Purpose of Life
You are what your deep driving desire is: As your deep driving desire is, so is your will; As your will is so is your deed; As your deed is so is your destiny(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)
Life finds its purpose and fulfilment in the expansion of happiness
(Maharishi Mahesh Yogi))
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature
Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by the infinite.
Without faith, hope and trust, there is no promise for the future, and without a promising future, life has no direction and no justification.
Love for Truth
The knower of Truth is never miserable in the world. for the whole universe is filled with Himself alone. (Astavkra Gita)
Truth can only come to the mind that is empty of the known. It comes in a state in which the known is absen, not functioning. (J Krishnamurti)
Truth is immediate and radiant. It is not tht truth has to be discovered - only you have to become aware (Osho)
Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message will be rejected(Mahatma Gandhi)
God
God is the friend of silence. How nature - trees, flowers, grass grow in silence. How the stars, the moon and the sun move in silence.(Mother Teresa)
God, despite his casual silence, still exists.
You cannot petition the God with prayer.
Science has proof without any certinity. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
The Light within
Who knoweth him, knoweth himself, and is not afraid to die(Atharva Veda)
He who knows others is wise; He who knows himself is enlightened.(Tao Te Ching)
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves..(Edmond Hillary)
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
Word Power
Beautifully crafted words have the powe to captivate the mind. A sweet tongued man is loved by one and all. Audience is always attracted towards those who can speak efficiently and effectively(Sama Veda)
Though you speak unking words to a man's face, do not speak words behind his back/ Though every word is full of kindly virtue, a min's mean back-biting will betray his empty heart (Thirukkural19.184-186)
Words have the power to both destroy and heal. when words are both ture and kind, they can change our worldely(Gautama Buddha)
If you are motivated by loving kindness and compassion, there are many ways to bring happiness to others, starting with kind speech(Thich Nhat Hanh)
Creative World
To be creative is not merely to produce poems, or statues or children; it is to be in that state in which truth can come into being. Truth comes into being when there is a complete cessation of thought; and thought ceaes only when self is absent, when the mind has ceased to create, that is, when it is no longer caught in its own pursuits.
(J Krishnamurti)
Be creative. Don't be worried about what you are doing - one has to do many things - but do many things - but do everything creatively with devotion. then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is a prayer. And what soever you do is an offering at the altar.(Osho)
You are what your deep driving desire is: As your deep driving desire is, so is your will; As your will is so is your deed; As your deed is so is your destiny(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)
Life finds its purpose and fulfilment in the expansion of happiness
(Maharishi Mahesh Yogi))
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature
Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by the infinite.
Without faith, hope and trust, there is no promise for the future, and without a promising future, life has no direction and no justification.
Love for Truth
The knower of Truth is never miserable in the world. for the whole universe is filled with Himself alone. (Astavkra Gita)
Truth can only come to the mind that is empty of the known. It comes in a state in which the known is absen, not functioning. (J Krishnamurti)
Truth is immediate and radiant. It is not tht truth has to be discovered - only you have to become aware (Osho)
Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message will be rejected(Mahatma Gandhi)
God
God is the friend of silence. How nature - trees, flowers, grass grow in silence. How the stars, the moon and the sun move in silence.(Mother Teresa)
God, despite his casual silence, still exists.
You cannot petition the God with prayer.
Science has proof without any certinity. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
The Light within
Who knoweth him, knoweth himself, and is not afraid to die(Atharva Veda)
He who knows others is wise; He who knows himself is enlightened.(Tao Te Ching)
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves..(Edmond Hillary)
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
Word Power
Beautifully crafted words have the powe to captivate the mind. A sweet tongued man is loved by one and all. Audience is always attracted towards those who can speak efficiently and effectively(Sama Veda)
Though you speak unking words to a man's face, do not speak words behind his back/ Though every word is full of kindly virtue, a min's mean back-biting will betray his empty heart (Thirukkural19.184-186)
Words have the power to both destroy and heal. when words are both ture and kind, they can change our worldely(Gautama Buddha)
If you are motivated by loving kindness and compassion, there are many ways to bring happiness to others, starting with kind speech(Thich Nhat Hanh)
Creative World
To be creative is not merely to produce poems, or statues or children; it is to be in that state in which truth can come into being. Truth comes into being when there is a complete cessation of thought; and thought ceaes only when self is absent, when the mind has ceased to create, that is, when it is no longer caught in its own pursuits.
