Spiritual Practice School

Vegetarianism

Within Buddhism, there has long been a debate about whether buying meat constitutes the karma of murder. Some schools have answered this question in the affirmative. However, quite a few schools have answered in the negative. Tibetan Buddhism, in particular, has taken a fairly firm position on this answer. The second view is typically supported by the following argument:

Imagine a pig. Let's imagine that the pig is wandering somewhere in the mountains when a large boulder falls from a cliff and kills it. Let's imagine that a monk is also hiking in the mountains and stumbles upon this fresh corpse. The monk, not wanting to waste the good, cooks the pig and eats it. Does this act accumulate the karma of murder? All schools unanimously answer this specific question: no, a monk does not accumulate the karma of murder, since he does nothing that could have influenced the death of the animal. And if we ask the question of how the animal died, everyone logically explains that it was simply the animal's karma manifesting itself.

Now imagine a homeowner invites a monk to his home, with the intention of treating him to whatever God has provided. Let's imagine that the monk accepts, but promises to return not today, but the following day. And the homeowner, for the occasion, slaughters a pig and prepares the pork for the monk's next visit. The question arises: does the monk in this case accumulate the karma of murder? All schools unanimously answer this question in this second case: yes, the monk accumulates the karma of murder, since in this case the animal was killed for his sake (and therefore, when a monk is offered an animal killed for his sake, the monk should refuse this meat, and then the monk will avoid accumulating the karma of murder).

Next. Now let's consider the original controversial case. The third case. The case of a butcher killing a pig in order to later deliver the meat to a store for sale.

Here is the reasoning of Tibetan Buddhism. Why does this pig die? Just as in the case of the rock, the pig encounters force majeure. And just as in the case of the rock, it dies due to its own karma. The only difference is: what or who manifests karma to this animal. In the first case, it was the boulder, and in the third case, it is the butcher. Of course, in this case, the butcher himself, of course, accumulates the karma of murder. But what about the karma of the buyer in this third case? He walks through the store and sees some already dead meat, so he buys it. Whether he buys it or not, nothing will change for this particular pig. It's already dead, and it will remain dead. In other words, it's the same as in the first case with the rock. Thus, the case of buying meat in the store is identical to the case with the rock, and therefore, as in the case of the rock, the buyer doesn't accumulate the karma of the murder. This is how Tibetan Buddhism reasons.

This reasoning, however, is flawed. In fact, it's the other way around: the case of buying meat is identical to the second case, where the homeowner killed a pig for a guest. The homeowner kills the pig for a monk. If the monk hadn't arrived, the pig would have survived. The same is true in the case of the store. The butcher kills the pig for a customer; if the customer hadn't arrived, the pig would have survived. The only difference between these two cases is that in the case of the store, the agent is not a specific person, but a community. That is, the global community of all butchers kills pigs for the sake of the global community of all those who buy and eat this meat. If there were no such consumers of pork, then, accordingly, butchers would not kill pigs. Therefore, when a customer walks through the store, sees meat and buys it, they automatically join this community, the community of meat consumers. And, accordingly, since by purchasing a chicken, he automatically joins this community, for which these pigs are slaughtered, he naturally accumulates the karma of killing these animals. To put it even more simply, when a customer buys a chicken, he reduces the store's stock of these chickens by one. This information is automatically transmitted from the store to the butcher. And the butcher, having learned that the store has a shortage of chickens, kills the next chicken. Thus, the customer, having bought a chicken in the store, automatically sets in motion the process of killing the next chicken. In other words, the customer causes the death not of the chicken they bought, but of the next one.

The above reasoning, of course, does not mean that all the karma of killing a chicken flows from the butcher to the customer. No. The butcher still bears almost all the karma of killing the animals he kills. The above reasoning only indicates that the buyer of this meat also bears some of the karma of this killing.

Worldly Desires

Everything that directs a person away from themselves, away from their True Ego, away from the Absolute, toward the external world, toward samsara, is called worldly desires. Worldly desires are the cause of all suffering. Worldly desires are the opposite of the desire for spiritual growth.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more beautiful their appearance.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the higher their overall health.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the longer they live.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the less stress they have and the lower their overall stress level.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the less stress they have and, as a result, the less they need food, which is mostly a means of stress relief.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more calm they are. And the better the person's reaction, which gives them a greater chance of survival in unforeseen circumstances. Good reaction is also a key factor that allows a person to win in a fight or in martial arts.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more successful they are in their professional, scientific, or athletic endeavors.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more adequately they perceive reality.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the shorter their sleep.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more willpower they have.

The more willpower a person has, the fewer worldly desires they have.

