abortion thoughts

The word SPIRIT comes from Lat. spirare, to breathe.

We are born when we take our first breath and die withour last.

We breathe when the umbilical cord is severed.

The astrological chart is based on the time, date, place of birth. It works as the unique way that individual will process experience.

So in a sense that is the beginning of life in the manifest world and when the "Spirit" enters the body.

So what about the fetus? Could that not be the building of the container for the Spirit?

A clumsy analogy is the building of a car. It takes the driver and the ignition key to make it work. It is manufactured, used, and finally ends up used metal or put in a museum as some few embalmed human bodies - Lenin - mummies, frozen or pickled ones are.........

I do not have the answer and I am always saddened by the necessity for some abortions and like the expression "Prayerfully pro-choice".

Any thoughts?

love

ao

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deb:

Re: [Negative-Capability] Abortion thoughts

Yes, thoughts!

Life is the thing, the what-beats-my-heart mystery of being. On a personal
level, I choose to feel that life begins at conception: the potential, the
hope, the growing under / by its own will, the sacred. (Growth. Such
mystery. Who controls a fetus's growth?) I also understand that this is my
choice, my thinking, made only for me; made over what I govern. A choice
that's allowed to me. A choice I understand that not everyone can or will
make.

When is the fetus sustainable on its own? That's the thing a culture / polis
*can* define by evidence given by the practical nuts and bolts world. *By
that we make law.* And such laws are in place, as in -- "[...] states cannot
prohibit abortions prior to viability, and laws that prohibit abortion after
viability must include an exception for the 'health of the mother.' "

Which frames the debate, the true morality that defines a culture:

We must do all we can for the health of all mothers and children.
Health, after all, fosters growth. And *growth IS sacred.*

And last week, a report told us that 1 in 5 American children live in poverty.

As for the world... how many starved today? When there's enough food to go around.

But it doesn't.


this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

e.e. cummings


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mike:

I'm always fascinated by this one.

Certainly life begins at the instant of conception. The Tibetan Buddhist description of the growth of the foetus is quite fascinating inasmuch as it actually describes it from inside - in terms of what's happing energywise. Almost any occidendal account i've read is speaking of dead foetuses at various stages and the descriptions are of what seems to have happened externally up to that point.
Briefly put, the actual meeting of the sperm cell and ovum, calls in a third entity as it were - calls in a rider - an awareness which is not inherent in material (witness how dead and 'material' a dead body is)(before it becomes host my pullulating other lives of course)... the body is made up of its solidity, its fluids, its empty spaces and its warmth. None of these is conscious.
Consciousness also never changes. Like a mirror, it reflects what is before it, life, death, happiness, sorrow, bliss, terror, but - ultimately - none of these change its basic nature which simply to be aware - to be witness - and to be nothing in itself except this faculty for being aware. This is what comes and goes and rides bodily forms that seem to be born and to die after a brief period of maturity and (optimally) the creation of further bodies of the same nature that can play host to awareness.
Awareness was never born and never dies... it has always been... since before even time and space (it's first two vectors) came into being. Awareness is the is of what is. Without it, nothing is. And yet, when you look for it it has no form, no colour, no shape, and not even a 'seat'... We say, for example, (us accidental occidentals), that awareness is seated in the brain, but when we point to ourselves, we don't point at the head - pointing at the head means that you or someone else a bit doolally - we point at the chest, at the heart. The Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan words for mind all mean heart... This is not to say that the brain is unimportant - obviously it is, but it is an instrument, if you like, of awareness, not its home.
That being - because it almost invariably sets itself up as a centre and what is peripheral to it and then splits itself off from the periphery - is what comes into the meeting of spermcell and ovum. Why don't we remember this? If you've seen that instant on film you'll know that it's pretty damn shocking - extremely violent - a literal slamming together and almost simultaneous destruction of all the other spermcells around. I think most of us are quite shocked, not least inasmuch as the bardo - the intermediate state - between life and life is quite scary in itself... One generally flees one's way through it in utter terror at the nightmarish experiences there as the structures of the past consciousness begin to fall apart and themselves die...
One comes screaming out of the bardo into what looks very often like some form of safe haven - a crevace in a rock, a hollow log, or - for those whose karma really is clean, a beautiful house or temple and into this extremely violent explosion whereby one fuses with the material energies of the father and mother and the growth process slowly begins.
Some extraordinary books on the subject are:

Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life - HIis Holiness the Dalai Lama [RIDER PUBLICATIONS, 2002]
The Jewel Ornament of Liberation - various versions... H. V. Guenther [RIDER, 1970]
Khenpo Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche [SNOW LION, 1998]
Ken & Katia Holmes [ALTEA PUBLISHING, 1995]*
The Life and Teaching of Naropa - H. V. Guenther [OXFORD, 1963]
The Tibetan Book of the Dead - Gyurme Dorje [http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670858866,00.html]
The Mirror of Mindfulness - Tsele Natsok Rangdrol [RANGJUNG YESHE PUBLICATIONS, 1987]
Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism - Lati Rinbochay & Jeffrey Hopkins [RIDER, 1979]

and, of course

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche [RIDER, 2002]

*As Gems of Dharma, Jewels of Freedom

This is not to pooh-pooh the occidental version - On the contrary, I believe a marriage of both views is of primal importance - Not least for the beings who are dying because of ignorance.
Of course the arguments for abortion are many and cogent (at least on their level). The arguments against are often far more confused and ignorant than those for it. Here, however, is an argument which might render the question - and the moral imperative of the question - far more subtle.
I, personally, can see abortion as a possibility where the birth of the child will really harm or endanger the situation of the mother and/or the child itself.
On the other hand, it was never promised that life would be fun, or even easy, but there are very few who would give up the chance for it if given the choice. No-one, as far as I know, gives up their life easily, not even those who take their own. There is always some sort of struggle. And taking the life of another living being - and particularly a defenceless living being - has never been considered among the better ways to accumulate good karma even in ignorance.
There are exceptions to everything, of course, and an action that is 'good' in one context may be very harmful in another.

This is where the subtlety comes in.

Under separate cover (since neither Jungfire nor negcap accept attachments) I can send anyone interested copies of two translations on the subject of the intermediate states I've recently made from the Tibetan, one the introduction to an empowerment given by my own teacher, His Holiness Düd'jom Rinpoche, and the other of a trio of short texts by the 14th. c. polymath, Longchenpa (klong chen rab 'byams)

.-_-.


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deb:

Thank you, all, for opening this discussion. It's the one no one on either side is really having.