Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00096)

In a message dated 01/06/02 10:18:11 AM, gschueler@earthlink.net writes:

>Morten, the "silly" (I restrained myself from using 'stupid') statement
>was that "Only Parabrahman is beyond Karma." This leaves out Buddhas and
>Jivamuktis, for starters, because both Buddhism and Hinduism teach that
>our personal karma can be overcome. Even higher Bodhisattvas are said to
>be able to eliminate all of their past karma and can perform karmaless
>actions. How? The Theosophical core-teachings offer us no answer, but 
Buddhism
>does. It says that karma and maya are both inherently connected to the
>belief in a self (atman), which itself is caused by ignorance (arigpa).
>When the belief in a separate self is eliminated through meditation, past
>karma dissolves (who is there to receive it?) and future karma is no longer
>created (who is there to earn it?). 

Is that so? Then, who is doing the meditating? And, who experiences the 
karmaless state? If, according to Buddhism, a Bodhisattva isn't anyone (an 
individual SELF) in particular (distinguishable from all other bodhisattvas 
by its individual actions) -- If we can't ask "who" are they -- then tell us 
what are they? On what scientific or logical basis do these conclusions of 
Buddhism rest? 

In my view (which, apparently, coincides with the theosophical view): what 
Buddha meant by "anatman" as "maya," or illusion, was that each individual 
Atman or "ray" of Atma is essentially of the same essence as the Supreme 
Spirit from which it emanates (therefore not "separate" in "essential being" 
from all other rays)... But, like individual rays of the sun, which are no 
different from each other in essence and travel on "forever"** in their 
individual (different) directions and activities (karma) -- each of these 
individual rays of Atma, as unchanging higher EGOS or individual SELVES, also 
continue on their separate paths -- and, consequently, through ignorance of 
their identical source, they each become deluded into assuming that the 
surrounding fields of lower nature (individual selves or lower egos 
identified with the mind and body) which they carry along with them, are the 
essential (unchanging) reality of their being. This false belief is what 
Buddha tried to dispel with his doctrine of anatma.

** "forever" meaning the entire loop that an emanating atmic ray travels 
through the cycle of "wakeful" manvantaric existence in Brahma and its return 
to "sleeping" pralayic existence in Parabrahm -- to begin the journey again 
in the next manvantara based on its individual skandas until all its 
unresolved karma is resolved or mitigated. Of, course, this doesn't deny the 
possibility that once any individual atmic entity (or Atman) resolves all its 
karma, whether through meditative realization or otherwise, and becomes 
absorbed in Parabrahm (or becomes ONE with the source in nirvana or 
paranishpanna) -- that is can ever be distinguished as the same separate 
individual being on the next emanation of Brahma (unless, as a Bodhisattva 
adept, it so chooses). 

LHM