9: The Messiah Projects: The Buddha, Son of Maya

2) Right Aspiration

This is realizing that you want to be a being of good.

3) Right Speech

This involves weighting everything you say in the balances. You wish to say only that which is truth or good. It also means that you must think very carefully, and say exactly what you mean. If you tell someone something and it makes them think something else, or has hidden meanings, it is bad karma. Then, there is ...

4) Right Behavior

This involves taking your knowledge of right and wrong, and doing only those actions or that behavior associated with good. Right behavior seeks to reduce karmic debt by doing only good things. We, as a people, must discover through knowledge what is a right action, and what is not. We must then agree that an action is either right or wrong. When there is agreement as to an action's character, we may then say we have found a truth. We call these truths of behavior, Laws.

The DOMA gave humans the basic Laws of God, through the prophets. They did this to help them live a better life, and to give them examples to judge other situations against. The Buddha taught five basic truths, or Laws of God. These are, Do Not: KILL, STEAL, LIE, TAKE STRONG INTOXICANTS, DO UNNATURAL SEXUAL ACTS. Now with what you have learned, weight each of these things in your balance, and see if they are truth. Remember to be truthful to yourself. The greatest lies, the most evil deceptions, are those against the self. You may notice that the first three are fairly easy. The fourth requires more thought, more aspects to be weighted. The last is a proverbial brain teaser. This is exactly what they were intended to do. They are not only truths, but they are individual lessons on judging truth. They represent very distinct and differing aspects of human behavior and conduct. Once you know how to weight these, you can use the knowledge gained to judge other things. Isn't that a beautiful set of lessons and concepts rolled into one nice clean package? Thank the Buddha for telling you this. Praise the DOMA for sending him to you and the fact that they cared enough to do so. But worship only and hold in your hearts the ultimate thanks for GOD.

The others are but the messengers; GOD IS THE MESSAGE. GOD is the source of all truth; GOD is TRUTH. There is only one God; God is RIGHT EVERYTHING. If you hold truth above all things, if you do only right, if you seek them both, then you are already worshipping God. God is found in the heart and soul and actions of a person. That is where God lives and grows, and makes itself manifest. Not in books, or rituals. These are the tools of idolatry. God does not need priests or priestesses or any other person, to bring you to God. God is in and around, everyone. You, and you alone, can find God, and in so doing find yourself, and in the end realize the true meaning of ONE.

5) Right Livelihood...

is fairly straightforward. It is a course of action based on what you have learned thus far. I will be talking about this subject in a Way message in the future. Let's save it for then.

6,7) Are both different sides of the same coin.

These are Right Effort and Right Mindfulness. They also tie back in to 4) Right Behavior. The real sequence they follow is this: Right Mindfulness, Right Behavior, Right Effort, Right Behavior, and then Right Mindfulness again.

What's it all mean? The answer to that is really quite simple, it's the implementation of these principals that is so hard. Realize right here and now that they cannot be achieved in one lifetime. They are continually refined over the course of an entire race's existence. Their ultimate purpose is to rid every being on the planet of wrong - everything. Once this is achieved, and only then, do you merge with God and become ONE. Now think very hard about what I am about to say. Weight it, ponder it, argue about it, and when you finish, do it again. And again.

God is The One. All things are One in God. There is no wrong, or darkness or evil in God. These things cannot exist in God. If you tried to join God with even the smallest amount of darkness in your soul, you would cease to exist. God chooses to not rid the darkness for you. Instead, God gives you free will to do either Right or Wrong. God gives you everything necessary to rid yourself of darkness, to become a being of light, and to find The Way back to were you came - The One. It is the greatest gift God has ever bestowed on the universe. It is called LIFE.

It is up to you to find the truth in what I have told you. Ponder it, question it, argue about it, seek it out with all your heart. I promise you this. On the day you find the truth in what I have said, and understand what I have really said, you will be there, and it will be finished. This is the ultimate truth, and every person on this planet and on all the other planets strive toward its realization. It's just God's Way, my friends, Just God's Way.

8) Achieving Right Concentration
(a small glimpse)

To be a being of concentrated and pure light. 6,7) are the contemplation you give to the success or progress you have made toward this goal. Right Mindfulness involves the honest introspection of who and what you really are. Remember what I told you was the first Golden Rule. You are all that you have thought and done. In order to change something, you must first know what that something is. In the case of you, only you, can really know what goes on inside you. Only the self can know the self. You must look very hard and honestly at your life and actions. Do not lie to yourself or try to justify that which you knew to be wrong. Examine all of the Right behaviors, and the Wrong Behaviors. This is the first step in Right Mindfulness, to know all your actions.

