Tradition

Dr.BCR.Titu barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,Sathorn,
Bangkok,10120
Thailand.

The word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem, acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on", and is used in a number of ways in the English language:
1. Beliefs or customs taught by one generation to the next, often orally. For example, we can speak of the tradition of sending birth announcements.
2. A set of customs or practices. For example, we can speak of Christmas traditions.
3. A broad religious movement made up of religious denominations or church bodies that have a common history, customs, culture, and, to some extent, body of teachings. For example, one can speak of Islam's Sufi tradition or Christianity's Lutheran tradition.
However, on a more basic theoretical level, tradition(s) can be seen as information or composed of information. For that which is brought into the present from the past, in a particular societal context, is information. This is even more fundamental than particular acts or practices even if repeated over a long sequence of time.

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Sexy...naughty...bitchy......

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The concept of personality.

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam.
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.

Whereas the concept "human being" emphasises man's biosocial, body-mind origin, the concept "personality" is connected mainly with his social and psychological aspects, such as his sense of dignity, his self-appraisal, his value orientations, beliefs, the principles by which he lives, his moral, aesthetic, socio-political and other social positions, his convictions and ideals, and also the character, the special features of his intellect, the style and independence of his thinking, the specific nature of his emotional make-up, his willpower, cast of mind and feelings, his social status.
One cannot conceive of a personality as something separate from the human being, or even from his external and general physical appearance. The personality (Lat. persona= mask) is the face that confronts us. When in their later years, people have plastic operations and face-lifts, they change their external appearance, which, as psychological observations have shown, also changes something in their mentality. Everything in a person is "interconnected" and affects the personality as a whole. What a person looks like is the outward expression of his inner world.
A personality is a socially developed person, one who is part of a certain specific historical and natural context, one or another social group, a person possessing a relatively stable system of socially significant personal features and performing corresponding social roles. The personality's intellectual framework is formed by his requirements, interests, frame of reference, peculiarities of temperament, emotion, willpower, motivation, value orientations, independence of thought, consciousness and self-consciousness. The central feature of the personality is world outlook. A person cannot become a personality without evolving what is known as a world outlook or world-view, which includes his philosophical view of the world.
A knowledge of philosophy is an inseparable attribute of a person's higher education and culture. Because a world-view is the privilege of modern man and its core is philosophy, one must know a person's philosophy in order to understand him. Even those who deny and make fun of philosophy possess a philosophy. Only the animal has no world-view whatever. It does not meditate upon things in the world, the meaning of life and other problems. A world-view is the privilege of the personality, that is to say, a human being uplifted by culture. Both historically and ontogenetically, man becomes a personality to the extent that he assimilates culture and contributes to its creation. Our distant ancestor, in the conditions of the primitive horde and the initial stages of the formation of society, was not yet a personality, although he was already a person, a human being. A child, particularly in his earliest years, is, of course, a human being, but not yet a personality. He has yet to become one in the course of his development, education and upbringing. A human being may or may not become a personality. The child who is isolated from people and surrounded by animals does not. Personality may or may not take shape, and it may also disintegrate, be deformed, or broken up altogether either by pathological processes in the organism, mental disorders, alcoholism, and so on, or by certain extremely unfavourable, tragic circumstances.
So, the term "personality" implies an integrating principle that unites the biological and social in a single whole, and also all the psychological processes, qualities and states that regulate behaviour, giving it a certain consistency and stability in relation to the rest of the world, to other people and itself. The personality is a socially historical, naturally conditioned and individually expressed being. A human being is a personality inasmuch as he consciously distinguishes himself from everything that surrounds him, and his relation to the world exists in his consciousness as a certain standpoint in life. The personality is a human being who possesses self-consciousness and a world-view, and who has achieved an understanding of his social functions, his place in the world, who has comprehended himself as a subject of historical creativity, a maker of history. The essence of personality is not its physical nature but its socio-psychological properties and the mechanism of its mental life and behaviour. The personality is an individual concentration or expression of social relationships and functions, a subject of cognition and transformation of the world, of rights and duties, of ethical, aesthetic and all other social standards. When we speak of a personality, we have in mind its social, moral, psychological and aesthetic qualities crystallised in a human being's intellectual world.
In each of his essential relations a person appears in an especial quality, in his specific social function, as the subject of material or spiritual production, the vehicle of certain production relations, as a member of a certain social group, of class, the representative of a certain nation, as a husband or wife, father or mother, in short, as the creator of family relations.
The social functions which man has to perform in society are many and various, but personality cannot be reduced to these functions, even taken as an integral whole. The thing is that the personal is what belongs to a given person and distinguishes him from others. In a certain sense one can agree with the view of those who find it difficult to draw a line between what a person calls "himself" and what he calls "his own". Personality is the sum-total of everything that a person may call his own. How does a person describe himself as a personality when he is asked what he is? He does this by relating himself to what he does or has done, by telling us with whom he is associated. Hence the principle: "Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are." In addition, he tells us what belongs to him, what he has mastered, what he has made his own, and in what way he has fulfilled himself, to what context of life he belongs—labour, social, age, family, education, and so on. What belongs to the personality is not only his physical and intellectual qualities, but his clothing, the roof over his head, husband and children, ancestors and friends, social status and reputation, first name and family name. The structure of the personality also includes what it has given its strength to and also the powers that have been embodied in it. It is a personal manifestation of embodied labour.
Take, for example, a person's name. It is not something purely extraneous in relation to the personality. A name grows together, as it were, with the personality, becomes affixed to the face and forms something inseparable from the given personality. And only if he is playing someone else on stage, or works as an intelligence agent, or has adopted a different faith does a person change his name, and everyone knows how difficult that is both for the person himself and for others. The whole physical existence of the personality is confined to the framework of a person's life, to the limits of his complex biography. But does this account for the existence of personality in general? Of course, not. Particular ly if we consider historical personalities, whose existence extends far beyond the framework of their bio-physical lives; they live on through the centuries and not only live but "work" actively through the hands and heads of subsequent generations.
Thus, the limits of the personality are far broader than those of the human body and its inner intellectual world. These limits may be compared to circles spreading over water; the nearest circles are the fruit of creative activity, then come the circles of one's family, one's personal property and friendships. The far-out circles merge with the seas and oceans of all social life, its history and prospects.
The fullness of the personality is expressed in its individual ity, in its uniqueness, its irrepeatability. Personality in general is an abstraction, which is concretised in real individuals, in separate, single rational beings with all the inimitable proper ties of their mentality and physique, the colour of their skin, hair, eyes, and so on. The personality is a unique representative of the human race, always particular and unlike any other personality in the fullness of his spiritual and material, physical life: every "ego" is unique.
Take, for example, a striking personality like Socrates. He attracted the attention of literally everyone he met both by his outward appearance and by his way of life, his beliefs, his activities, his teachings, and everything connected with his unique individuality. Socrates was rather stocky, with thick lips, a paunchy stomach, a short neck and a large bald head with a huge bulging brow. He had a habit of going about barefoot, both winter and summer, and looking around him with prominent eyes from under lowered brows. Marvelling at the individuality of Socrates, Alcibiades stressed the exceptional originality of his intellectual personality, in which something incomprehensible, mysterious, elusive seemed to be hidden. The most surprising thing was that he was quite unlike anyone else. In his manner and conversation Socrates was so original that we search in vain for anyone remotely resembling him either among the ancients or among the people of today.
One could similarly describe the appearance and personalities of other great men and eminent individuals, and each of them would be unique in some way.
A personality is an individual rational being. In the broader sense the individual is not only a person but a synonym for a separate specific being. This also applies to the concept of "individuality", which includes the personality's spiritual features as well as his physical peculiarities.
There is nothing more individualised in the world than the human being, the person, nothing in creation is more diverse than people. At the human level diversity achieves its highest peak, the world contains as many individuals as there are people. This is due entirely to the complexity of human organisation, whose dynamics would appear to have no limits. Human individuality is expressed in its having different opinions, in abilities, level of knowledge, experience, degree of competence, in temperament and character. Personality is individual to the extent that it has independence in its judgements, beliefs and views, that is to say, when the brain is not "stereotyped" and possesses unique "patterns". In every person, regardless of the general structure of his individuality, there are specific features of contemplation, observation, attention, various types of memory, of orientation, and so on. The level of individual thinking varies, for example, from the heights of genius to the worst cases of mental retardation.
The principle of individualisation has its limits, its proportion. Beyond this borderline we come to complete relativism, which maintains that if every person has his own soul, then every person must also have his own world, and hence there are as many worlds as there are people. But the actual dialectics of existence tells us that the uniqueness both of outward appearance and a person's spiritual world is relative. It is derived from the universal, to which it belongs and from which it has sprung. The personality has a general origin, position, culture, language, certain standards, a world-view, and so on, that it shares with others. The more fully it represents, individually, the universal human principle, the more significant the personality becomes. Every person is a unique individuality in the whole complex of his physical and spiritual peculiarities, but at the same time he embodies the essence of the race and also certain general features of his class and nation.
People may be divided into various types, depending on the predominance of certain elements in the structure of their personalities. A person may be inclined to practical or theoretical thinking, to rational or intuitive understanding of reality, to operating with sensuous images, or he may possess an analytical cast of mind. There are people who are largely governed by their emotions. For example, sensuous types have an exceptionally highly developed perception of reality. For them the sensation is the concrete expression of the fullness of their life. A person of the intellectual-intuitive type constantly strives for new opportunities. He cannot be satisfied with a commitment to generally recognised values but is always seeking new ideas. People of this type are the driving force of culture, the initiators and inspirers of new enterprises. The types of personality may also be classified according to behaviour orientation. A person may be classified as extrovert or introvert according to whether his orientation is on objective reality or his own inner world. Introverts are often reticent, and rarely, or with difficulty, open their hearts to those around them. As a rule, their temperament is melancholic and they rarely stand out or come to the fore. Outwardly calm, even indifferent, they never try to compel anyone else to do anything. Their true motives usually remain hidden.
In psychology and sociology a person is usually characterised by his individual peculiarities. Qualities connected with a certain manner of perception or judgement and also with the way a person is influenced by his environment are singled out. Attention is focussed on originality, on the features that make a person stand out in society, on the functions he performs, on the degree of influence he exercises or the impression that he makes on other people: "aggressive", "submissive", "hard", and so on.
Independence, decisive judgement, willpower, determination, passion, intellect and wisdom are regarded as highly important.