(J Krishnamurti)
Be creative. Don't be worried about what you are doing - one has to do many things - but do many things - but do everything creatively with devotion. then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is a prayer. And what soever you do is an offering at the altar.(Osho)
1. When Nothing Became Something (Andrew Cohen)
When you take the perennial meditative journey to the depts. Of your own self, you discover what it was like before the beginning. You come to rest in the timeless empty void before the Universe was born, which the mystics call the ground of Being. When you taste the profound freedom that is the inherent nature of that primordial ground, it can seem like the end of the path. Where else could there possible be for you to go? The very notion of seeking for liberation, for enlightenment, for meaning or purpose seems absurd. The question, who am I? is answered before it is asked. And the question, why am I here? Simply does not arise.
In traditional enlightenment, this is the end of the path. But the journey of evolutionary enlightenment does not end here. Why? Because the cosmic experiment that is life did not end here. If that empty ground, where every question is answered, was all there was to know and to discover, why would the universe exist? Why did something come from nothing?
This is not an abstract philosophical question but a profound spiritual contemplation that can take you to the essence of what it means to be alive. Why did something come from nothing….. and become light, energy, matter, life consciousness and you---- 14 billion years later reading these words? Why are you here?
If the eternal perfection that is the Source of everything knows no desire, why would the universe have emerged? If the ground of all things has no impulse but to be, why did it become? But it did. And thanks to evolutionary science, we can behold just how far this miraculous explosion of Becoming hs brought us in the 14 billion years since that initial burst. We can reflect on its awe inspiring progress, and wonder at its ever greater complexity and integration and creativity. And we can ask ourselves, why did all of this come from nothing?
You don’t need a powerful telescope to see all the way back to the Big Bang – you can go there, right now. In your very own experience.
The Big Bang is not just metaphor or a disputer scientific theory about what occurred 14 billion years ago. It’s happening right now. Something is coming from nothing every second. You might not be conscious of it, but it’s true. Your own experience of action and reaction is not unbroken – there are countless moments of every impulse, and every response. If you slow your experience down, and keep slowing it down, you will start to see that there is a vast chasm of empty space that is the foundation of everything that is occurring, the ground out of which each impulse arises. Even as you are aware of the body, of the passing of time and the movement of thought, beneath, it all you can become conscious of this current of stillness that is the ground of Being.
Because you can locate the empty ground in your own experience, you can also locate the seed of everything that came out of that nothingness. The essence of evolutionary enlightenment is found in that precise moment when nothing became something. When you contemplate the ground of Being, you can begin to intuit for yourself what that very moment must hve been like.
2. Is Buddha Alive or Dead?(Thich Nhat Hanh)
In Western philosophy, the term “being-in-itself” is very close to Buddhist term “suchness” – reality as it is free from conceptions or grasping. You cannot grasp it, because grasping reality with concepts and notions is like catching space with a net. So enter reality in a non-conceptual instant. The Buddha handed us an instrument to do this. If you continue to cling even to Buddhist notions and concepts, you miss the opportunity. You are carrying the raft on your shoulders. So not be a prisoner of any doctrine or ideology, even Buddhist ones.
Our notion of being is dualistic, the opposite of the notion of non-being. The reality of being that the Buddha tries to convey is not the opposite of non-being. When he says “Self”, it is not the opposite of anything.
In Mahayana Buddhism, we use anti-notions to help us get rid of notions. If you get caught by the notion of being, the notion of emptiness is there to rescue you. But if you forget that true emptiness is filled with everything, you will be caught by your notion of emptiness and bitten by the snke. All other notions can be healed by the notion of emptiness, but when you are caught in the notion of emptiness, the disease is incurable.
The belief that the Self is there before I was born and will continue after I die is a belief in permanence. The opposite belief, that after you die you enter absolute nothingness, is a belief in annihilation. These views are discussed in the Sutra on knowing – the better way to catch a snake. Take care not to fall into either trap – belief in a permanent Self, whether great or small, or the belief in annihilation, become nothing. These two notions must be transcended. When you are caught in one notion or the other, you get bitten by the snake over and over again.
