Doctrine Of Awakening Quotes

The problem that faces us is the problem of awakening. What we lack is not an ideology or doctrine that will save the world. What we lack is mindfulness of what we are, of what our situation really is. We need to wake up in order to rediscover our human sovereignty. We are riding a horse that is running out of control. The way of salvation is a new culture in which human beings are encouraged to rediscover their deepest nature.

Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions.

Modern man has not only to fight against materialism, but must also defend himself from the snares and allures of false supernaturalism. His defense will be firm and effective only if he is capable of returning to the origins, of assimilating the ancient traditions, and then of relying upon the ascesis to carry out the task of reestablishing his inner condition. For it is through this that these traditions will reveal to him their deepest and perennially real content and show him, step by step, the path.

Solitude should not be a burden, something that is suffered, that is borne involuntarily, or in which refuge is taken by force of circumstances, but rather, a natural, simple, and free disposition. In a text [Suttanipāta] we read: 'Solitude is called wisdom, he who is alone will find that he is happy'.

An Aryan [noble] mind has too much respect for other people, and its sense of its own dignity is too pronounced to allow it to impose its own ideas upon others, even when it knows that its ideas are correct.

It has been said that in the New Testament doctrine is grace; and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified. Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.

As in a mirror, he 'looks at himself again and again before performing an action; he looks at himself again and again before saying a word; he looks at himself again and again before harboring a thought.' It can easily be seen that by following such a path a man naturally transforms himself into a kind of living statue made up of awareness, into a figure pervaded by composedness, decorum, and dignity . . .

We have always heard it preached, „Love one another“. What for? That doctrine was peached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.

There is, however, something odd about this pattern. Other than joining a political party, it is hard to think of any other sort of community that people join by agreeing to a set of principles. Imagine joining a knitting group. Does anyone go to a knitting group and ask if the knitters believe in knitting or what they hold to be true about knitting? Do people ask for a knitting doctrinal statement? Indeed, if you start knitting by reading a book about knitting or a history of knitting or a theory of knitting, you will very likely never knit.

When an ascesis is understood as a technique for the conscious creation of a force that can be applied, in the first place, at any level, then the disciplines taught by the doctrine of awakening can be recognized as those that incorporate the highest degree of crystallinity and independence.

There is no need for you to formally promote certain doctrines: your very presence becomes a teaching example to others, a liberating art that opens their imagination to the potential freedom they also can experience. (p. 79)

Awakening’ is the keystone and the symbol of the whole Buddhist ascesis: to think that ‘awakening’ and ‘nothingness’ can be equivalent is an extravagance that should be obvious to everyone. Nor should the notion of ‘vanishing,’ applied in a well-known simile of nibbāna to the fire that disappears when the flame is extinguished, be a source of misconception. It has been said with justice that, in similes of this sort, one must always have in mind the general Indo-Aryan concept that indicates that the extinguishing of the fire is not its annihilation, but its return to the invisible, pure, supersensible state in which it was before it manifested itself through a combustible in a given place and in given circumstances.

when they identify relativism, the belief that there is no absolute truth to guide human behavior, as one of the evils of our times; but you won’t find absolute truth if you look for it where it cannot be found: in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, or stories.

The lion is king of the beasts. When he leaves his den, he stretches and gazes out over all the directions. Before seeking his prey, he lets forth a mighty roar that causes the other creatures to tremble and flee. - Birds fly high, crocodiles dive beneath the water, foxes slip into their holes. Even village elephants, decked in fancy belts and ornaments and shaded by golden parasols, run away at the sound of that roar. -Community, the proclamation of the Way of Enlightenment is like that lion’s roar! …..False doctrines fear and tremble. When Impermanence, Non-self, and Dependent Co-arising are proclaimed, all those who have long sought false security in ignorance and forgetfulness must awaken, celestial beings as well as human beings. When a person sees the dazzling truth, he exclaims, ‘We embraced dangerous views for so long, taking the impermanent to be permanent, and believing in the existence of a separate self. We took suffering to be pleasure and look at the temporary as if it were eternal. We mistook the false for the true. Now the time has come to tear down all the walls of forgetfulness and false views.