The ability to tolerate pain varies. Some people have a low pain threshold, while others have a high pain threshold. One of the main factors influencing the pain threshold is the level of a person's worldly desires. The fewer worldly desires a person has, the higher their pain threshold.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the more merit they have.

The fewer worldly desires a person has, the higher their spiritual level.

The desire to accumulate merit, the desire for spiritual growth, the desire to engage in spiritual practice, the desire to observe the commandments, the desire to follow dharma, the desire to live according to one's conscience, the desire to save all these are not worldly desires.

Meaning of Life

The meaning of life is spiritual growth.

A person is born. They live. They grow up. They die. Then, their soul is reborn in a new body. And so it goes on, practically endlessly. This is called the cycle of samsara. If a person strives to achieve spiritual liberation in each life, then sooner or later they will be able to free themselves from the cycle of samsara. If a person does not strive to achieve spiritual liberation, then with each subsequent life they become closer and closer to the world of hell. In Buddhism, the totality of all people who strive for spiritual liberation is usually called the "stream of Truth" or the "ascending stream". And the totality of all people who do not strive for liberation and waste their lives on false goals is called the "descending stream". The descending stream consists of people who mistakenly believe that the purpose of life is to achieve pleasure, that they should simply live and enjoy this life. In our time (the beginning of the 21st century), the ratio between the ascending stream and the descending stream is approximately one to a thousand.

In Hinduism and Buddhism, there is a concept called Dharma the universal law of existence. In the East, it is Dharma that is more commonly observed than the Law of Karma. "Dharma protects those who protect Dharma". The overwhelming majority of people, both in the East and throughout the world, strive to structure their lives so that they are as closely aligned with Dharma as possible, or, in common parlance, so that they do not violate their Conscience. However, unfortunately, few understand what Dharma truly is. Few understand what is truly harmful. The overwhelming majority consider Dharma to be what is generally accepted as Dharma. The overwhelming majority take as their life guidelines what is generally accepted as their life guidelines. And few understand that what is generally accepted is, in fact, wrong. Few understand that what is generally accepted is, in fact, harmful. On the contrary, the First Correct Law of Dharma is the Law of Liberation from Worldly Desires: "The cause of all suffering is worldly desires". And the Second Correct Law of Dharma is the Law of Karma. The Six Karunas can be considered as further Correct Laws of Dharma (see the chapter "Message to the Seven Churches"). Dharma is not limited to these seven laws (the first karuna and the first law of dharma coincide, so both are considered one). This entire book should be considered a "Correct Dharma School".

In order to live freely and freely, it is necessary to achieve liberation.

Law of Projection

Every thought has power. Every image manifests in reality.

A weak, isolated image manifests as imperceptible consequences.

A strong image manifests as tangible reality.

A special case of the manifestation of a strong image occurs when a person conceives of something and then brings this idea to life. This is usually called creation.

The images of the gods are always very powerful. Therefore, their images are life-giving.

A strong, repeated collective image manifests as a real, inevitable event.

A very powerful thought can give birth to life.

Meditation on becoming is precisely one way to make your thought strong and repeated.

The law of karma and the law of projection are interconnected. The more merit a person has, the more their consciousness manifests.

Law of Resonance

People, being close to or touching each other, experience the same emotion, the same feeling. Another name for this law is interpersonal identification. This law is sometimes interpreted as the crowd effect. The crowd effect is a special case of the law of resonance. This law applies to any communication between people, even if people are located at a great distance, even if communication between people occurs via telephone, mail, or the internet.

When touching another person, a state is transferred, but not karma. Due to the law of resonance, it may seem that by touching another person, you can transfer your karma to them, or, conversely, take their karma for yourself. However, this is not the case. Karma isn't transferred like that. Karma isn't transferred at all. No one can take on someone else's karma. Sometimes, as an extremely rare exception, individuals like buddhas, who are free from any karma whatsoever, can take on someone else's karma.

The Question of the Primacy

Being determines consciousness. And consciousness determines being. These are two sides of a single dialectical principle.

An illustration of the first: Being determines consciousness. Humans have an innate desire to live. In order to survive, they carefully study the objects on which their life depends. In particular, such an object for a person is their mother. A person studies their mother very carefully. They carefully try to understand what their mother thinks, what their mother wants from them. As a result, the person develops an internal image. An image of their mother. Trying to study their mother more deeply, a person tries to imitate their mother's actions. They imitate their mother's words. As a result, a person succeeds in learning speech. And, having mastered speech, a person masters the thinking that lies behind this speech. That is, being determines consciousness.

