If you ask me what is the meaning of life. I'll probably just ask you the same exact thing.
Life is a broad subject, but the question that you should have asked was what is the meaning of your life.
To fully understand meditation you have to understand who you are first. Listen to your thoughts, what you are thinking. If most of your thoughts are on love, ask yourself if its really worth picturing about the perfect man? Well I don't want to sound bias but your just wasting your time. Every human being wants love, they want somebody to hold, somebody to be intimate with. But if you think about it have you ever seen true love? Sure in books and movies, but in reality, love is a silent karma something that distracts us. I'm not telling you to not fall in love. I'm simply asking you to think about what other things you can do instead of dreaming about a lover and start thinking about more important things.
But love is a different story if your thinking about more complex things like your children, let's break love into different branches. Love is a very powerful thing that is beautiful but very avengence. It tears you down on all of you problems, you hurt yourself to help someone you love. But that's just all in the web of karma. So I'm just simply stating if you are a thinker or dreamer, consider this: Love is karma try your best to avoid the complexities of it by not having too many high expectations, your just letting karma clawing its way through your life, but of course love is something that everyone wants, so before you day dream meditate first and explore your needs and separate your wants or you will just end up hurting yourself.
If you think about the past and let it bother you and wear you down, I won't tell you to stop thinking about it. But I will ask you why are you thinking about it? Why are you letting a complication ruin your life. If it really bothers you that bad than just ask yourself why it happened, was it meant to be, go back to it, figure out what really haunts you, if you can fix it, do your best to fix it, if you can't, tell yourself you tried your best, forgive, move on. Live. Forget. Don't dwell on mistakes, learn and make tomorrow a better day. If you dwell on problems promise yourself tomorrow you will be a better person, you will grow wiser and stronger, you will attempt to find a solution, if you can't you will forgive yourself, forgive the problem, Know that you have done what you can do, and just move on. Don't promise me that, promise yourself that.
If you think about the past or the future. Don't. Think about now, the present, what can you do to help yourself. To help free your soul and live with no more remorse or sorrows. What can you do to understand the reason why you are living. To understand why you wake up every morning and go to bed every night.
Life is a game, a game you can never win, a game of karma against you. Everything you think or say depends on you so listen to this don't let little or big things bother you, don't dwell on your problems. Ask yourself what you can do to be a better person, control your thoughts, your tempers, your sorrows. Most of all control your actions and understand yourself. Understand why things happened and then understand that whatever you have done in the past has created you and who you are right now.
Understand that you are in control that you do have a mind. Do not underestimate what your brain can do. You can explore it in so many different ways with meditation.
Life is like a dream a very long dream and your just waiting to wake up. Funny I wish we could all wake up. But in a way I believe it is I use to always ask myself what's the point of this crazy cycle that we have here on this planet 'your born, go through childhood, school, work, raise a family, watch them get old, die, and than you start all over again.' Woo... fun cycle right. Well what you can do is to understand and help yourself by meditation and helping other people learn to meditate. Buddha didn't create Earth, no, we created earth. Karma created it. Because of what we have done in the past has led us to this life now. All we can do right now is to meditate, master meditation, teach others to meditate, and then free ourselves from this world.
Ask me anything I would do anything in my power to help.

Hello, Lestrange.

BY .

Hello Lestrange,

Wow!  This is a great start!  Really appreciate your sharings already...it's like a union of great born Bliss and Emptiness.

Welcome Aboard,
De Men (Cricket!)

Trích dẫn
Hello, Lestrange.

BY .

Hello BY,
I'm Lestrange feel free to talk to me anytime. Thanks for reading I hope you liked it.

Trích dẫnHello Lestrange,

Wow!  This is a great start!  Really appreciate your sharings already...it's like a union of great born Bliss and Emptiness.

Welcome Aboard,
De Men (Cricket!)

Why thank you. That's very nice of you De Men. Feel free to ask me anything.

Toi khong biet tieng Anh, nhung doc bai dich cua ban BT toi thay rat hay, rat chi li.... Chan thanh cam on ban da goi bai viet nay len HSTD. Chuc ban + moi nguoi an lac va tinh tan.
A DI DA PHAT.