Anyone who engages in Buddhist meditation is subscribing to the bizarre doctrine that they do not actually exist, that they have no soul, that they are not a Self. They are agreeing with the extraordinary proposition that Nature - inexplicably - deals in creating pointless illusions.

„Love one another“. What for? That doctrine was preached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.

That the divinities can do little for men, that man is fundamentally the artificer of his own destiny, even of his development beyond this world—this characteristic view held by original Buddhism demonstrates its difference from some later forms, especially the Mahayana schools, into which infiltrated the idea of a power on high busying itself with mankind in order to lead each individual to salvation.

Once detachment, viveka, is interpreted mainly in this internal sense, it appears perhaps easier to achieve it today than in a more normal and traditional civilization. One who is still an 'Aryan' spirit in a large Eu­ropean or American city, with its skyscrapers and asphalt, with its poli­tics and sport, with its crowds who dance and shout, with its exponents of secular culture and of soulless science and so on-among all this he may feel himself more alone and detached and nomad than he would have done in the rime of the Buddha, in conditions of physical isolation and of actual wandering. The greatest difficulty, in this respect, lies in giving this sense of internal isolation, which today may occur to many almost spontaneously, a positive, full, simple, and transparent charac­ter, with elimination of all traces of aridity, melancholy, discord, or anxiety. Solitude should not he a burden, something that is suffered, that is borne involuntarily, or in which refuge is taken by force of cir­cumstances, but rather, a natural, simple, and free disposition, in a text we read: 'Solitude is called wisdom [ekattam monam akkhatarin], he who is alone will find that he is happy'; it is an accentuated version of 'beata solitudo, sofa beatitudo'.

what is elsewhere fragmentary here becomes systematic; what is instinct becomes conscious technique; the spiritual labrynth of those minds that achieve real elation through the workings of some “grace” (since it is only accidentally and by means of suggestions, fears, hopes, and raptures that they discover the right way) is replaced by a calm and uniform light, present even in abysmal depths, and by a method that has no need of external means.

In 1987, members of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Reagan ended the Fairness Doctrine, which had protected public information since the earliest days of radio, in the 1920s. In order to get a public license, a radio station had to agree to present information honestly and fairly and to balance different points of view. Movement Conservatives demanded an end to the Fairness Doctrine so they could push their ideology of “individualism” and Christianity.[

He has so appeared as the Mediator between God and men, that, uniting the two natures in one person, He both exalted what was ordinary by what was extraordinary, and tempered what was extraordinary by what was ordinary in Himself. 10. But where in all the varied movements of creation is there any work of God which is not wonderful, were it not that through familiarity these wonders have become small in our esteem? Nay, how many common things are trodden under foot, which, if examined carefully, awaken our astonishment!

The world of "becoming" is thus, in a manner of speaking, the truth Buddhism uses from the start. In the becoming nothing remains identical, there is nothing substantial, and nothing permanent. It is the becoming of experience itself, consuming itself in its own momentary content. Ceaseless and limitless, it is also conceived as nothing more than a succession of states that give place one to another according to an impersonal law, as in an eternal circle. We can here see an exact parallel of the Hellenic concept of the "cycle of generation" kύkλoς τς γενέσεως, and the "wheel of necessity," κύκλoς τς εἱμαρμένης.

Many Buddhists understand the Round of birth-and-death quite literally as a process of reincarnation, wherein the karma which shapes the individual does so again and again in life after life until, through insight and awakening, it is laid to rest. But in Zen, and in other schools of the Mahayana, it is often taken in a more figurative way, as that the process of rebirth is from moment to moment, so that one is being reborn so long as one identifies himself with a continuing ego which reincarnates itself afresh at each moment of time. Thus the validity and interest of the doctrine does not require acceptance of a special theory of survival.

We have implied that asceticism, when considered as a whole, can assume various meanings at successive spiritual levels. Simply defined, that is to say as “training” or discipline, an ascesis aims at placing all the energies of the human being under the control of a central principle. In this respect we can, properly speaking, talk of a technique that has, in common with that of modern scientific achievements, the characteristics of objectivity and impersonality. Thus an eye, trained to distinguish the accessory from the essential, can easily recognize a “constant” beyond the multiple variety of ascetic forms adopted by this or that tradition.