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Intelligence and wisdom.

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120
Thailand.

What do we mean when we say a person is clever? Usually someone who thinks well, with subtlety and profundity, who is able to speak convincingly and precisely, and who suits his actions to present and future circumstances. Intelligence is an adequate reaction to a situation. A clever person is capable in any circumstances of coming to grips flexibly with events, of finding his place and asserting himself. He says no more than the situation and the circumstances demand, but is not at a loss if something of importance to the matter in hand needs to be said. Intelligence should be clearly distinguished from various other gifts, for example, talent, when a person because of his resourcefulness, the vitality of his intellect or phenomenal memory, his gifts of spoken or written speech is able to brilliantly interpret or convey something that has already been achieved by humanity, that is available in the general experience and to perfect it in certain ways. However, a talented person may not be clever, astute. These are different forms of human ability and they do not always go together. A talented person may be careless, unorganised, and unmotivated. He may be carried away by some idea, forget about everything else and even appear absurd to those around him, forgetful of the world, impractical and in general "have his head in the clouds". A clever or astute person has a well-ordered mind, is diplomatic in his words and actions. He may be quite untalented or possess only a small talent. But his chief advantage is his ability to make maximum use of even small gifts for the sake of achieving his aims, particularly those of a practical or organisational nature. The clever person does not suffer from the carelessness of the talented.
The highest expression of the gifted personality is genius, an unusually powerful gift of nature, moulded and polished by education and upbringing. History places on men of genius the tremendous and extremely responsible mission of pioneering new paths and, by the power of their mighty reason, advancing science, art, technology, and social and political life. Destiny endows the genius with strong wings for his great flights of imagination. They are capable of carrying him high in the realms of thought and in the world of public affairs. But anything that flies very high is extremely vulnerable to the lightning! And an essential feature of genius is courage. Very often these luminaries of humanity are martyrs on whose shoulders human culture rises to new heights.
Both talent and genius are not only a gift of nature, not only the product of education and upbringing; they are also achieved by extraordinary diligence, which is a crucial component in the structure of talent. In analysing talent, genius and intelligence, I have no desire to contrast them. It would be absurd to speak of the genius being stupid. The stupidity for which humanity has as yet found no remedy is characterised by a primitive and muddled way of thinking. The judgements of the foolish person are poorly thought out, disordered and vague. He is always being diverted from the chosen direction of his thought and with the greatest difficulty struggles out of the jungles of his own vagueness and muddle. Foolishness comes from the inability to concentrate attention on anything definite and consists in a constant flitting from one object to another. Foolish people are a great burden to those around them. They are the embodiment of intellectual chaos and empty chatter.
The measure of human intelligence and its effectiveness is determined by the degree to which things, events and their• transformation conform to logic. To a certain extent intelligence depends on experience, on knowledge. But an intelligent person is not merely someone who knows something. Much knowledge, as most people realize, does not necessarily make a person clever. Goethe's Faust was a person of great erudition but he was a split personality. With horror he sees in a mask features that are not characteristic of his true self. But he can do nothing about it. The metaphor fully expresses the common destiny of his contemporaries and this serves as some consolation to the hero. Finally, however, comes the moment of enlightenment. This is my real face and that which I believed to be my real face is, in fact, only a mask. There the mask is the symbol of adaptation to circumstances, the symbol of alienated impersonal forces that impose their laws, their way of acting and style of thinking on the personality. All their lives people perform roles, and yet preserve the stamp of their individuality, which itself, in essence, is a variation of the socially typical. We move freely within the framework of the role we have chosen or that has been chosen for us, and this frame has both its centre and its periphery. Some people may take efficiency to the point of bureaucratism or convert liberalism into anarchy, while others do their work intelligently, reasonably and even wisely. Role-playing demands discipline. But if it fetters the creative principle in the personality, it loses its reasonable proportions and evokes a natural protest.
The choice of a role in life and its performance are, in effect, the whole of our life. And it is a bitter feeling when neither role nor performance are what we would have wished, what our true self desired and needed. In later life a person may ask himself bitterly, "Hasn't it worked out that the whole of my conscious life has been 'not what it should be'?" So intelligence is not merely knowledge in itself, but the ability to realise that knowledge, to apply it in practice. Intelligence is not simply a characteristic of thought but a special feature of the personality that is able to behave properly according to the circumstances.
When we wish to stress the highest expression of a person's intelligence we call him wise. Cleverness may be bound up with egoistic centres, with narrow personal expectations and everyday interests. Wisdom, on the other hand, has a rich moral content. Socrates associated wisdom with virtue, maintaining that one could not consider a person wise who possessed knowledge but lacked virtue. The clever person may turn out to be an adventurer, a criminal, and, as a criminal, the cleverer he is the more dangerous he may be. This cannot be the case with a wise man. The immoral and everything connected with the narrow egoistic centres of cold rationalism is incompatible with the very essence of wisdom. As a personal characteristic of perfect knowledge, wisdom presupposes the ability not only to apply one's knowledge, but to apply it skilfully and behave with dignity and consideration, in accordance with the objective logic of things and the interests of the matter in hand. The wise man has the ability to grasp the very essence of events, to solve problems that seem insoluble. The characteristic feature of wisdom is the achievement of maximum results with the least expenditure of means, the ability to grasp even the most confused situation and to find the best way out of what seems to be a hopeless situation and, while doing so, to maintain coolness and restraint.
A person who has true wisdom cannot live by the purely private interests of the philistine. This is the lot of stupidity, of self-satisfied and comfortable stagnation. A truly wise person is one who possesses knowledge of what really matters in life and behaves in accordance with the situation and the objective tendencies of its development, who would not spare even his life to have these tendencies realised. Wisdom is bound up not only with intellectual and emotional culture but also with moral culture, the ability and desire to use it in life, to bring good to others. The truly wise person lives by the principle: we are forever indebted to one another.
Wisdom is often reduced to the notion of carefulness, caution, the ability to trim one's sails to the wind. But this is a great mistake. If everyone in society were that kind of wise" person, progress would slow down sharply. There would be no revolutionaries, burning with the desire to transform life in the interests of humanity, of the people. As a rule, this can only be achieved at the cost of suffering or even life itself. Wisdom, of course, presupposes not only knowledge but also a reasonable way of life, which cannot however be identified with moderation, obedience and certainly not with mere adaptability. "Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour".