One day I was contemplating a stick of burning incense. The smoke coming off its tip was creating many beautiful forms in the air. It seemed alive, really there. I perceived an existence, a being , a life, and I sat quietly enjoying myself and the “Self” of the incense stick.
I enjoyed the smoke as it continued to drift up creating various forms. I used my left hand to “catch” the smoke. The last moment the stick was burning was especially beautiful. When there was no more incense at the other end, there was more oxygen on both sides, so it burned most intensely for a moment, revealing a bright red colour. I looked at it with all my concentration. It was parinirvana, a great extinction. Where had the flame gone?
When a person is about to die, he often becomes very alert at that last moment of life and then fades away, just like the stick of incense. Where has the soul gone? I had several other sticks of incense, and I knew that if, at that last moment, I took another stick of incense and touched the first tick with it, the flame would have continued onto the new stick, and the life of the incense would have continued. It was only a matter of fuel, or conditions….If I feed one stick after another to the fuel, is the life of the incense eternal?
Is the Buddha alive or dead? It is a matter of fuel. Perhps you are the fuel and you continue the life of the Buddha.
3. Goodbye Death, Hello Immortality(Rock Furtado)
Who isn’t familiar with Doomsday prophecies? They have been around since ages. Why are we afraid? Perhaps we’re sacred of the retribution that will follow death – a great life in Heaven for the good and a bad one in Hell for others. Light candles….say a prayer…worship a deity… beg for forgiveness. All in all, there is a pattern that keeps Doomsday prophecies alive and kicking and every generation has had the good fortune of having lived through them.
The latest Doomsday prophecy based on the Mayan calendar has seized popular attention. It points to December 21 2012 being the end of days. The Mayan calendar stops at December 21, 212… and the next thing you hear is….that this is the prediction for the end of the world. Yes, the Mayn calendar is very detailed and covers thousands of years – and for it to stop at 212 suddenly. Is taken to imply that it’s the end.
What if the makers of the Mayan calendar decided that they do not want to go beyond 2012? That they were tired from exercise of projecting the dates into future of their own time which none of them will ever see, and also may be their own belief that they have done enough and it is time to call it off. Secondly, that no civilization after theirs may ever refer to their work., so it is useless exercise of dwelling into the calendar of the future.
All doomsday prophecies should be taken with a barrelful of salt. Humanity is hardy – We’ve survived earthquakes, tsunamis, eruptions, pole tilts and atmospheric changes. Perhaps in the future the population count might be less – then the world might be a better place with less pressures and concerns.
The known history of humanity is that we have lived for millions of years. Certain civilizations talk of developments that we have yet to see in our present lifetime. It must be assumed that in these millions of years, certain parts of humanity that existed before us had surpassed many times what we know as our achievements and developments.
Studies now talk of “Oneness” or Singularity” as possibilities of the future. The basic belief is that human consciousness is constant and the physical body is transient. What if the body itself is permanent as consciousness? Are we in a position to retain a physical body that is constant.
There are attempts by scientists to clear physical bodies of all age-related diseases. Why do we live only 80 to 100 years in a single physical life time? It is because body cells generate till the age of 20 and degenerate after the age of 20. What if this degeneration is arrested and we induce hormone balancing which regenerates cells after the age of 20?
This seems to be possible – now that we know that physical degeneration is due to aging and it involves telomeres which are found at the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorted, and once the cell runs out of telomeres, it can’t reproduce any more and dies. The enzyme called telomerase could reverse this process… and like magic….you could be forever young?
Science and spirituality could converge at some point – perhaps that’s where we say goodbye to death and hello to immortality. Only time can tell.
4. Delicious Food For The Soul(Sri Sri Ravi shankar)
Meditation is the journey from movement to stillness, from sound to silence. The need is present in you to meditate because it is your natural tendency to look for undiminished hoy and love that doesn’t distort or turn negative.
Is meditation alien to us? That’s not true because you have been in meditation even before your birth. In the womb you were doing nothing. You didn’t even have to chew food; you were fed directly and you were happily floating in fluid, turning and kicking. That is meditation or absolute comfort. You did nothing, everything was done for you. Isn’t it natural for us to crave for that state absolute comfort? And getting back to that state which you have had a taste of, just before entering the hustle and bustle of the world is very natural because everything in the universe is cyclic, and wants to go back to its source.
