Weak Good overcomes Strong Evil in todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Jedi Knights and Bodhisattvas.and#8221; Parami evokes the Bodhicitta mind-heart with a vision towards interconnectedness in this excerpt from the talk and#8220;The Awakening Heartand#8221; given at Taraloka Retreat Centre.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Jedi Knights and Bodhisattvas
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. So, are you sitting comfortably? [laughter] Exactly. Once upon a time, there was a jedi knight. And the jedi knight asked his great master, "Why is the power of darkness so much stronger than the power of light?" And the jedi master said, "It's no stronger. It's faster, easier, and more seductive." That's the story for today. Buddhi Chari Abattara in the seventh century, Shanti Deva said, "The power of evil is exceedingly strong, and the power of good is weak. If it were not for the awakening mind, how could evil ever be overcome?" So just hold those two quotes. A jedi warrior and a warrior for the Dharma in the seventh century. So, the awakening mind that Shanti Deva talks about, the awakening mind which can overcome, is the only thing that can really overcome. Not so much overcome evil has overcome the dichotomy between evil and good. It's the body heart. It's the awakened heart of the awakened mind. It's a translation of Buddhi Chita. So, Buddhi Chita is a term that we often find, where we find very centrally to set the skills of Buddhism. So, it's sometimes translated as the thought of enlightenment, the Buddhi Chita, but thought is a very weak translation for Chita, Chita's mind or heart. In fact, it's mind and heart together. So, it's volition. Chita is volition. So, it's the volition towards awakening and the awakened heart that results from that volition. And it's an awakened heart which is awake to all beings, and awake to the needs and the cries of all beings. So, I'm going to come back to that, to Buddhi Chita. Buddhi Chita is the very heart of what's known as the Bodhisattva ideal, the wonderful and sublime ideal that's central to Mahayana Buddhism, which is the whole kind of thrust of Buddhism in which personal practice is not only in terms of when it's personal, it's not only a method of personal development, but it's also an orientation of life towards interconnectedness and towards working in the service of all beings. So, I'd like to, what I want to explore really this morning, as a very important background to the work that reconnects is the whole idea of interconnectedness. So, we bandy the term around quite a lot, and I'm sure we all have a felt sense of what we mean by that. We've all had an experience, I'm sure, of interconnectedness. But what I wanted to do this morning was maybe unpack that term, and at least share what it means for me and just, you know, hopefully bring that into relationship in a way that might be useful and helpful for people. So, I thought, first of all, I'll just tell you another little bit about my history. You know, I said the other day, didn't I? I've got five planets in Leo. I think I'm the most fascinating thing in the universe, as Leo's tend to. And strangely enough, I'm an extrovert with that. But more seriously, I often think when I hear other people talk about their own particular history of how Buddhism's affected them, or how they've come across it, or whatever, I find it quite deeply moving. Even maybe it's what Sophia was saying this morning about, speaking from that very deep and real place in ourselves, quaking, as it were, with a need to share and a need to hear. And, yeah, I feel as if I could, maybe I could be in a 12-step program just now, you know, I could just say to you, my name's Parimian, I'm an ego-holic. My name's Parimian, I'm a sang-sada-holic. And, yeah, and I'm working with that. So, speaking from that, I'll tell you my story. As we do sometimes in search meetings. So, I won't give you the whole go-to details, but there was one spoon of time. I was walking up Saki-hol Street. Well, I was walking then a flight of stairs into Saki-hol Street. And I'd been sitting for about the previous 20 minutes thinking, "I must change my life. I really must change my life. My life is full and apart. I must change my life." So, I was 25 years of age. It was very recently. It was in 1977, and I'll leave you to do the math. So, I was thinking, "I really must change my life." And I walked down this flight of stairs into Saki-hol Street, and saw a poster which said, "Change your life." Okay, I thought. Not being able to turn my back on the messages of the universe. I rang the telephone number at the bottom, and it was a glass cup of just cinema. And it was advertised in a series of taped lectures by Sanger X to call Buddhism for today and tomorrow. So, I'd already come across a bit of Buddhism. Most famously, the Tibetan Book of the Dead read to me while I was on acid in local home and beach. It was one of my first encounters with Buddhism. So, that had been some years previously. And so, there I was, 1977. Quite deeply disillusioned by a lot of things in my life. Disillusioned by relationships. Disillusioned by politics. Disillusioned by education. Disillusioned by career. Disillusioned. And this was the hard one. Disillusioned by sex and drugs and rock and roll. You know, there was... Yeah. I went and changed my life. And I went and listened to this tape lecture given by Sanger X to a couple of years or maybe the year before. You'd given this series of photos called Buddhism for today and tomorrow. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this screen. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny. And thank you. Thank you. [music] [music] [music] [ Silence ]