|
Message Board: |
| DISCLAIMER: This board is not connected to any organization. All messages are solely the personal opinions of the posters. We are not responsible for any postings (or the resulting side-effects) that are expressed on this board. Posters, please confine your discussions to subjects concerning the study of Buddhism. |
| Poster: Haha Reply Post Message Date: Sun Nov 27 18:35:55 2005 |
| Subject: Gui Ban PTDT |
| Post No: 2379 Reply to: 2366 |
I never said I no longer suffer. I said I've found happiness and suffered all the time; happiness and suffering alternate in me throughout the day, month, and year. You defined Nirvana is the cessation of suffering, so my question to you was: Do I enter and exit Nirvana all the time? Friend PTDT, you have not fully understood the first noble truth. The first noble truth is the Noble Truth of Suffering. The suffering of the first noble truth has many forms and permutations. It ranges from the coarse, easy to detect forms like pain, sadness, aging, death, dying, etc. to the sublime forms like stress, unsatisfactory, impermanent, etc. You may fine better, more complete definition on the web. According to the first noble truth, even your moment of happiness is suffering because it does not last. It is impermanent. Attachment to such happiness, thinking that is Nirvana, binds you to the cycle of birth and death. So you have never really attained Nirvana at all. What is Nirvana? Nirvana is a sanskrit word meaning to blow out or extinguish, as in blowing out a fire or extinguishing a fire. In buddhism, it is the third noble truth or Cessation of Suffering, the ending of all suffering forever. Even though a person who ended all suffering can obtain various psychic powers and capable of accomplish countless amazing deeds, these powers are not important for someone who still suffers. It is important to end all suffering first, as illustrated through the story of the person who was shot by the poison arrow. To end suffering, we first have to examine suffering in various forms and permutations and its cause. Meditation helps a lot here. When we learn to meditate, we learn to concentrate our attention to one point for a very long time. When we have mastered the skill of meditative concentration, we use it to examine phenomena. With meditative concentration, we can easily see how phenomena arise, how they persist, they ended, and what caused them to arise in the first. We can also trace various causes back to the root cause. When we fully understand how phenomena arise, persist, end, and their causes, we understand dependent co-arising. The Buddha said that whoever sees dependent co-arising sees the Buddha. When we see dependent co-arising, we see reality. The world that we perceived is an illusion. Since all suffering come from the world that we perceived, suffering is also an illusion. Haha . . . |