I am sorry

I was angry

I am really sorry

I was so angry

I am so angry

about myself

about all I did

that I regret immensely

about everything

and this is where my anger has got me

anger allows all kind of excuses to happen

I was so jealous

I felt so uncreative

I was so uncreative

I was jealous of everybody

I pretended I was creative

But I was not

Maybe that's the only thing I haven't talked about: my anger and my jealousy

I feel so sad

I know you're not there

wherever you are I wish you overcome the smoking

I wish you never let yourself be fooled by Jim again

I wish you find the Buddha

I wish you a blessed return

last year on my way to the swimming pool I found a 5 euros bill on the street
a couple of days later on my way home I found a pack of cigarettes, it must have fell from somebody's pocket
there were 5 cigarettes in it

- here, there is something I'd like to show you

- what is it?

- it's this, watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xV8xgWlZy0


- are you a Buddhist?

- yes and no

- what do you mean?

- I am a Buddhist in the sense that I know Buddha and the Dharma, "know" as in recognition. But I don't know the institution, "know" as in recognizing.

- who or what is Mara? this part of the film is about Mara

- Mara is one word for 5 things: pride, greed, fear, desire and ignorance. Mara is always happening in our lives

- is it like a demon or a devil? why does the story impersonate the 5 faces of Mara as women?

- that's bullshit. that is just a product of the institution of monks and priests who gained control over Buddhism. Woman is always guilty, like in Pandora's box or Eve's apple. The institution is always ruled by men, they are the power creators within the religious system. And it's all a game of hypocrisy because the problem of letting Mara be there instead of you, controlling you, is your inner being problem. if you don't succeed the problem is you, however you know how hipocrit people are, they will always place the blame for the failure outside themselves. If they can't let go of woman then woman will be to blame. this is a characteristic of man that crosses all religions where man has the power to dictate the rules. It's simply stupid, look, the tree is there, you can't help eating an orange but immediately the tree is guilty.

- so Mara is not a demon.

- no demon, Mara is unawareness. Pride, greed, desire, fear and ignorance (Mara) are always there throughout your life. they always come. they come in different forms. if you are alert you will recognize Mara coming to you in the 5 forms more than once every day, maybe every hour. Mara is that which stops every human being from becoming a Buddha. to reach Buddhahood means that Mara is no longer affecting you and your life in all the 5 forms. Instead Beauty is. if you look for Beauty then Mara has no chance. Beauty in every action, every speech, every thought. if you need some sense of morals to guide you then drop right/wrong and see it in terms of beautiful/ugly. This is called sensibility.
Mara isn't showing itself to the Buddha for the first time here, Mara is continually showing, in the thousands of lives of that man who became a Buddha Mara was there. But one day, in one glorious life, you not only recognize Mara, you let go. You don't let Mara be there instead of you anymore.

- which of Mara's 5 forms is smoking and alcohol?

- greed.

- ha! really?

- but of course. Imagine the phases of the moon for each of the 5 faces of Mara: the full moon is full greed, full fear, full desire, full pride, full ignorance; the new moon is no greed, no pride, no fear, no desire, no ignorance. smoking and alcohol are a phase of greed, certainly not the full moon but maybe the crescent. it's like when you eat too much. so be alert, be aware, look inside, and you will recognize the lurking face of greed when you pull out a cigarette to smoke, when you ask for one more drink.

- what if I don't want to stop smoking?

- the face of ignorance is smiling at you. Mara is there again, smoking will bring suffering, disease, pain and most of all it sucks your energy because your breath is your energy. try this, be alert for whatever happens to you throughout the day and identify the greed, the fear, the desire, the pride, the ignorance whenever they manifest. you will be surprised how they rule your being almost every hour of the day without you being aware of it. and so Mara is there instead of you.

- wow! I found something really important today. I think I'm going to the message board and tell about it.

- pride

- oops, I didn't see it coming.

- I know

- how can anyone stop Mara? is it possible to stop?

- that's the whole thing about becoming a Buddha.

- and what exactly is a Buddha?

- I don't know. I guess you have to experience it yourself in order to know. you will never know what it is like being a Buddha without trying. however, I feel it is all about energy.

