SandBox SandBox  

 

CAVEAT: To put some balance with the below web page, it may be helpful to weigh it against the Creationists' point of view, and their own view of science. To do this, go to the following link, especially reading - in full - the book recommended and edited by Don Batten:

 

http://inspectorblebeau.pbworks.com/DINOSAURS-and-the-BIBLE

[Rememeber, I believe that Jesus is God (THE WORD MADE FLESH) while Buddha is not, so any parallels in thought is merely coincidental.]

 

 

It incorporates similar themes addressed in other web pages on this site, including 'THE FORM & THE ESSENCE' ~~ 'RESPONDING TO JESUS' ~~ and 'KEYS TO ASCENSION'.The Reptilian Pact.mht

 

ENJOY:-)

 

 

 

WHERE PATHS OF CHRIST & BUDDHA MERGE

 

ENTRY SUBJECT:

 

Below is a brilliant & enlightened expose from "Gnostic Tom" on what it takes to be true to yourself while being true to the REAL God at the same time. This is located at:

 

http://www.geocities.com/gnostictom/eight.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dharma according to Tom: Life comes with the stress of not having it all together. There is a reason for not having it all together, and that reason is that we are led around by what other people want us to want and trying to be what other people want us to be. We are not being true to ourselves. There is a way to get it all together, to be strong enough to be real. It is a simple eight

 

step program. It is a free course. You do it for yourself. 1. You look inside of yourself for that inner light, that spark of vision, that source for intuition--and then resolve to trust in your gut feelings. Trust yourself. 2. Don't be afraid to eliminate stuff in your life, stuff getting in the way, stuff you are collecting that you don't really want. Clean house. 3. Take control of your voice, speak what you really mean and don't just be a parrot. Speak words as if each sentence is a

 

 

on past mistakes and resonance’s, to meditate on the meaning and purpose of it all, to just take a break and sit under a tree and touch the grass with your fingers. 8. At least every so often in life, get to a state of mind that is high enough that you can see beyond infinity, and imagine beyond time, and can see the oneness of it all.

 

 

 

 

...anyways, that's my current take on the Dharma. Christ and Buddha put it in their own terms for their own people and their own age. So much of what they said still rings so true centuries later...

 

 

 

It is wished upon the religions of the world by some that all paths somehow lead to the same destination. What both Christ and Buddha noted, however, is that you have to be able to distinguish the direct paths from the misleading ones. This is to say, you can get to the same destination from any starting point, but not every path from every point leads you on a direct way. Buddha taught that step one is to have the right view, which means that you have to know what are the wrong views. The right understanding is a vision that kindles the fire to be used as the fuel for the journey. What both Christ and Buddha agreed upon, from perspectives separated by age and culture, is that the Way is unconventional, un-institutional, untraditional, uncontained. It is rather a personal provable transformation, a direct experience that binds a lasting change to the experiencer.

 

The Dharma is not gained by calling me Lord, but by aligning yourself to the will of Heavenly Father. Matthew 7:21 Wow, did he really say this? The religion of Jesus is not gained by following a religion about Jesus. Belief

without holiness, faith without works, is like being a fruitless leafless dead tree. The Way is a journey, not a destination. It is a means to salvation, not a magic bullet. The Dharma is about aligning with the will of God,

resonating with that universal and eternal Truth that is somehow already known in the deepest part of our being. It should go without having to be said that getting people to align with the will of the Father is the main purpose of Jesus having taught. This Dharma aligning is the message of Jesus for the world.

