Buddhism and Management – Balamadana

Marcelo,

I keep thinking what Karma means.

Wikipedia says: The philosophical explanation of karma can differ slightly between traditions, but the general concept is basically the same. Through the law of karma, the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others.

Would that mean that whatever action I take in my past, present and future live, I actually create my own destination with that. And, as you wrote, the action of the past can create a strong bond in the future, e.g. you meeting me, or your friend etc.? Maybe we had something in common in a former life?

Maybe everything has been predicted and fixed when we were born, did you hear about that theory? James Hillman wrote a book about it – the soul’s code.

It is good to have friend who are true friends. The ones you sit down, even if you have not seen them for years, and you just start talking as if you have just seen them yesterday. Being away from many friends in Germany there are only a few that I can do that with. Those are the closest friends I have.

Also, I had a fabulous night with a close friend last night. Isn’t that the best ever time you can have? Or would meditation beat that – not sure yet. I started meditating more regularly but not to the stage yet where I can be confident doing so at any time.

Did I tell you that I went for acupuncture. It was great. I still need to think about what happened but you get an interesting sensation in your body. The person suggested to do a “Heaven, Earth and Man” acupuncture for spiritual purposes. Did you ever hear of that? I found a description here, I think.

I agree with Gelshe that, if you cannot change things, you should not worry about it. Not easy. And, not easy to get rid of all your possessions. Easier to not worry about them, e.g. not being overprotective and share them with people.

If you say you accept your karma – what do you mean? Do you mean you accept your action?

Have a good Sunday and a good start in the week.

Love

Volker

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Buddhism

Good Morning Volker, how have you been?

Wow, today is 29th august 2008. Time’s been running out quicker day-by-day or is just my life getting closer to its goal.
A friend of mine was here visiting me last weekend, it was a nice time together since we have not seen each other for more then 5 years.
He is trully my friend, without attachment, without grasping myself to him only feeling love, compassion, peace and friendness meantime we were together.
It was amazing because from the first minute we felt comfortable to each other, like if I had saw him the day before. How can we explain that? There was not hard time, silence time, the talking ran out easily between us, the feelings as well as were great – it was really food for my heart.
We just allowed ourselves to be ourselves.
Where these feelings come from? Why can we have this kind of relationship with someone? Weither sometimes we cannot have a regular relationship with our workteam, colleagues of work?
Some people has just desappeared from my life? I cannot find them anymore even if i tryed it.
Like family, manytimes our relationships are tense and stress out, but another time we just want to be with them, forgiving and forgeting all the hardships.
What is that? Love, compassion, karma, what is the point? Emptiness? Inherent existence? I do not know!
In the same way we have many problems in our lifes, as I had got some few problems with this friend of mine, but afterwards everything has sold out.
Geshe-la says: Why do we get so worry about things? If there is something I can solve it out I will, but weither something I cannot solve it out, I might accept that and let it go, because I cannot fix it.
But we grasp it to ourselves, we develop such strong attachment to it and then we suffer and from this suffering all of our pain, disturbing minds and sorrows come from.
On meditation we can learning how to let things go away, we can learn how to empty our mind and attain tranquil abinding. At that stage we will understanding the real nature of everything, and so, as Buddha Shakyamuni sad: we will be free from our miserable, ordinary life full of suffering, we will be free and trully happy.
Are you ready to try that? Are you ready to abandon all your graspings and attachments? I am not sure if I am, but indeed I want to be permanent happy. So, does it not a contradiction?
When can I really turn the page of my ordinary life down?
When can I fulfil my life of meaningfulness?
I want that and I am trying for that. But I am in the first step: accepting my karma and trying to change my mind only.
L&K
Marcelo

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karma

Marcelo,

Food for thought that is! Wow!!!

Emptiness is the subtle way of understanding and living? Does that mean inner peace and relaxation? Does that mean the answer to all our questions?

So is meditation the way to move forward and experience emptiness – btw, I started meditating. Not as regular as I want but I got started.

If you say you perceive the wake state with a dream mind, does that mean we run around like zombies? Apologies, do not want to sound silly but are we less caring and less participating in that state? Have you had this state of emptiness?

