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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Y2K" data-source="post: 10834971" data-attributes="member: 35049">Jesus: Has to be paid for? Look at the masses alongside these shores-harried, preoccupied, all busy trying to earn a living. Carved into their consciences is this enormous moral debt you speak of. What an unbearable burden you're laying upon humanity, Gautama!How does one pay? With what does one pay? And to whom does one pay? The creditor haunts but isn't there.Buddha: But I didn't just arbitrarily make up this philosophy. Years of thought went into it. Where do I begin to explain it?I'll grant you that this entanglement from past choices isn't an easy grip from which to free oneself. And looking at Priya, here, one groans under the burden.But I have found a way. And that's the beauty. I've repeated that answer so many times. Let me explain something to both of you. A moral law of cause and effect exists in the human consciousness. This has nothing to do with God or the evil one. Whether they exist or not is completely immaterial. The collective moral capital with which you were born, Priya, is something you had nothing to do with-that, at least, should bring you comfort.But your present moral bankruptcy is because of the way you spent your life-that should bring you responsibility. You came into being bearing another's debt. Your choice was to reduce that debt or to pay it.The word is karma the karma of lives gone by and your own karma. This combination of what is inherited and what is spent is like a wheel that will either crush you or enable you to break free from its repetition when you've lived a pure life. You won't escape the results of what you've done.There's hope, though! The sum of your good deeds and bad deeds will reappear in another life. You've made your deposit into an account that will be drawn from in a reborn life.Priya: So I'll be reincarnated with another chance at payment, right?Buddha: Not quite as simple as that. You're mistakenly using the term reincarnated You're not technically incarnated again ... you're reborn because you don't return as yourself. Another life will make its entrance after you're gone. That's the difference between what I call "rebirth" and what the Hindus call "reincarnation." I teach that another consciousness with the moral deposit reaped from your indebtedness will be born.Priya: This is perplexing. It is at once my greatest hope and my greatest puzzle. My friends and I have often talked about this. Whose karma is being worked out when each life is wrapped around so many? I wonder: Are my parents also paying for past lives through my tragedy? Are my customers paying when I sell my diseased body to them? What about the baby that I gave up? Was that its karma, even before it knew anything about good or bad? I mean, trying to reach for an answer in this karmic cycle is like putting your hand in a bucket of glue and then trying to wipe it clean. Everything you touch becomes sticky and there's nowhere to wash it off.Buddha: I have a technical term for all this: dependent origination. Your origin is dependent upon innumerable causes, Priya.But that's far too complex to go into right now, and frankly, you must forget the past. There's nothing you can do to change that. And don't think of the future; it's all speculation. Deal only with the now. Free yourself now from the illusions of God and forgiveness and individual life hereafter. Invest in a life of good deeds that will outweigh the bad ones. That's your only hope. Make your heart pure, and that will offset all of your impure acts and thoughts.Jesus: Well, Gautama, I can see that this discussion is going to take us far afield. Perhaps since Priya wants nothing more than answers to life itself, she won't mind if you and I talk as she listens in. But let's be sure that we get back at the end to what she personally needs to know. And by the way, Priya, you said it well: glue on the hands with nowhere to wash.Buddha: Jesus, I must say a couple of things right now. The first is awkward, but it's better said right at the onset.After my enlightenment I didn't let my disciples call me Gautama. It isn't proper to call one who has reached this stage by his common name. I'll let you do so, however, out of my respect for you. But I will not grant Priya that option. You see, I'm technically Gautama, the Buddha. I've reached the pinnacle of all knowledge and wisdom.The second thing is that I will be most happy to talk on a range of issues with you. But you see, Jesus, even in what you just said, you were misleading Priya. My early followers made the same mistake you're making. You said that we must get back to dealing with what she "personally needs "...that's one of the core differences between you and me. This idea of "personal" is a delusion. If you don't mind, I'd like to retrace my spiritual journey to help you understand what I mean. I will then give you a hearing, as I've always taught that one ought to respect other religions.Jesus: A point of clarification, though. It's true that you repeatedly called for the respect of all religions. But you also warned your followers to reject the falsehood in these religions. Although you were born a Hindu, didn't you reject some Hindu doctrines because you had some deep differences?Buddha: Yes, but maybe we can pick that up later. I can see I'll have to be very careful with my words here.As I was saying, I was comfortably situated in life. I had three palaces, one for each season. Stop me if you already know all this.Jesus: Well, I do, and actually more than you realize, but I think it's good for Priya to hear it from you.Buddha: I lived in a happy household with a host of material comforts. My parents gave me a very sheltered life. Actually, just seven days after I was born my mother died and I was raised by my aunt, whom my father married after the death of my mother. While still quite young, I married my cousin Yasodhara. She was a devoted wife. My parents had great hopes for us, and they wanted me to be shielded from all pain and suffering.Ah! There's a key word, Jesus: suffering! Long before you came into this world-to be precise, over five centuries before you were born-I wrestled with this issue. The answer to this problem became the ultimate quest of my life.Jesus: Your pursuit has obviously inspired your followers. But I think it's important that before you proceed we lay to rest this notion of "long before I was born."Centuries before pain and suffering became your pursuit, one of the patriarchs of old, a man by the name of job, wrestled with it night and day. I'm not sure you've even heard of him. In fact, Priya, I should add that he suffered even though he was a morally upright man. You can imagine his soul search in trying to figure it all out.The answer he found was drastically different than yours, Gautama. And in his story, Satan played a pivotal role-even as he did in yours, your discomfort with the idea of the evil one notwithstanding.Buddha: This must've happened long before my time, because I haven't heard of job.Jesus: And if we must talk about who predates whom, another of my choice servants was Abraham, who also lived long before you. He lived to be a very old man, and I know the infirmities of old age particularly troubled you. But just when Abraham thought life was over, God birthed a miracle. Modern history and some of its anguish harkens back to what happened in Abraham's household.I say all that just to say this: Abraham came more than two thousand years before you. And just for the record, before Abraham was, I Am.That is why John the Baptizer, who announced my coming, said of me, "There comes one after me who is greater than me because he was before me." So time ought not to be a factor of seniority here, if you don't mind. Those who define truth by the calendar run afoul of Him who created time.Buddha: That was quite a response, Jesus! I must take note of it because my followers do pride themselves in dating my earthly sojourn before yours. But I see your point: How can time argue with eternity?Anyhow, over the course of my life, I saw many sights that distressed me greatly. Old age (as you pointed out)! My, how that troubled me. To see a body wasting away over time gives one pause. But all that paled when I considered the next sight: death! What a morbid, painful reality.Then the third, sickness! Disease. Pain. How can we be rid of them?All these stirred me beyond words. I couldn't live without facing the anguish of these realities. I knew I had to leave my home to find an explanation for these mysteries.As I pondered that, I saw a wandering ascetic living a life of scant provision. Maybe that's the answer, I thought. I should do the same. When my father heard that I was planning to leave, he shook like a tree struck by an elephant, and in a voice choked with tears, he pleaded with me not to go. I had no choice but to leave home and find the answer. Yes, I left my wife Yasodhara, and I left the very night our son was born. I named him Rahula, which means "fetters" or "shackles," because he was an encumbrance to my pursuit of peace. Wife, children, parents-all were an attachment that I had to leave if I was to find true peace.</blockquote>

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