From: Gordon Bentley-Mix on
If I drown I reckon I'll be spending the first part of eternity under the
water until the gases in my decay corpse bring it to the surface. After that
I'll probably be spending a bit of time as parts of various fishes and other
sea creatures. At some point I suppose I'll be spread across the entire
planet and then as part of the collapsed sun. Things get a bit hazy from
there but I'm not really too worried about it.

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,
when pursuing the deep prajñaparamita,
recognized the five skandhas as completely empty
and passed beyond all vexations and distress.

Shariputra, appearances are not different from emptiness,
emptiness is not different to appearances.
Appearances are emptiness,
emptiness is an appearance.

Impressions, thoughts, associations
and knowing too, are also like this.
Shariputra, all dharmas are empty of appearances,
are not created, are not extinguished,
are not defiled, are not pure;
do not increase, do not decrease.

For this reason, amidst emptiness there are no appearances,
nor are there any impressions, thoughts, associations and knowing,
There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, touch, ideas.
There are no colors, sounds, smells,
tastes and touch dharmas.
There is no eye-element up to no imagining nor knowledge element.
Neither is any non-understanding,
nor is there any end to non-understanding up to no old-age and death.
Neither is there any end to old-age and death.
There is no suffering, cause, extinction or path.
There is no knowledge nor anything to find.

Because there isn't anything to find,
the bodhisattva is free because of relying upon prajñaparamita:
a heart without any obstruction.

Because there are no obstructions, there is no fear.
Abandoning, overturning dreams and concepts,
finally reaches nirvana.

Because all the Buddhas of the three times have relied upon prajñaparamita,
they have found anuttarasamyaksambodhi.

For this reason, know prajñaparamita is the great spiritual mantra.
The great understanding mantra.
The supreme mantra.
The unequaled mantra, able to cut through all vexation
because in reality there is no emptiness.

Speak the prajñaparamita mantra, speak the mantra's words:

gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi svāhā.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix

"Vagabond" <Vagabond(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5F250419-42F7-4F5E-B17D-6A5AB5437E12(a)microsoft.com...
> That's all a bit over my head....
>
> What a comfort it is to know that God has his hand over all these things
> we
> worry ourselves sick about! Do we really think that He made some
> fundamental
> calculation errors when He created the world?? If He chooses to drown the
> world, as He has done once already, as a judgement for our ungodliness, no
> amount of billions of dollars will make any difference. Just make sure
> you
> know where you will spend eternity if you end up drowning.
>
> "Karl E. Peterson" wrote:
>
>> A lot of the focus of the Copenhagen negotiations has been on the
>> expectations for what the climate will look like at the end of this
>> century. It's a convenient milestone, and it gives people something
>> that they can wrap their heads around, but it's a very arbitrary and
>> unscientific time point, as some of the impacts of current carbon
>> emissions may take centuries to fully register. This is especially true
>> when it comes to sea level; current estimates of a rise of about a
>> third of a meter by the end of the century seem manageable, but it's
>> not as if the oceans will stabilize on January 1, 2100. A paper
>> published in Nature on Wednesday now provides some sense of just how
>> badly off that estimate may be, by showing that a period with similar
>> temperatures saw ocean levels that were probably over six meters above
>> the ones we currently experience.
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/12/low-end-temp-predictions-may-bring-6-meter-ocean-level-rise.ars
>>
>> Wow... And that's from a change of 1-2°C...
>>
>> --
>> ..NET: It's About Trust!
>> http://vfred.mvps.org
>>
>>
>> .
>>