The natural tendency is to recycle all that we’ve collected in life a impressions, getting rid of them and getting back to the original state we were at birth is what meditation is all about, Becoming fresh again, alive, is what it is. Getting back to that serenity, your original nature, is meditation. It is absolute joy and happiness; pleasure minus excitement. A thrill without anxiety is meditation/ It is love without hatred or any of its opposite values.
Meditation is food for the soul. When you are hungry, spontaneously you eat something. If you are thirsty you drink water. Similarly, the soul yearns for meditation and this tendency is in everyone. Hence, there is not a single individual who is not a seeker. It’s just that they don’t recognize it. The problem is that we try to look for that food where it is not available. It is like going to a grocery shop when you want to fill fuel in your car. You keep going around the grocery store saying, ‘ I want fuel for my car ’It won’t work because you need to go to petrol station. So, find the right direction. Meditation happens in transition. Actually meditation happens, you can’t do it. You can only create a congenial atmosphere for it to happen.
Meditation is uplifting energy and mind and spreading it out. When you are happy, you associate it with a sense of expansion. And whenever you have felt miserable, you associate it with a sense of shrinking or contraction. There is something in you which expands when you are happy and contracts when you are unhappy. But we never pay attention to what is contracting and expanding. We only keep our attention outside; We only keep our attention outside; We have not paid attention to the reason.
Sage Gaudapadacharya said, “There is something in you that is expanding that is worth knowing.” Even a glimpse of this consciousness, this energy inside you, can make the smile on your face so strong that nothing whatsoever can take it away from you. Nobody can make you miserable or take away the joy from your life. Life assumes another dimension suddenly once you glimpse something inside that is expanding. You don’t have to leave things here and go. Just being amidst all the noise and still recognizing that beauty is so wonderful so fascinating, right here and now and that is meditation, which is supreme prayer.
All powers are hidden within the Self and everything will manifest when you connect to your consciousness.
5. Live With A Meditative Attitude(Swami Brahmdev)
Meditation is not an activity or a hobby. It is the attitude one has to life. If you think you are "doing" meditation by sitting alone and closing your eyes, think again. Meditation is not something you do.
If you live with clarity, meditation will awaken. Meditation is an attitude. You are always with yourself, meaning that you are expressing your true self. When you are close to yourself, you are in meditation. So anything, which can bring you close to yourself is meditation. If you are "doing" meditation, you will go farther away from yourself.
When you sit to meditate don't do anything. Just be there, quiet with yourself. Be present, feel the environment, the atmosphere, just enjoy your own company. To awaken your meditative nature, there are certain kriyas and one powerful kriya is that you observe your breath. If you cannot observe your breath. If you cannot observe your breath, then count your breaths. Make it your permanent habit from today that you will never spend a day without couting hundred breaths. As you start it, in 10 minutes you will start feeling some change inside. Don't make any effort to breathe, let it be natural. Just count it. counting your 100 breaths will awaken your meditative nature. slowly you will start feeling that your life is becoming a meditation.... What does that mean? That means your life will be full of power, creativity and strength.
The environment is full of vibrations. When vibrations touch your system your system transforms them into thoughts. Thought is power. I have the power to think and to create thoughts. we never use that power. In our whole life we never thin. What we call thinking is not thinking. It is just repeating or parroting. If we knew how to think and what to think, we could create paradise. the power to think is the power of creation. Whatever we are now, we created that life with our thoughts, with our imaginations, with our dreams. Whatever you imagine, that becomes. Whatever you think, that becomes. If I know consciously how to use my thoughts, how to use my thinking power, then we make our lives as we want them to be.
If you pause a little you will realise we have freedom to think but we re not free to think. We are living in frames, society, system, culture, religion, philosophy - we are so boxd in that we are unable to think. since we are not free, we need to first get liberated! Only with wisdom can we think. And wisdom comes with consciousness. first discover higher consciousness by cultivating a meditative attitude.
