Thursday, March 18, 2010

Five Rules of Nature in Buddhism

Buddhism is a philosophy which shows the world as a living being and nature creation. There is no one above the human to control himself apart from some forces of nature. The intension of this post to show that, as a human being you should see the world as it is. That is , the world is not a creation of a supernatural power, but merely the cause and effect and the nature makes the continuity of living being and the world/universe. In the previous post, I explained in general how the cause and effect principle ( kamma and vipaka ) affects person. But thats only a one way out of the five rules of nature.

These five rules are called Niyama in Pali.

1. Utu Niyama (physical inooganic order)
Effects from seasonal changes like in spring some flowers blossom, but in winter leaves fall. People get displaced by winds and rain, earthquakes. This is happening not because we have done bad karma, or some supernatural god is against us. But its the phenomena of nature which can be hardly controlled.

2. Bija Niyama (Physical Organic Order)
This is bind with living beings organic characteristcs. Eg:- When we plant a rice seed, we get rice as harvest, not apple. Thats the pattern of reproduction. Some fruit maybe tasty, but some is bitter. Some flowers smell and some do not. We live within the womb for roughly 10 month after conception, but elephants have a different time period.

3. Kamma Niyama (Order of Action and Reaction)
This is what I explained in the previous post. This is what you are fully responsible. Simply taking I abbreviate this as WYDIWYG ( "What you do is what you get" ). Quite cool huh.

4. Dhamma Niyama (Order of Norm )
This is the nature of the world in general. Eg:- gravitation, why the earth rotates. why your skin gets wrinkled with aging. Simply taking thats how the world as it is.

5. Chitta Niyama ( Order of Mind )
Thousands of ideas are coming to our mind within a second. We forget somethings, we remember important things. Your brain will prefer to keep some events forever. This will explain some abilities which some people posses like telepathy, premonition, thought reading.

One thing we should remember here. Kamma Niyama is the Niyama, which we should be aiming to control as its our responsibility. Other forces of nature, we should be able to control into some extent. I will explain Kamma Niyama in more detail later. But its pointless to prey for "external help" to change any of those natural phenomena.