Opposed to all these critics of radio-bliss, and equally opposed to radio-bliss itself, there was in each country a small and bewildered party which asserted that the true goal of human activity was the creation of a world-wide community of awakened and intelligently creative persons, related by mutual insight and respect, and by the common task of fulfilling the potentiality of the human spirit on earth. Much of their doctrine was a restatement of the teachings of religious seers of a fine long past, but it had also been deeply influenced by contemporary science. This party, however, was misunderstood by the scientists, cursed by the clerics, ridiculed by the militarists, and ignored by the advocates of radio-bliss.

According to Shaivism, anupaya may also be reached by entering into the infinite blissfulness of the Self through the powerful experiences of sensual pleasures. This practice is designed to help the practitioner reach the highest levels by accelerating their progress through the sakta and sambhava upayas. These carefully guarded doctrines of Tantric sadhana are the basis for certain practices, like the use of the five makaras (hrdaya) mentioned earlier. The experience of a powerful sensual pleasure quickly removes a person’s dullness or indifference. It awakens in them the hidden nature and source of blissfulness and starts its inner vibration. Abhinavagupta says that only those people who are awakened to their own inner vitality can truly be said to have a heart (hrdaya). They are known as sahrdaya (connoisseurs). Those uninfluenced by this type of experiences are said to be heartless. In his words: “It is explained thus—The heart of a person, shedding of its attitude of indifference while listening to the sweet sounds of a song or while feeling the delightful touch of something like sandalpaste, immediately starts a wonderful vibratory movement. (This) is called ananda-sakti and because of its presence the person concerned is considered to have a heart (in their body) (Tantraloka, III.209-10). People who do not become one (with such blissful experiences), and who do not feel their physical body being merged into it, are said to be heartless because their consciousness itself remains immersed (in the gross body) (ibid., III.24).” The philosopher Jayaratha addresses this topic as well when he quotes a verse from a work by an author named Parasastabhutipada: “The worship to be performed by advanced aspirants consists of strengthening their position in the basic state of (infinite and blissful pure consciousness), on the occasions of the experiences of all such delightful objects which are to be seen here as having sweet and beautiful forms (Tantraloka, II.219).” These authors are pointing out that if people participate in pleasurable experiences with that special sharp alertness known as avadhana, they will become oblivious to the limitations of their usual body-consciousness and their pure consciousness will be fully illumined. According to Vijnanabhairava: “A Shiva yogin, having directed his attention to the inner bliss which arises on the occasion of some immense joy, or on seeing a close relative after a long time, should immerse his mind in that bliss and become one with it (Vijnanabhairava, 71). A yogin should fix his mind on each phenomenon which brings satisfaction (because) his own state of infinite bliss arises therein (ibid., 74).” In summary, Kashmir Shaivism is a philosophy that embraces life in its totality. Unlike puritanical systems it does not shy away from the pleasant and aesthetically pleasing aspects of life as somehow being unspiritual or contaminated. On the contrary, great importance has been placed on the aesthetic quality of spiritual practice in Kashmir Shaivism. In fact, recognizing and celebrating the aesthetic aspect of the Absolute is one of the central principles of this philosophy. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 124–125.

Finally, the tern 'asceticism' is also susceptible to being misunderstood by those who view Buddhism from the outside. Evola reminds his readers that the original meaning of the term asceticism is "practical exercise," or 'discipline' — one could even say 'learning.' It certainly does not mean, as some are inclined to think, a willingness to mortify the body that derives from the idea of penance, and even leads to the practice of self-flagellation, since it is believed that one must suffer in order to expiate one's sins. Asceticism is rather a school of the will, a pure heroism (that is, it is disinterested) that Evola, a real expert in this subject, compares to the efforts of a mountain climber. To the layman, mountain climbing may be a pointless effort, but to the climber it is a challenge in which the test of courage, perseverance, and hero-ism is its only purpose. In this we recognize an attitude that Brahmanism knew under certain forms of yoga and Tantrism. In the spiritual domain, the procedure is the same. Buddha, as we know, was tempted early in his life by a form of asceticism that was similar to that of a hermit living in the desert. This approach involved prolonged fasts and techniques aimed at breaking the body's resistance. Siddhartha, however, realized himself and achieved the Awakening only when he understood this type of asceticism to be a dead end. Turning away from the indignant protests of his early companions, he stopped mortifying his body, ate to placate his hunger, and returned to the world of human beings. But it was then that his detachment started to develop: the world no longer had a grasp on him, since he had become a 'hero,' or like the ancient Greeks would have said, a 'god.

