Suthep_Steve

I really like Chiang Dao, we have been there three times for a night away from Chiang Mai. It's quiet and I've never been on a trek or anything like that but it's a great place to get away from it all.

Have stayed at Chiang Dao nest 1 and 2. 1 has great western food cooked by Wicha the co owner who trained in Norwich some of the best western food available in Northern Thailand I think.

Nest 2 has Thai food and is run by Wicha's sister. That's great too. Book though as they are both often full.

My German girlfiend loves Grace. She hates dentists as a rule but had to go for root canal work and has now had all her old fillings replaced.

She says that all the dentists who practise there are lovely, but it ain't cheap. However they are certainly better equiped than anything we could have afforded in the UK or Germany.

What makes nature or karma so different from good, evil, right and wrong? What makes them any more real?

This is a lovely topic.

I'm interested to hear about what Theravadians think about setting a correct motivation as a precursor to creating merit. I know that for many Mahayanists setting a good motivation first is more important than the actual physical, verbal or mental act of making merit. Then once the deed is done is it common to dedicate and what is the purpose of this dedication? In the Mahayana it is described as a sealing in of the merit which would otherwise be destroyed by the mind of anger.

In one way what I have written sounds very mechanical but if you work at it and gain experience I think that it helps you to improve your inner experience of merit.

Oh by the way I'm talking about the motivation of the maker not of the receiver. We can never know others motivations unless we are a Buddha so we may as well just focus on our own.

I always thought that most science is very floored from a buddhist point of view. From a Buddhist perspective if you have a scientific mind and strong faith in science the world you project will be scientific. Therefore all you will keep 'proving' with your enquiries and experiments is that the world you are projecting is a scientific one.

If you have a magical mind and strong faith in magic you will live in a magical world.

If you could choose which would you pick?

Most science is based on the strange idea that there are objects, laws and facts out there waiting to be discovered. Buddhism rejects that point of view in my humble opinion.

I haven't been to any Thai related rituals / magic / Buddhist. But I have been to quite a few from other forms of Buddhism.

Why do I go?

The answer is complex but I think one of the main reasons is that it gives me the confidence to be a better person. So in one sense it's a confidence trick. The reasoning goes I've had this initiation therefore I must be a better person, therefore I behave in a better way.

I think we can also do the same for other people. We have a lot of pre concieved notions about people and how they will behave. We expect people to behave in certain ways because of who we think they are, what they look like or where they come from. Therefore we think that Bar Girls will behave one way no matter who or where they are and fat american tourists will behave another way because that's what they are.

If we give that person some space and say impute on them warm sensitive kind and generous person. Then we give them the mental space to be that person, it doesn't always work but then again if your fighting someones self image then you have an uphill struggle but it works more times than it fails.

Of course voodoo, religions etc. use confidence tricks but don't think that Western scientific society doesn't. What is advertising and all those graduation ceremonies. It's all a confidence trick to make you think that you are buying or have done something meaningful.

Then there is the media another form of voodoo, this is the way the world is because a small box in the corner of your rooms tells you so, that's real magic who would have thought we could be so dumb?

The Nolan I bought from the shop on Chiang Moi is an XXL. I don't think they have XXXL but I have quite a big head. Bigger than the average farang I would have thought.

It doesn't have a D ring either but you can still clip it in using the secondary strap on the chin strap. It's not super safe but at least it looks as if it has a D ring.

Oh forgot to say thanks to davidgtr last time. Good call my man.

Another option is to check out Prida on Chang Moi, right hand side, just before the Thai Military bank. He did have a selection of full-face Nolan, export rejects - wrongly labeled sizes - for 2,000 baht. My mates who have bought & used them say they are the real thing, genuine farang Nolan helmets, which are just about as good as you can get, without going into the top dollar bracket like Arai & Shoei.

He still has them, got one this morning. It sure looks like the real thing comes with leaflets in Italian etc. but they don't have the latest models. I think he only has the Nolan N37. It appears to be a nice helmet with a much better ventalation system than the cheapo full face thing I used to use.

Price was 1500 Baht. You pays your money and takes your chance and hope you never have to find out just how good it is.

Anyone found a jacket and gloves combination that don't make you look like you just fell in a lake?

