote something you disagree with?

I have no problem with my wisdom, just in case your being sarcastic.

You didnt ask what I was on about, if you care to look back at your question and how it was asked.

I wasn’t disagreeing with you at all.

[Dargor]

Originally Posted by ImthatIm

Suffering is out of balance.

It is out of balance because people are out of balance.

Most people seem to live out of balance, so suffering increases.

This in turn seems to throw the world out of balance.

The question that I had to ask is, how do I rise above my own suffering
in an unbalanced world?

Let me guess, by becoming a vegetarian?

[Shivani Devi]

Originally Posted by SlayerOfLight

Let me guess, by becoming a vegetarian?

Not at all.

If you could understand the nature of the universe by dropping all your skepticism, would you?

I notice your signature from Dr Gregory House...he also became addicted to Vicodin and was pretty much hated by everyone, even though he was "right" and saved many lives, but he destroyed his own in the process....the thing is my friend, you don't need to be an a-hole to be right all the time.

The problem that comes with being right all the time, is that you can shout your lungs out...remove all the sugar coatings...point out everybody's flaws of character and suggest ways they can be fixed according to their perceived ills...but if others don't want to listen or are not ready to listen, or their biased views of you get in the way of acceptance, no matter what you say, they will NOT listen...they will not care WHAT you have to say, even IF it is right.

If they are sick and tired of you and want you to just shut up and go away...and if they are nice and meek about it, the best thing they can say is "yes, you are right" (as a platitude only) or just ignore you and change the subject entirely.

This does two things..

First off, it perpetuates the notion that you cannot be proven wrong... don't confuse another's unwillingness to play your game as any indicator of smug, egotistical reassurance...and secondly, it leaves you feeling bitter, resentful and self justified in your misplaced certainties...for example "the reason why he/she cannot give me any good contradictory arguments, is because they are a total idiot anyway"... sound familiar?

Of course, no light can get in, of you have closed yourself off like a black Tupperware container..then you go "try it NOW light...I dare ya...I will prove you are a load of cr*p because you have no way of getting around the walls I have put up...muahahahaaaa". Yeah, I know, right?

It is all about acceptance and surrender, which people with humongous egos will NEVER do!

We don't have to love suffering..we don't have to shake our fists at the sky going "why, God...WHY?" All we need to do is just acknowledge that suffering exists... usually to knock our egos down a peg or two...drill a hole in that Tupperware container and say "NOW what you gonna do?"...so you go "stupid light...I'll teach you a thing or two..you don't mess with me" and you patch it up, isn't it?

The more you patch it up, the more holes will be drilled based on that old saying "that which you resist, WILL persist!" until, in the end, you admit.."I cannot win here...do your worst, come at me God 'bro" and that is when Nirvana happens...when we are at our defenseless worst...and this is how suffering is balanced.

....and I am still waiting for you to reply to iamthat, as to why Karma is unrfeasible even with Reincarnation thrown in...

I mean, if one wears the mantle of being right all the time, they need to put up a bloody great, irrefutable argument...which is the difference between you and I in the whole "absolute faultless" stakes.