While originating in acts of imagination, orthodoxies paradoxically seek to control the imagination as a means of maintaining their authority. The authenticity of a person's understanding is measured according to its conformity with the dogmas of the school. While such controls may provide a necessary safeguard against charlatanism and self-deception, they also can be used to suppress authentic attempts at creative innovation that might threaten the status quo. The imagination is anarchic and potentially subversive. The more hierarchic and authoritarian a religious institution, the more it will require that the creations of the imagination conform to its doctrines and aesthetic norms. Yet by suppression of the imagination, the very life of dharma practice is cut off at its source. While religious orthodoxies may survive and even prosper for centuries, in the end they will ossify. When the world around them changes, they will lack the imaginative power to respond creatively to the challenges of the new situation.

If, for instance, a Presbyterian pastor begins: “Methodists teach that a true believer may totally and finally fall away from a state of grace: this I shall now refute,” every person of that persuasion in the house will naturally feel as though he were personally assailed. But had this pastor advanced the opposite doctrine, so explained as to free it from odious misconceptions, in a didactic mode and temper, making only a respectful general reference to an honest difference of judgment upon it among the recognized followers of Christ, every fair-minded adherent of Wesley would have listened without offence, and would have come away with the pleasing impression that Christians were not so far asunder upon this vexed question as he had supposed. It is very much due to the observance of this simple rule that wise pastors (without infidelity to truth) preserve pleasant relations with other communions, hold their own ground triumphantly against encroachments, and even win accessions, without awakening denominational strife And it is usually the rash contempt of this easy caution which plunges others into unseemly and mischievous rivalries.

This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception. He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.' After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism. Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.

The Mosaic legend of the Fall of Man has preserved an ancient picture representing the origin and consequences of this disunion. The incidents of the legend form the basis of an essential article of the creed, the doctrine of original sin in man and his consequent need of succour. It may be well at the commencement of logic to examine the story which treats of the origin and the bearings of the very knowledge which logic has to discuss. For, though philosophy must not allow herself to be overawed by religion, or accept the position of existence on sufferance, she cannot afford to neglect these popular conceptions. The tales and allegories of religion, which have enjoyed for thousands of years the veneration of nations, are not to be set aside as antiquated even now. Upon a closer inspection of the story of the Fall we find, as was already said, that it exemplifies the universal bearings of knowledge upon the spiritual life. In its instinctive and natural stage, spiritual life wears the garb of innocence and confiding simplicity; but the very essence of spirit implies the absorption of this immediate condition in something higher. The spiritual is distinguished from the natural, and more especially from the animal, life, in the circumstance that it does not continue a mere stream of tendency, but sunders itself to self-realisation. But this position of severed life has in its turn to be suppressed, and the spirit has by its own act to win its way to concord again. The final concord then is spiritual; that is, the principle of restoration is found in thought, and thought only. The hand that inflicts the wound is also the hand which heals it. We are told in our story that Adam and Eve, the first human beings, the types of humanity, were placed in a garden, where grew a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God, it is said, had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of this latter tree: of the tree of life for the present nothing further is said. These words evidently assume that man is not intended to seek knowledge, and ought to remain in the state of innocence. Other meditative races, it may be remarked, have held the same belief that the primitive state of mankind was one of innocence and harmony. Now all this is to a certain extent correct. The disunion that appears throughout humanity is not a condition to rest in. But it is a mistake to regard the natural and immediate harmony as the right state. The mind is not mere instinct: on the contrary, it essentially involves the tendency to reasoning and meditation. Childlike innocence no doubt has in it something fascinating and attractive: but only because it reminds us of what the spirit must win for itself. The harmoniousness of childhood is a gift from the hand of nature: the second harmony must spring from the labour and culture of the spirit. And so the words of Christ, ‘Except ye become as little children’, etc., are very far from telling us that we must always remain children. Again, we find in the narrative of Moses that the occasion which led man to leave his natural unity is attributed to solicitation from without. The serpent was the tempter. But the truth is, that the step into opposition, the awakening of consciousness, follows from the very nature of man; and the same history repeats itself in every son of Adam. The serpent represents likeness to God as consisting in the knowledge of good and evil: and it is just this knowledge in which man participates when he breaks with the unity of his instinctive being and eats of the forbidden fruit. The first reflection of awakened consciousness in men told them that they were naked. This is a naive and profound trait. For the sense of shame bears evidence to the separation of man from his natural and sensuous life. The beasts never get so far as this separation, and they feel no shame. And it is in the human feeling of shame that we are to seek the spiritual and moral origin origin of dress.