An illustration of the second: Consciousness determines being. A person, for example, noticed that he would be more comfortable if he sat not on the ground, but on something higher. So, a person formed an image within their mind of something that could help them with this. They created the idea of a stool. Then, they drew this image on paper and, examining the drawing, checked whether what they had imagined corresponded to what they needed. Having satisfied themselves that what they had drawn corresponded perfectly to what they had conceived, and what they had conceived corresponded perfectly to what they desired, they took wood and tools and made a stool. So, at first, there was no stool, then the idea of a stool appeared, then the stool appeared in reality. In other words, consciousness determines existence.

Materialism asserts that matter is primary and consciousness secondary. Idealism, on the other hand, asserts that consciousness is primary and matter secondary. I wonder, on what basis do people take one side or the other? Anyone wishing to understand the essence of this debate would do well to first understand the "law of disappearance".

"The Law of Disappearance":

Everything that has a beginning has an end

A completely natural consequence of this law:

Is that everything that has no beginning also has no end

This law is easily proven by the lack of examples in life where something had a beginning and no end. This dialectical law should be taken into account by any philosopher, regardless of hether they are a materialist, an idealist, or anyone else. That is, a thinker who rejects this principle should be considered an illiterate thinker, an ignoramus. All Abrahamic religions should also be considered such ignoramuses. In contrast, most Buddhist and Hindu schools recognize this principle. This principle is also recognized by science.

As for the question of what comes first, matter or consciousness, most Buddhist schools believe that both matter and consciousness exist eternally and, therefore, have no moment of origin. And, therefore, there is no need to ask the question "which came first", since both were originally. In science, the most popular view is that matter exists eternally, and consciousness is secondary. That is, consciousness appears at a certain stage in the evolution of matter and disappears at a certain stage.

Buddhism asserts that physical matter can transition from a state of global vacuum, global empty space, global absence of motion, and global absence of time, to a state of the presence of motion and time. This movement is initiated by all of us. We are souls who have chosen to live in this physical universe. This, in principle, can manifest in the physical world as the Big Bang (but not necessarily). The universe expands, stabilizes, exists, then contracts, collapses, and again returns to a state of global vacuum. And this pulsation repeats endlessly.

Buddhist philosophy acknowledges science and accepts Darwin's theory. And rightly so.

The theory of predetermination (fatalism) is incorrect.

The past cannot be changed. A time machine cannot be created. The past cannot be changed due to the law of cause and effect (and also because the law of cause and effect is correct).

Question of Knowability of God

This world is given to man through sensation, and only through sensation. However, scientists have agreed that the world given to us through sensation, and only through sensation, really exists. Although this is practically impossible to prove.

It Similarly, it is impossible to prove the existence of dreams. No instrument can register human dreams. Instruments can only register the various electromagnetic oscillations of the brain. Scientists have discovered that when the sleeping brain emits a strictly defined pattern of electromagnetic oscillations, if a person is immediately awakened at that moment, they say they just had a dream. It is impossible to prove the existence of dreams in any other way. And yet, scientists have agreed to acknowledge that dreams exist and are an objective reality.

That is, scientists agree on practically everything that is commonly considered objective reality or that is not commonly considered objective reality.

With regard to Regarding the existence of God, the global scientific community has agreed that He is unknowable and that His existence is impossible to prove.

However, this is a scientific error. Scientists have failed to notice that the method of studying God is identical to the method of studying dreams. There are such people saints. Saints testify that they have experienced communication with God. Saints testify that this communication with God occurs in a particularly deep meditative state. As a rule, the testimonies of different saints about God are similar. The similarity of the testimony of a large number of saints is sufficient proof that saints are dealing with the same reality. Distinguishing saints from non-saints is quite easy using that same electroencephalography. When a saint enters the required meditative state, their brain begins to emit waves with a strictly defined pattern, which can be objectively recorded with a physical device. The similarity and repeatability of physical indicators and the similarity and repeatability of the meditative experiences described by saints should be interpreted as evidence of the presence of such an objective factor as the existence of God.

There is another scientific proof of God's existence. It's the biblical book "Apocalypse". This work was written two thousand years ago. Yet it describes events occurring precisely in our time, primarily at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The "Apocalypse" describes the events of our time very accurately. Almost all the predictions of various seers whom people encounter suffer from one flaw: excessive metaphor. Because of this, almost all prophetic prophecies are of no practical use. Because these predictions reveal virtually nothing in advance. The "Apocalypse" however, is fundamentally different from such predictions. The "Apocalypse" precisely answers the main questions: "Will there be a Third World War or not?"; "Will America perish or not?"; "Will communism triumph worldwide or not?" To have such a distant and very precise foresight, one must be a true God. That is, the existence of such a scripture as the "Apocalypse" and the confirmation in reality of everything it predicts, is real, completely scientific, proof of the existence of God. The "Apocalypse" is a real scripture, and the whole world knows it almost by heart. In this scripture, God conveys information through John the Theologian about what will happen on Earth in two millennia. For example, He conveys that a Third World War will occur on Earth. And, indeed, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a Third World War occurs. If there is a sufficiently accurate real prediction of the events of a Third World War, then there is a source of these sufficiently accurate predictions. And the source of these real predictions is God. What more real proof of God's existence do you need?