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What is the human "Self"?

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam.
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.

In ancient times the concept of the Self was the object of much attention among the philosophers of India. The Self was interpreted as individuality of spiritual existence, as the vehicle of the infinitely diverse relations of the personality both with itself and with everything around it. With great zeal and psychological detail this amazingly subtle and complex problem has been tackled, mostly at the practical intuitive level, in the various schools of yoga, which have refined their methods of self-training to an astonishing degree, making wide use of the techniques of long and systematic concentration on one thing, such as the state and functioning of the internal organs. In order to achieve complete isolation the yogis went out into the deserts, the mountains, the forests and plunged themselves into the contemplation of the world and themselves, and achieved amazing results in self-control, in changing their physical states and reaching the point of dissolving themselves in the natural whole and the total self-abnegation known as nirvana, a state of unequalled beatitude. By means of exercises evolved through the centuries the yogis achieve great self-control over both body and mind. Yoga has been practised for thousands of years and allowed its adherents to make a very subtle analysis of the gradations of the various states of the Self, the levels of its regulative functions, the specific features of its structure.
In ancient Greek culture, the problem of the Self attracted particular attention from Socrates. He thought of it as something independent, supra-personal, as a very powerful razor-sharp conscience—the daimonion by which he was guided at the most critical moments of his life. This dictating or advising Self told him how best to act.
In medieval philosophy the Self was identified with the soul, whose volitional, emotional and intellectual forces were striving for communion with God. The individual is torn between constant fear of punishment and hope of salvation, of the forgiveness of sins, of the goodness of the Lord. He feels himself a helpless toy before the absolute power of the Creator, while at the same time he carries on a constant dialogue with God, appealing for his help at moments of trouble and despair and imploring forgiveness for his sins. The individual is always and everywhere watched over by a god regarded as the regulating principle in the structure of the Self. This is observed with great psychological subtlety in the "Confessions" of Saint Augustine, who identifies the sense and knowledge of Self with the sense of God in oneself. Augustine maintained that he could not even have a Self if there were no God in him as the regulating principle of his personal will. Thomas Acquinas was, in effect, proceeding from the same principle when he maintained that everyone should test his actions in the light of the knowledge given to him by God. On the whole, the Christian orientation is on personal spirituality, as expressed in the maxim: "Linger not without, but enter into thyself!"
Beginning with the Renaissance, the orientation of the Self changes sharply. Leonardo da Vinci defined man as a model of the universe. The personality sets out to reveal itself. This is the time of the triumph of individuality, the great awakening of the sense of being a person. The individual enters the arena of modern history, asserting the principle of the self-sufficient value of the Self. According to Descartes, Self means the same thing as "my soul", thanks to which "I am what I am". A thinking Self knows only one incontrovertible truth—that it thinks, doubts, affirms, desires, loves and hates. Descartes stressed the rational principle in the structure of the personality. In his philosophy the Self acts, above all, as the subject of thought, its regulator and organizer. Rejecting the Cartesian interpretation of the Self as a special substance, English empiricism regards the Self as a totality of processes. ". . .For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without perception, and never can observe anything but the perception." So the Self, it turns out, is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, which "succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement". These profound reflections of a subtle thinker show that our subjective pursuit of the essence of the Self is constantly baffled by the actual flow of the concrete sensations of the given moment, either directed inwardly or outwardly. Nothing else is perceived. This is rather like a traveller in a wood, who literally cannot see the wood for the trees. He is in the wood and therefore cannot see it as a whole. It is just the same with ourselves. Wishing to reconcile rationalism with empiricism, Kant distinguished two types of Self, the empirical and the pure. The first was the flow of intellectual processes, of various sense impressions rushing hither and thither, while the pure Self was something that had a kind of supra-individual character. Its basic function was to unite the multiform by means of pure categories of Reason. This was known as transcendental apperception, which meant the unity of consciousness, which was the essence of the Self.
According to Hegel, the Self is the individual as a universal formula embracing all personalities in general. The individual "self s" become part of the formula as a means of giving it individual expression. Hegel loathed all preoccupation with the individual and had a great bent for raising the individual to the universal, to an all-embracing formula in which everything intimately personal dissolved. In Hegel the Self as a universal formula swallows up all the concrete egos of separate individuals.
In contemporary Soviet philosophy and psychological literature the concept of the Ego or Self is usually identified with that of the personality. In my view, this is not quite correct. The concept of the personality is much wider than that of the Ego. It cannot be identified either with consciousness or self-consciousness because it also embraces something from the depths of the subconscious, and this something acts as a kind of irrational "governor" in the structure of the personality when the unconscious takes into its sinister hands the will of the individual and drives the flows of energy towards irrational behaviour. This is seen particularly clearly, for example, in neuroses of obsession and paranoidal forms of schizophrenia. The person who suffers from such mental disorders becomes a prey to voices and images that command him and guide his thoughts and feelings into nightmares of illogicality and disordered conduct, void of all adaptive powers.
Man's mental world, generated by the brain and depending on its biophysical condition and the state of the organism as a whole, presents a kind of relatively independent structure, with its own logic, its own specific mental mechanisms, the elements of this structure are mental states, processes and formations. Moreover, these elements may have several values and are not all of the same value. And it is this intimately profound subject of all mental phenomena in their integral wholeness that forms the Ego. This Ego is the spiritual nucleus in the structure of the personality. It is the very deepest and most profound part of it. In its essence it is psycho-social. When people speak of "my Self", they have in mind something that is not simply personal but intimately personal in the highest degree, something extremely precious and valuable and therefore vulnerable. Hence the phenomenon of "hurt Ego", when the personality is wounded to the quick on its tenderest spot. It is damage to our Ego that causes our most painful and morbid reactions and moral suffering. The Ego is the throne of conscience itself.
The term "Ego" or "Self" also denotes the personality as seen in the light of its own self-consciousness, i.e., a personality as perceived by itself, as it is known and felt by the Self. The "Ego" is the regulative principle of mental life, the self-controlling force of the spirit; it is everything that we are essentially both for the world and for other people and, above all, for ourselves in our self-consciousness, self-appraisal and self-knowledge. The "Ego" presupposes know ledge of and a relationship to objective reality and a constant awareness of oneself in that reality.
Sensuous and conceptual images, states and goals are all part of the Ego, but they are not the Ego itself. The Ego rises above all the elements that compose the spirit and commands them, regulates their life.
Every personality has a large number of facets to its Ego—what it is in itself, how it is mirrored by its own self-consciousness (the "Ego image") in general and at a given moment in time, what kind of ideal Ego it conceives (what it would like to be), how it looks in the eyes of other people at a given moment, particularly the eyes of "those who are something" and also the "eyes" of the future and even, posthumously, of history, while among religious people it is important how the Ego looks in the "eyes" of God. All these constantly interflowing aspects of the Ego, glittering with their own specific colours, possess a certain stability, balance and harmony. The Ego is essentially reflexive. Its regulative and controlling power takes part in every act of the individual. It is not the separate mental processes, formations, properties and states, as was assumed by Hume and long before him by Plato, who urged his readers to think of themselves as wounderful living dolls manipulated by the gods. The internal states of the personality are controlled by very fine strings, which pull a person in various and sometimes opposite directions, some towards good and others towards the precipices of vice. But, one may ask, who pulls these strings? In Plato, it is a god who made these dolls, called human beings, either for his own divine pleasure or for some serious purpose unknown to us.
If we look at the problem through the categorial apparatus of modern culture, we find that our Ego is nothing but the integrity, the wholeness of our mental, intellectual world, notwithstanding its internal contradictions, which are nevertheless harmonized if, of course, the Ego is in order. The healthy vector of its energy flow is vitality-oriented, life-asserting and in general self-asserting. The means by which it asserts itself in the stream of existence depend on the level of its moral culture.