The next step is to identify and isolate all the wrong things, and then determine what caused them. What made you think that. What made you do that. What made you say that. Here's an example. You went to a party last night and became very drunk. You seemed to change, becoming almost another person. You were angry, argumentative and even fought with and hurt someone. But now it's morning. Let's look back on the day before and all your actions. You identify first all the actions which you did. For brevity I will only mention a few. 1) You helped someone move some furniture and did not accept payment. 2) You fought with and injured someone at the party. 3) You yelled at a person and said things that hurt them emotionally. Now take what you have learned and weight your actions in the balances. Did you have a good karmic day? No, you did but one right action. You did one wrong action, and one wrong speech. You incurred a karmic debt. This is the process of achieving Right mindfulness: Review, Identify, Weight. I need to express in as strong a way as I can, the importance of this first step. The first step in eliminating evil from your life is to identify it. The simple act of admitting to yourself, "That thing I did was wrong," is one of your most powerful tools. It is necessary to know what it is, before you can change it, and this is your tool for doing so. But more subtle and more important is this. As you begin to consciously acknowledge your actions, you begin to train what we call the subconscious. Your mind begins to identify wrong actions for you. The little voice starts to get louder and talk to you more often. It will gain enough strength to warn you as you do it, and eventually before you do wrong things.

Now that you know what it is that you did, it is time to take the next step. What is it that made you do it in the first place? Remember - be honest in this; you only lie to yourself if you don't. No matter what it is you have done, and there is nothing you can do that many before you have not already done, God allows you the chance to change, and right the wrong. It is also just as important to identify your good actions and their cause as it is the wrong ones.

Let's look at the day again. 1) You help a friend. What was the cause of this action? There are a couple of things involved with this. First, you did it out of friendship. Friendship is a positive, or right, thought. Second, you experience pleasure in making someone else's burden lighter. Third, you did not take any reward, but did a right thing and that in itself, was reward enough. These then are the right thoughts and actions found in this deed. Now lets look at the other two. 2) You got drunk and hurt someone. Part of this one is obvious - drinking can effect your behavior. This also applies to other intoxicants or drugs. Anger also played a key part in this one. Anger is a negative emotion. Notice that I did not say 'wrong.' There is a difference between wrong, and negative, emotions. Anger usually leads to destruction of one form or another, and destruction is negative, therefore creation is positive. If you are angry at something that means you no intentional harm, then this is wrong.

What happens when your anger is directed at another destructive action, though? You are allowed to get mad at injustice, cruelty, and things of this nature. Still, the emotion you feel is one of destruction. It is negative in its effect. You must use extreme caution when dealing with these negative emotions, even when they are intended for use in a positive outcome. This type of anger is sometimes referred to as "Righteous Anger" and although it can have its place, it has been the justification of much tragedy in this world. Religious fundamentalism is but one example. We will be discussing this more in future Way messages.

So, the above steps are part of Right Mindfulness. The next step is to use the Right Knowledge gained from Right Mindfulness and apply it to Right Effort. Simply put, learn what causes you to do bad things, and then make an effort to either eliminate the causes from your life, or change your responses to them. It is easy to say that, even easy to see the logic in it. It is not easy to do. The Buddha said that many of the Wrongs in one's life are caused by selfish or destructive desires. Drinking to destruction. Obsession with owning or possessing things to misery. And so on. These scenarios are certainly valid. Some of these behaviors have either a dual nature, or are only wrong if taken to extremes, however. The answer is not to eliminate all desires and wants, for that would extinguish the very fires that drive us in our search for God and Truth. The key is to pick a middle path between total apathy and total fanaticism. It is called "Balance" and it is one of the keys to making everything else in your life work.

A person's soul is like their body. In order for it to function properly, there needs to be a balance of certain basic systems. Your heart should beat in relation to your oxygen intake. Your oxygen intake should meet the requirements of a particular effort. Chemicals are balanced in our bodies so that processes go smoothly. Too much stomach acid and we get heartburn. Not enough insulin and our metabolism goes wrong. All these things exist in balance with one another. So too, should your life be.

Right Effort seeks to not only steer your life toward good, but also to create balance in it. Let's take an example. Desires make up a good portion of the emotions you feel. People with too little desire are said to be apathetic, or lazy. People who have too much desire are said to be zealots, or perhaps greedy. Somewhere in between these too extremes lies the middle point of desire. Perhaps you want to have a boat. You think of sailing and fishing all day long. You work as many hours as you can. You spend your off-hours studying boat-related subjects. You really want a boat; your life would be so much better with a boat. You have to have a boat. You will do anything to get the boat. What started as a simple desire for something which could give you pleasure, has now turned into a destructive obsession. Destructive to not only you, but also to those around you. You take time away from your family. Perhaps you spend money that would better be used for other family-related needs.

Knowing the difference between a simple desire and an obsession is crucial. Obsessions destroy all the balance in your life. Obsessions come in many forms but their effects are always the same. What we are looking at now, are the specifics of emotions. Much more of this topic is the subject of the next two Way messages, particularly the Jesus message. What you have hopefully learned here of the teachings of the Buddha, are the spiritual tools necessary to change your actions, behavior, and in the end, your soul. These eight basic tools will help you implement the examples that are provided in the Christian and Islamic faiths. They are yours to do with as you will. Remember though, only you can choose to use them. Only you can choose to change your thoughts and actions.

In order to use them you must have the desire in your heart to be a better person, to make a better world, and to find the your Way back to God. It is the one desire in this universe that you can never be too extreme about. When you have this desire in your heart, you have it within you to accomplish all things. That you should be happy and the world should be made a better place is the will of God. If these are your desires as well, then you have already surrendered your will for God's own. It is the only time that a surrender can mean total victory.

Peace,

Ma-Di

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