Friday, June 8, 2012

TEACHINGS from TIBET /Guidance from Great Buddhists/


AN OUTLINE OF THE PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT

The Buddha taught so that beings would be happy and satisfied. Having attained the ultimate happiness of enlightenment himself, out of love and compassion for each sentient being he wanted to share his experience with them all. But he could not transplant his realizations into the minds of others, remove their suffering by hand or wash away their ignorance with water - he could only reach them to develop their minds for themselves, as he had done. Thus he showed the path to enlightenment.

THE NATURE OF THE MIND

There are two kinds of being with mind: Buddhas and sentient beings. Buddhas were once sentient beings, but through engaging in and completing the practice of Dharma, they fully purified their minds of both gross and subtle obscurations and and attained enlightenment, or buddhahood.

There are also two kinds of sentient being: those beyond cyclic existence /Skt: samsara; Tib: khor-wa/ and those within. Those beyond cyclic existence have purified their minds of the gross obscurations/грубые, общие затемнения/ but not the subtle/тонкие/. Sentient beings within cyclic existence are suffering from both levels of obscuration and are under the control of the disturbing negative minds/delusions/ and their imprints on the consciousness - karma.
The mind, or stream of consciousness, is impermanent, that is changing from moment to moment. All impermanent phenomena are the products of causes. The mind does not arise from nothing. 

The mind proceeds from a previous state of mind; each thought moment is preceded by a prior thought moment and there has never been a first.   Moreover, each mind comes from its own previous continuity and not from another mind such as "cosmic consciousness" or from the minds of one's parents*/Биеийг нь төрүүлэхээс санааг нь төрүүлдэггүй /.  Hence, each individual's mind is beginningless. And just as physical energy never goes out of existence, disappearing into nothingness, so too does mental energy continue forever; only its state changes.

No comments:

Post a Comment