 

 

 

 

For the Buddha, the very next stage after contacting the right view is to develop right mindfulness. Mostly, you are what you think. You have to be inspired by something to be motivated to do anything at all. You are defined by what you will. One of the greatest realizations of the Dharma is that we have free will. For all of the predestination and karma preached by various religions, the Dharma's answer is quite simple. We have free will and can will a change in the very direction and purpose of our being at any time. Perhaps the chapter should be called where the controls to the Way are placed in your hands. Some of us when we are young imagine in dreams that our hands are wings and we are in control of the very flight of our lives. You are hereby invited to consider the birds in flight. Matthew 6:26

 

 

 

 

Blessed is he who keeps his heart clean by not slandering with the tongue. Blessed is he who clings to his principles and shuns iniquity. [Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q525 Frag. 2 2:1-2] The step beyond you are what you think about is you appear to stand for what you talk about. Right speech is presented as the next Dharma foundation by the Buddha, immediately after right view and right selection. Dharma demands that we deal with life. We can't just stay up in the free will sky and soak up the sun rays all day. This is where we get our feet wet with having to come down to earth and interact with other people. The main way we begin to interact is communication. Our words represent the tone of our heart, our mood, our intent, our purpose, our message. This is why communicating the Dharma comes before doing anything else with the Dharma. Words are powerful tools. They can be used to encapsulate ignorance and perpetuate its existence. They can be used to express division, to rationalize injustice, to explain away prejudice, to justify a lack of compassion. Words may also be used to inspire the world with the Dharma of concern and hope and charity and transformation.

 

 

 

 

Do not unto others what you would not wish done to you. Tobit 4:15 What is hateful to yourself do not to your fellow-man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary Hillel: Shab 31a (Talmud) Become God inyour own world. Where else could you be God? Encounter God in your own

world. Where else could you meet God? Become the eyes of God to observe what needs to be helped in the world. Become the hands of God to actually make a difference. The Buddha was too busy putting compassion into practice to worry about theological arguments about God. Jesus was too busy with hands on compassion defining his Father to worry about theological debates of the rabbis. In other words, God within the Dharma is a verb and not a noun. God is met by doing God.

 

The soul seems to be God and God seems to be the soul. [St. John of the Cross: Spiritual Canticle 31:1] The soul appears to be God more than a soul. Indeed it is God by participation. [St. John of the Cross: The Ascent of Mount Carmel II 4:7] The fourth spoke of the Dharma Wheel is life in the world out there. It is present after the foundation of having taken the spark of the Dharma, and formed an inner resolving of intent to represent the Dharma, and learning how to communicate the Dharma. If it is all just mind games, it can be dismissed as so much fluff. If there is any validity at all to the Dharma, it must have an impact out there on the streets of life. It must mean something in real life.

 

 

 

 

Hear the Dharma sown in the heart. Some don't understand and lose it. Some are too shallow and give it up. Some are so lost in the weeds of their desires that the Dharma gets choked. Matthew 13:19 Some are caught up in delusions, paradigms from which the Dharma makes no sense. It is some alien evil to them, a joke, like meat eaters making fun of vegetarians or couch potatoes making fun of exercisers. Some are just not evolved enough to consider the ethics presented in the light of riding the waves of their anger and frustrations with managing the immediate needs of their life. Some are carried along by the wishes for pleasant experiences, working for the money to pay for their toys, always wanting more and more. No time for the Dharma.

These are the same as the three snares as taught by the Buddhists-ignorance, hatred, greed. The Buddha taught that the next step after learning how to talk the Dharma and walk the Dharma is to make sure you remain authentic and know what you stand for in life. This means that you are not allowed to sellout for money or fame or power. In the world and yet not of the world, the student of Dharma is like a fish swimming down a stream full of fish hooks. The shiniest hooks with the most appealing baits often turn out to come from organized

religions themselves. Sometimes being real comes with a sacrifice that needs to be made.

