The personality is sin.

[Sleep_Fan]

The personality or ego is composed of both good and evil. If a person has dissolved his evil side, he is innocent like a child, but both good and evil need to be dissolved to achieve the highest goodness which transcends duality. Yet, sometimes the individual who attains Nirvana doesn't manifest any goodness for the world. In other words, he is useless to the world because he is completely absorbed in Nirvana. Ramana Maharshi was such a case at the age of 16, but became balanced and thus useful to the world when he started being conscious of it again.

I guess I just very much hate being a personaity. I don't want to be a unique expression in the universe with my own special talents that make me stand out in my own way. The personality is the beast and is rooted in selfishness, so it can go straight to hell. The evil side of the beast is narcissism, while the good side of the beast is innocense. Both are desceptions and obstacles for realization. I'm very frustrated how next-to-impossible it is to dissolve it. You have two choices:

1: Fight your ego, lose, suffer, try again, fail again. If you fight your ego, you fight yourself, since the ego is your personality.
2: Give your body/ego what it wants, at which point you become healthy and your ideal self. And now that you're your ideal self, you are happy and a blissful idiot, and life is good, and you're very human, and you like other people and the personality, and your passions are out and you're carried away by them. You are in ego-auto-pilot mode and persuing your career and essentially it's all selfishness because the "I am the body" idea has you firmly by the balls.

Meanwhile the devil (who created nature) is very satisfied with how you're no threat to him because he knows that the personality leads to nothing but pleasure and pain, birth and death, and that means endless suffering to feed him with. (the devil feeds on suffering, don't you know?) If you are a distracted blissful idiot and pumping out babies to keep the circus going, he will keep you entertained and busy. Ohhh, but if you start to suspect that life is an insane asylum and going nowhere, and you ask, "who the f*** is this personality?" And you put your cell phone in the garbage disposol because you're sick of your friends pecking at your head, and you start smoking again because you realized that you don't want to pamper the body. But all you really want to do is to destroy the personality because you're sick of it. That's when you're raising a red flag, and you're having a quarrel with the devil, and the whole universe is going to make sure that you suffer, because there's no place in the universe for somemone who has no place, you see? You're either playing the part of a cartoon character, or you're rebelling against being a cartoon character, and the devil doesn't like that one bit. So you go and meditate, and Mrs. Partridge is knocking on the door because her cat Fiddles is stuck in the tree, and you were right in the middle of meditation. How did that damned cat get stuck in the tree if it has a cast on? And what's up with the women always checking you out ever since you became a renunciate-minded? And that's how it works.

And then, after your pety rebellion, you still die without attaining Liberation and have to reincarnate into this shithole called nature alllllll over again. SUCKS FOR YOOOOUUUU.

[lyndon taylor]

I would recommend a practice based around sobriety!!!

[Sleep_Fan]

I would recommend a practice based around sobriety!!!

Yeah? Are you a Buddha that you can now recommend what we should and shouldn't do?

[lyndon taylor]

Actually sobriety is part of being a practicing Buddhist, you are on a buddhist forum aren't you.

[Sleep_Fan]

Actually sobriety is part of being a practicing Buddhist, you are on a buddhist forum aren't you.

Oh no, sobriety isn't part of Buddhism, only attaining Liberation is. Everything else is just dogma. And the only pre-requesite for liberation is earnestness.

[lyndon taylor]

Sorry but you're not really in a position to be lecturing us about liberation, the Buddha taught that liberation was impossible without a strong grounding in the precepts, not the least of which is sobriety.

[culaavuso]

You have two choices:

1: Fight your ego, lose, suffer, try again, fail again. If you fight your ego, you fight yourself, since the ego is your personality.
2: Give your body/ego what it wants, at which point you become healthy and your ideal self. And now that you're your ideal self, you are happy and a blissful idiot, and life is good, and you're very human, and you like other people and the personality, and your passions are out and you're carried away by them. You are in ego-auto-pilot mode and persuing your career and essentially it's all selfishness because the "I am the body" idea has you firmly by the balls.

These are not the only two choices. From cultivation of compassion, the futility of fighting the ego motivated by craving for non-becoming can be understood. From understanding of nutriment, the counterproductive results of feeding the ego can be understood. This opens up the choice of starving the hindrances and feeding the factors for awakening as explained in SN 46.51.

Oh no, sobriety isn't part of Buddhism, only attaining Liberation is. Everything else is just dogma. And the only pre-requesite for liberation is earnestness.

Heedfulness: the path to the Deathless.
Heedlessness: the path to death.
The heedful do not die.
The heedless are as if
already dead.

Knowing this as a true distinction,
those wise in heedfulness
rejoice in heedfulness,
enjoying the range of the noble ones.

"With what virtue,
what behavior,
nurturing what actions,
would a person become rightly based
and attain the ultimate goal?"
...
one should go about free
of intoxication
...

[Sleep_Fan]

Sorry but you're not really in a position to be lecturing us about liberation, the Buddha taught that liberation was impossible without a strong grounding in the precepts, not the least of which is sobriety.