I will look into the books, here are the links to the respective Amazon sites if anyone is interested:

Heart of Wisdom: An Explanation of the Heart Sutra

Clear Light of Bliss: Tantric Meditation Manual

Ocean of Nectar: Commentary to Chandrakirti’s “Guide to the Middle Way”

I will have to practise a bit more and then come back to more books. There are still a few you recommended. It is heavy stuff, hard to understand but good. It helps me!

You also wrote:
We are here together, you from Germany I am from Brazil, we have met in 2006 in London, Why? How could it be possible? I am very declined to say: Our Karma, we have lived and developed some common karma before. Otherwise why can I not have with other the same experience as I am having with you right now?

Isn’t that interesting. We are far apart but so close. I remember first meeting you (sounds like a love story) and I thought “this man is interesting, there is something about him”. Maybe I should confess now, watching you coming into the session at Covent Garden and when you sat down, you prepared for meditation. There is something about the way you prepare that was different to other Buddhist Monks. I cannot put my finger on it.
As if we had met before, in another life?

Maybe you have to teach me things and I have to teach you things so that in the next life we are getting closer to where we should be? Or, there is more to come and we might be able to achieve something for some people in this life.

I often wonder how many people read this blog – I mean I can count the visitors to this blog but I cannot see how many people actually read it.

You out there – do you enjoy what you read?
Marpa left a message the other day, his blog is here. Maybe more people could let us know.

I believe, Marcelo, that we will be up for something good soon – and soon can mean anything before I turn 40
Why 40. Because I have a (master) plan of things I want to achieve before I am 40. And part of it will have to do with Buddhism, Charity and the greater goods in life. But we discuss that some other time.

Love and Kindness from the Big Smoke,
Volker

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Buddhism, chakra, emptiness, karma, love and kindness, meditation

Dear Volker, good morning!

This is the most complex subject we can have to get in.

Understanding emptiness for us, Buddhists, is the gateway to achieve enlightenment.
Emptiness is not nothing, just the opposite, is everything in a subtle way with a subtle mind. We have many 3 levels of awarenesses, gross, subtle and very subtle.

We can perceive emptiness only when we can have an experience of our subtle mind, meantime everything will be only intelectual understanding of emptiness and a wrong view of all phenomena. We need to meditate, there is not another way.

Self-existence is not nothing. Please forget about nothing. Emptiness is not that. Emptiness is full of life is “the real soup of life”, is the criation, is everything, but again perceived and experienced with a subtle mind.

Is almost like that: experiencing awake state with a dream mind. When we have dreams, bad or good, immediately after we’ve waken up we know for sure, they were just dreams, we do not believe in their self-existence, but we believe we know we have experienced them. But where they come from? I might say they come from our imprints, from the imprints over our minds.

Same it happens in our awake time, everything come from the imprints of our mind, the difference between them we believe these imprints durings the awake time are real, we believe they are inherent existent.

For sure, we have our chakras, these chakras are the place where we have some important energy concentrations, they are essencial for our lifes, but again do they exist from itselves?
What happen to whom doesn’t not believe in chakra?

I am not sure if I’ve understood the picture, because i do not know if the picture you have to add on here, it’s showing me that the enlightenment chakra is outside of our body or it is located on our crow of our head? What do you think?

You have asked what’is going on with us…I can tell you: we are trying our best to attain our true happiness. That is not so simple, so easy, Buddha Shakyamuni spent 12 years on meditation to achieve it, so do not be desapointed if we are going up and down, if we are going on circles… life is a circle of death, intermediate state, birth, growing, ageing, sicking and death again until we attain enlightenment and permanent freedom from all our suffering.

I can ask you, go and get some Geshe-la’s book about this subjetc Clear Light of Bliss, Heart of Wisdom or even Ocean of Nectar. They are complex but i am pretty sure you will can get some imputs.

We are here together, you from Germany I am from Brazil, we have met in 2006 in London, Why? How could it be possible? I am very declined to say: Our Karma, we have lived and developed some commun karma before. Otherwise why can I not have with other the same experience as I am having with you right now?

