Also,Saoshun wrote:mostly people here who is palying with thoughts will end up in lower realms because of lack of any realization
A few years ago I reached a relatively comfortable understanding/misunderstanding of sunyata, but have since become convinced that I'm going to burn for incalculable eons and emerge with none of the little progress I've made in dharma, given how I 'progressed' in everyday life before that time, and given how events have panned out since.Gampopa wrote:Dharma itself can become a cause for the lower realms
I've accepted my condition and feel some 'pride' in that, but it seems to me that my thoughts and mismanaged emotions destroyed my mind and life as much as drugs and alcohol ever could have, and I feel guilt and shame for what I appear to have done to myself, as well as despondency about the future of my mind-stream. Allow me to present a 'case study' which I hope will have some relevance for others. Sorry if what I've written below sounds a bit dreary!
As an autistic boy, I was contented and a bit 'spiritual' but often bored - My parents were new-agey, and I remember having the sense that people were basically 'strands of consciousness', but I never formed the genuine and purely technical 'special interests' that mildly autistic kids generally have. During early adolescence, I felt so wretched -partly due maybe to a family history of schizophrenia, alcoholism and resulting trauma- that I developed the unique strategy of using negative emotions to motivate myself enough to uncover some kind of inner 'normality'. This was in spite and because of the fact that I didn't even recognise the way in which I came across (which was typically autistic as well as comedically attention-seeking) as substantially human - or anything else beyond 'white noise'.
I thought I'd got the better of all this by the time I left for University, but I quickly fell apart socially and turned to Buddhism (at 19) as an alternative and an explanation. I also became more aware of social skills and how they were coming to be demanded across all walks of life, leading to the pathologisation of even the mildest autism; I soon got myself diagnosed with mild Asperger's Syndrome, given the terminology of the day. However, there was little understanding or support for this extended form of autism yet, and many less-sanguine 'aspies' lacked the wisdom to see through the BS. I, for one, assumed I wouldn't be accepted outside my old circle of friends in any way until I finally cured myself of autism, and although I got on socially after I turned 25, I doped myself up on antidepressants throughout my 20s and early 30s. To avoid 'jinxing' either of these things (as well as because of the side-effects of the drug and of the illness mentioned below), I wasn't genuinely prepared to test myself sufficiently to give back much of what I owed to myself and to society, fearing that developing a proper career would lead to others making it clear to me that I was still autistic.
My self-recognition deteriorated, throughout my teens and 20s, to the point where I felt and believed that sentient beings were simply non-existent at all meaningful levels, with myself lacking even the appearance of existence. {Like most people, I couldn't just deal with this by means of a Susan-Blackfield-style equanimity!} However, in my early 30s, frequent dharma study and less-frequent meditation seemed to break through to an overcoming of nihilism and a basic comprehension of sunyata, and my new work supporting autistic adults -besides forming a long-term relationship with an autistic girl- made me abandon my main life goal of overcoming autism. However, it was treatment for a serious illness that really seemed to speed things up:
At 36, then, I'm dealing with the fact that my uniquely unskilful way of dealing with my autism, with its aversion and distorted views, appears to have created negative karma powerful enough to impact this lifetime well beyond the obvious psychological consequences. Naturally, this meant more of what I'd felt aversion toward, well after I'd learned to accept it - The particular 'vipaka' or whatever that I uncovered at 32 was a slow-growing tennis-ball-sized brain tumour which -due to its location- made the negative aspects of my autism worse, removed the positive aspects, and added other cognitive problems due to the brain cell loss and damage (as well as epilepsy) caused by the successful operation to remove all of the tumour.
One positive detail of all this is that the only time in my life when I recall acting purely out of compassion for strangers was the second time I volunteered to have a basic brain scan for autism research: The tumour had grown large enough to show up via its displacement of other brain regions, a similar scan at 28 having appeared 'clear' to the non-specialist researchers at the time; Since I still hadn't noticed any obvious symptoms, the op I had two weeks after the later scan prevented all of the serious consequences of further tumour growth, and I was retrospectively given 1-2 years to live unoperated.
Perhaps this all makes for a good cautionary tale, but I've highlighted the words I've highlighted in 'bold' so as to reinforce the improbability of anyone suffering a similar fate. {I did a huge amount of personal research into the experiences of autists during the 'noughties', and not one of them apparently felt, as I did, that there was some fundamentally normal state that they might be able to access.} Still, the mistakes of adolescence tend to be the most self-destructive and the most likely to remain with a person for life, even though actual suicide, in my case at least, would probably have left less negative karma. {I've given my immediate family hell with conversations relating to the subjects of this post.} My question is: Is it worth practicing dharma under my kind of circumstances when one can see one has progressed beyond the 'intellectual' stage, or will even this only make things worse?