All matter is energy, energy is consciousness, all force is consiouness. Strenght comes when you are positive, you feel healthy; when you are destructive you start feeling different, you start feeling weak. when your thoughts are healthy, positive. you start feeling strong. When your thoughts are negative, you start feeling weak. when we are sincere, we feel strong; we are not sincere, we start feeling week.
Do not confuse positive thoughts with ego. such thoughts relate only to yourself. Positive thoughts are when you feel positive not just about yourself but about everyone around you. that again is born only with a meditative attitude.
So the first step for any kind of meditation is to develop the right attitude through watching your breath and slowly progressing to discover your inner self.
When you sit to meditate don't do anything. Just be there, quiet with yourself. Be present, feel the environment, the atmosphere, just enjoy your own company. To awaken your meditative nature, there are certain kriyas and one powerful kriya is that you observe your breath. If you cannot observe your breath. If you cannot observe your breath, then count your breaths. Make it your permanent habit from today that you will never spend a day without couting hundred breaths. As you start it, in 10 minutes you will start feeling some change inside. Don't make any effort to breathe, let it be natural. Just count it. counting your 100 breaths will awaken your meditative nature. slowly you will start feeling that your life is becoming a meditation.... What does that mean? That means your life will be full of power, creativity and strength.
The environment is full of vibrations. When vibrations touch your system your system transforms them into thoughts. Thought is power. I have the power to think and to create thoughts. we never use that power. In our whole life we never thin. What we call thinking is not thinking. It is just repeating or parroting. If we knew how to think and what to think, we could create paradise. the power to think is the power of creation. Whatever we are now, we created that life with our thoughts, with our imaginations, with our dreams. Whatever you imagine, that becomes. Whatever you think, that becomes. If I know consciously how to use my thoughts, how to use my thinking power, then we make our lives as we want them to be.
If you pause a little you will realise we have freedom to think but we re not free to think. We are living in frames, society, system, culture, religion, philosophy - we are so boxd in that we are unable to think. since we are not free, we need to first get liberated! Only with wisdom can we think. And wisdom comes with consciousness. first discover higher consciousness by cultivating a meditative attitude.
All matter is energy, energy is consciousness, all force is consiouness. Strenght comes when you are positive, you feel healthy; when you are destructive you start feeling different, you start feeling weak. when your thoughts are healthy, positive. you start feeling strong. When your thoughts are negative, you start feeling weak. when we are sincere, we feel strong; we are not sincere, we start feeling week.
Do not confuse positive thoughts with ego. such thoughts relate only to yourself. Positive thoughts are when you feel positive not just about yourself but about everyone around you. that again is born only with a meditative attitude.
So the first step for any kind of meditation is to develop the right attitude through watching your breath and slowly progressing to discover your inner self.
6. Full Moon Enhances Your Qualitie(Sadhguru)
One Poornima or full moon night some 2500 years ago, something tremendous happened. After almost eigh years of intense sadhana. Gautama Siddhartha had become so weak that his body was almost at the point of death. He came to the swift flowing Niranjana, a large stream with knee height water. He tried to cross the river, but halfway, his body became so weak that he could not take another step. but he was not the kind to give up. He held on to a dead branch and just stood there.
It is said that he stood like this for hours. Suddenly, he realised that what he had been seeking was actually within. "So why struggle? All that is needed is absolute willingness and it is right here. Why am I searching everywhere? Once he realised this, he found that little extra ounce of energy to take the next few steps, walk across the river and sit down under the now famous Bodhi tree. He sat with the determination that "unless the ultimate happens to me, I will not move. Either I will get up enlightened or I will die in this posture". And in one moment, he was there, if it becomes the only priority, one moment is all it takes.
In his own silent way, Gautama changed the world forever. His flowering on that full moon night, 2500 years ago, has made a significant change for spiritual seekers, whoever or wherever they are.
Any poornima is significant. for one, the full moon has a certain aesthetic quality which improves your receptivity. if you look at anything beautiful, your receptivity to that object increases. The moment you look at anything that you consider ugly, your receptivity to it goes down. Another aspect is, on poonima, the planet is in a certainposition and feel of the moon is very different when it is full. And its magnetic pull is also different at that time. It is working upon the surface of the planet which is exposed to the moon. When there is such a natural pull, since your spine is vertical, there is a tendency for your energies to move upward. That means, blood and prana, the fundamental life energies flow in a different wa. Just as tides rise higher on that night because of the moon's grabvitational pull, your blood is also being pulled up and the circulation of blood increases in your brain.