What is Truth?

If a person doesn't have a clear enough understanding of what is right and what is wrong? If a person's life is going awry? If a person feels like their life isn't worth a damn? If a person can't understand what in this life has meaning and what doesn't? If a person doesn't understand where to spend their energy and where not? If a person feels like they don't understand something very important in this life? All this means that a person doesn't know the "Truth".

One must be able to discern the difference between "philosophical absolute truth", "spiritual absolute Truth", and the "Truth to which a Buddha awakens", the awakening to which Buddha derives his title. One must also be able to discern the difference between the concept of "Truth" with a capital T and the concept of "truth" with a lowercase t.

Truth, with a small letter, is the content of a thought about the essence of the knowable that has overcome the status of a hypothesis in the procedures of verification for compliance with the knowable; the coincidence of thinking and reality as opposed to error (contradiction between thinking and reality). Practice is the criterion of truth. Truth, with a small letter, is also called a human statement when it corresponds to reality (truth as opposed to a lie). The concept of truth is also used in logic, when a particular logical statement has no contradictions.

The concept of absolute truth (with a small letter) is used in philosophy. In philosophy, absolute truth is a true statement (philosophical or scientific), the content of which does not imply problematization and correction. In other words, if a statement can be problematized, with subsequent correction according to some criterion, then this truth is not absolute.

Since the absence of any problematization or correction of any true statement is impossible (unless this statement is equal to zero in its content),Insofar as absolute truth does not exist, it follows that the essence of primordial philosophical absolute truth lies in its absence. In Buddhist philosophical schools, this principle is called the principle of emptiness: "truth is emptiness".

"There is nothing inherently existing". Everything we think about any given phenomenon as an essence is merely our own thoughts, which we "extract" from things or phenomena. And these thoughts themselves were not and are not present in any things or phenomena.

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Truth with a capital T is usually understood to refer to spiritual absolute Truth.

The essence of spiritual absolute Truth lies not in the existence of a Single God, nor in the structure (or universal interconnectedness) of the Universe, nor in the existence of an afterlife, nor in the existence of the law of karma, but in the eradication of worldly desires.

The eradication of worldly desires is the same as liberation from addictions, from samsara, from the bonds of samsara, from suffering, from illusions, from bonds, from karma, and other such things; it is the same as the attainment of nirvana, the absence of agitation, the state of the Absolute, a state of absolute peace. Since the state of nirvana is described as a transparent emptiness in which there is nothing, in Buddhist philosophy the principle of emptiness, "Truth is emptiness", is also applicable to the "spiritual absolute Truth". That is, essentially, there is no difference between the "spiritual absolute Truth" and the "Truth to which a Buddha awakens". They are one and the same. However, it is crucial to understand the distinction between the two interconnected things discussed here. "The Truth to which a Buddha awakens" is the state of mahanirvana, the experience of this state, and what remains in the Buddha as a result of this experience. All of this is personal experience. And therefore, all this material cannot be conveyed in verbal and logical form. However, on the other hand, all this material can be conveyed to some extent in verbal and logical form. It is precisely that part that can be conveyed in verbal and logical form that is conveyed by the concept of "spiritual absolute Truth". The experience of Buddha is reflected in this concept, but is not fully reducible to it.

Experience cannot be conveyed in words. Words can only convey knowledge. Knowledge and experience are different things. When a teacher tells students something in school, they are transmitting knowledge. When a teacher assigns students a problem, and the students solve it, the students gain experience the experience of solving that problem. Experience is not transmitted in any other way. Experience is a thousand times more informative than knowledge. It is for this reason that it is impossible to convey knowledge of nirvana or the experience of awakening in words, like ordinary knowledge. The only thing that can be conveyed in words are instructions, instructions on the methods by which adepts could themselves enter into the correct meditative state and experience nirvana, liberation, awakening, or any other required experience. This is precisely why it is always wrong to understand "spiritual absolute Truth" as merely knowledge of the results of spiritual practice, but not the results themselves. This is because the results of spiritual practice can only be realized through personal experience and in no other way.