BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Atheist Aboutthe power of the mind

What, about our thoughts making our world?
I have tried explaining this elsewhere, as well as to a close friend.
I hope she doesn't mind, but I'm reproducing what I said to her in a pm, here.
I hope this will explain what the tag line means more clearly, because I fear some may be misunderstanding it.....

FIRSTLY:

The word Karma - and it's meaning - has been somewhat misunderstood, i think.

Karma is a simple process. it's not a manner of judgement, or retribution, or condemnation or punishment.
karma is just a system by which we describe cause and effect. Action and re-action.
But even the greatest Minds in Buddhism cannot fathom out the deepest mysteries and workings of Karma.
The Buddha himself listed the Law - the complexity - of Karma as being one of the Four Imponderables, or the Four Conjecturables.

The bad things that happen to us in this life are NOT payback. They are not a means of Revenge, meted out on us by that great god Fate or his partner, Destiny.
There is National karma, there is Community karma, there is neighbourhood Karma, there is familial karma and there is individual karma. and we are subject to influence by all of those.
But to say that a child of today is suffereing because of evil deeds carried out in a previous life is both cruel and over-simplistic.
if a child is born severely handicapped, we cannot say what brought it to this point. But what about the parents? is it due to their bad karma too? Why should they be punished because of something their child did in a previous life? Or indeed, why should the child endure a punishment, because of his Prents' Karmic consequences?
It's ludicrous to ponder such things, to squander precious Life-time now, trying to work out something like this. We inflict mental pain and torment upon ourselves, in an effort to wrestle with the unsolvable dilemma.
What happened to you in this life, was nothing to do with you. it was not your fault, you did not bring it upon yourself, and you did nothing to invite or cause any of the things that happened to you.

Just as we cannot be held to blame for what our neighbour did to his dog before you met him, so we cannot be blamed for what our yester-self has done in the past.
You can only admonish your neighbour now, and prevent him from being cruel to his dog, just as you can only deal with you now. And only Now.

To try to find rhyme or reason for some things is impossible, because you would need to be able to get into the minds of those who hurt you, and why they hurt you, and what caused them to act like that, and into the minds of everyone they know, and how they all inter-acted, and then, further back still, into the minds of all those peoples' parents, and what made them behave in any way they did....
It's all impossible.
Some things are unanswerable because they just are.

The fundamental basic reason people behave in negative ways is through Fear and Pain. Fear of Loss of Control. Pain because of this Fear. They lash out like a wounded wild beast.
How these two emotions manifest - and to what extent - is a massive and unquantifiable variable.
I'm not suggesting for one moment you sympathise, forgive or accept.
All I'm asking you to do is to understand.
To call such people "ignorant" is to massively understate their condition, but it's a delusion, an ignorance and a lack of mental astuteness and ability to climb out of the pit.
Consider then, the store of negative consequences they have set up for themselves, for now and for goodness knows how many lifetimes, in whatever future realms they will be born into....

And consider instead, the goodness, kindness and reslilience you are creating for yourself.
Maybe you were their victim because your re-born self needed this experience to help you grow and develop into the strong, marvellous human you are now.

It is said that at the moment of his enlightenment, the Buddha became aware of his previous existences. And apparently, some of them were pretty [censored]. He wasn't always the glowing Golden Boy. he had been a fairly base nasty piece of work at times.
But he knew that they only counted insofar as they had been stepping stones to Here and Now. And Here and Now is where he was, and Here and Now is where we are and Here and Now is all we've got.

Nothing more, nothing less.
The Past is just a bridge.
But we've paid the toll, so we don't need to keep hanging around. We need to stop trying to keep dragging it with us, because we don't need it. we're building new ones all the time.
and we haven't got to the next one yet.

That's point ONE.

SECONDLY:

This is what the Buddha meant by the signature I carry, which is a quotation from him....
It's really very simple.

"We are what we think."

For any words to be said, for any actions to be carried out, they must first of all appear as a cognitive thought in our head. Nothing we ever say or do, is NOT preceded first, by it's blossoming or birth, as a thought in our head.
When somebody says, "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking" what they actually mean, is, "I'm sorry, I didn't put sufficient thought into the consequences of my words/actions."
When somebody says, "Oh, I never think about...." you know that they're either lying, or not putting sufficient thought into how they are phrasing something.
This is why Right View, and Right Intention, precede Right Speech and Right Action, in the Eightfold Path....

"All that we are arises with our thoughts; with our thoughts, we make the world."

"By his actions shall you know him".
Don't do as I say, do as I do".
"Actions speak louder than words"
Do as you would be done by".

Where did all these actions first arise?
[i]In that person's mind.

WE are constantly led to believe that if you watch how a person behaves, then you will know that person. If you observe how they live their lives, then that will be an indicator of that person's character.

But all these actions have to genuinely reside in that person's mind FIRST.

Every single person is first and foremost responsible for what they are thinking, because their thoughts will first shape the utterances from their mouths, often swiftly followed by an action to suit. That's how we create 'our' world.

If we think angrily, and speak angrily, we will be classified as an angry person. People will be on their guard, or avoid speaking and interacting with us. We will be socially shunned. Which, doubtless, will only serve to make us angry and give us a jaded view of the world as a hostile and unfriendly place.

If on the other hand, we develop Compassion, Kindness, and Love for our fellow man, (encompassing our selves first) we are more likely to develop the ability to use compassionate, kind, loving words and gestures, to express ourselves. This in turn will give people a favourable impression of us, AND themselves. They are worthy of such sentiments, which will make their day.
And make your world.[/i]

Is that any better?