I'm not trying to start an argument and It wasn't a lecture and I don't care about being right. The ego loves being right about everything. I don't take spirituality too seriously and I don't really care about formula's because if formula's were correct than those with the yellow robe would be liberated, yet how often are they? Yes, purity of mind and body is one path but anything can be a way, even sin.

“There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream of being and may never more swim back again to its source. The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life. Nor will suicide really solve your problem [...] You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply many times your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace. This is the road that Buddha and every great man has gone, whether consciously or not, insofar as fortune has favored his quest.” -hesse

[binocular]

Yes, purity of mind and body is one path but anything can be a way, even sin.

Including banging one's head up against a wall?

If anything goes, then nothing is possible, and all we are left with are plays of words to distract ourselves.

[Sleep_Fan]

Yes, purity of mind and body is one path but anything can be a way, even sin.

Including banging one's head up against a wall?

If anything goes, then nothing is possible, and all we are left with are plays of words to distract ourselves.

Any reasonable path can be a way as long as it's in the back of your mind. Who would choose banging his head against the wall to achieve enlightenment any way? Well, maybe he's trying to destroy his ego. I doubt it ever worked, just like the Buddha starving himself led to nothing.

[m0rl0ck]

Any reasonable path can be a way as long as it's in the back of your mind. Who would choose banging his head against the wall to achieve enlightenment any way? Well, maybe he's trying to destroy his ego. I doubt it ever worked, just like the Buddha starving himself led to nothing.

There is nothing between the quote above and an opinion actually worth listening to except a little study and a lot of practice. Start now.

[Ben]

Any reasonable path can be a way as long as it's in the back of your mind. Who would choose banging his head against the wall to achieve enlightenment any way? Well, maybe he's trying to destroy his ego. I doubt it ever worked, just like the Buddha starving himself led to nothing.

There is nothing between the quote above and an opinion actually worth listening to except a little study and a lot of practice. Start now.

I totally agree.
Sleep fan, there is a world of difference between the Dhamma of the Buddha and the New Age ideas you are espousing.
It would be worthwhile familiarising yourself with the Buddha
Dhamma. Feel free to check out the introductory resources thread in the Discovering Theravada sub-forum on this site.
Kind regards,
Ben

[purple planet]

look at the last post of this thread : http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... start=1780

A certain not very well known Bhikkhu once asked the Blessed Buddha:
Venerable Sir, the removal of Greed, Hate, and Ignorance, is it often said…
What, Venerable Sir, is the real meaning of that statement?
This removal of Greed, Hate, & Ignorance is a description of the dimension
of Nibbana…The final elimination of the mental fermentations is spoken of
just like that.

Venerable Sir, the Deathless, the Deathless, is it often said…
What, Sir, is this Deathless and what is the way leading the Deathless?
The destruction of Greed, of Hate, and the destruction of Ignorance:
This is called the Deathless. The Noble 8-fold Way is the way leading to
this Deathless; that is:

Right View (samma-ditthi)
Right Motivation (samma-sankappa)
Right Speech (samma-vaca)
Right Action (samma-kammanta)
Right Livelihood (samma-ajiva)
Right Effort (samma-vayama)
Right Awareness (samma-sati)
Right Concentration (samma-samadhi)

unless its some un-normal situation (like stealing to save someone ect) that im not sure what an arahant would do - an arahant would not commit a sin

welcome to the forum by the way

[Dan74]

Any path can be a way and it often is until we realize the futility and the harm in many of these 'paths'. There is often little use in being told so, so we learn through mistakes, inevitably.

Mistakes themselves can be fruitful while treading the seemingly 'right' path for the wrong reason can be futile.

But at the end of the day, cluttering our minds with ideas, concepts and theories about what is and what we are actually doing is nowhere near as useful as actually stopping to pay attention and find out for ourselves. Very often the truth is a lot more mundane than our fantasies, but that is what sets us free, not the fantasies.

It is a bit of a cliche to say that the spiritual path starts right here, right where we are and this means with the personality, such as it is. Rather than declaring a war on it, it is best to see it for what it is, work with it, see where it's useful and where it gets in the way and through this knowledge to become at least to some extent free. Conflict just leads to more division and inner turmoil.What we need is attention, awareness and healing. Through healing there is a letting go of what is unwholesome and an opening of the heart.

Maybe this sound new agey too, I am not sure, but I am trying to draw on experience here rather than on the scripture.

[binocular]

Any reasonable path can be a way as long as it's in the back of your mind. Who would choose banging his head against the wall to achieve enlightenment any way?

You said -

Yes, purity of mind and body is one path but anything can be a way, even sin.

If anything goes, then banging one's head up against the wall goes too.

But if you think that banging one's head up against the wall is not a path to enlightenment, then you have left the domain of "Yes, purity of mind and body is one path but anything can be a way, even sin," and are in fact applying some kind of discernment.