- explain

- if you stop spending your energy in actions and thoughts of desire, fear, greed, ignorance and pride, where does your energy go to? it's stays inside. so perhaps becoming a Buddha is becoming all this amazing powerful energy yourself.

- is Mara like the 7 sins?

- no because none of the faces of Mara is a sin. they are just wild phenomena of human wild life. they are just there, naturally. they are the wheel of samsara, and a Buddha is one who escapes samsara.

- what is samsara?

- it's the wheel of life and death and life again. it's the suffering you go through until you stop being reborn. that's why a Buddha is someone who will not be reborn again, he has jumped out of the wheel.

- and reached nirvana

- yes,

- but if a Buddha is someone who will not be reborn again how come there's a new Buddha every 2500 years?

- obviously it is not the same person, it is someone else who during those 2500 years was not a Buddha but now became one. Buddhas never come back so if there is a new Buddha it means that someone new has reached enlightenment

- in that case I can also become a Buddha

- correct

- tell me more about Mara

- first thing to take into consideration about Mara is that it is there. the idea of sin comes from a totally different angle, it comes from guilt, and guilt is very negative, twice as negative as the "sin" itself because it buries you deep down in a bad energy vibe. the proposition of sin is the only sin because it is unnatural, it is a fabrication. Mara is wild, in this sense Mara is natural, but sin is an artificial phenomena manipulated by some hipocrits. sin creates fear, which means that an artificial psychological phenomena is calling out to Mara. Mara is there already but humans create ideologies that call out to Mara. what do you call this? what face of Mara is this?

- ignorance

- so you see, the 7 sins are superficial, they are subproducts. what is jealousy but greed? what is laziness but greed? and why isn't sadness also a sin? if anger is a sin then sadness should be too. anger is a result of frustration, it is not a face in itself, it is an expression in a face.

- why isn't sadness also a sin?

- because for christianity all that suffers is good. misery, hurt, sacrifice, all of this is good, if you suffer like Jesus on the cross you are proving your faith and love for god. why is Jesus famous? because of the cruxificion, if Jesus had been a happy man you wouldn't have heard about him. who cares for happy people? happy people make us jealous. now pay attention, sacrifice is there because you are not. you see, sacrifice has been praised as a good thing but how can something forced be good? the sacrifice exists to replace you, you put the sacrifice there because you can't be there, so you force it. whether it is an animal or yourself doing something that you don't like sacrifice is just another word for "outside of you" - it's something that is not within you, it's not pure, it's a fabrication. and so how can something that is a fabrication, that is not you, please god? doesn't god want truthfullness, authenticity, sincerity?
you never hear christians talk about vegetarianism, do you hear the pope telling the people not to kill animals? of course not. in christianity like in judaism and islam the animals are inferior beings, the whole idea is that man is superior, man made at god's image. "thou shall not kill" doesn't include the animals. the whole of the creation is meant to serve humans, animals have no right to a happy life, to an existence of their own, they only exist to serve you. compassion for animals is not even mentioned. even science is poisoned with these ideas. science is christian, even those who say they are atheists are christian programmed. does science show any respect for the innocent animals? does medicine show any respect for the innocent animals? does fashion and cosmectics show any respect for the innocent animals? look around you, we have built a society completely dependant on animals. they are in our food, our medicine, our clothes, our everything. Only Buddhism talks of vegetarianism, that's where you hear it from.
there is no buddhist science. science is a christian phenomena. Buddhism is not interested in christian science because Buddhism is already science in itself. only experiencing and experimenting can create a Buddha, the process is empirical and proves itself. Buddhism is the science of Being, it is focused inwards; christian science is focused outwards. heaven and hell is inside you, heaven and hell is a place outside you. that's why it is christian science, because its focus is on the outside, it wants to understand the outside. Buddhism is the science that wants to understand the inside. for both christianity and science the source and the destination is outside you. for Buddhism source and destination is inside you.
science is looking for a creator: the big bang. it's their god. do you see the implication? humanity is a child who needs mom and dad, a creator. humanity is not enough on its own. and science is childian, this is the infancy of humanity.
you don't know that you are a Buddha in potential how come you want to know what's beyond the stars? Buddhas travel in the universe and they can be with the living as much as they can be with the dead. Buddhas travel in all the worlds.