The World of Learning

and the World of Compassion

Written especially for Blaine Smith in response to his comment about past experiences with religion: “This is the topic I’d like to learn! Cosmology & religion. I was literally "attacked" by a pastor when I told him I believe the big bang actually happened. He never let me go until I said, "God created the universe as it is written in Genesis." so, Buddha's teaching and his points of view of the universe are an eye-opener to me.” Also from Blaine – “I studied, or "was forced to study", Christian apologetics. I’m afraid I was trained so well that almost automatically I’m able to "counterattack" this teaching by showing some adequate Bible verses...  I’m too good at memorizing  they practically "brain-washed" me.  Reading and pondering your Ancestral Well blogs is helping me wash off their dangerous doctrine.”

  Blaine, The important thing to keep in mind is that conditions surrounding these encounters don’t exist in your world anymore. Even more important, you show an eagerness to learn, to gain additional knowledge—this eagerness evident not only here at Ancestral Well, but in your correspondence with JJ and Fanvid buddies (to which we both happily belong), relating your knowledge and experiences to JJ’s and other’s many wonderful posts and discussions. As result, I don’t need to tell you, you’ve become, as I have, part of a larger family who seek to discover and learn new things about the world and each other, and ain’t it grand?

  In his earlier teachings, and again in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha points out that “the world of learning,” (the 7^th world of the shravaka) is a world where one gains knowledge, discovers larger perspectives on how to live life, how to respond to others, and plays a pivotal role in entering the Buddha-path leading to enlightenment.

  Briefly, the Ten Worlds are described as the six lower worlds of anger, covetous­ness, ignorance, contention; the fifth–the world of humanity, and sixth–the world of temporary enlightenment.

  From Sutra of Innumerable Meanings – “Many living beings discriminate falsely—it’s this or it is that, advantageous or disadvantageous, entertain confused thoughts, make various bad choices (causes), and thus transmigrate within the six realms of existence [the six lower worlds] in lifetime after lifetime  and cannot escape from there, thus suffering all manner of miseries.

  This may sound like a “judgment” but significantly, the Buddha continues, “Bodhisattva-mahasattvas, observing rightly like this, should raise the mind of compassion, display the great mercy desiring to relieve others of suffering, and once again penetrate deeply into all laws.” How to help those suffering all manner of miseries—first of all, never judge, but show compassion.

  Thus, in one fell swoop, the Buddha dismisses all judgments, and does so repeatedly in the Lotus Sutra, always reacting to human suffering with statements like, “beholding this my heart is stirred with great pity,” or “how can I cause all the living to abandon the world of suffering and enter the Way supreme?”

  To enter the seventh world of learning—gaining knowledge—is the  trigger which takes the person out of the “lower worlds” on a path leading to enlightenment—in the eighth world one reaches the “mindfulness” of self-attained enlightenment, in the ninth, one dwells in the world of the bodhisattvas who seek to gain enlightenment, first for others, even though their own enlightenment will be delayed.

  Also important to understand is that we often go in and out of each of the six lower worlds, while simultaneously may be active in other worlds as well. One is never “stuck” in any of the worlds, in this teaching, and the world of learning acts as a gateway opening to higher worlds.

  So, as I see it (from afar, it’s true) you find yourself very much in the 7^th world of learning these days, and it’s a really good place to find yourself. The past can be done away with. It doesn’t even exist anymore.

  Study will from time to time introduce thrilling surprises as one learns to discover the beauty and probability that knowledge enhances our beliefs and encourages and motivates us to expand our beliefs, leading to productive relationships with others. It’s important, most of all, not to shut one’s self off from the ever-existing possibility that there is something new to discover that will bring it all together. The thrill of learning and discovering must never be impeded; keeping one foot in the world of learn­ing is not a bad thing. Residing there one continues to gain new perspectives, and the process seems never ending.http://ancestral-well.blogspot.com