The value of a teaching?

This is just a short post about something that is often thought about but not often asked about when we attend a teaching or course of some kind. How can I measure the value of a teaching? Especially when the teaching is something spiritual and may not be measured empirically. My teachers have always said I should simply ask am I a better person because of it. This is not as easy a thing to check as it might seem. The implication is that after the teaching, having learned the topic. You then must put the topic into everyday use for maybe six months or more. Then you can accurately measure the value of the teaching by asking am I a better person because of it.

So the next course you take just ask am I a better person because of it. But don’t forget the hard work involved in the answer.

Turn the other cheek RIGHT!

“As a Buddhist I should turn the other cheek RIGHT!”. Absolutely… Except when…

So there is this perception of Buddhist practitioners as being a quiet, easy going sort who are not confrontational at all. I can tell you from my experience true practitioners are not always like that. Yes of course they are willing to turn the other cheek. If it is the right thing to do. But it is not always the right thing to do. Maybe the person needs a strong rebuttal, a bit of push back to help them realise what they are doing is wrong – the assumption being that we somehow know it to be wrong?

But how can you know if you are acting correctly when you push back. this comes down to motivation or the way your mind is at the time you act to push back. Are you thinking “to hell with them, I’ll show them!”. Or are you truly thinking “what this person is doing is bad for them, so I want to prevent them from hurting themselves now or in the future and that’s why it’s important that I not let them think this is okay to do”. If you are thinking the latter then you are generally going to act well or least with the right intention.

Another measure I find useful is to ask yourself if you choose to could you turn the other cheek. If not then it’s really time to turn the other cheek. Because if you aren’t capable of walking away it means your anger is probably quite high and you really shouldn’t act from that place. This is when you really need to be strong to walk away.

Not easy to do all the time but at least we can start with a tactic that might help.

Infinite loop or Divine being?

During my study of Buddhism one of the great questions that comes up regularly is can we become a divine being? I think to answer this we have to look at what a Divine being is. Did they become divine or were they always divine?

To answer this we have to then ask is a Divine being a changing thing or an unchanging thing? Of course we would have to say a changing thing. But what makes them a changing thing. Take any being and examine whether the thought they are having now is the same or different to the one they had a moment ago. Even if it is of a similar type of thought it will inevitably be different. This is one proof a being as a changing thing. If your thoughts are changing you are therefore changing. One way to say it is that your thoughts affect you and thus change you when they change.

So what would an unchanging Divine being be like. They would be caught in a process of repeating the same thought or action or way of being over and over and over again. This is what computer programmers call an infinite loop (so common an idea that the address for Apple is number 1 Infinite loop). The typical example in given in programming classes is the instruction often found on a bottle of shampoo. The instructions simply state: wash, rinse, repeat. So this becomes: wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat… and so on infinitely. So lets say our Divine being started with “pray for a sick person”. This is all they could do and would have no other function or ability. Because if they are unchanging so is every detail about them.

What has this got to do with can we become a Divine being? Now we know they are changing we can also say that they were not always the same. Their mind as a Divine being came from a previous moment of mind. That is to say that this mind of a Divine being was created from previous causes. In other words Divine beings are created from causes. So does a Divine being have a mind that is caused? Yes. Do we have a mind that is caused? For the same reasons we would have to say yes. Could we then apply the causes for the mind of a Divine being to the stuff that is our mind? It would seem logically possible. So can we become a Divine being? Yes if we create the correct causes for the mind of a Divine being.

Obviously this short post does not answer all the questions on the topic. I am sure there are as many arguments that go the other way. However this is a good logical basis to start our discovery of whether we can become Divine and what it might take to become Divine. Mostly I think it gives a good argument for training our mind. Increase your potential for good because your mind is a changing thing. That fact alone is something that is powerful.