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Old 04-17-2011, 07:52 AM   #8
polleroy

Join Date
Oct 2005
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372
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Can someone help me understand a bit more about cyclic existence in a basic way please?
Understanding may become clearer if we have a clearer understanding of the terms and meanings used.

Ok so we are reborn ...and in this 'form' we suffer from the moment we are born.....
from what I hear in some teachings etc is that we want to escape cyclic existence.
It might be more accurate to say that what we experience is constant striving, due to a perception of a permanent sense of "me". Since no actual "me" can be shown to exist, then this is regarded as a type of confusion, and that we naturally want to experience clarity, which is the opposite of, or freedom from confusion.

...but where do i go that is going to benefit others if the dharma is about freeing all sentient beings from suffering? and how come we have great Lamas still on this earth if we should be striving to escape cyclic existence?
Lamas say that great teachers choose to postpone passing into nirvana, and instead keep coming back in order to benefit beings. i mean, that's the 'official' story. Not all Buddhists go along with it.

how can you not suffer when there are so many people suffering?
It is painful to see so much suffering and confusion and craziness in the world. But, it's sort of like when a parent wants to calm a crying baby. You can see their misery, and you want it to end, but you do not directly experience their suffering. So, there is a degree of separation in that sense.

In terms of suffering from the suffering of the world, if you are not attached to a sense of "me" then there is no "me" that suffers from it. There might be real sadness over various situations, but one does not feel personally victimized or oppressed by this feeling. It's just a feeling. On the contrary, as you expand your sense of compassion, wishing to take on all suffering, your sense of "me" diminishes. This sounds like self-torture but it is actually liberating.

does someone have to die and not exist again to be free of cyclic existence?
This assumes that there is a 'someone'. If you can let go of that, then that is the same as being free of cyclic existence.

Here is a story. There are two Halloween pumpkins, one carved with a mean face and one carved with a frightened face. It is the day after Halloween, and they are discussing what they will come back as in their next life. The mean pumpkin worries that since he has always been mean, he will have a terrible rebirth and the scared pumpkin is just worrying about all the terrible possibilities. They go on and on and on until they have rotted away and been eaten by animals. Meanwhile, the rain and the sun and the earth are also having a chat. the rain says, "it was a lot of fun coming together as pumpkins again this year. what shall we do next?"

The point of this story is that we see our reality as the whole of everything based on our very limited viewpoints, our very short time as living beings (compared to, for example, the age of the universe) and so we project a kind of reality which is not entirely accurate. We experience this 'human realm' as just that. Sometimes we experience our perception (and a lot of it really comes down to how we "experience our perceptions") as hell or heaven or whatever, which is cyclic existence. So, just as the pumpkins thought that they were dealing with things that only existed in their context, it turns out that they were really just part of something else that was going on.

I don't know if this was helpful. I hope it was fun.
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