What Makes a Buddha
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.
|
A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.
|
Compared
to all the myriad things in the world, the root principles to be
practiced for the complete extinction of dukkha [suffering] amount to a
single handful.
|
“Given the 1970s feminist in me saw much to be concerned with from a gender perspective with traditional marriage, I thought the better approach was not to change the old but to create something new,” she said during The Michael Kirby Lecture at Victoria University. “In my time post-politics, as key countries have moved to embrace same-sex marriage, I have identified that my preferred reform direction was most assuredly not winning hearts and minds.” Ms Gillard said she assumed at the time the Coalition would have eventually allowed a conscience vote on the issue and marriage equality would have became law. “My position would have been overtaken by history, something which would have caused me no heartburn,” she said. “Now, given the discussion of a plebiscite or a referendum, I find myself in a world where these assumptions have been upended.” Ms Gillard called for a conscience vote on the issue soon after the next election, and said she would vote in favour of same-sex marriage if she was still in parliament.Australia’s first female prime minister, Gillard held office from 2010 to 2013. She is a self-described atheist, which is virtually unheard of for a major head of government.
We
have created our problems, and only we can solve them. That becomes
something of a bottom line for Buddhists. We need to train our minds to
be less attached, less mistaken, less shortsighted, and, most of all,
less self-centered.
|
|
I
became enamored of [Buddhism] when I realized its basic tenet began by
saying, essentially, 'Life sucks and then you die, so what’s that all
about?' This was the religion for me. This was a framework I could use
to examine my actual experience. Far from the promise of
pie-in-a-big-sky afterlife, this was about dealing with the fear that
comes when you realize nothing is going to save your ass.
|
There
are three types of practitioners: practitioners of small capacity, who
die without fear; practitioners of middle capacity, who die without
regrets; and practitioners of the utmost capacity, who die happily.
|