For sure we are not just pupped or pop in and out to nowhere. We are helping each other…the path is even important as the end.

Love and Kindness (L&K)

Marcelo

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Buddhism

Marcelo,

That is a lot of input.

You are saying that emptiness is the ultimate nature of everything. The ultimate nature of everything is emptiness. Does that make sense? Does that mean, we are nothing, come from nothing and go nowhere. Is it that? Why are we here and how are we doing the right things being here (earth?)?

If nothing is self-existent, everything is created from Karma/wisdom – and if there is a greater unconscious (see Jung) where we all have access to, who is it that determines that a certain Karma/thought comes to us. Are we accessing this “bundle of thoughts”?

Pointing you to my mind – that was your other question. Hmm, another difficult one. Did we not speak about it before. Is it in our chakra, the “enlightenment chakra” above our head?

Marcelo, I am not sure if I answered your question, neither am I sure whether I can answer your question. What is happening with us? Are we just puppets that connect via an imaginary cable to the clouds of unconsciousness? And, who determines what we “download” from there?

What do you think?

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chakra, emptiness, mind

Volker, please read the real nature before finding ourselves.

L & K

Marcelo

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Buddhism

Dear Volker, another question to you!
Try to point me at where is your mind? Or where is your body.
Be sure you are point at the right space? part? point?
So if you are a part or space or a point how could we be a collective without discriminate its parts?
If you mind is located in your heart space, if it is there, how can we feel our feet? Our mind is not there, is your heart spacelike. And if our mind are not in our feet how can you feel when someone step over them?
How many minds do we have? One, Two, how many? Can you gues?

Ummmm,

Let me know your answers.

L & K

Marcelo

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Dear Volker, hope you are doing great!
What is the real nature of all phenomena, thoughts, I, body and mind
You said i really wish to have nothing on my mind…
Sorry that is not the nature or source of our real happiness.
Emptiness is not having nothing on our mind. Emptiness is to understand the real, the ultimate nature of everything.
And what’s that? Where is it?
Budha said: the ultimate nature of all phenomena and persons is the emptiness.
So what is it then?
Emptiness is the understanding that everything lack of self-existence even our mind and thoughts are lacking of self-existence or inherente existence.
Everything is create from the results of causes and conditions in accord to our Karma and wisdom.
Our mind, our body, our I, our life, our problems, sufferings, pains, happiness are the results of a rippened Karma, that we have gathered together in past lifes or in the earlier of this life.
In this way we can ask ourselves, where is the beggining or the ending of that? When did I start? I konw my body in this present life starts to exist when my mum and dad had a sex intercourse, but i can not say exactly when my mind, feelings and thoughts started exactly to exist.
Has it started when i was a just single cel or 2, or 4, or 8 or the morula? When i start to attach my mind to my body? Are they different? Are they individual? Or are they one, in the way one need to another to exist?
Emptiness is the understanding of all this things, is the understanding of how connected we are to the universe and where this universe exists? Where is it? What is it? A convencional name? A mere name?
Day by day it has been discorvered differents aspects of it, bigger – smaller, atoms – giants, longer, deeper, higher…I cannot find the right answer. The scientists are creating a wonderful huge machine to try to find the answer, but eventhough the answer by itself will not be enough, it needs some minds and people belienving in it, otherwise the answer it will continue to be a path, a brigde for the next question and its answers.
We must understand emptiness because is onle their we can find the answer.
To find ourselves we need to go deeper inside of ourselves, like a cirurgian cutting and cutting our body in smaller and smaller pieces…chemistries and phisicians go to end (that they believe on it) they go to the atoms, protons, eletrons, neutrons and so forth getting smaller and smaller of some spacelike energy and when they arrived farther they said that smallest part is a probability to find some part of an energy….and then they come back saying that all phenomena and persons are those energies gather together, its colletive.
So you are at the same time the beggining and the end and in this gap we generate our lifes, our bodies, minds, thoughts and soever.
What do you think about it?
L&K
Marcelo

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Buddhism

Living in change, isn’t it? Constant change!