I will never forget my mother, for she implanted and nurtured in me the first germ of goodness; she opened my heart to the impressions of nature; she awakened and furthered my concepts, and her doctrines have had a continual and beneficial influence in my life’.

The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. If we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we cannot help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are at best reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendant God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent.

The world is there for both sage and student, and both must work and serve—the difference being mental only. Illusionism is not the doctrine except as an intermediate stage towards truth, which is higher. One must participate in God’s work by assisting evolution and redeeming the world, not squat idly in peace alone.

The spiritual, political and economic situation in Europe was like a carefully built bonfire waiting to be lit, but the torch that set it burning was the spiritual crisis of Martin Luther. His struggle led eventually to the rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith. ... But what made the Reformation catch fire as an international movement of new life within the church was the reduplication of Luther's experience and insight among a number of Christian humanists who found this doctrine the key to their spiritual release and to their conceptual understanding of the needs in Western Christendom.

There are, O disciples, other things, profound things, things difficult to apprehend, hard to understand, but that beget calm; joyful things, things not to be grasped simply by discursive thought, things that only the wise man can understand. These things are expounded by the Accomplished One, after he himself has known them, after he himself has seen them.

The doctrine of the Ariya is called "beyond imagination

Plato's view of anamnesis, "reminiscence" or "recollection

This is the reason for the recurrence in later Buddhist literature of the term sphoṭa, which has a similar meaning: it is knowledge manifested as in an unveiling—as if an eye, after undergoing an operation, were to reopen and see. Dhamma-Cakkhu, the "eye of truth" or of "reality," cakkhumant, "to be gifted with the eye" are normal Buddhist expressions, just as the technical term for "conversion" is: "his eye of truth opened.

four truths of the Ariya

(yathābhūtaṁ)

This is naturally an achievement only through a gradual process. "As an ocean deepens gradually, declines gradually, shelves gradually without sudden precipices, so in this law and discipline there is a gradual training, a gradual action, a gradual unfolding, and no sudden apprehension of supreme knowledge.

He who cannot strenuously train himself, cannot achieve truth; through strenuous training (an ascetic) achieves truth: therefore strenuous training is the most important thing for the achieving of truth."24

Kantian antinomies

In order to understand the Buddhist teaching we must start from the idea that to the man it had in mind the ātmā-brahman, the immortal and immutable "I" identical with the supreme essence of the universe, would not be a concept "conforming to reality" (yathā-bhūtaṁ), based, that is to say, on the actual evidence of experience, but rather that it would be only a speculation, a creation of philosophy or theology.

saṁsāric consciousness.

theory of universal impermanence and insubstantiality (anattā).

In previous speculation, the first term of the binomial ātmā-saṁsāra—that is, the immutable, transcendent "I" and the current of becoming—stood in the foreground. In the teaching that serves as the point of departure for the Buddhist ascesis emphasis is placed instead almost exclusively on the second term, saṁsāra, and the consciousness associated with it. This second term, however, is considered in all those aspects of contingency, relativity, and irrationality that can only proceed from a comparison with the metaphysical reality already directly intuited. This reality itself therefore remains tacitly presupposed, even if, for practical reasons, it is not mentioned in the argument.

khandha or santāna. Khandha literally means "a group," "a heap"—to be understood as a bundle or aggregation—and santāna means "current.

Thus it is said: "All the elements of existence are transitory"—"All things are without individuality or substance (sabbe dhammā anattā 'ti).

The law of saṁsāric consciousness is expressed by this formula: suññaṁ idam attena va attaniyena vā ti—void of "I" or of anything that resembles "I," void of substance. Another expression: everything is "compounded" (saṅkhata), "compounded" being the equivalent here of "conditioned."2 In saṁsāra there are only conditioned states of existence and consciousness.