To recapitulate, the Ego is not just the sum-total of sense impressions; it is that to which all impressions are related. It is not only the vehicle of consciousness, self-consciousness, world-view and other intellectual phenomena, but also the core of a person's character, the expression of his principles and positions. It is a living bundle not simply of experience accumulated by the individual in action, but of the active and guiding force of experience, the power of selfhood, a certain psychic mechanism regulating this experience and expressed in the fact that the individual feels himself to be the master of his desires, emotions, thoughts, efforts of will and actions. Through the prism of our Ego we become aware of the difference between us and everything else, and feel the constant identity of ourselves with ourselves. The fact that the Ego performs the role of "master" in the spiritual world of our subjectivity is aptly illustrated by the phenomena of dreams. In dreams the "master" is absent or rather he is asleep; his controlling power is no longer active and hence the meaningless kaleidoscope of images, whose origin, direction and purpose we cannot understand any more than we can understand their connection with other equally strange guests of our soul.
In a normal waking state, however, the flow of our feelings and volitions has its own logic, a certain integrity and organizing principle, and also a surprising stability of the whole amid this constant change of its elements. The Ego is something united in its diversity and variability. The Ego of our childhood is something quite different from the Ego of puberty and adolescence. The Ego of maturity differs substantially from the Ego of rebellious youth with its abundant hopes, and also from the Ego of old age and senility, burdened with physical disabilities and an intense awareness of the approaching and inevitable end.
The differences spanned by the age ladder, particularly between its top and bottom rungs, are so great that it is hardly believable that this is one and the same person. Evidently we all experience something similar when we look at photographs taken in our childhood, from which gaze the naive, innocent, inexperienced eyes of our distant and almost dream-like past. Our Ego may also change almost instantaneously, depending on the state of our health. It is different in a state of sickness from when we are healthy. At times of joy and inspiration and high flights of the intellect the Ego differs greatly from what it is when we are tired. And how enormously, sometimes beyond recognition, does the Ego change under the influence of drink! As the poet says:
At every instant we are not the same.
All changes, changes not the name.
At the same time in all this interflow of the changing Ego, in all conditions, something invariable, stable, integral is preserved which, like the thread of Ariadne guides a person through life, saving the something that is his Ego, the something that distinguishes it from any other Ego. Through out his life a person carries in himself all his ages, recorded on the "tape of memory". Without this thread that leads us along all the roads of life, our Ego would fall apart into separate, disintegrated acts of existence and feeling.
The Ego is impossible without concrete sensations, thoughts, feelings and motivations, principles, positions and value orientations. But sensations, thoughts and feelings constantly change, moving from one qualitative state to another. They may also be controlled, programmed, for example, as in the change of personality achieved by an actor. If the Ego were nothing more than these separate acts of consciousness, it would change together with them and there would be no unity in this diversity of constantly changing states. There are "situational personalities" who drift with life and become so malleable that they adapt to any situation, become mere playthings of circumstance. And there are also natures that are quite the opposite, integrated, stable, confidently and firmly following their chosen path in life.
The fact that the Ego remains relatively stable and can resist external influence is based on the brain's ability to record, store and reproduce information. A person regards even his childish pranks as his own, although they were performed by a different body and a different (child's) mind. Between our Ego of today and our Ego of yesterday lies a night full of dreams—the triumph of the unconscious, in which the chain of conscious acts is broken. There would be no continuity between these Egos but for the bridge of memory that spans the gap.
The plasticity and variability of our Ego reveals itself also in its changes of role. At work as a manager a person is different, for example, from what he is in the role of father of the family. When he finds himself in an official atmosphere a person cannot permit himself all that he does in the family circle. Constantly moving with the flow of life, every person changes his Ego on entering an office, his home, a railway carriage, an airoplane, theatre, hospital, and so on. Every day of our lives we are in motion, crossing various thresholds, entering this or that place, which has its own specific psychological atmosphere, requiring a certain readiness, a certain tuning of thought and feeling, a certain attitude and state of mind. Any change of situation influences our state in some way.
This is particularly apparent when a person is in critical situations, taking an examination, consulting his doctor, meeting somebody he loves, and so on. In order to cope with such situations a person must reckon with what lies beyond each "threshold of existence". But despite the amazing plasticity of our Ego, it possesses, when healthy, an internal connectedness, integrity and relative stability.
That this is so can be seen in cases of mental illness. Highly relevant to our understanding of the human Ego is the well-known syndrome of depersonalization, which sometimes assumes the strangest forms of deformation of the personality, ranging from a diffused awareness of Self to the complete disappearance of self-awareness, when a person loses the sense of controlling his own feelings, thoughts and actions: I am no longer I. The initial stage of this mental disorder is derealization, when reality is removed, alienated from the person; objects, events and people, without losing their empirical existence, become psychologically insignificant, unreal in the sense that the patient is incapable of establishing any meaningful contact with them. A wall rises between him and the world in general. He is alienated from his surroundings. He sees and understands but feels everything in a different way from what he did before. He loses his intelligent, comprehending sense of existence. The perception of things becomes a sensationless, "dead" fixation of only their outward appearance. In more serious cases, when depersonalization in the full sense of the word takes place, the patient loses all sense of the reality of his own body. The body is alienated and seen as something extraneous, the patient ceases to be aware of any form of life activity. He suffers from complete apathy. His feelings are blunted, he no longer experiences any joy in life. All its emotional colours fade. Out of sheer necessity he tries to appear cheerful. But inwardly he is drained and empty and consumed by hopeless misery. At times of temporary depression, overfatigue, a bad mood, apathy evoked by certain unfavourable circumstances, such a state can, of course, overcome people who are mentally quite healthy. In such cases the zest for life is sometimes lost, everything seems grey, dull and uninteresting. But when the condition becomes permanent, it may cloud the reason, destroying the unity of the Ego, splitting or even causing pluralism.
Psychiatry has described cases of the so-called alternating Ego, when a person somehow has within himself two coexisting autonomous Egos, which take possession of him for periods of a few hours or even years. In such cases, when dominated by one Ego, a person is unaware of the existence of the other. Everything he does under the sway of his other Ego is ousted from his consciousness. The two Egos may be quite different from one another and even opposites. If the first Ego is shy, timid, indecisive and oversensitive, the second Ego may be very resolute, unceremonious, outgoing, free, and even impudent. The second Ego may know nothing at all about the life of the first. Sometimes one Ego is more grown up than the other.
Such is the tragedy of mental disorders. When a person is in a healthy state he carries through the whole of his life, through all its transformations, transmutations and states, the stable nucleus of his Ego, conditioned both by the unity of his bodily organization, particularly the nervous system, and by the sturdy framework of character, temperament, and manner of feeling, thinking and acting. When remembering any stage of the path travelled, some surrender of principle or taste, a person tends to identify his present Self with the past, his childhood and youth, with mature age. Not everything in us flows away irredeemably with the river of oblivion.
Thus, the human Ego, while substantially changing under the influence of social conditions and together with growing knowledge, cultivated emotions and training of the will, and also with changes in physical states, health, and so on, nonetheless preserves its intrinsic integrity and relative stability. Thanks to the existence of certain essential invariable characteristics of the structure of his mental world, a person "remains himself". We move from one stage in life to another, carrying with us all the baggage of our intellectual gains, and change as this wealth increases and our physical organization develops.
To sum up, at the point when the Ego comes into being there is a self-identification of the personality; it knows itself. The Ego is a unity, an entity of spiritual and physical existence. It is given as the vehicle of infinite relationships both with the surrounding world and with ourselves. These connections, while infinitely diverse, are possible only thanks to this unity and wholeness of mind as the system of the highest organization of everything we know.