 

 

 

 

The next advice from the Buddha, after having talked and walked the Dharma and having aligned and prioritized your meaning in life, is for you to finally reach up into your potential and take flight. Right effort is the willful

self-pushing after aligning your life. It is an offering of a living sacrifice back to God, a vibrant song, an inspired dance, a sincere smile. Effort implies that for at least part of the journey, it is all up to you. Like hang gliding. Christ can lead you to the top of the mountain and give you a push off. Then it is you who are in flight, having been trained and prepared and equipped. This is your vision quest of discovering the purpose of your life and what effort you need to put into it, what you need to contribute back to the world in the name of the Dharma. This sixth spoke of the Dharma Wheel rests on the foundation you have made with the previous five spokes. You began by wanting more out of religious pursuits than mindless blind faith and meaningless speculation. You lit the fire of the desire to directly experience the spiritual. You then discovered the breath of your own free

will and learned how to be authentic and original. You learned how to let go. Then plunging into the sea of words, you learned golden silence and the knowledge of how words limit and impact and define people. You touched the Dharma dirt in developing meaning and charity and good intent for everyone you encountered. By this you gained a sanctified peace. Then back upstream, you learned the values of a detached life of solitude, being in the world and yet not of it, purifying your interactions with society. Now you are ready to fly solo, but know you are never alone.

 

 

 

 

Something has to light your fire and keep it burning, warm you and fuel you and inspire you. Like light bulbs being useless once the sun comes through the window, small concerns that used to drive you now diminish in the light of a higher purpose. Up to this point a lot has been required to prepare to begin the journey. Lots of making reservations and packing and gassing up the car and getting money out of the bank type preparations, but now the journey begins. What the Buddha called right attentiveness is a state of mindfulness that only comes to those who have purified their lives and intensified their resolve to begin to awaken to the simple reality of how things are. It was difficult to get past the programming of the words and the obstacles, the distractions and the ambitions, to the point at which everything in life is not filtered through bigotries and traditions and plans and reactions that have no place in the Dharma. The payback is the discovery of an internal Source that is a sixth sense of how we should be at any given situation. Holy Spirit is a realm beyond the ability of words to properly convey. It must be experienced, realized, kindled within like a holy fire. Being attentive to this fire, mindful of what it is teaching us, we can resurrect into a force that links us to eternity. We touch our very Buddha Nature, our Christ

 

Consciousness, our oneness with an all encompassing divine plan. Here we encounter the holy spirit, holy being ha-gnos. Ha-gnos means consecrated, blameless, perfect, virgin. Actually the Greek term translates into perfectly experiencing reality, being fully awakened, which reminds us of the term Buddha. Holy is to know fully the purity of being a spirit in union with God. Holy is power. Holy Spirit is the dynamic aspect of the Christian image of the Divine, comparable to Buddha Nature as a Buddhist image. As such, this Holy Spirit is the means of which the faithful develop and journey to their spiritual goal.

 

 

God that has to be actively participated in, channeled though lives, the response of a free will to the call of the divine.

 

Blessed is he who meditates upon Wisdom and reasons with understanding, who considers Her ways with his mind, pondering Her secrets. Sirach 14:20-21

 

 

 

 

Nirvana is extinguishing. Concentration is extinguishing distractions. Awareness is extinguishing ignorance, which is extinguishing ignoring. Put out the fires. Extinguish the ambitions. Extinguish having to judge

everything. Extinguish the need to control. Extinguish reaction. Extinguish counting the quantities. Right concentration is the last of the eight spokes to the Dharma wheel. As wheels are circular, it may be noted that when you get to the end you go back to the beginning. With each pass around the circle, each turning of the wheel, you become purer and more perfect. The wheel needs all eight spokes to hold together, none really being more important than another. And yet, we stand at the level of concentrating upon mindfulness, of channeling the Holy Spirit. Now we are not running on blind faith in promises of hoping that we will reach a destination someday. In this concentration of awareness, it is realized that we have been there all along. It is gnosis. It is known because we have experienced it. Drop the mask and look in the mirror.

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If you liked the above essay, similar types of essays and ideas can be found on "Inspector Byron LeBeau's CHIT-CHAT corner" located at the below link:

 

http://www.maar.us/lebeaus_chitchat_corner_page_three.html#THIRTY-NINTH