Marcelo, it was so good to chat to you yesterday and see you back on the blog.

Yes, the internal change. You need to overcome your inner barrier (Germans call it the “Schweinehund” which literally means “pig’s dog”).

I strongly believe that if you change things in your mind, your attitude and approach to things, you are more capable to accept external change and cope with external change also. What I mean by that?

There is constant change around us. Politics, work, life, relationship, advertisement, everyone tries to get your attention. If you do not have the inner attitude and focus on the important issues in life, you cannot cope.

Where does that tie in with change? I believe that we are all exposed to constant change. “Managing at the speed of change” – blog entry 1 and blog entry 2 – is a book and a great title to understand that e.g. management needs to keep up with change. And, your inner attitude and approach to life is your management, your self-management. This self management needs to be ready for life, for the change in life, speed of life/change, e.g. life is change, isn’t it?

I like the idea of having nothing on your mind. Unfortunately I have not reached that point yet. The point where your chagne is a point in time, as your head is empty. Not literally, I mean your mind is focused on one point, “nothing”, and you would not have to worry about anything, no change, not yourself, nothing.

Maybe it is similar to pressing the reset button on the computer. The one that closes everything, saves it and restarts the system. I used to get drunk (not anymore) just to forget and “press the reset button”. Nowadays, I strongly believe that the way you describe is much more effective as you clean your mind and focus on nothing else but yourself without looking at anything else, no disturbance.

Before I drift away from the topic too much, if we look at the overall picture and the appreciation of us just looking on the good things in life, coping with change, would that not be all we need to do? Is the meditation and focusing on a little bit just a bit extra to get a bit closer to where we want to be?

I send you love and kindness, Marcelo. Speak soon.

Your friend,
Volker

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change, change management, inner self, self development

Good morning Volker. Hope you are well as well!
Yes, sometimes we must believe we need to change, unfortunately we also deeply believe we need to promote some external changes in our life, as you have said on your last post.
Actually I do sometime do the same, but in fact all what we need are some internal changes. Just that! Internal changes.
Changing the way we love others; changing the way we conduct our own lifes inpired by our delusions, such as: attachment, ignorance, hatred, jelousy, inpatience, anger, unkidness and so forth. All these delusions are hidrances, obstacles in our espiritual realizations and progress.
Another time we had talk about happiness and I strong believe that our happiness comes from our inner realizations, to become free from our delusions – the root of our all sorrows.
Remember when we talked to each other not to change the side of the rose? Don’t push yourself too much from one side either do not just change the side you are pushing yourself.
We must change our way/path to achieve our permanent freedon from our sufferings and attain permanent Happiness.
It is the method that should be changed and this comes from inside of our mind.
We need to enjoy our life, duties, deed all the time, but intead of we got frustrated within ourselves, with our achievements and then we decide we need to get more, to do more in order to fulfill inside of us. What Geshe-la says is: we need to remain with ourselves more time, keeping ourselves quiet, silent and enjoy to be just with ourselves. NO MUSIC, NO BOOKS, NOTHING AT ALL. Just the absolutely peace from inside of ourselves.
We do not need anything else, we just need to free from our ignorance. The ignorance of the empitness – ignorance of inherent existence of all phenomena and living beings.
Once we can find the truly I within ourselves, we can rest and be at peace forever.
Make changes, but their framework should be inside at first. And make all of them very very smoothly, like the waves and tides in the ocean and a lake, when their are smoothly they keep the lifes in them up, but when their are strong and disturbed they destroy everything around them and after them pass.
Yesterday I opened my precious book – Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of life – from Shantideva, and I got the following mesage for us:
“All things truly exist in the nature of their causes.”
But we have already thoroughly refuted the possibility of truly existent things.
According to you, clothing and the like arise from the general principle, which is a balanced state fo pleasure and so forth;
But this cannot be the case, because we have refuted the existence of such general principle.

Our Happiness or satisfactions do not come from things but from the mind that are perceiving and feeling them.

L&K

Marcelo

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Buddhism