Mount Meru
I went to a good teaching tonight by Khenpo Tsering Samdup at the Chicago Bodhi Path Center. Oooo I love living in a city with multiple means of education....
Anyway, tonight's discussion was on Karma, as based on Gampopa's book The Jewel Ornament of Liberation. There was also a brief discussion of Tibetan Buddhist Cosmology, which finally made some sense (to me). In that cosmology, there is a central mountain, Meru, surrounded by an ocean in which appear four continents. We currently live on the southern continent.
Hang with me here.... We also talked about collective karma, and how the karma of a group of people "makes" their collective situation. For example, the karma of the group of people born into the USA makes good ol' America what it is. Extrapolating, with my lightning-fast logic, I realized that the collective karma of all people (and other sentient beings here) generated the Earth. And similarly the Universe, and similarly all the way back to the Big Bang.
So I asked Khenpo how that worked, as back at the Big Bang there were obviously no humans or animals around in this Universe to exert any karmic influence. I suspected that we were all hanging around in the other three continents. Hah! I was right.
And people think that Intelligent Design is hard to figure out.
Personally, I want to think about dark matter and dark energy, which some people equate with the old-fashioned ether (can't see it, can't measure it, but it must be there!). What if it's all caused by the other three continents, too? Or what if it's caused by the God realms? there are even more of those confusing possibilities. Buddha said that people are accustomed to think in terms of "exists," and "doesn't exist." As long as we remain entangled in these two views we will not attain liberation. Nor get enough sleep.
Anyway, tonight's discussion was on Karma, as based on Gampopa's book The Jewel Ornament of Liberation. There was also a brief discussion of Tibetan Buddhist Cosmology, which finally made some sense (to me). In that cosmology, there is a central mountain, Meru, surrounded by an ocean in which appear four continents. We currently live on the southern continent.
Hang with me here.... We also talked about collective karma, and how the karma of a group of people "makes" their collective situation. For example, the karma of the group of people born into the USA makes good ol' America what it is. Extrapolating, with my lightning-fast logic, I realized that the collective karma of all people (and other sentient beings here) generated the Earth. And similarly the Universe, and similarly all the way back to the Big Bang.
So I asked Khenpo how that worked, as back at the Big Bang there were obviously no humans or animals around in this Universe to exert any karmic influence. I suspected that we were all hanging around in the other three continents. Hah! I was right.
And people think that Intelligent Design is hard to figure out.
Personally, I want to think about dark matter and dark energy, which some people equate with the old-fashioned ether (can't see it, can't measure it, but it must be there!). What if it's all caused by the other three continents, too? Or what if it's caused by the God realms? there are even more of those confusing possibilities. Buddha said that people are accustomed to think in terms of "exists," and "doesn't exist." As long as we remain entangled in these two views we will not attain liberation. Nor get enough sleep.
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