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The unity of man and society.

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand

A person's whole intellectual make-up bears the clear imprint of the life of society as a whole. All his practical activities are individual expressions of the historically formed social practice of humanity. The implements that he uses have in their form a function evolved by a society which predetermines the ways of using them. When tackling any job, we all have to take into account what has already been achieved before us.
The wealth and complexity of the individual's social content are conditioned by the diversity of his links with the social whole, the degree to which the various spheres of the life of society have been assimilated and refracted in his consciousness and activity. This is why the level of individual development is an indicator of the level of development of society, and vice versa. But the individual does not dissolve into society. He retains his unique and independent individuality and makes his contribution to the social whole: just as society itself shapes human beings, so human beings shape society.
The individual is a link in the chain of the generations. His affairs are regulated not only by himself, but also by the social standards, by the collective reason or mind. The true token of individuality is the degree to which a certain individual in certain specific historical conditions has absorbed the essence of the society in which he lives.
Consider, for instance, the following historical fact. Who or what would Napoleon Bonaparte have been if there had been no French Revolution? It is difficult or perhaps even impossible to reply to this question. But one thing is quite clear—he would never have become a great general and certainly not an emperor. He himself was well aware of his debt and in his declining years said, "My son cannot replace me. I could not replace myself. I am the creature of circumstances." It has long been acknowledged that great epochs give birth to great men. What tribunes of the people were lifted by the tide of events of the French Revolution— Mirabeau, Marat, Robespierre, Danton. What young, some times even youthful talents that had remained dormant among the people were raised to the heights of revolutionary, military, and organisational activity by the Great October Socialist Revolution.
It is sometimes said that society carries the individual as a river carries a boat. This is a pleasant simile, but not exact. An individual does not float with the river; he is the turbulently flowing river itself. The events of social life do not come about by themselves; they are made. The great and small paths of the laws of history are blazed by human effort and often at the expense of human blood. The laws of history are not charted in advance by superhuman forces; they are made by people, who then submit to their authority as something that is above the individual.
The key to the mysteries of human nature is to be found in society. Society is the human being in his social relations, and every human being is an individual embodiment of social relations, a product not only of the existing social system but of all world history. He absorbs what has been accumulated by the centuries and passed on through traditions. Modern man carries within himself all the ages of history and all his own individual ages as well. His personality is a concentration of various strata of culture. He is influenced not only by modern mass media, but also by the writings of all times and every nation. He is the living memory of history, the focus of all the wealth of knowledge, abilities, skills, and wisdom that have been amassed through the ages.
Man is a kind of super-dense living atom in the system of social reality. He is a concentration of the actively creative principle in this system. Through myriads of visible and invisible impulses the fruit of people's creative thought in the past continues to nourish him and, through him, contemporary culture.
Sometimes the relation between man and society is interpreted in such a way that the latter seems to be something that goes on around a person, something in which he is immersed. But this is a fundamentally wrong approach. Society does, of course, exist outside the individual as a kind of social environment in the form of a historically shaped system of relations with rich material and spiritual culture that is independent of his will and consciousness. The individual floats in this environment all his life. But society also exists in the individual himself and could not exist at all, apart from the real activity of its members. History in itself does nothing. Society possesses no wealth whatever. It fights no battles. It grows no grain. It produces no tools for making things or weapons for destroying them. It is not society as such but man who does all this, who possesses it, who creates everything and fights for everything. Society is not some impersonal being that uses the individual as a means of achieving its aims. All world history is nothing but the daily activity of individuals pursuing their aims. Here we are talking not about the actions of individuals who are isolated and concerned only with themselves, but about the actions of the masses, the deeds of historical personalities and peoples. An individual developing within the framework of a social system has both a certain dependence on the whole system of social standards and an autonomy that is an absolutely necessary precondition for the life and development of the system. The measure of this personal autonomy is historically conditioned and depends on the character of the social system itself. Exceptional rigidity in a social system (fascism, for example) makes it impossible or extremely difficult for individual innovations in the form of creative activity in various spheres of life to take place, and this inevitably leads to stagnation.

