<div>Obviously I am no better than the average person in terms of accumulated tendency to kindness, morality and so on on and have no less hatred, greed, ignorance etc. In fact I have very strong attachments and get angry more easily than most people. And when I think about people like Bin Laden and Gadhafi, knowing myself, it is easy for me to imagine that I have been worse in past lifetimes and will likely be so in future ones. It just happens that the conditions in this lifetime have been such that this has not happened and probably will not.
But all this is to be expected, since change must happen very, very gradually. Indeed it has been compared to using a knife. One does not see how much the handle is worn away when observing one day after another, but only after a long time will you see that it has worn away a little. And according to the Buddha, the first step is the eradication of wrong understanding and doubt and with these, also miserliness and jealousy. And this is already aeons away for someone like me, not to mention anger, sensual desire, conceit, attachment to being and ignorance which are further down the road (although not long after). And what does this point to?
That if we think to fight sensuous attachments, conceit and anger we are in fact invariably encouraging them in other forms and towards other objects. The cause as well as what results is perversion of perception, of consciousness and of understanding. It is this latter which gives the impression not only that we should try to fight these vices, but also the illusion that we have had some success in lessening them.
So long as there is wrong understanding, other evils will not lessen one bit, in fact they are being encouraged in other forms, including to the very idea of being without particular ones. All this is the result of
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But all this is to be expected, since change must happen very, very gradually. Indeed it has been compared to using a knife. One does not see how much the handle is worn away when observing one day after another, but only after a long time will you see that it has worn away a little. And according to the Buddha, the first step is the eradication of wrong understanding and doubt and with these, also miserliness and jealousy. And this is already aeons away for someone like me, not to mention anger, sensual desire, conceit, attachment to being and ignorance which are further down the road (although not long after). And what does this point to?
That if we think to fight sensuous attachments, conceit and anger we are in fact invariably encouraging them in other forms and towards other objects. The cause as well as what results is perversion of perception, of consciousness and of understanding. It is this latter which gives the impression not only that we should try to fight these vices, but also the illusion that we have had some success in lessening them.
So long as there is wrong understanding, other evils will not lessen one bit, in fact they are being encouraged in other forms, including to the very idea of being without particular ones. All this is the result of
More...