Have you ever taken an event you had an opinion over and traced the line of cause and effect back to the root cause? If you have then you've either decided; Tao is defective or cause and effect is a false model.
Case One: Tao is defective. Now this case was a bit of a joke but maybe you exist. (see later).
Case Two. Cause and effect is a false model.
What is causing me to write this? You need a me. So it's my Mum's fault!?
For any cause-effect relationship you assume two points, the cause and the effect, but all causes in this model are the effect of a previous cause. You must eventually conclude that there was some beginning to all of this and it made a mistake. Ah you see, you did fit Case Number One after all.
No ok, back to Case Two. There can not be a complete cause and effect model that does not have a creator and a defective one at that. Cause and effect is flawed as an explanation to anything. This being the case you can not blame anyone or anything for the way they are.
I've said in many ways and at many times that: Life just seems to happen, and you can't alter it one bit. The only thing you can alter, if even this, is your attitude to "what is".
Seems to be this, seems to be that... Love it it or hate it, seems to be the only choice you have.
You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.
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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao
3 comments:
Hello,
But what about intention?
If life just seems to happen, there is no free "will" or choice and then is not predetermined whether one meditates or not?
From http://viewonbuddhism.org/karma.html
From His Holiness the Dalai Lama's book Path to Bliss:
"Some people misunderstand the concept of karma. They take the Buddha's doctrine of the law of causality to mean that all is predetermined, that there is nothing that the individual can do. This is a total misunderstanding. The very term karma or action is a term of active force, which indicates that future events are within your own hands. Since action is a phenomenon that is committed by a person, a living being, it is within your own hands whether or not you engage in action."
Take your reading this reply as an example.
It is now impossible for you to have not done it. You'll never know an alternative. This is the case with all "action", there is just the one way of things being, not several options. This is called 'what is' and accepting that is bliss.
Who is doing the wind? Who is doing your heat beat? Who is doing sunlight?
Is intention a method we can rely up on? If someone says "I intend to..." Then will that thing happen for sure?
Isn't intention always based in the future? Isn't the future unreal? Isn't intention based in desire? Isn't this pure misery to live for a future of no guaranteed outcome?
In the moment there is never seen to be anyone who could possibly be acting.
This is not predetermined, this is not fatalism, this is the personal inseeing that in this very moment there is no one to do anything. The doer occurs only when the mind invents future or past. Future and past are not real and so it is inseen that as only now is there is no doership.
Thank Ta-Wan, much appreciated.
Much of what you say mirrors my own experience.
Maybe it is just the last resistance I am seeing / feeling. That the mind wants to keep control.
I can see many things just do happen and we just act according to what is.
I will contemplate your answer.
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