Bindi

An enlightenment that didn’t go beyond cultural attitudes would be a very poor enlightenment indeed.

Actually, most of the moderators were directed to leave by the owner of the site for holding right wing views. Those that weren’t banned are still here as far as I know.

Even a well placed troll can get a bit boring and repetitive - I haven’t felt baited yet, but I am getting a bit tired of heartbreaks endless new topics each slightly edgier and wonkier than the last. Here’s an idea, how about everyone who feels the need to respond in any way to heartbreak collectively puts him on ignore right now. Then there will be no more need to respond to anything, and heartbreak will get bored. It’s not like anyone will ever get through to him by continuing to respond. But it’s like herd immunity, enough have to do it that no new outbreaks occur

Trust in Allah but tether your camel.

And yet... I’ve been reading up on all things Buddhist this weekend, including Buddhist psychology and Buddhist Tantra. From what I can gather from Buddhist psychology, Buddhism doesn’t aim to remove the backlog, and doesn’t claim to deliver mental health in the western sense, for example people on antidepressants are advised to stay on them, and people practicing for many years can still be anxious and depressed. This is relevant if dust is basically the backlog, and dust is what I’m interested in removing.

To me, as far as I can understand it today, dust has to do with thoughts. Once for a couple of days many years ago the backlog of my thoughts, and each new repetition, disappeared and any new thought fell away so it was very peaceful in my mind, it was a great relief, but after a couple of days I noticed thoughts started getting stuck again, falling onto a floor and starting to pile up. I thought of them then like leaves falling to the ground, when I could see them individually falling and starting to pile up, but piled ever higher over the ensuing years I think this is the dust. So I wonder if the problem isn’t in having thoughts, but in them not falling away freely, and to fall away freely somehow the floor might have to be removed, permanently. And I think this might be possible, working my way with wind and consciousness through the emotional and mental subtle channels, which is an unfolding process.

Yes I shouldn’t have put it in the Buddhist forum really, it’s only that my first quote was Buddhist. I’d be interested in hearing what dust means to you. Thinking about it for a few days I have more of an idea of what it might mean to me, but it’s a pretty out there explanation which I might just keep to myself for now 🙃

Thanks Steve, I have come across this before, I don’t resonate with the concept though, as emotional and mental obstructions are quite real for me, and I’m happier working on them as my way through than thinking neither dust nor the potential ‘awakened mind’ beneath it even exist.

I came across the Tibetan Buddhist idea of removing mental and emotional obstructions recently, which leads to the direct experience of our true nature. Perhaps some can bypass this work, but certainly I’m not one of them, and as such there is mud and dust to remove as far as I can see. On the issue of the minds relationship to awareness: Reading this quote carefully, I can see that wisdom wind and karmic wind are differentiated, my lack of understanding on this issue is surely because karmic wind still dominates my mind and I haven’t experienced the nature of wisdom wind yet. Nonetheless I see the need for cleaning away ‘dust’ at the stage I’m at.

What if awareness is filtered through the mind. Awareness being taken as always clear, but passing through the mind it is distorted because of the dust lying there. Like our senses are filtered through the mind, inescapably, same with our pure awareness. Inextricably linked.

I see there is a very early reference to dust, from the Ayacana Sutta: The Request - “Lord, let the Blessed One teach the Dhamma! Let the One-Well-Gone teach the Dhamma! There are beings with little dust in their eyes who are falling away because they do not hear the Dhamma. There will be those who will understand the Dhamma.” “...surveying the world with the eye of an Awakened One, the Blessed One saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world.” In this sutra the dust stops people from seeing clearly, from awakened seeing. Old mental habits maybe. Mental obscurations that have been there for ages. Is this dust also (from the Lankavatara sutra) the “habit energy [or memory] which has been accumulated by erroneous reasoning since beginningless time.” Seeing the dust, I have a chance to remove it. Not seeing it, erroneous reasoning can even erroneously reason that there isn’t even any dust.

I’m wondering, is this article good Buddhism? “No Mind” is Buddha Personally I like dust as an analogy for what obscures our highest nature in our minds, on an almost organic level I think our consciousness hasn’t inhabited the head chakras in such a long time that the equivalent of dust has built up there, but that’s just my take on it of course. I’m not sure the dust is ‘delusions’, maybe. I’d be interested in other people’s concepts of dust

I once walked into a Scientology office when I was 17. I lasted 20 minutes 😁

I read this: Question: Some of the articles about you over the years have indicated that you’ve dabbled or more than dabbled in various kinds of spiritual paths. Is the line, “Did you ever go clear?” from Famous Blue Raincoat a Scientology reference? Leonard Cohen: It was a Scientology reference. I looked into a lot of things. Scientology was one of them. It did not last very long.