stirling

Ah... phew! Thank goodness I'm not doing any of that.

Bob, Would it hurt you to be a little more kind in your responses? There might be some things you don't completely understand. What is smug about understanding the teachings, or having insight into them? The Realms of Existence, the pure-lands and heavenly realms - even nirvana and enlightenment - aren't cosmology, aren't somewhere else, they are right here. All the time. Not in the past or future. Literally RIGHT in front of you, right now. Always have been. (Bonus answer: The Tao and Brahman also suffuse everything in this moment and are RIGHT HERE. They are all the same thing.) They are a series of metaphors intended to show you where people get stuck on the path to complete understanding, and can be seen once you know what you are looking for with little difficulty. What you are able to see depends on the clarity of your ability to see. The Buddha illustrates this in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra: People cycling through the realms become attached to specific ideas about what might make them happy, or what is possible. You might find this nice practical application of the teachings from a realized teacher interesting: https://www.lionsroar.com/everyday-life-is-the-practice/

If you use THIS definition, then yes: I'm a big fan of this description. It is clean, clear, and doesn't get lost in lists of specific behavior, or adopted ideas. Evil is typically a conceptual designation most people use for a lumped-together bunch of actions or philosophies that they fear or disagree with. I don't believe in evil as some entity that acts on people or has any particular personifications. I DO believe that there are people who will do anything to protect themselves from the ideas or things that they fear, or in a misguided attempt to make themselves feel happy or safe, often at the expense of others.

Which war were you working on, and where is it happening, that's the question.

My dear Robert, they are not platitudes, they are highly practical instruction IF pragmatically practiced. They are only platitudes to those too fearful to try.

Dharma(s) is/are teachings, not rules or regulations. No person created it/them. You can actually reduce the causes of suffering to a simple formulae: What are you attached or averse to? If you are in the world and have no attachment or aversion there is equanimity. You are in alignment with the Dao, and generating NO karma. Congratulations, you are actualizing the fundamental point. "Free will" is a mind generated fantasy created the moment we imagine that we are a separate person and experience attachment or aversion to our delusion of a reality with separate things. Look for "free will" when your mind is still in meditation. Look for "self" when the mind is still. How about "suffering"? If you are looking closely you will see that none of these appear in consciousness when it is still, just blissful being-ness. How is this possible? Where did it all go? Watch what happens when your thinking process comes back online - there is suddenly and "I", and all of your suffering, attachment, and aversion to separate things begins anew. The suffering has always been "yours"... so also the "liberation".

...or realizing that we have missed a trick and there isn't one.

Good luck rooting out evil in others! Changing ourselves changes the world.

One definition of "doing evil" from a Buddhist perspective:

He's not kidding, it has been requested to be reviewed.

Annnon, While I appreciate your sentiment, threads such as this are no longer welcome here - not due to any particular political allegiance. Please read, or re-read this thread: After consultation with the various mods, this thread is now permanently locked. _/\_

Yes, the common metaphor amongst the Advaitans is that of a fountain - the non-duality creating the illusion of duality moment to moment. In Buddhism this is the Dharmakaya the moment to moment arising and passing of all phenomena that we label. Intent, like any other thing that arises, including what you might think of as "your' thoughts, also arise from this infinite field of possibility impersonally.

Creating an image in your head seems like imagination to me? The imaginal is necessarily "self" bound and dependent, not the deeper reality on the non-dual. For example, while I also have my own imagination and things imagined, they do not include "sense organs on every plane and subplane". This is an imaginal realm that makes sense to you, but not any kind of reality that we could discuss on equal footing. If you had insight in the the non-dual nature of reality we would have no trouble talking about it and understanding one another because it is possible to see RIGHT here RIGHT now as the salient quality of reality. While I have had experiences seeing things some might label gods, goddesses, angels, demons, etc. I gnow that they don't have any permanence or any real separateness of their own, because even THEY have non-duality as their obvious salient quality.

This would be an act of imagination, is that correct? By "inner plane" we are again talking about imagination, correct?

I guess I'm not clear what you are proposing here, could you clarify?