Johnny Dangerous wrote:In a Buddhist context, love, compassion, equanimity, all the paramitas, all these kinds of things are not necessarily "emotions" like they are in western psych or religion etc. I think the point of something like Tonglen or Metta or whatever is not just to make you feel good or make you nicer to others, it is to turn around your view at a deep level.
These are about one's relation to, and view of the "outside" world..the more you practice them, the more you open and the line between "inside" and "outside" fades, so not only are they important, but from a Mahayana POV they are instrumental in the realization of emptiness.
Also, trying to focus on "nothingness" to blot other stuff out is warned against really specifically in a number of texts, some of them say the conscious attempts at "nothingness" or repression/stopping of thought can lead to an animal rebirth!
If you are still fearful of being reborn in the lower realms, then you will never get out of samsara because you have not removed the karma of fear from your energetic blueprint.
The true enlightened person is not fearful of being reborn as an animal, hungry ghost or in hell because all animals, hungry ghosts and even hell itself are illusionary phenomenon conjured by the attaching mind.
In other words, everything which you see and experience around you are imprints of your karma, a manipulation of your reality by higher dimensional forces.
A quote from the Trodrel Namkhadang Nyempai
Gyu: "If anyone enters the 'Nature Without Action',
whether that being is a god or a human or
in any one of the six realms, the nature of mind
will always be purified spontaneously into natural
truth. And whoever wants to get into this nature
should not make any kind of action—only
remain in the final truth."
All the existences that belong to samsara and nirvana
are reflections that come from the natural
state. All of them will be liberated into the natural
state. Just at the moment when they are reflected
they are ready to be liberated—there is
no need to try to liberate them. Therefore decide
to enter the 'Self-Liberation'.
A quote from the tenth chapter of the text above:
"This is the automatic cutting off of the mistakes
or obscurations. From the beginning it is
beyond the views of nihilism and eternalism.
Here nothing is said about them for all are naturally
liberated into the 'Pure, Great, Naturally
Liberated'."