Hello Lestrange,

How are you feeling?  Hope your strength is back to normal.  I have so many questions concerning Buddhist practices since there are so many sects (i.e. Hinayana, Mahayana, Vajrayana/tantrayana, Paramitayana, etc.).  To begin, here are a few questions that I have:
1. What group do you belong to or how would you categorize your main practice?
2. How would you define "Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya" and how would one differentiate them in meditation?
3. The word Buddha means "one who becomes conscious".  Can you explain what this word really means?
4. When one realizes samadhi, vipassana, and wisdom of emptiness, what is left to be learned or experienced?
5.  From your "Knowing" and "Seeing", what is the quickest way to achieve full enlightenment?

BTW, did you get the name "Lestrange" from Harry Potter?  Does that mean "Death Eater"?

Wish you always have the good health and happiness!
Dế Mèn

Trích dẫn từ: Lestrange trên Th5 16, 2009, 11:37 PM
If you ask me what is the meaning of life. I'll probably just ask you the same exact thing.

Life is a broad subject, but the question that you should have asked was what is the meaning of your life.

To fully understand meditation you have to understand who you are first. Listen to your thoughts, what you are thinking. If most of your thoughts are on love, ask yourself if its really worth picturing about the perfect man? Well I don't want to sound bias but your just wasting your time. Every human being wants love, they want somebody to hold, somebody to be intimate with. But if you think about it have you ever seen true love? Sure in books and movies, but in reality, love is a silent karma something that distracts us. I'm not telling you to not fall in love. I'm simply asking you to think about what other things you can do instead of dreaming about a lover and start thinking about more important things.

But love is a different story if your thinking about more complex things like your children, let's break love into different branches. Love is a very powerful thing that is beautiful but very avengence. It tears you down on all of you problems, you hurt yourself to help someone you love. But that's just all in the web of karma. So I'm just simply stating if you are a thinker or dreamer, consider this: Love is karma try your best to avoid the complexities of it by not having too many high expectations, your just letting karma clawing its way through your life, but of course love is something that everyone wants, so before you day dream meditate first and explore your needs and separate your wants or you will just end up hurting yourself.

Actually, the question about: what is the meaning of your life should be changed to what is the meaning of LOVE?

This is an old age question and has multitude answers by many human beings from various paths of life; yet, I found Lestrange's understanding is most profound.

LOVE is Karma.

It's just like I tuned into your frequency but the sound was not so clear yet due to noises and then gradually the sound became more crystally clear that I am now on the same wavelength.

It's STRANGE, because I was about to break down each of the paragraph that Lestrange wrote to refute a point of two.

Therefore I will end it here and sit on this wave travel through life and examine it concurrently.


Thanks,
GiacTanh

Trích dẫn từ: Lestrange trên Th5 16, 2009, 11:37 PM
If you think about the past and let it bother you and wear you down, I won't tell you to stop thinking about it. But I will ask you why are you thinking about it? Why are you letting a complication ruin your life. If it really bothers you that bad than just ask yourself why it happened, was it meant to be, go back to it, figure out what really haunts you, if you can fix it, do your best to fix it, if you can't, tell yourself you tried your best, forgive, move on. Live. Forget. Don't dwell on mistakes, learn and make tomorrow a better day. If you dwell on problems promise yourself tomorrow you will be a better person, you will grow wiser and stronger, you will attempt to find a solution, if you can't you will forgive yourself, forgive the problem, Know that you have done what you can do, and just move on. Don't promise me that, promise yourself that.
If you think about the past or the future. Don't. Think about now, the present, what can you do to help yourself. To help free your soul and live with no more remorse or sorrows. What can you do to understand the reason why you are living. To understand why you wake up every morning and go to bed every night.
Life is a game, a game you can never win, a game of karma against you. Everything you think or say depends on you so listen to this don't let little or big things bother you, don't dwell on your problems. Ask yourself what you can do to be a better person, control your thoughts, your tempers, your sorrows. Most of all control your actions and understand yourself. Understand why things happened and then understand that whatever you have done in the past has created you and who you are right now.
Understand that you are in control that you do have a mind. Do not underestimate what your brain can do. You can explore it in so many different ways with meditation.
Life is like a dream a very long dream and your just waiting to wake up. Funny I wish we could all wake up. But in a way I believe it is I use to always ask myself what's the point of this crazy cycle that we have here on this planet 'your born, go through childhood, school, work, raise a family, watch them get old, die, and than you start all over again.' Woo... fun cycle right. Well what you can do is to understand and help yourself by meditation and helping other people learn to meditate. Buddha didn't create Earth, no, we created earth. Karma created it. Because of what we have done in the past has led us to this life now. All we can do right now is to meditate, master meditation, teach others to meditate, and then free ourselves from this world.
Ask me anything I would do anything in my power to help.

