new fortune.

diff --git a/infobase/fortunes.dat b/infobase/fortunes.dat
index d5b0fa4841b5eb8fb0281688e3cad22a81ccc6e9..e50b2310325f2f6258032b722aa223b1f6336639 100644 (file)
--- a/infobase/fortunes.dat
+++ b/infobase/fortunes.dat
@@ -42289,7 +42289,37 @@ not be intimidated by lots of bills to pay, diapers to change, food to cook,
 or papers to be filed.  Fundamentally, in spite of all those responsibilities,
 you begin to feel that it is a worthwhile situation to be a human being, to be
 alive, not afraid of death.
-
-##--#Chögyam Trungpa, "Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior", published
-by Shambhala Publications
+  -- Chögyam Trungpa, "Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior", published
+     by Shambhala Publications
+~
+    These deities share a freedom from passion and experience more and more
+subtle states of mind in each higher level.  In the first level, the freedom
+from passion is experienced; in the second, freedom from discursive thought;
+in the third, the elimination of gross joy in meditation, leaving only sublime
+delight; in the fourth, freedom even from delight.  Above these are the four
+levels of the realm of formlessness, whose inhabitants have transcended form
+altogether and have no bodies or forms at all.  Here deities experience
+successively even more subtle states of mind: the infinity of space, the
+infinity of consciousness, “nothing at all,” and neither perception nor
+nonperception.
+    These states can certainly appear enormously attractive from our human
+point of view.  In fact, they correspond to what many think religious practice
+is all about—attaining some kind of heaven or some sort of tranquillity or
+bliss.  But from the Buddhist viewpoint, the sublimity even of these states is
+not a worthy ultimate goal.  One may ask, “What can possibly be wrong with
+such attainments?”
+    It is important to remember that the divine states of the desire realm,
+the form realm, and the formless realm, like all the other states known in the
+other five realms, are still part of samsara and subject to karma,
+impermanence, and suffering.  In spite of the relative exaltation of their way
+of being, there comes a day for every god when he or she begins to feel the
+signs of impending death.  The intoxication of the godly state gives way to
+sadness, pain, fear, and finally terror, and this is followed by death and
+rebirth in a lower realm.
+    In addition, the gods have one enormous liability: precisely because of
+their power, longevity, and intoxication, they are unable to hear the dharma
+with its teachings about duhkha, the first noble truth.  They, like the
+inhabitants of all the other nonhuman realms, are victims of their karma and
+are unable to practice a spiritual path to gain liberation.
+  -- Reginald A. Ray, in "Indestructible Truth", published by Shambhala Publications