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Karma and Cause & Effect LA Beach Cities Region Introduction to Buddhism May 7, 2007

Karma and Cause & Effect LA Beach Cities Region Introduction to Buddhism May 7, 2007. The Law of Causality Cause and Effect.

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Karma and Cause & Effect LA Beach Cities Region Introduction to Buddhism May 7, 2007

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  1. Karma and Cause & Effect LA Beach Cities RegionIntroduction to BuddhismMay 7, 2007

  2. The Law of CausalityCause and Effect • “Renge, the lotus flower, symbolizes the wonder of this Law. Once you realize that your own life is the Mystic Law, you will realize that so are the lives of all others.” • The lotus flower produces flowers and seeds at the same time, indicating that the effect is simultaneous with the cause.

  3. Everyone wants to live a long, healthy and fulfilled life. It is very difficult to do this if we do not have an understanding of how destiny is created. Much as we may try to improve our circumstances, anunexpectedmisfortunecan throw us off course. This makes us feel as if we are being carried along by our changing destiny, like the currents of the ocean.

  4. Buddhism explains destiny through the concept of karma. Karma originally meant action. Later, it came to be understood as the destiny one had created through these actions. Every thought, word and deed is a causewhich creates aneffect.On a simple level, if we go to work, we will get paid. If we exercise, we will become fit. Buddhism therefore teaches that our fate is not arbitrary, neither is it imposed by supernatural forces. We create our own destiny.

  5. If you want to understand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they are manifested in the present. And if you want to understand what results will be manifested in the future, look at the causes that exist in the present. • Why is that the nice woman down the road has cancer? • Why are people born in such different circumstances? Surely a child has had no chance to make the causes to be born into poverty and hunger? • Why do some leaves on the tree get eaten by worms and other leaves do not?

  6. Karma • Mutable Karma – (Lighter) Not fixed. Manifests in the same lifetime it is created. • Immutable Karma - (Heavy) Traditionally considered unchangeable- destined to appear in the next lifetime or lifetimes.

  7. The Nine Consciousnesses Never seek this Gohonzon outside yourself. The Gohonzon exists only within the mortal flesh of us ordinary people who embrace the Lotus Sutra and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. The body is the palace of the ninth consciousness, the unchanging reality that reigns over all of life’s functions.

  8. The Nine Consciousnesses The First Five Consciousnesses: Hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste. Sixth Consciousness: Mind Consciousness – The sixth level is the thinking mind which integrates the information we receive from the five senses. Seventh Consciousness: Mano Consciousness- Where we form judgements about what action to take. It corresponds to the thinking and aware self which discerns value. This seventh level is the area of motivation and intention, much of it subconscious.

  9. Eighth Consciousness: Alaya consciousness- Storehouse of our karma. Alaya literally means ‘accumulation’. All our experiences are filtered through the initial seven layers of consciousness and stored in the eighth, which exists as an unconscious memory of all our previous actions and reactions. This influences our reactions at any given time, based on our past experiences, including those of previous lifetimes. Ninth Consciousness: Buddha Nature Nam-myoho-renge-kyo – the basis of all spiritual functions and is identified with the true entity of life.

  10. The doctrine of karma clarifies why people in the present age, which Buddhism calls the Latter Day of the Law, in which life is strongly influenced by the three poisons, which cause people to take incorrect actions resulting in disasters within the three areas of human activity. leads to which occur in DISHARMONY WITH THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT DISHARMONY AMONG PEOPLE DISHARMONY WITHIN ONE’S OWN BODY NATURAL DISASTERS, INFLATION, FOOD SHORTAGES WARFARE AND STRIFE DISEASE AND ILLNESS, BOTH MENTAL AND PHYSICAL GREED selfishness, desires, delusion about oneself and the environment ANGER perversity, lesser ego, arrogance, self-centeredness, delusion about self and others FOOLISHNESS ignorance, lack of wisdom to live correctly, blind to the law of cause and effect in one’s life

  11. This does not mean that when we practice we avoid the effects of our karma. In fact, we find that those hidden things that cause us to suffer start to surface. This means we are changing them. They surface because we are tapping into the ninth consciousness, underneath the storehouse of karma. The flaws have to come to the surface in order to be purified.

  12. We, living beings, have dwelt in the sea of the sufferings of birth and death since time without beginning. But now that we have become votaries of the Lotus Sutra, we will without fail attain the Buddha’s entity which is indestructible as a diamond, realizing that our bodies and minds have existed since the beginning less past are inherently endowed with the eternally unchanging nature, and thus awakening to our mystic reality with our mystic wisdom.

  13. Thank you!

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