Welcome to the bone heap world

This following discourse by the Buddha from the Itivuttaka (Iti 17) is titled, Bone Heap (Aṭṭhi-puñja).  For me, it describes our Earth as something like a massive bone orchard — no, it's not a happy discourse.  Our birth and death add up to zero which best describes saṃsāra.  But also this discourse talks about the "four noble truths" as being our hope, you could say.  But what is really being said as regards these truths?

The first noble truth is about the suffering of the five aggregates subject to clinging that make up our human life, namely, material shape, feeling, perception, choices and consciousness.  The second noble truth tells us why we suffer.  It is because of our desire and holding on to these five aggregates.  Logically, it is by the stopping or the removal of desire for these five aggregates that we are released from suffering.  But this release rests upon a special path by which we attain direct cognition or intuition of the unconditioned which is nirvana.

The Buddha is calling on us to transcend, completely, the five aggregate person which we know as our carnal body of birth.  We have over identified with it, believing it is who we are.  However, it really hides our true being or nature which is the animative principle this being the clear-light Mind which is unconditioned.  It is our unbroken desire for these aggregates that is our problem.

Sadly, nobody cares anymore about the Buddha's message and what the "four noble truths" really mean.  Materialism dominates our world.  People actually believe that when they die, that's it!  Some of these people want to practice Buddhism.  But they lack the necessary spiritual ability and may never attain nirvana in many rebirths of suffering because of their disbelief in the transcendent.

 This was said by the Lord…

“Bhikkhus, the skeletons of a single person, running on and wandering in saṃsāra for an aeon, would make a heap of bones, a quantity of bones as large as this Mount Vepulla, if there were someone to collect them and if the collection were not destroyed.”

The bones of a single person
Accumulated in a single aeon
Would make a heap like a mountain—
So said the Great Sage.

He declared it to be
As great as Mount Vepulla
To the north of Vulture’s Peak
In the hill-fort of Magadha.

But when one sees with perfect wisdom
The four noble truths as they are—
Suffering, the origin of suffering,
The overcoming of suffering,
And the noble eightfold path
Leading to relief from suffering—

Having merely run on
Seven times at the most,
By destroying all fetters
One makes an end of suffering.

 

 

Comments

[Jung]

Strawberries and potatoes undifferentiated, the immensely rich Mind of the Vultures peak takes no positions, anytime, or anywhere. That which has everything, needs nothing at all.

The poor harvester of these fruits and vegetables though remains at the hillside, always looking for water and light to promote the desired growth as to quench its thirst and hunger for all things and deeds alike.

[n. yeti]

Jung:

One does not plant potatoes and expect to harvest strawberries, even at the foot of Vulture Peak.

[Jung]

N. Yeti;

Your actions does not measure up to your past words.

This sentient named Dave B, is suffering in so many ways unnecessary to specify here, and yet you ad to its compounded suffering by making a joke on the errors of its thoughts, and actions.

If anything, how do your perceive its errors as above and beyond your own? And if not, which bodhisattva, specifically, commands such discriminative rights entitled by right of its own enlightenment?

[n. yeti]

Dave Black:

Well then, here's a holiday surprise for you!

Ho ho ho!

https://oldtimemoviesandradio.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SantaClaus_1-07.jpg

[dave black]

"But if the assumed soul-entity it is not separate" yeti

Another case of "buddhists" totally lacking logic. Separate from what? Its not separate from your self because it is uour self. Separate from the body? This is where "buddhists" lack the distinction between separate and distinct, or between separate and separable. It may not be separate from the body, but it is distinct and separable from it. Why do "buddhists" pretend that their illiteracy and poverty of language is wisdom?

"How can something (a soul) be both part of something and separate from something else (the body)?" yeti

How can your tooth be not separate from your body yet separable from it? Its different in that the tooth is physical and part of the body, wheras the soul is not physical nor part of the body but only connected to it (this is what is called grasping the aggregates in Buddhadharma, i.e. the soul grasping the body). But it still shows the linguistic and logical poverty of "buddhists" that they exult in as wisdom but is its opposite.