Joy is a Factor of Enlightenment

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
--

Will you kill?

Do not condemn your neighbour; you do not know what you will have done in his place!

It is NOT easy to realise is that Even "our" thoughts are NOT ours,

NOT entirely under our control...

many will find this hard to believe.

I was taught this a long time ago, and I was initially shocked by this...... How can, I said!??

Vipassana Meditation is so important as it leads to this profound insight; as we note honestly and without prejudice, without desire for anything, we can calmly watch the mind and see all these clearly.

Our thoughts arise as a result of a cause which may be distant or recent, and when the conditions are appropriate for its arising, wham! it arises; whether we like it or not, want it or not.

Truly Anatta (NonSelf).

For example, we had taken the Precepts and feel obliged to keep them as we feel them wholesome, now when the opportunity arise to BREAK them, we hesitate because of the CAUSE ie the Precept being taken!!!

We may say it is 'MY' Free Will, but this Decision came to be because of the Past events!!

Or a new event may have occurred like seeing a BIG car, so now the chain of Thinking had changed, for the priority/greed for that car overwhelms the more distant Precept!! And we steal the money/ etc to feed that new Desire.

Observe and see that our thought patterns, responses are truthfully conditioned by many things, our education, culture and personal practise..... very little is "original", it is a chain of events, one following another in a complex web.

Some of the causes may be very distant, eg a childhood acquired behaviour trait like 'never walk barefooted you naughty boy' and now when we do, note how the mind responds! Yukkk Dirty3!

or in med school 'always wash your hands before.....' so much so it is a conditioned behaviour now

or merely 5 mins ago when we were upset at our wives for buying another pair of shoe when there is enough to satisfy Imelda Marcos already, and thoughts of wife, shoe recurrently arise as we note our mind....... Try getting rid of that thought and we will find that NEAR Impossible.

There is no concrete 'I' really, just a process driven by kammic energy, causes and conditions, and its responses too are "patterned" by these.

This is why 'we' can CHANGE!!!! because by altering these Causes, and Conditions we CHANGE our responses, 'Free Will', behaviour, 'ourselves'.

But until we are enlightened, defilements from causes planted from the past both LONG2 ago and recently, will give rise to intention when the Conditions appropriate for its arising is there. BUT as long as we watch it with Calm Abiding and do NOT respond with action, it is OK!! This is Wise Attention the suttas talk of. And even this respond of doing nothing but watch IS also created by causes and conditions!!

A teacher asks a student if he would obey his every command.

The student replies affirmatively.

The teacher then asks, "if I were to tell you to go and kill, would you obey?"

The student replies, with deepest respect,

"Master, I would have to disobey because I am incapable of killing anything".

The teacher says,

"You have NOT understood Anatta (NonSelf),

know that it is not because you are morally good that you cannot kill. It is only that kamma, and existing causes and conditions, do not incite you to kill. When those conditions change, know that we can be capable of any act!"

This is very profound and requires Insight of the Non Self nature of all beings.

We are a flow of Khandhas (Aggregates), and what we are now is the result of Kamma, Causes and Conditions;

every moment helps condition the next Moment, the next Consciousness.

When conditions change, this complex of Aggregates similarly change. Everything is the result of causes and conditions, even our present thoughts are but the results of causes and conditions conducive to its arising!

So we must constantly create good causes in the present moment in our every action, to maintain the most wholesome conditions possible, such that the coming future will as best as possible be positive.