Even the person—sakkāya—is khandha and santāna, an aggregate and a current of elements and of impermanent, "compounded," and conditioned states. It is also sankhata. Its unity and reality are purely nominal, at the most "functional." It is said: as the word "wagon" is used when the various parts of a wagon are found together, so when the various elements making up human individuality are present, we speak of a "person." "As the joining together of the various parts makes up the concept of a wagon, so the aggregation or series of states gives name to a living being."4 The wagon is a functional unity of elements, not a substance; so with the person and the "mind"—"in the same way the words 'living being' and 'I' are only a way of speaking of the fivefold stem of attachment."5 When the conditions that have determined the combination of elements and states in that stem are no longer effective, the person as such—that is, as the particular person—dissolves. But even while he endures, the person is not a "being" but a flowing, a "current" (santāna) or rather a section of a "current," since santāna is thought of as something that is neither started by birth nor interrupted by death.6

Consciousness and perception are inseparable: "these two things are joined, not separate, and it is impossible to dissociate them so as to differentiate between them: since of what one has a perception of that one is conscious and that of which one is conscious, of that one has a perception.

conditioned genesis" (paṭicca-samuppāda

four truths of the Ariya" (cattāri ariya-saccāni)

phenomenalistic

The first two truths of the Ariya corresponding to the terms dukkha and taṇhā, then appear.

The deeper, doctrinal, and nonpopular significance of the term dukkha is a state of agitation, of restlessness, or of "commotion"15 rather than "suffering.

And it is for this reason that, in the texts, dukkha, anicca, and anattā when they do not actually appear as synonyms,16 are always found in close relationship.

In order really to understand the implications of dukkha, the first truth of the Ariya, and therefore to grasp the deepest significance of saṁsāric existence, we must associate the notion of "anguish" with that of "commotion" and "agitation.

pañcakkhandhā, the fivefold stem of the personality: materiality, feeling, perception, the formations, consciousness.22

The process of saṁsāric life is thought of as a flame attached to burning material or rather as a flame that is itself its own material.

The contacts develop through attachment, upādāna. This occurs above all in the fivefold stem that makes up the person in general: materiality, feeling, perception, formations, individuated consciousness.

The theory of anattā, of "not-I," thus has this meaning: the "I" does not exist outside the process of burning, it is this very process—were a halt really made, the "I," the illusion of being "I" would collapse.

In the same way the life of beings has only the duration of a thought: the being of the past moment has lived, but does not live and will not live; the being of the future moment will live, but does not live and has not lived; the being of the present moment lives, but has not lived and will not live."29

In changing the state—in having a different "name-and-form" (philosophically we might say: a different principium individuationis)—it is well to change also the denomination.

Beings, then, are the heirs of actions.

Second Great Awakening brought with them long-lasting efforts to apply Christian doctrine to social problems. It is not too much to say that the major social reform movements of the nineteenth century had their genesis in the camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening.

The paṭicca-samuppāda—which literally means "conditioned genesis" or "formation"—considers a series of twelve conditioned states. The term used is paccaya, condition, and not hetu, cause: it is a question of conditionality and not of true causality. We may here return to the simile of a substance that, in being transformed, passes through various states, each of which contains the potentiality of giving place, in appropriate circumstances, to the next, or, if neutralized, of suspending the next. On what level does this causal series develop?

the Sāṁkhya or the Vedānta doctrines, for example, and where it might be figuratively illustrated by saying: man is a god who is unaware that he is such—it is his unawareness (avijjā) alone that makes him a man.

