So if we just aim for liberation, it has to be accurate, what Buddha taught about it, and conviction that that’s possible – otherwise we’re aiming for a different type of liberation. What’s Buddhist is understanding what are the causes of samsara, uncontrollably recurring rebirth, and what does liberation from it actually mean. Well, if we don’t believe in rebirth, how can we aim for getting liberated from it? And how can we aim for enlightenment in which we’re going to be able to help everybody else get free from rebirth? Almost all Indian religions and philosophies – Hinduism, Jainism and so on – all of those are aiming for liberation from samsara, so that in itself is not particularly Buddhist. That’s what is specifically Buddhist.Įven liberation, what is that? Liberation is liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth – samsara. Buddhism is all about achieving liberation and enlightenment. Maybe the Buddhist way of doing it is appealing, but that’s not really Buddhism. Many, many religions and philosophies teach us that. But when our belief is challenged by friends and relatives who are not Buddhists, who say, “Oh come on, this is just propaganda, you are brainwashed into believing this,” then we start to become a little bit unstable because, well, how do we answer that? “I believe in Buddha, and he wouldn’t lie to me” – that’s not so stable, is it?īut if we’re following the spiritual path of Buddhism just to learn how to be a nice person, and to get along better with other people in this life, and to have less difficulties in dealing with our life situation – you don’t have to be Buddhist to do that. Certainly, believing it on that basis – “Well, I relied on a valid source of information: Buddha” – can get us started on the path of working toward liberation and enlightenment, without thinking that it is completely crazy. There’s no reason why they would lie, particularly not Buddha.” And so on that basis we could accept it and believe it is true. So how can we become convinced? “Well, my teacher said that it was possible Buddha said that it was possible and so I believe them because they are valid sources of information. If we are aiming for liberation or enlightenment, then as I said, if we’re not convinced that we can achieve it, then our whole spiritual path is very unstable. This requires really a great deal of investigation, and study, and thought. This is not easy, to become convinced that So it has to be being convinced that it’s something that actually is valid. To have that strong intention to achieve it and for that to be really sincere and well-founded, it has to be based on being convinced that it actually is possible to achieve it, and not just because we could be convinced that it is possible to achieve something impossible. In order to achieve enlightenment – that future enlightenment which has not yet happened – we need to have the strong intention to achieve it. That requires study – hearing the description, understanding it, and so on. If it’s possible, we’re not going to be enlightened, so we fool ourselves if we achieve it and if it’s impossible, then we can never achieve that. I mean obviously in the example of going to Lithuania or Estonia from Latvia, we could arrive in either place, but usually when we have an inaccurate perception of enlightenment, it can either be something that’s possible or something that’s impossible. And so unless we have an accurate picture of what enlightenment is, we’re aiming for some sort of fantasy thing which is impossible to achieve. Otherwise it’s like we’re aiming to get somewhere else – it’s like if we’re aiming to go to Lithuania and we imagine Estonia, we’d be going on the wrong road, going in the wrong direction. With bodhichitta – relative bodhichitta is what we are talking about here – it’s very important to have an accurate mental representation of enlightenment, an accurate idea of what enlightenment is.
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