We went a couple of weeks ago due to a favourable review in Citylife magazine. It was very busy and we were shunted inside as we didn't have a reservation. OK not their fault. The review said it was OK for vegetarians. We looked at the menu which didn't have many vegie things on it. OK again not their fault either. Never mind I thought most Thai resturants can be talked into providing something pretty good. Asked the waitors in my bad Thai what they had for vegetarians. He gave me a look somewhat akin to a rabbit in the head lights of an on coming car. After he calmed down a little all he could come up with was Pad Pak Ruam, even more boring than the vege lasgne which is the normal fair for vegetarians in the UK. I found a couple of other things on the menu namely chips and fried cashew nuts. The food we had was quite good but it wan't a great meal. Have to admit that I enjoyed the Galae much more.

They really pack in the tables and there wasn't much room

We did get our revenge however as when the roaming muscians came to our table my Mum who was out here on holiday sang along to "Lay down your head Tom Dooley"

We didn't stay long.

I guess for meat eaters when it's not so busy it might be good but I would advise vegies to stay away.

I have found that Argosof,t that I was using as my smtp gateway, is setting a limit

on the size of file attachments.

I have now installed PostCast which seems to get round the limitation.

It is a free version.

Take care to set it up to limit who can use it, to prevent your computer being used

for spam.

This applies to all such programmes.

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I installed PostCast about the same time as Astral and apart from one scare when TT&T / HiNet blocked port 25 for a whole day, it seems to be working fine. I'm very pleased with it, it seems to have solved all my emailing problems and will allow me to stop using Hotmail linked into Outlook.

Astral how many of the security features would you advise using. Limiting IP addresses of course but do you use any of the other features?

I've only ever played at Lanna Sports club. Mainly because it's the nearest to town by a long way and I like it there. I've played there about once a week for the last month or so. They have 29 holes, it can be a little busy even mid week cost just short of 1000 bart for 18 holes midweek, more at the weekend. They have a driving range and you can rent clubs but I don't know how much they are.

It's on the Mae Rim road only about 2 or 3 miles away from the centre of town. Your next nearest for 18 holes is Chiang Mai Green hills, I've never played there but it's in Mae Rim quite a bit further out than the Lanna.

Sorry, what I was doing there was asking questions... not making statements.

My view is this, and just my view of course. We are born with a physical brain/computer, that has no 'mind' as such. At the birth stage we have no consciousness of 'I'. The brain, as I see it, is a computer with an empty hard drive that comes with an 'operating system'. This operating system takes care of all the autonomous stuff... breathing, heartrate, temperature controls etc etc etc.

The brain/computer itself has no input at birth and is gradually 'programmed' by the environment... The eyes learn to focus, the limbs and muscles learn to move and develpe more accuracy as we develope. Gradually we gain the sense of 'I' and the ego developes...

Dreams I believe are the brain/computer defragging itself while we sleep. The dreams are created from all the 'pieces' of infromation being processed and all going back into place... and the mind trying to make sense of this jumbled information when we at near waking.

I do not see any 'mind' or anything working outside of, or free from the physical body. The brain is a part of the body and visa versa, we cannot have one without the other. They come as a complete unit. Mind is what I would refer to if speaking of the 'whole' brain system... which is monstrously complex. We can say, the workings of the 'mind' or the workings of the 'brain'. It is the same thing. I do not think that 'soul' has anything to do with anything, other than a way to explain how we can have another Life. I do not believe in reincarnation. I cannot believe for the sake of believing... it must fit into my logic.

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No need to apologies Ravisher. I love this kind of thing, just wish I was better at it.

You (sorry for stereotyping) best fit the Eastern Philosophical school called the Charavakas although you lightly touch on one of the subjects used by Buddhists as an area of weakness in the Charavaka philosophy, namely dreams and subtle levels of mind. When you’re asleep but not dreaming couldn't you be experiencing levels of mind that are not produced from the brain? Some Buddhist schools call this mind the Clear Light Mind; this is the mind that goes from life to life. The dream world arises from it as does the 'real' world when we are reborn. I won't call it a soul as that is a messy word with far too much baggage. It is as illusory as everything else but if we can learn to use it we are very close to becoming a Buddha.