The passage from purely individual consciousness to this saṁsaric consciousness that includes indefinite possibilities of existence, both "infernal" and celestial—this, fundamentally, is the basis of the whole Doctrine of Awakening. We are not dealing here with a "philosophy" but with an experience that, to tell the truth, is not the sole property of Buddhism. Traces and echoes of it are also to be found in other traditions, both Eastern and Western: in the West, particularly in terms of secret knowledge and of initiatory experience. The theory of universal pain, of life as pain, does not represent, in this respect, anything other than something completely external and, as we have already said, profane. Where it has been widely diffused it refers only to the forms of a popular exposition.

paṭicca-samuppāda

nirodha,

Here it will be well to add the following consideration. We have already said that the first two truths of the Ariya, with particular reference to the doctrine of thirst and of fire, may not be directly evident to modern man. He may be able to understand them fully only in special or critical moments, because the life he normally leads is as if outside himself; half sleepwalking, he moves between psychological reflexes and images that hide from him the deepest and most fearful substance of existence

You do not exist. You cannot say 'mine' of anything. You do not possess life—it is life that possesses you. You suffer it. And the possibility of immortal survival of this phantom 'I' at the dissolution of the body is only a mirage, since everything tells you that its correlation with this body is essential to you and a trauma, an indisposition, a fainting fit, or any kind of accident has a definite influence over all its faculties, however 'spiritual' and 'superior' they may be.

santāna,

Conditioned Genesis The problem of "origin," corresponding to the second truth of the Ariya, is investigated more deeply in what is known as doctrine of dependent origination or "conditioned genesis" (paṭicca-samuppāda), which makes a separate study of the stages and states by which conditioned existence is arrived at.

states of consciousness corresponding to the three watches of the night,

mania here being considered as tripartite, that is, as "mania of desire, mania of existence, mania of ignorance—kāmāsava, bhavāsava, avijjāsava.

Prince Siddhattha stated that he himself had attained knowledge through his own efforts, without a master to show him the way; so, in the original Doctrine of Awakening. each individual has to rely on himself, and on his own exertions, just as a soldier who is lost must rely on himself alone to rejoin the marching army.

I learned that reincarnation had been part of the original teachings of Jesus but was removed from The Bible as part of the “reorganization” of the church. In defiance of Emperor Constantine, reincarnation was actively taught as part of Christian doctrine by many priests until 553 AD when Rome declared ex-communication for anyone continuing that practice.

The phrases “I am the light and the way” and “the only begotten Son” were created and added to The Bible and to church doctrine at that time…more than 300 years after the life of Jesus. Bishops and priests protesting the changes wrote many letters to the emperor. They asked, what gave Constantine the right to change church doctrine? Jesus called himself a teacher, not the only begotten Son. He sought to empower others, not to make them servants to the church.

Nietzsche does not see the essence of life in “self-preservation” (“struggle for existence”) as do the biology and the doctrine of life of his time influenced by Darwin, but rather in a self-transcending enhancement. As a condition of life, value must therefore be thought as that which supports, furthers, and awakens the enhancement of life. Only what enhances life, and beings as a whole, has value — more precisely, is a value.

Do I indeed exist? Or do I not exist? What am I? And how am I? This being here, whence has it really come? And whither will it go?" All these for Buddhism are but "vain thoughts": "This is called the blind alley of opinions, the gorge of opinions, the bramble of opinions, the thicket of opinions, the net of opinions," caught up and lost in which "the ignorant worldling cannot free himself from birth, decay and death.

While in the Vedas only a single fate after death is considered, as in ancient Hellas, in the Brāhmaṇa texts the theory of the double way already appears:

Yājñavalkya

king Ārtabhāga,

brāhmaṇa caste

Ikśvāku,

Sāṁkhya system,

Jainism,

This period, called by some the "climacteric" of civilization, falls approximately between the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. It is in this period that the doctrines of Lao-tzu and Kung Fu-tzu (Confucius) were taking root in China, representing a renewal of elements of the most ancient tradition on the metaphysical plane on the one hand, and on the ethical-social on the other.

Buddhism closely adhered to the kṣatriya (in Pāli, khattiya) spirit, the spirit of the warrior caste.

The Brāhmans, against whom Prince Siddhattha turns, are those who say they know, but who know nothing,

Asrama

flame that is sustained by virtue, and lighted by training,

To unite himself with Brahmā a man must develop in himself qualities similar to Brahmā.

The general principle of any right hierarchy is confirmed with these words: "In serving a man, if for this service one becomes worse, not better, this man, I say, one ought not to serve. In serving a man, on the other hand, if for this service one becomes better, not worse, this man, I say, one ought to serve."46

epuration

Prince Siddhattha has so little sympathy for the masses that in one of the oldest texts he speaks of the "common crowd" as a "heap of rubbish," where there takes place the miraculous flowering of the Awakened One.