-Lestrange

Explanation is not always effective . People have to realize things for themselves .

Practice is important to help develop Insight and eventually Realization ...

BY .

Trích dẫn từ: Lestrange trên Th5 16, 2009, 11:37 PM
If you ask me what is the meaning of life. I'll probably just ask you the same exact thing.
Life is a broad subject, but the question that you should have asked was what is the meaning of your life.
To fully understand meditation you have to understand who you are first. Listen to your thoughts, what you are thinking. If most of your thoughts are on love, ask yourself if its really worth picturing about the perfect man? Well I don't want to sound bias but your just wasting your time. Every human being wants love, they want somebody to hold, somebody to be intimate with. But if you think about it have you ever seen true love? Sure in books and movies, but in reality, love is a silent karma something that distracts us. I'm not telling you to not fall in love. I'm simply asking you to think about what other things you can do instead of dreaming about a lover and start thinking about more important things.
But love is a different story if your thinking about more complex things like your children, let's break love into different branches. Love is a very powerful thing that is beautiful but very avengence. It tears you down on all of you problems, you hurt yourself to help someone you love. But that's just all in the web of karma. So I'm just simply stating if you are a thinker or dreamer, consider this: Love is karma try your best to avoid the complexities of it by not having too many high expectations, your just letting karma clawing its way through your life, but of course love is something that everyone wants, so before you day dream meditate first and explore your needs and separate your wants or you will just end up hurting yourself.
If you think about the past and let it bother you and wear you down, I won't tell you to stop thinking about it. But I will ask you why are you thinking about it? Why are you letting a complication ruin your life. If it really bothers you that bad than just ask yourself why it happened, was it meant to be, go back to it, figure out what really haunts you, if you can fix it, do your best to fix it, if you can't, tell yourself you tried your best, forgive, move on. Live. Forget. Don't dwell on mistakes, learn and make tomorrow a better day. If you dwell on problems promise yourself tomorrow you will be a better person, you will grow wiser and stronger, you will attempt to find a solution, if you can't you will forgive yourself, forgive the problem, Know that you have done what you can do, and just move on. Don't promise me that, promise yourself that.
If you think about the past or the future. Don't. Think about now, the present, what can you do to help yourself. To help free your soul and live with no more remorse or sorrows. What can you do to understand the reason why you are living. To understand why you wake up every morning and go to bed every night.
Life is a game, a game you can never win, a game of karma against you. Everything you think or say depends on you so listen to this don't let little or big things bother you, don't dwell on your problems. Ask yourself what you can do to be a better person, control your thoughts, your tempers, your sorrows. Most of all control your actions and understand yourself. Understand why things happened and then understand that whatever you have done in the past has created you and who you are right now.
Understand that you are in control that you do have a mind. Do not underestimate what your brain can do. You can explore it in so many different ways with meditation.
Life is like a dream a very long dream and your just waiting to wake up. Funny I wish we could all wake up. But in a way I believe it is I use to always ask myself what's the point of this crazy cycle that we have here on this planet 'your born, go through childhood, school, work, raise a family, watch them get old, die, and than you start all over again.' Woo... fun cycle right. Well what you can do is to understand and help yourself by meditation and helping other people learn to meditate. Buddha didn't create Earth, no, we created earth. Karma created it. Because of what we have done in the past has led us to this life now. All we can do right now is to meditate, master meditation, teach others to meditate, and then free ourselves from this world.
Ask me anything I would do anything in my power to help.

