Mike,
Since this is such an important concept, to me anyway, I've embedded my
responses in your post below:
[Mike] Bill!, You old fox! I know where you're coming from, but don't jump too
far ahead of yourself by being too quick to judge the relative from the
standpoint of the absolute. The Dharma (as in the Law of nature) can be
basically stripped down to cause and effect
[Bill!] All concepts including Dharma, Law of Nature and Cause-and-Effect are
products of our human intellect and are illusory.
[Mike] Tell me one thing that isn't caused by a previous condition.
[Bill!] Nothing is caused by a previous condition because there has been no
other nor previous condition. The dualisitic terms 'other' and 'previous' are
describing illusory qualities.
[Mike] Remember that Buddha was pointing out that the (inner) world we create
for ourselves is based on our thoughts and actions - which come from how we
perceive phenomena.
[Bill!] Agreed...
Only when we manifest Buddha Nature does our equanimity extinguish cause and
effect and hence karma.
[Bill!] Agreed...
But cause and effect in the world of the conditioned is very much a Law that
explains our happiness or misery (and what to do about them).
[Bill!] Agreed...as you say 'in the world of the conditioned' which I maintain
is 'the world of forms' or 'the world of illusion'.
We each create this world with our intellect. We create the forms with our
human intellect, and that's no big deal as long as we don't forget that the
forms are empty. It's when we create content for the forms (thoughts,
judgement, classifications, associations, etc...) and we become attached to
this illusory content we ourselves have created that we lose grounding in
Buddha Nature.
The concept of cause-and-effect an example of such human-created content and is
illusory.
...Bill!
------------------------------------
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