In fact to get back to DeDanan's original point what the Vajrayanists do is then put a physical face on this mind. So they describe a formless object or mind in a visual way, rather than writing about it they create a visual explanation. The Clear Light Mind of a Buddha meditating on the ultimate nature of reality appears in the aspect of Buddha Vajradhara, this gives those who need it, and I hold my hand up here because I do, a deity to cling on to when we are in trouble. However the deity in a sense represents a state of mind that we are aspiring to.

This is 'assuming' there is a relationship between the mind and the brain... Is the mind not created by the physical brain? Are the two, one and the same? If there is a mind, can it exist without a body? If mind can exist without a body, then a body is just a waste of space... So many questions without answers or proofs.

I love it when people say... and Buddha said, or Jesus said... as if it were irrefutable fact.

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I don't think the mind is created by the physical brain. The reasons both ways are somewhat circumstantial but I believe the evidence is stronger for the other way around. Most people look at the world with their 5 senses and believe them unquestioningly. The world is a fixed, existing entity out there waiting to be discovered.

As early as 500BC Parmenides (one of the three main Milesian Philosophers) decided that there was a conflict between reason and the evidence of the sensors. He was I think the first Rationalist in Western philosophy. In some ways I think Buddha is a kind of rationalist he is asking us to put aside what are 5 sensors are telling us and look at reality in a different way.

What if, as in a dream, the brain doesn't create the mind but the mind creates the brain. If we take Darknights computer analogy and turn it around if you turn a computer off and then turn it back on again the computer is basically the same. It can do the same things etc. If you turn off a human and then turn them back on again (i.e. kill them and then link them up to a life support) you don't produce consciousness just because you have the power back on to the brain.

You are right about the body Ravisher it is a waste of space in many ways. One of our biggest attachments is to our body.

I do accept your criticism about my posts being low on intellectual reasoning but as Winnie the Pooh said "I am a bear of little brain," or do I mean mind. There are lots of books and teachers out their if you want to explore the mind brain relationship from a Buddhist perspective. You might like "Understanding the Mind" by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso published by Tharpa.

Perhaps you would like to explain your view and the logic behind it.

What is the relationship between the mind and the physical brain?

I believe that the mind is a formless thing that does not depend on the brain for its existence. Not a very popular view. I've heard a lot of scientific people pooh pooh that notion but they can never come up with a good argument against it.

If that's true then if we look at cause and effect again, what causes the momentary experience of mind to arise? The mind is formless therefore its cause will be formless. We talk of a stream of consciousness. One thought giving rise to the next. From a Buddhist point of view the cause of a mind is the previous moment of mind. Therefore when did this process begin when did we have our first thought. Buddha said he could see no beginning to living beings mental continuums. How could he if cause and effect is true you can't have an effect suddenly arising without a cause. You can't suddenly have a mind arising without its associated cause. Therefore our mind has always existed. That means we have had countless previous lives and by extrapolating the argument forward we will have countless future lives as well.

Well that's what I believe.

It is always good to give, and giving body parts is a great way to help others and accumulate merit. However there is one problem, I don't know if this is the case for all traditions. Many Buddhists believe that the mind may dwell inside the body after the body is Western Scientifically dead. This is usually of most importance to practisioners who wish to meditate through the death process. I believe there has been some substansiated reports in India of meditation masters staying "fresh" for several weeks after clinical death has occured.

I don't think you need to worry about that amount of time but it may be worth stipulating an hour or so to vacate the premisies as it were!

However the likelyhood is that you will have some spotty junior doctor jumping up and down on your chest while shouting about getting that electic shock cart thing they use on ER a lot. I've tried meditating in the dentist chair as a preperation for this event. However I'm none to hopefull if I were to pop my clogs today. Definately more practise needed. Perhaps I should start eating toffee....

Good post cdnvic,

I used to be on a Buddhist programme in the UK which had a discussion element within it and teachers always used to say to us that we should think that we were offering a humble gift that should be motivated by the wish to benefit others when we spoke, not by the wish to score points over an imagined opponent.

Sometimes we need to explain a point and we should do this by logical reasoning, scriptural citation, analogy and stories, however most of the time all we need to do is be honest, explain our doubts and areas of difficulty and offer our own personal experiences to others to help them come to there own conclusions.