-Lestrange

Hightly appreciated . I love meditation but so far i do not how to start , pls help me. I hope to meet someone , or a master to guide me.
Lotusviet

hello

this is a place for buddhists to discuss about buddhism, am i right? so why have you deleted my post and my nickname white_dragon? you claim to be Buddhist but can be easily angered by a simple question? i registered an account here because my parents told me to do so, but now i'm dissappointed, because your reaction shows me that you are just ordinary people, but talk big, talk about being good. is deleting an account of someone who wants o share his thoughts with this community good karma?

hello bt! thank you for your friendly reply. i am vietnamese, too. but as ive been living in an european country since my birth & as Ive been lazy to learn Vietnamese, this English Corner is the only place I can discuss with you.

back to my question: what is meditation for?


lestrange, i just read your text. everything you described above is something that many people think. you wonder why this "crazy cycle" exist? every buddhist man/woman knows about this crazy cycle and wants to break through. according to Buddha, everyone of us can become Buddha. But I ask you one thing: Why, in this second of reading, doesn't everyone in this world just become enlightened??

There are so many Buddhist following other Buddhist monks, listening to Buddha's teachings; some in order to become Buddha, others just to have a better life after rebirth. They do good things, meditate & try to be better persons. Ok, there is a big probability that these people will have a better life for example as an angel or whatever. But some time later they will fall back & become "lower beings", beings for which it will be hard to get connected to Buddha teaching. then there will be many rebirths until they are reborn Human & then have the opportunity to learn Buddha's teachings or other.
I don't wanna break through this cycle. It doesn't bother me, I accept it. I don't care if in my next life I will be a mouse killed by a cat or if I'm gonna get hurt million times in hell. What comes will come. This is the system that works. When there are good people, there must be bad people. When there are englightened ones, there must be non-enlightened ones. Is it possible that everyone reading this forum will be enlightened in this life? i don't think so...

lestrange talks about human beings thinking about their past because they have done something wrong & at the moment can't forget about it. every time they have that in their mind they always think "Why did I do that? Why didn't I....?"
I fully agree with lestrange. you shouldn't think about your past the whole time. because the past does not exist. it is good if you learn from the past, but always thinking about it only harms you.

lestrange also says "If you think about the past or the future. Don't. Think about now, the present, what can you do to help yourself."

but if you don't think about the future you can't go to work. because you don't think that tomorrow you have to work. so your life in this world can't go on except you are a monk...


in my opinion this life has no meaning. everything has no meaning. it's just that human beings give everything meanings...thats all to it...



i have another theory fetched from a very intelligent indian philosopher... do you know why many ppl follow the dharma but most of them cannot be enlightened?

this philosopher said that every man following a religion... listening to higher buddhist monks... they don't change that much after getting so much information. because this is all entertainment for them. talking about life, death, rebirth, the way to break through the cycle, the other worlds... all that is entertainment to these people...

this discussion is also entertainment... yes, also for me...

that's the reason why we at the moment do not become enlightened...

Hello Saburo!

I can see that many of my non-Buddhist friends have the same perception like yours:  There's nothing wrong in this samsaric (cyclical) system, what goes up must come down, etc.  I always hear things like "Show me the money, then I believe".  I am a Christian who practice Buddhist meditation for the last four years and have many great experiences.

I gather that you are quite logical and somewhat scientific, therefore you should keep analyzing Buddha's Dharma such as the Four Noble Truths (Moral, Meditation, and Wisdom of Emptiness) and the Eight Fold Path.  The path to enlightenment is not that far fetched.  Actually, the word "Buddha" in sanskrit simply means "One who becomes conscious".  One should start with observing how things and all phenomena truly exist, then yourself: How the "I" exist.

To sum it up, one need to have three aspects of the path:
1.  Morality:  Renunciation of this samsaric world (this is hard when you see nothing wrong with this cyclic existence... :-))).  One must have the Right View.
2.  Right Meditation:  The see things as they truly are:  scientifically things are always changing (Impermanent) and there is no independent existence (selfless).  So, the Right Meditation is definitely needed here and there are many methods/teachings on this that you can learn from this forum.  First is to calm the mind, second is to gain insight.
3.  Wisdom:  All things arise from causes and conditions.  One must realize the emptiness, the true nature of things.  You may wonder "why do we need to realize emptiness?"  We don't wish to suffer, and we know that the root of suffering is the "untamed Mind".  When our mind perceives and understand things mistakenly, negative emotions arise and we suffer.  To avoid this, we must develop the unmistaken mind, the intelligence that perceives the true nature of phenomena.

I hope you enjoy this sharing.

hi BT & De Men!

thank you for your replies.

I wanna learn some methods of meditation. I heard there is a master in this forum who shows ppl the way they should meditate. do you know how I can contact him?

thank you BT!