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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: EternalCowabunga]
#8044314 - 02/19/08 07:26 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
EternalCowabunga said: I was just thinking of that picture the other day. What a powerful statement! I love that guy and what he represents
WOW! I was just remembering that self-immolating monk too! I mentioned it to my Lady this weekend and here it is. I remember the event - protesting the Vietnam war.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#8044343 - 02/19/08 07:31 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Crazy, fun loving Buddhists.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: Kombat Frank]
#8044497 - 02/19/08 08:01 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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The only affirmation that I am comfortable making is that I am more enlightened than I used to be. I do not compare my own development with someone else's. Perhaps it is that I am more aware of my impermanence than I used to be. I am more appreciative of moment-to-moment experience than I used to be, and I am less and less identified with the numerous social roles and status-seeking behaviors, howsoever humble, that most people around me seek to aggrandize their egos.
I mean, I have graduate degrees, for example, but I'm not a published professor at Harvard. I can appreciate without envy those who are more established in the egoic world, but that is not my lot in life. I have some perspective. I work with teachers in a middle school who boast about being the chairperson of a department, or boast about their wrestling team. Meanwhile, the coach for the US wrestling team in the last Olympic games in Greece is a PE teacher at my school, and he doesn't boast. Some people are merely grateful for experiences, others try to make their molehills into mountains. The great Egyptian pyramid Khufu/Cheops still hold its form, without the white polished limestone it once had, but in another 5000 years, it will be a rounded mound in the desert with little form to suggest its original grandeur. Leona Helmsley spent a fortune on her own grave, but who will visit it in 50 years? Who will care? By the same token, what will eventually become of the myriad life forms of planet Earth before it too perishes from the death of its Sun? Will all life go the way of the dinosaurs, or will only selected life forms be herded upon an interstellar Noah's ark? Who knows, but impermanence of form - living or inert makes human presumption the most ignorant and unenviable aspect of the human condition. MY car, my child's grades, my bank account, my religion, my country. Small small minds in the face of cosmic consciousness.
Have these words expanded your perception so that you could share my view, or was your perception already expanded so that you just read them and nodded in the affirmative? In either case, if you can experience even a moment of "unbearble compassion" for any of these scenarios, your mind is enlightened relative to any common ignoramus - to Leona Helmsley or to a famous Egyptian pharoah who saw himself as a god.
peace.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: Icelander]
#8044553 - 02/19/08 08:10 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Can you imagine? Would you want to? It is that BE HERE NOW thing that speaks of pushing one of your senses beyond... Not a means for me voluntarily, and surely not a point understood by the millions who have seen this pic or its filming since Vietnam. The Gnostics were bad-mouthed for not becoming martyred by torture. They Knew good and well that mouthing what the tyrants wanted to hear was not going to mean betraying Jesus or God, that it meant continuing to live their lives without feeling obliged to make a social statement about their inner world. I would have been with them. Eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols? Make mine an idol of Aphrodite please, or Hermes-Mercury or even Apollo, who represented the rationality to eat the stupid meat instead of being used as a pitch-covered human torch in the colliseum. Thumbs up for life.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,532
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#8046117 - 02/20/08 04:24 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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politics and religion are closely entangled rulers would hope people are ready to die for what they believe and want a big stake in that belief if possible.
buddhism is more in the arena of relief from belief that photo proves that anyone can wear a robe and use it to confuse people
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_ 🧠 _
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: redgreenvines]
#8046170 - 02/20/08 05:45 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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There were, as contradictory as it was, (and as contradictory as the 'Liberation Theology' that characterizes fascist-Catholic South and Central American countries) militant Buddhists who protested the war in Vietnam (and covertly, Cambodia). They were too wrapped up in politics to be Theravadin monks in the full sense. Doing such violence to a human being, including oneself, violates ahimsa.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#8046203 - 02/20/08 06:15 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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monks enjoy watching soccer, it's an occupation for many- no divine, shamanistic insight or calling
but violations, we don't know what he was thinking, did he follow Buddhist ideology as you'd prescribe? we throw stones at an accused burning man
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: Lakefingers]
#8047466 - 02/20/08 02:06 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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I'm not "throwing stones," I'm merely observing the blatent lack of compassion for himself. It was horrible and sad and tragic.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#8047685 - 02/20/08 03:02 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: Can you imagine? Would you want to? It is that BE HERE NOW thing that speaks of pushing one of your senses beyond... Not a means for me voluntarily, and surely not a point understood by the millions who have seen this pic or its filming since Vietnam. The Gnostics were bad-mouthed for not becoming martyred by torture. They Knew good and well that mouthing what the tyrants wanted to hear was not going to mean betraying Jesus or God, that it meant continuing to live their lives without feeling obliged to make a social statement about their inner world. I would have been with them. Eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols? Make mine an idol of Aphrodite please, or Hermes-Mercury or even Apollo, who represented the rationality to eat the stupid meat instead of being used as a pitch-covered human torch in the colliseum. Thumbs up for life.
He was just another human caught up in a belief system; a belief system he was so invested in that most likely he felt he had no choice.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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badreligion2good
Uncertain


Registered: 02/21/06
Posts: 888
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: Icelander]
#8049313 - 02/20/08 09:16 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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There are so many sutta's out there, all pointing to the same idea. The notion that from ignorance arises clinging, craving and clinging bring suffering, that suffering can cease, and there are techniques which help liberate us. I think you should check out the Tipitaka, its a great collection.
I personally studied Zen briefly, and was very bored by it. Since I began studying Theravadan Buddhism, I have noticed marked improvements in my ability to cope, and interact with my experience. In retrospect, I understand what Zen is teaching, and find it quite interesting now, but it did not seem like a good starting point for me. Most Tibetan Buddhism I have encountered seems hindered by dogma. Though I am sure there are many wise and noble Tibetan Lamas as well.
So, you can add another person to your list of people on this forum who study Buddhism.
Oh, and to answer Org's question regarding the recording of the teachings of the Buddha. Buddha is believed to have spoken Pali, a language with no written component. His discourses were memorized by his monks in the form of chants, and passed down in the oral tradition for several hundred years, until a variety of scribes from different cultures translated Pali pheonetically, and so the discourses were put on paper.
Its fair to doubt that these are the exact words of the Buddha, but many of the ideas and themes presented in the Tipitaka are very insightful, and worthy of the examination of any philosopher. So whose ideas they are does not matter, the fact is that the teachings have the potential to liberate people from suffering and thats what matters.
Org, ever heard of the Middle Way?
-------------------- All I know is that I dont know. Row, row, row, you boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#8050406 - 02/21/08 02:21 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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you're so grave!
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: Lakefingers]
#8050541 - 02/21/08 05:37 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Lakefingers said: you're so grave!
Why is that? Is self-immolation something that makes you smile?
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
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Re: Nirvana Sutra? (Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra) [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#8050676 - 02/21/08 07:15 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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depends on what the topic is in relation to, but you're just goading the question: what makes you smile?
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