Remindings

When I read the readings from Friday It reminds me of how when someone tells you what shouldn’t be done (how the Buddha says not to delight in pleasures) you try to find exceptions or make up your own rules to try and test what was said or to find a way around the rules (how Arittha says pleasure is not an obstacle along the path to liberation.) In the end we know that most rules are set to help us and not hurt us.
            When I read the story of the simile with the snake I also thought of how when people hear things, they like to take it and run with it, when they don’t know the essence of what is being told to them. I also thought of the saying “the more you think you know the less you actually do.” When I read the lines “Instead they learn the Dhamma only for the sake of criticizing others and for winning in debates, and they do not experience the good for the sake of which they learned the Dhamma” many things popped in my head. The first thing I thought about, being a Christian, is how many people feel that Christians are hypocrites because many of them act in this manner. A lot of Christians will throw bible verses at you, but do not live according to the words in the bible. Then they use the verses to try and condemn you and make you feel like a bad person when in reality they are the ones who are worse off than you. I also thought of how some people to charity for recognition instead of doing to from the heart. Some like to pretend to be interested in the needs of others, but truly couldn’t care less about the beings of others. Or in movies, and possibly real life, people put on for the cameras and when the cameras cut off they show their true character because they feel no one is watching. It reminds me of a movie I watched called Good Deeds and the woman felt as is she was a charity case for the man and she didn’t believe that he would ever want to interact with her if she didn’t need help. I don’t remember the exact quote, but they got into an argument and she said “you don’t even know the price of a gallon of milk!” she was basically saying that he was to busy worrying about how other people saw him that he didn’t truly know the lives of the people who worked for him. (I know I probably went off topic but that’s what I thought about when I was reading.)
            When I read “while the one limits the impact the truth can have on them, the other allows it to saturate the whole of his mental” it goes back to what I was saying in the first paragraph and rules and how they are made to help and not hurt. I thought about how when we don’t learn our lesson from something the first time, you keep going through it, maybe something worse, so that you actually learn your lesson. When we are more receptive to things we don’t have to go through hard times for the point of the lesson to come across. I also thought about how we don’t take things for what they are worth and how we take so much for granted.
            The simile with the raft it reminded me of how as kids our parents/guardians give us things such as pacifiers, night lights, and baby blankets to help us get through different phases in life during times of transition. Once the object has served its purpose it is not needed anymore. Sort of like using training wheels to ride a bike, once you master how to balance on your own the training wheels aren’t needed, but you know the next child on a tricycle will eventually need to the training wheels to get from a tricycle to a bicycle.
            In the next chapter I thought about how sometimes it is so important for people to learn things, people don’t care how the message is said. Some people may even lie to you if it means that you get/understand/hear what you are supposed to. Or how when people have something that you need to hear, but there will be opposing views, they simply state facts as to not appeal to a certain side.