Also it's easy to forget but practising the Dharma is fun and sometimes we need to convey that, Dharma is medicine for the mind. It gives temporary and ultimate benefit if we are not becoming happier in our practise we need to examine our practise as the fault will almost certainly be with us. We can share our difficulties here and try and form a Sangha community. Not Sangha in the sense of ordained people but the real Sangha jewel which is the realizations within the minds of practitioners. If we treat each other as fellow Sangha we may well start to resolve our own doubts and problems rather than emphasising the differences between us.

Some do have a short life unfortunately. A quick check of some of the life spans of the Dalai Lamas will reveal some short ones.

Tenzin Palmo, the English Nun who spent 12 years in a cave in the Himalayas Guru died quite young as well. I think he was in his 40's. As an aside her biography "Cave in the Snow" is a good read.

Lama Yeshe who founded the FPMT one of the larger Tibetian groups in the west. Was in his early 60s I think. Chogum Trungpa who wrote cutting through Spiritual Materialism wasn't very old.

Most of the really famous Masters do tend to have a long life however, it takes time to become really famous. In the Tibetian system you have to study first which can take up to 25 years. Interestingly not all great masters are at the top of the class. Then you have to go on your meditation retreats. That's another 20 or so years usually in isolation for the most part. Then when you leave your cave with all that wisdom and experience you might be still completely unknown. Then maybe if you have some karma with students you might start to pick up some followers. Another 20 to 25 years for your teachings / books to become well known. You could well be pushing 80 at this point. No wonder they all seem old.

Now that's what I call effort.

No one can do it for you but you cannot do it alone.

I beg you all to reconsider.

Are Buddhas omniscient, do they know all objects of knowledge past present and future?

What is a Buddhas ultimate nature?

Are Buddhas' bodies the same nature as their minds?

Does meditating in the presence of a holy person help you or have no effect?

I'm not saying there is a Buddha out there waiting to be discovered but is there really a mind searching for Buddha either?

Again I beg you please think again, in my humble and not very worthy opinion you are missing something of vital importance.

Much love

ss

Ok just guesses but first one Wat Ched Yod just off the super highway and site of the 7th or 9th Buddhist council

Second one Lana 3 just off the Huey Kiew.

Buddha Shakyamuni said: Now my four disciples and others make offerings to me directly. In the future many people will make offerings with faith to an image representing my form. These actions have the same meaning

If the four truths are to be believed, then why do very religious Thais (Theravada) and Chinese (Mahayana) engage so readily in the greed that would, according to their beliefs, cause suffering.

Only those who have completed the path are free from delusions and there effects. Also if the world is impermanent or subjective, then doesn't the subjective appearance of the world tell us more about ourselves than it does about others? If we live in a world devoid of the divine, it says more about how obscured the divinity is in our own minds, rather than implying the validity of our opinions about others.

Why the proliferation of Mahayana Buddha's?

All things arise from causes, even Buddhas. If you create the causes to become a Buddha that is what you become. The main aim of the Mahayana is to benefit all living beings. The best method for benefiting living beings is to become a Buddha. Therefore the Mahayana focuses on creating the causes to become a Buddha.

Whether there is some natural underlying mind that is pure and happy is interesting speculation but knowing or believing that does little to expedite the Path. When you're locked away in a prison cell you can deny that you're in prison, and proclaim you are actually sitting in a meadow full of fragrant flowers. If you proclaim it long enough you might come to believe it. I don't think most people can sustain that kind of visualisation very long, but for those who can, does that mean that they're not actually sitting in prison? 

How about looking at it this way if you’re in prison but you don't think there is anything better on the outside how do you get motivated to leave?

'The Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa was once asked

In which pure land did you achieve enlightenment? He replied "In that one" and pointed at his cave'

If six beings each from one of the six realms were to look at a glass of water what would they each perceive, would they perceive the same thing, is their something inherent within the glass of water that makes it what it is from its own side?

Maybe you are right and most people cannot sustain a visualisation of a meadow filled with fragrant flowers for very long but how long can they sustain the visualisation of the prison cell before they are so knackered they have to sleep?

If you change your mind do you not change your reality?

Suffering is, after all, the first Noble Truth, the very first teaching Gautama Buddha chose to offer to the world. Nothing in his original teachings suggests that happiness is a natural state. He didn't say "The basic truth of existence is that we are all actually happy, we just need to realise that, and here is the way to realise your true happy state."