This upsurge of energy enhances your qualities, whatever they may be. If you are mentally imbalanced. If you are more meditative, it makes you more medtative. If you are loving, it makes you more loving. If you are fearful, it makes you more fearful. The same happens with other qualities in you too, but most may not be sensitive enough to notice it.
For seekers, especially those on the meditative path, it is more conducive to meditative path. It is more conducive to meditate on those nights because without an upsurge of energy, without a heightened sense of energy, there is no question of awareness. when there is a heightened sense of energy in your system, what you call awareness will come naturally to you. So we just want to make use of this ntural phenomenon which is occuring on that night. So poornima is giving you a free ride of energy and awareness.
7. The Meaning of Karma ( Daisaku Ikeda)
Each of us creates our own karma. Our past thoughts, speech and behaviour have shaped our present reality, and our actions, thoughts and speech now will in turn affect our future. The influence of karma carries over from one lifetime to the next, remaining through the latent state between death and rebirth. The law of karma accounts for the circumstances of one’s birth, one’s individual nature and the differences among all living beings and their environments.
The idea of karma predates Buddhism. The pre-Buddhist view of karma, however, contained an element of determinism. Shakyamuni maintained that what makes a person noble or humble is not birth but actions taken.
Good karma, then, means actions born from good intentions, kindness and compassion. Conversely, bad karma refers to actions induced by greed, anger and foolishness (or the holding of mistaken views). Some Buddhist treatises divide the causes of bad karma into ten acts: the three physical acts of killing, stealing and sexual misconduct; the four verbal acts of lying, flattery (or idle and irresponsible speech), defamation and duplicity; and the three mental acts of greed, anger and foolishness.
Buddhism teaches that the chain of cause and effect exists eternally; this accounts for the influence of karma amassed in prior lifetimes. The influence of such karma resides within the depths of our lives and, when activated by the moment-to-moment realities of this lifetime, shapes our lives according to its dictates. Some karmic effects may appear in this lifetime while others may remain dormant. “Fixed karma” produces a fixed result at a specific time, whereas the result of “unfixed karma”, of course, is neither fixed nor set to appear at a predetermined time.
Some karma is so heavy, so profoundly imprinted in the depths of people’s lives, that it cannot easily be altered. For instance, suppose someone deliberately makes another person extremely unhappy or even causes that person’s death, that person has created heavy negative karma. According to the strict law of causality, this negative karma will surely lead to karmic suffering far beyond one’s ordinary powers to eradicate it. Such grave karma usually exerts its influence at death, and the most influential karma at the time of death will determine one’s basic life condition in the next lifetime.
The influence of particular karma will be extinguished after its energy is unleashed in one’s life. This is similar to a plant seed that sprouts and grows to blossom as a flower or bear fruit. After fulfilling its function, the same seed will never repeat the process.
Bad karma can be erased only after it “blossoms” in the form of our suffering. According to pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, the influence of severely bad karma, created through numerous actions, could only be erased through several lifetimes. But the Lotus Sutra teaches that the principal cause for attaining Buddhahood is the Buddha nature inherent in each individual life, and that faith in the Lotus Sutra opens the way to that attainment. It is not required that we undergo lifetime after lifetime of austerities. Through our diligent practice of faith in the Lotus Sutra, we can instantly tap our innate Buddhahood and extricate ourselves from the effects of our bad karma in this lifetime. Moreover, the transformation of an individual’s life condition can evoke a similar transformation in others. As this process ripples outward, similar transformations become possible throughout entire societies, all humankind and even into the natural world. From the author’s ‘Unlocking the mysteries of birth and death’, Soka Gakkai International
In his own silent way, Gautama changed the world forever. His flowering on that full moon night, 2500 years ago, has made a significant change for spiritual seekers, whoever or wherever they are.