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The human being and the group

Titu Barua
Wat suthivararam,
yannawa, sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand

The problem of man cannot be solved scientifically without a clear statement of the relationship between man and society, as seen in the primary collectivity—the family, the play or instruction group, the production team and other types of formal or informal collectivity. In the family the individual abandons some of his specific features to become a member of the whole. The life of the family is related to the division of labor according to sex and age, the carrying on of husbandry, mutual assistance in everyday life, the intimate life of man and wife, the perpetuation of the race, the upbringing of the children and also various moral, legal and psychological relationships. The family is a crucial instrument for the development of personality. It is here that the child first becomes involved in social life, absorbs its values and standards of behavior, its ways of thought, language and certain value orientations. It is this primary group that bears the major responsibility to society. Its first duty is to the social group, to society and humanity. Through the group the child, as he grows older, enters society, Hence the decisive role of the group. The influence of one person on another is as a rule extremely limited; the collectivity as a whole is the main educational force. Here the psychological factors are very important. It is essential that a person should feel himself part of a group at his own wish, and that the group should voluntarily accept him, take in his personality.
Everybody performs certain functions in a group. Take, for example, the production team. Here people are joined together by other interests as well as those of production; they exchange certain political, moral, aesthetic, scientific and other values. A group generates public opinion, it sharpens and polishes the mind and shapes the character and will. Through the group a person rises to the level of a personality, a conscious subject of historical creativity. The group is the first shaper of the personality, and the group itself is shaped by society.

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Fundamental principles of Dhamma communication

Shila Rakkit
ID no: 5101201157
Subject: Dhamma communication

Class: B.A 1st year

Before we discuss principles of dhamma communication we should know or define the meaning of the “Dhammma” here first. As we know there are many principle points to discuss in Buddha’s teaching. The teachings of the Buddha are not second to each other. Everything in the Buddha’s teaching is important. How can we pickup as the principles of dhamma communication so it’s quiet difficult to discuiss. Anyhow we should know what is meaning of Dhamma here first.

What is Dhamma?

"Dhamma" usually refers inclusively not just to the sayings of the Buddha but to the later traditions of interpretation and addition that the various schools of Buddhism have developed to help explain and expand upon the Buddha's teachings. The 84,000 different teachings that the Buddha gave to various types of people based on their needs. The teachings are expedient means of raising doubt in the hearer's own cherished beliefs and view of life; when doubt has opened the door to the truth, the teaching can be put aside.
Alternately, "dharma" may be seen as an ultimate and transcendent truth which is utterly beyond worldly things, somewhat like the Christian logos seeing the dharma as referring to the "truth" or ultimate reality or "the way things are".


The Dharma is one of three jewels of Buddhism of which practitioners of Buddhism seek refuge in (what one relies on for his/her lasting happiness). The three jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha (mind's perfection of enlightenment), the Dharma (teachings and methods), and the Sangha (awakened beings who provide guidance and support).




And secondly we should discuss about the qualities of the Dhamma or the value of the Dhamma. To make devotes understand and make Saddha in their minds. How the Buddha explained the qualities of the dhamma. As we know Buddha himself introduced the dhamma as his teacher too.

The qualities of the Dhamma
The Teaching of the Buddha also has six supreme qualities
1. Svākkhāto ("well proclaimed"). The Dhamma is not a speculative philosophy, but is the Universal Law found through enlightenment and is preached precisely. Therefore it is excellent in the beginning (sila – moral principles), excellent in the middle (Samadhi concentration) and excellent in the end (paññā -Wisdom).
2. Sandiṭṭhiko ("able to be examined"). The Dhamma can be tested by practice and therefore he who follows it will see the result by himself through his own experience.
3. Akāliko ("immediate"). The Dhamma is able to bestow timeless and immediate results here and now, for which there is no need to wait until the future or next existence.
4. Ehipassiko (which you can come and see-- from the phrase ehi, paśya come, see!). The Dhamma welcomes all beings to put it to the test and come see for themselves.
5. Opanayiko (leading one close to). The Dhamma is capable of being entered upon and therefore it is worthy to be followed as a part of one's life. In the “Vishuddhimagga" this is also referred to as "upanayanam”.
Paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhi ("To be personally known by the wise"). The Dhamma can be perfectly realized only by the noble disciples (Ariyas) who have matured and enlightened enough in supreme wisdom.



Knowing these attributes, Buddhists believe that they will attain the greatest peace and happiness through the practice of the Dhamma. Each person is therefore fully responsible for himself to put it in the real practice.
Here the Buddha is compared to an experienced and skilful doctor, and the Dhamma to proper medicine. However efficient the doctor or wonderful the medicine may be, the patients cannot be cured unless they take the medicine properly. So the practice of the Dhamma is the only way to attain the final deliverance of Nibbāna.
These teachings ranged from understanding (Pāli: kamma) (cause and effect) and developing good impressions in one's mind, to reach full enlightenment by recognizing the nature of mind.

Now we can discuss how the Buddha used the Dhamma or his own teaching as a medium or a communication to the world. And what kind of techniques he used for teaching the Dhamma to all beings. As we know various kind of people there are in the world. So Buddha had to use various types of ways to make understand his teaching.
But the common way to every people is the middle path. This is the way that suitable to everyone he used.

What is middle path?

As a youth, Prince Siddhartha enjoyed the indulgent life of pleasure in his father's palace. Later, when he renounced the worldly life and become an ascetic, he experienced the hardship of torturing his mind and body. Finally, not long before attaining Enlightenment, he realized the fruitlessness of these two extreme ways of life. He realized that the way to happiness and Enlightenment was to lead a life that avoids these extremes. He described this life as the Middle Path. These three ways of life may be compared to the strings of different tensions on a lute. The loose string, which is like a life of indulgence, produces a poor sound when struck. The overly tight string, which is like a life of extreme asceticism, similarly produces a poor sound when struck and is moreover, likely to break at any moment. Only the middle string which is neither too loose nor too tight, and is like the Middle Path, produces a pleasant and harmonious sound when stuck. So these who follow the Middle Path which avoid the extreme of indulging one's desires and opposite extreme of torturing one's mind and body unreasonably, will find happiness, peace of mind and Enlightenment. This is the Fourth Noble Truth of the path leading to the end of suffering.
Next we should see how the Buddha gave Dhamma talk to the people we can see many example stories in the Tipitaka. In every Dhamma talk there is a story and a sub story. Buddha separated His teaching very in a clear way. For the lay society there are very useful advices how to lead a lay life? How to live a household life? And how to do politics in a proper way? The sigalovada sutta in the digha nikaya ("Long Discourses of Buddha") is very clear the way to lead a lay life.

The sigalovada sutta in brief.

Sigala's honoring his father
The Sigalovada Sutta takes place when Lord Buddha encountered a youth called Sigala in his morning stroll. The young man, in drenched attire, prostrated and worshipped the four compass direction (East, South, West and North), plus the Earth (Down) and the Sky (Up). When asked by Lord Buddha why he did so, the youth Sigala replied that he had been told by his late father to do so and he thought that it was right to uphold his father's wishes. Lord Buddha then, based on Sigala's point of view, taught him on how a noble one (Pali: ariya) should worship the Six directions.





Avoid evil ways
The Buddha first describes fourteen evil ways that should be avoided by a householder. The Buddha enumerates these evil ways to be avoided as:
The four defilements of action:
1. taking life (panatipato)
2. stealing (adinnadanam)
3. sexual misconduct (kamesu micchacaro)
4. lying (musavado)
The four causes of evil action:
1. desire (chanda)
2. hate (dosa)
3. ignorance (moha)
4. fear (bhaya)
The six ways of squandering wealth:
1. indulging in intoxicants
2. wandering the streets at inappropriate times
3. frequenting public spectacle
4. compulsive gambling
5. malevolent companionship
6. Habitual idleness.




Choose true friends

The Buddha then elaborated on the importance of having and being a true friend, as he described what true friends are; and what true friends are not; and, how true friends will aid in attaining a blissful life.

Protect close relationships.