Maybe happiness was not such a great word to use when one is talking about inner peace. I don't believe we are all actually experiencing inner peace but we haven't realized it yet. I know that is an argument that some have put forward but that would be like saying that the oak tree exists inside the acorn. There is no oak tree within the acorn but the acorn has the potential to create an oak tree. In the same way the root mind of a sentient being is clouded by the delusions but it has the potential to create the experience of peace.

In my tradition we say

The nature of the mind is clarity, and it functions to perceive objects

Is its natural condition suffering? Definitely not. Suffering is caused by delusions that obscure and corrupt the natural clarity of the mind.

Is its natural condition happiness? I would say a qualified yes. The experience of finally perceiving the internal clarity of our root mind is one of indescribable inner peace and bliss. It is so far removed from our normal ideas of happiness that we cannot imagine what it would be like. Our present experiences of happiness (I'm talking to the non enlightened members of TV here) are in reality what Buddha called the suffering of change.

For example if we have been standing for a long time we say we are happy to sit down. But in reality if we were to remain seated for a long period of time we would be happy to stand up. The reality is we are just happy that one suffering has ceased but all we have done is replace it with another.

All our human pleasures are like this, eating, sexual activity watching the football etc. Something can only be the cause of happiness if the more we do it the happier we become no matter how much we do it.

IMHO I think both focus on suffering. In the Hinayana teachings (I don't necessarily equate these with the Theravada) you examine your own personal suffering and develop renunciation.

In the Mahayana you examine the suffering of all sentient beings and develop great compassion (the wish for all living beings to be free from suffering) and love ( the wish for all living beings to experience happiness and its causes ). Based apon this the practisioner then developes the wish to do something about the suffering of all living beings, realizes that only a Buddha has the power and skill nessesary to perform the task and thus resolves to become a Buddha for the sake of all living beings (mind of Bodhichitta).

Based on either of these two motivations the practisioner meditates on ultimate truth in order to cut the root of their delusions.

First of all a big thank you to everyone who responded to my original post. There has been a lot of interesting stuff for me to think about written here.

Personally I think anger is a very negative and destructive emotion, by anger I mean -

Anger is a mental factor that observes an animate or inanimate object, feels it to be unattractive, exaggerates its bad qualities, considers it to be undesirable, becomes antagonistic, and develops the wish to harm the object.

Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Joyful Path of Good Fortune

For me the important bit in the definition is that anger exaggerates the bad qualities of its observed object. I'm sure many of us lesser mortals have had experience of this. You feel some upset and then you brood on the person or thing who you feel caused the upset and exaggerate their bad qualities. Thus your anger has created a generic image of that person (if we are talking about a person as the object) which is distorted. The next time we meet them our anger will be much quicker to arise and possibly more heated. This is one of the dangers of allowing anger to dwell in our mind it creates horrible images for us to encounter in the future and get angry with all over again. It's the same if we suppress i.e. turn our anger inward or express it. Maybe of the two expressing it is marginally better as it is usually shorter lived? However if we express to much we may perform a terrible action that will haunt us for a long time.

The best solution is to inwardly practise patience or jai yen or what ever you want to call it. Keeping the mind calm and relaxed and trying not to exaggerate the situation but trying to perceive it as it really is.

If we can do this then we may well outwardly exhibit, shall we say, a wrathful aspect. By this I mean that outwardly we appear angry but on the inside our mind is not disturbed by anger. A good example of this is when a mother scolds her child for not being mindful of the traffic. Externally it looks like anger but internally the mother is acting out of love, compassion and wisdom.

So who can tell if Westerners are angrier than Thais maybe the Westerners are practising wrathful actions

As for using Tantra to transform anger, I've never heard of this being scripturally advocated although I have heard it being discussed. Usually it is attachment / desire that is transformed.

Thanks again and much love

Steve

Maybe it's Kuan Yin

Known as Drolma to the Tibetians, Tara in Sanskrit and Kuan Yin to the Chinese. She is a Buddha or Bodhisattva depending on how you define these things. The Tibetians say she is associated with active or quick compassion, she helps quickly in times of imediate danger. The vegetarian festival that is going on at the moment is strongly associated with her.