Yessssss, definitely!tiltbillings wrote:And our actions, our choices - as they unfold moment to moment - can also be the basis for our freedom from samsara, thus my signature line:Jechbi wrote: To answer the OP, I agree with Tilt that our present actions will condition the forms dukkha takes as long as we are bound to samsara.
"This being is bound to samsara, karma is his means for going beyond."
SN I, 38.
It all comes down to our "reactiveness" to each moment, our responses to experience, situations... Cultivating calmness, peace, compassion- positive or neutral mindstates, we are less likely to act in ways that create further dukkha and suffering... Less likely to "go with" reactive thoughts, emotions, desires and actions that are only going to lead to the construction of samsara, in our experience?
1. Vision is Mind
Everything we see, feel, taste, touch, hear, absorb, vibrate with, experience, all circumstances...is all Mind - we can call it our karmic vision. It's our own unique experience of everything, which for most all of us is inaccurate...a projection based on ignorance.
2. Mind is Empty
Our karmic vision is inaccurate because it is clouded by our attachment-fueled reactivity that demands and imagines solidity and certainty. If we look carefully at everything inside and outside of us including our mind we begin to understand that it is all dynamic, insubstantial, conditioned appearances...empty of all our projections.
The Tibetan Bon view was excellent, Jeff, but for some reason i really dig your Californian street version...pink_trike wrote:
I saw a great teeshirt the other day that said "We don't have to believe everything we think". We don't have to work through every tangled emotion and thought...we can give ourselves a break by understanding that thoughts and emotions are frequently just excretions or like the dreams we have at night. All that stimulation and sensation we take in during our wacky modern life is seeping back out. We can just neutrally observe all the excretions and periodic vomiting...watch them arise and fall away, like waves. Release them and let them appear and disappear without getting all grabby with them. We're not our thoughts or emotions.