Any poornima is significant. for one, the full moon has a certain aesthetic quality which improves your receptivity. if you look at anything beautiful, your receptivity to that object increases. The moment you look at anything that you consider ugly, your receptivity to it goes down. Another aspect is, on poonima, the planet is in a certainposition and feel of the moon is very different when it is full. And its magnetic pull is also different at that time. It is working upon the surface of the planet which is exposed to the moon. When there is such a natural pull, since your spine is vertical, there is a tendency for your energies to move upward. That means, blood and prana, the fundamental life energies flow in a different wa. Just as tides rise higher on that night because of the moon's grabvitational pull, your blood is also being pulled up and the circulation of blood increases in your brain.
This upsurge of energy enhances your qualities, whatever they may be. If you are mentally imbalanced. If you are more meditative, it makes you more medtative. If you are loving, it makes you more loving. If you are fearful, it makes you more fearful. The same happens with other qualities in you too, but most may not be sensitive enough to notice it.
For seekers, especially those on the meditative path, it is more conducive to meditative path. It is more conducive to meditate on those nights because without an upsurge of energy, without a heightened sense of energy, there is no question of awareness. when there is a heightened sense of energy in your system, what you call awareness will come naturally to you. So we just want to make use of this ntural phenomenon which is occuring on that night. So poornima is giving you a free ride of energy and awareness.
7. The Meaning of Karma ( Daisaku Ikeda)
Each of us creates our own karma. Our past thoughts, speech and behaviour have shaped our present reality, and our actions, thoughts and speech now will in turn affect our future. The influence of karma carries over from one lifetime to the next, remaining through the latent state between death and rebirth. The law of karma accounts for the circumstances of one’s birth, one’s individual nature and the differences among all living beings and their environments.
The idea of karma predates Buddhism. The pre-Buddhist view of karma, however, contained an element of determinism. Shakyamuni maintained that what makes a person noble or humble is not birth but actions taken.
Good karma, then, means actions born from good intentions, kindness and compassion. Conversely, bad karma refers to actions induced by greed, anger and foolishness (or the holding of mistaken views). Some Buddhist treatises divide the causes of bad karma into ten acts: the three physical acts of killing, stealing and sexual misconduct; the four verbal acts of lying, flattery (or idle and irresponsible speech), defamation and duplicity; and the three mental acts of greed, anger and foolishness.
Buddhism teaches that the chain of cause and effect exists eternally; this accounts for the influence of karma amassed in prior lifetimes. The influence of such karma resides within the depths of our lives and, when activated by the moment-to-moment realities of this lifetime, shapes our lives according to its dictates. Some karmic effects may appear in this lifetime while others may remain dormant. “Fixed karma” produces a fixed result at a specific time, whereas the result of “unfixed karma”, of course, is neither fixed nor set to appear at a predetermined time.
Some karma is so heavy, so profoundly imprinted in the depths of people’s lives, that it cannot easily be altered. For instance, suppose someone deliberately makes another person extremely unhappy or even causes that person’s death, that person has created heavy negative karma. According to the strict law of causality, this negative karma will surely lead to karmic suffering far beyond one’s ordinary powers to eradicate it. Such grave karma usually exerts its influence at death, and the most influential karma at the time of death will determine one’s basic life condition in the next lifetime.
The influence of particular karma will be extinguished after its energy is unleashed in one’s life. This is similar to a plant seed that sprouts and grows to blossom as a flower or bear fruit. After fulfilling its function, the same seed will never repeat the process.
Bad karma can be erased only after it “blossoms” in the form of our suffering. According to pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, the influence of severely bad karma, created through numerous actions, could only be erased through several lifetimes. But the Lotus Sutra teaches that the principal cause for attaining Buddhahood is the Buddha nature inherent in each individual life, and that faith in the Lotus Sutra opens the way to that attainment. It is not required that we undergo lifetime after lifetime of austerities. Through our diligent practice of faith in the Lotus Sutra, we can instantly tap our innate Buddhahood and extricate ourselves from the effects of our bad karma in this lifetime. Moreover, the transformation of an individual’s life condition can evoke a similar transformation in others. As this process ripples outward, similar transformations become possible throughout entire societies, all humankind and even into the natural world. From the author’s ‘Unlocking the mysteries of birth and death’, Soka Gakkai International
Note : This is only a scribbling note. These are purely my understanding.
These may or may not be the correct one. This is not to hurt anybody's feeling.
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