Finally, returning to the topic of the six directions, the Buddha described the Four Compass Direction as: parents (East), teachers (South), wife (West), and friends and colleagues (North), and the two vertical directions as: ascetics and Brahmins (Up) and the Servants (Down). He elaborated on how to respect and support them, and how in turn the Six will return the kindness and support.
The householder's commitments and the reciprocal acts of those he honors, as identified by the Buddha, are represented below in accordance with the four directions on the horizontal plane (east, south, west and north):









NorthFRIENDS
commitments
reciprocal acts
generositykind wordshelpfulnessimpartialityintegrity
supportivenessprotect your wealthprovide shelterloyaltyhonor your family
WestWIFE
EastPARENTS
commitments
reciprocal acts
commitments
reciprocal acts
honor herrespect herfidelityshare authorityprovide gifts
organize dutieshospitalityfidelitywise budgetingskillfulness
support themfulfill their dutieshonor traditionsdeserve inheritancehonor their passing
restrain from evilnurture goodnessteach skillsarrange marriageprovide inheritance
SouthTEACHERS
commitments
reciprocal acts
rise to greet themattend to themeager receptivityserve themmaster their teaching
thoroughly instructensure comprehensionprovide well-roundednessprovide referralsensure safety

NadirWORKERS
To the left are shown the householder's commitments to and the reciprocal acts of employees and servants (representing the nadir, below the practitioner's body).
To the right are shown the householder's commitments to and the reciprocal acts of religious guides (representing the zenith, above the practitioner's body).
ZenithASCETICS
commitments
reciprocal acts
commitments
reciprocal acts
apt workjust wageshealth careperksleave time
rise earlystay lateno stealingwork wellallegiance
loving actsloving speechloving thoughtshospitalitymaterial support
restrain from evilnurture goodnessloving-kindnessenlightenclarifyteach go
(These sources are from books)
By this we can understand that:
"This practice of 'worshipping the six directions,' as explained by the Buddha, presupposes that society is sustained by a network of interlocking relationships that bring coherence to the social order when its members fulfill their reciprocal duties and responsibilities in a spirit of kindness, sympathy, and good will.... Thus, for early Buddhism the social stability and security necessary for human happiness and fulfillment are achieved, not through aggressive and potentially disruptive demands for 'rights' posed by competing groups, but by the renunciation of self-interest and the development of a sincere, large-hearted concern for the welfare of others and the good of the greater whole."
Next we know that He how to lead a non household life too. (Monk’s life)
In the vinaya pitaka we can find the rules of the monks to lead a proper non household life.
An introduction to vinaya pitaka

The Vinaya Pitaka, the first division of the Tipitaka is the textual framework upon which the monastic community (Sangha) is built. It includes not only the rules governing the life of every Theravada bhikkhu (monk) and bhikkhuni (nun), but also a host of procedures and conventions of etiquette that support harmonious relations, both among the monastics themselves, and between the monastics and their lay supporters, upon whom they depend for all their material needs.
When the Buddha first established the Sangha, the community initially lived in harmony without any codified rules of conduct. As the Sangha gradually grew in number and evolved into a more complex society, occasions inevitably arose when a member would act in an unskillful way. Whenever one of these cases was brought to the Buddha's attention, he would lay down a rule establishing a suitable punishment for the offense, as a deterrent to future misconduct. The Buddha's standard reprimand was itself a powerful corrective:
It is not fit, foolish man, it is not becoming, it is not proper, it is unworthy of a recluse, it is not lawful, it ought not to be done. How could you, foolish man, having gone forth under this Dhamma and Discipline which are well-taught, [commit such and such offense]?... It is not, foolish man, for the benefit of un-believers, nor for the increase in the number of believers, but, foolish man, it is to the detriment of both unbelievers and believers, and it causes wavering in some.
The monastic tradition and the rules upon which it is built are sometimes naïvely criticized — particularly here in the West — as irrelevant to the "modern" practice of Buddhism. Some see the Vinaya as a throwback to an archaic patriarchy, based on a hodge-podge of ancient rules and customs — quaint cultural relics that only obscure the essence of "true" Buddhist practice. This misguided view overlooks one crucial fact: it is thanks to the unbroken lineage of monastics who have consistently upheld and protected the rules of the Vinaya for almost 2,600 years that we find ourselves today with the luxury of receiving the priceless teachings of Dhamma. Were it not for the Vinaya, and for those who continue to keep it alive to this day, there would be no Buddhism.
It helps to keep in mind that the name the Buddha gave to the spiritual path he taught was "Dhamma-vinaya" — the Doctrine (Dhamma) and Discipline (Vinaya) — suggesting an integrated body of wisdom and ethical training. The Vinaya is thus an indispensable facet and foundation of all the Buddha's teachings, inseparable from the Dhamma, and worthy of study by all followers — lay and ordained, alike. Lay practitioners will find in the Vinaya Pitaka many valuable lessons concerning human nature, guidance on how to establish and maintain a harmonious community or organization, and many profound teachings of the Dhamma itself. But its greatest value, perhaps, lies in its power to inspire the layperson to consider the extraordinary possibilities presented by a life of true renunciation, a life lived fully in tune with the Dhamma.
(This introduction is picked up from internet by me)
Next we should see the Buddha have given to each character. Then we should give an example story from Tipitaka. Buddha usually uses examples to make the man understand a thing or realize the nature this is a way of Buddha in his teaching. For example in Dhammapda (Kuddhaka nikaya) there are many examples. When He gives advice. He used examples from the natural things in the world. Flowers, animals etc.




The story of Angulimala
There was once the son of a Brahmin (the highest "priestly" caste in India) in the court of King Pasenadi of Kosala, whose name was Ahimsaka. He was sent to Taxila for his studies. Ahimsaka was intelligent and obedient to this teacher; therefore he was liked by both the teacher and his wife. This made the other pupils jealous of him. So they went to the teacher and falsely accused Ahimsaka of having an immoral relationship with the teacher’s wife. At first, he did not believe them, but after hearing it a number of times, he thought it was true and vowed to have revenge on Ahimsaka. He thought that to kill him would reflect badly on him. His rage prompted him to suggest the unthinkable to the young and innocent Ahimsaka. He told his pupil to kill a thousand human beings and to bring the right thumb of each as payment for teaching him. Of course the youngster would not even think of such a thing, so he was banished from the teacher’s house and returned to his parents.
When his father learned why Ahimsaka had been expelled, he became furious with his son, and would hear no reason. On that very day, with the rain pouring down, he ordered Ahimsaka to leave the house. Ahimsaka went to his mother and asked her advice, but she could not go against the will of her husband. Next Ahimsaka went to the house of his betrothed (in accord with the ancient custom in India calling for betrothal of children long before their actual marriage), but when the family learned why Ahimsaka had been turned out of school, they drove him off. The shame, anger, fear, and despair of Ahimsaka drove him out of his mind. His suffering mind could only recollect the teacher’s order: to collect 1,000 human thumbs. And so he started killing, and as he killed, the thumbs he collected were hung on a tree, but as they were destroyed by crows and vultures, he later wore a garland of the fingers to keep track of the number.
Because of this he came to be known as Angulimala (finger garland) and became the terror of the countryside. The king himself heard about the exploits of Angulimala, and he decided to capture him. When Mantani, Ahimsaka’s mother, heard about the king’s intention, she went to the forest in a desperate bid to save her son. By this time, the chain around the neck of Angulimala had 999 fingers in it, just one finger short of 1,000.
The Buddha; learned of the mother’s attempt to dissuade her son from, and reflected that if he did not intervene, Angulimala, who was on the lookout for the last person to make up the 1,000, would see his mother and might kill her. In that case, he would have to suffer an even longer period for his evil kamma. Out of compassion, the Buddha left for the forest.
Angulimala, after many sleepless days and nights, was very tired and near exhaustion. At the same time, he was very anxious to kill the last person to make up his full quota of 1,000 and so complete his task. He made up his mind to kill the first person he met. As he looked down from his mountain perch, he saw a woman on the road below. He wanted to fulfil his vow to complete the 1,000 thumbs, but as he approached, he saw it was his mother. At the same time, the Buddha was approaching, and Angulimala had just enough presence of mind to decide to kill the wandering monk instead of his mother. He set out after the Blessed One with his knife raised. But the Buddha kept moving ahead of him. Angulimala just could not catch up with him. Finally, he cried out, "O Bhikkhu, stop, stop!" And the Enlightened One replied, "I have stopped. It is you who have not stopped." Angulimala did not catch the significance of these words, so he asked, "O bhikkhu! Why do you say that you have stopped while I have not?"
The Buddha replied, "I say that I have stopped because I have given up killing all beings. I have given up ill-treating all beings, and have established myself in universal love, patience, and knowledge through reflection. But you have not given up killing or ill treating others and you are not yet established in universal love and patience. Hence, you are the one who has not stopped." On hearing these words Angulimala was recalled to reality, and thought, these are the words of a wise man. This monk is so very wise and so very brave that he must be the leader of the monks. Indeed, he must be the Enlightened One himself! He must have come here specially to make me see the light. So thinking, he threw away his weapons and asked the Blessed One to admit to the Order of the bhikkhus, which the Buddha did.
When the king and his men came to capture Angulimala, they found him at the monastery of the Buddha. Finding that Angulimala had given up his evil ways and become a bhikkhu, the king and his men agreed to leave him alone. During his stay at the monastery, Angulimala ardently practiced meditation.
Angulimala had no peace of mind because even in his solitary meditation he used to recall memories of his past and the pathetic cries of his unfortunate victims. As a result of his evil kamma, while seeking alms in the streets he would become a target of stray stones and sticks and he would return to the Jetavana monastery with broken head and blood flowing, cut and bruised, to be reminded by the Buddha: "My son Angulimala. You have done away with evil. Have patience. This is the effect of the evil deeds you have committed in the existence. Your evil kamma would have made you suffer through innumerable existences had I not met you."
One morning while going on an almsround in Savatthi, Angulimala heard someone crying out in pain. When he came to know that a pregnant lady was having labor pains and facing difficulty to deliver the child, he reflected, all worldly beings are subject to suffering. Moved by compassion, he reported the suffering of this poor woman to the Buddha who advised him to recite the following words of truth, which later came to be known as Angulimala Paritta. Going to the presence of the suffering woman, he sat on a seat separated from her by a screen, and uttered these words:
Sister, since the day I became an arahat I have not consciously destroyed The life of any living beings. By this truth, may you be well And may your unborn child be well.
Instantly the woman delivered her child with ease. Both the mother and chid were well and healthy. Even today many resort to this paritta.
Angulimala liked living in solitude and in seclusion. Later he passed away peacefully. As an arahant, he attained parinibbana.
Other bhikkhus asked the Buddha where Angulimala was reborn, and when the Blessed One replied, my son Angulimala has attained parinibbana, they could hardly believe it. So they asked whether it was possible that such a man who had in fact killed so many people could have attained parinibbana. To this question, the Buddha replied, "Bhikkhus, Angulimala had done much evil because he did not have good friends. But later, he hound good friends and with their help and good advice he became steadfast and mindful in practicing the dhamma and meditation. Thus, his evil deeds have been overwhelmed by good kamma and his mind has been completely rid of all defilements."


The Buddha said of Angulimala
"Whose evil deed is obscured by good, he illumines this world like the moon freed from a cloud."
The power of love and compassion are stronger than any evil, and are absolute conditions for awakening.
From this we can understand the stories in Buddhism also a communication to make people understand the doctrine of the Buddha. And also the deep teachings of The Buddha. Specially we can say that the conclusion of the Buddha’s teaching is the Buddhist handbook The Dhammapada (khuddakanikaya) .



The Dhammapada

The Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses in 26 chapters, has been a source of daily inspiration to many people, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike who are attracted to the grand and unequivocal moral teaching of the Buddha.

The trust of the book is on living a morally-pure life in a mental state of steadfast mindfulness.

The opposite and sorry condition is to be asleep, ignorant and unaware.

Despite its high calling, the Dhammapada (also spelt Dharmapada) is full of simple work-a-day illustrations and examples that the Buddha uses in driving home his lessons.

In Chapter 4, Flowers, for instance, the Buddha says, "As a bee gathers the nectar of a flower and flies away without destroying its beauty or fragance, so let the sage wander in this life. Think not of the faults of others, of what they have done or not done. Think rather of your own misdeeds and negligences." (v.49, 50)

Who is the sage but one "who for himself or for others, wishes not for sons or for power or wealth. And if he wishes not for success above righteousness, then he is good, wise and virtuous." (v.84)

The Dhammapada can be read and re-read throughout life. Each reading brings spiritual renewal, stirs the reader to pursue the path of light, and strengthens him to fight the temptations of worldly pleasures.

Time and again the reader is exhorted to avoid evil deeds "as a merchant who carries much wealth but with a small escort avoids a dangerous road, or as a man who values his life avoids poison." (v.123)

In Chapter 7, achieving sainthood (an Arhat), the Buddha says: "The gods envy him whose senses have been subdued like horses well-broken in by the driver; such a person who does his duty in life is enduring like the earth, firm as a pillar, clear as a lake without mud, and free forever from the wheel of birth and rebirth." (v.94, 95)

The Dhammapada goes into great length on the practical difficulties of moral living. It talks about anger, thoughtlessness, strong drinks, lying, mischief-making, corruption, sexual pleasure, meanness, and scores of other vices. Even the dull repetition of sacred verses is a taint on a man's character!

"But the greatest of all taints is ignorance. Cast of this taint," urges the Buddha, "and become pure." (v.242) Ultimately, the worse possible sin is deliberate ignorance of the truth.

But as the Buddha points out, "As rain does not break through a well-thatched house, so passion does not break through a well-guarded, reflecting mind." (v14)

Read then the Dhammapada and experience the joy of spiritual awakening, knowledge and self-discipline.

Even on his deathbed the Buddha gives this practical advice to Ananda, one of his most faithful disciples:

"You must be your own lamp and refuge. Take refuge in nothing outside yourself. Hold firm to the Truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for anything as refuge besides yourself. A monk becomes his own lamp and refuge by continually looking on his body, feelings, perceptions, moods and ideas in such a manner that he conquers the cravings and depressions of ordinary men, and is always strenuous, self-possessed and collected in mind.

"Whoever among my disciples does this, either now or when I am dead, if he is anxious to learn, will reach the summit."
From these examples we can understand that the Dhammapada is the most important Dhamma communication of the people. It’s very clear and easy to understand to everyone not like as deep as Abhidhamma, paticca samuppada.

Finally in conclusion we can say that not only Dhammapada jataka stories we can take the holy Tipitaka as our Dhamma communication to everyone Buddhists and non Buddhists.


The end

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