S:C

Where can I find a text that explains the two truth doctrine in simple words? Near to the original? 
thanks

Thank you, @Mark Foote, I am getting closer to understanding your perspective , even though the foreign concepts are hard to grasp, yet I can come up with some comparisons, that are more familiar to me. Very much appreciated. It did get clearer. 

On 1.11.2023 at 10:06 PM, Mark Foote said:

The intent concentration consisted of sixteen thoughts, applied or sustained in the course of an in-breath or an out-breath.  

I have had no instructions on the Pali Sermons, yet. When you speak of concentration, it seems to have a different meaning than in colloquial language? @Mark Foote Do you mean meditative states? Meditative states where senses are left behind? That’s what you mean with “there is a natural escape from agitation, dissipation, distraction--priceless!”?

Do I understand it correctly, that he followed a rule of thought during every breath, and among those sixteen in the process?
 

Edit: it actually is a method of sixteen steps, - not in one breath, but over a series of breaths, that can be read up here: https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Anapanasati

Dissipation, distraction and decay is a scary thing to fully embrace, imo, as is passivity and planlessness or lack of drives. @steve It seems kinda sad, too. Need for trust in the process to reverse itself again, at some point. 

How can we best adapt to changes of intensity on the path? 
 

Do we always have to feel the contrast of what we have felt before, like a hidden pendulum swinging back to an equilibrium? 
 

After extreme agitation must follow extreme calm? After focus must follow dissipation/distraction? 

Guess I cannot outrun my fate, that cat is still there somewhere in the stellar storms ... could I please change into:

S:C

Thanks.

21 hours ago, Bhathen said:

masala chai latte in winter is adding dry ginger powder or a  fresh ginger piece, cardamom, fennel seeds and sometimes a pepper corn to the tea.

that sounds awesome! thanks

22 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

I thought this shacha sauce, which contains ginger, was delicious.  Shacha Sauce (Bullhead Sha Cha Copycat) | I Heart Umami®

apart from the shrimp powder it sounds great

For a long time I went for oats (either made warm with milk or water) and some fruits. Can't do that everyday, it is so sticky.
Don't like bread with cheese, marmelade etc. Ended up with some amaranth, buckweath and millet heated with water and rasperrys/or apples, that's okay.

But I am still curious: what are your favorite breakfast dishes?

Warm or cold?

Did you consciously choose the contents or is it more a habitual (sweet tooth) thing?

Did you import some recipies from asian countries?

Do you preprep the night before or fresh in the morning.

Thanks (I really need inspiration here...)

I lately found ginger very helpful. I am looking for good recipes.

10 minutes ago, thelerner said:

and letting go.

I do have to remember that part now and then. Thank you. 

Besides walking meditation (that you mentioned elsewhere) which technique do you do or recommend for that part of letting go / non-reaching? 
 

So awareness and state of mind is not a technique to you (hence the differentiation) ?

13 hours ago, Nungali said:

'Having a rational life'  - in the context of eudamonia

This is interesting too, thanks, we have different perspectives of rationality. One of those that I carry around with me correlates with what I wrote in another recent thread. You could exchange the word awareness with rationality. 
 

Quote

What is awareness rationality anyways? Recognizing the contents of the personal five (or more senses) simultaneously for a reasonable amount of time? Or is it transcending the five (or more) senses beyond space and time? What Mr. Hume and Mr. Bohm would call the foundational ground (being empty). 

 

I don’t know if that serves as a persuasive purpose/meaning for life (guess I ain’t very good at it), but it’s possible to try. 

22 hours ago, thelerner said:

Meaning/sacred is what we give meaning to.  Perhaps in the game of life the person with the most love and passion wins. 

This is interesting, I like it. 
 

3 hours ago, kakapo said:

I am Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience

So you yourself Kakapo are Mr. Seth? 
 

Quote

It's the idea that our conscious experience is not an accurate reflection of an objective reality, but a user-friendly interface that allows us to navigate the world.

Interesting thesis and nice wording. Who is the interface designer and to what end are we navigating here around, in your opinion?

On 26.9.2023 at 2:55 AM, Stilltrying said:

cultivate and integrate their awareness and apply it to a skill

I don’t have an answer here but another question: When is ‚cultivated awareness’ a skill (positive connotation) and when is it an evasion/escape (negative connotation)? What is ‚cultivated‘ awareness anyways? 

Stemming from the Alan Watts quote on another current thread about ‚unduly absorption‘.

What is awareness anyways? Recognizing the contents of the personal five (or more senses) simultaneously for a reasonable amount of time? Or is it transcending the five (or more) senses beyond space and time? What Mr. Hume and Mr. Bohm would call the foundational ground being empty.

49 minutes ago, Apech said:

Thoth it is about understanding the process and knowing the right words to use for the various things encountered.  You could call this getting the over view - or mapping the process if you like.  Anubis on the other hand is about applying sensitivity to subtle energy to be able to do certain transformations and navigate certain situations or environments you might encounter - a more on the ground approach if you like.

 

If you accept the Egyptian view the gods are not really archetypes, they are living souls which form part of the universe.

 

I don't know if this helps or not.

It does: no need for differentiation if there isn’t any significance: so Toth is the rational/yang/left brain aspect and Anubis the touchy/feely/yin/right brain aspect that is leading the (dead)human. Seems reasonable and understandable. 👍

p.s: dear fellow cat, would you mind unquoting my hidde/in-brackets-text? it‘s something in a process, unfinished and incoherent mumbling, that I’d probably like to delete later, - I do get embarrassed about incoherency and do not want to lead someone astray / maintain a delusion with incomplete thoughts…. thanks! 

Out of pure curiosity I will shoot some more questions:

Where is the jackal rooted in (archetypically)?

And isn’t the Thot (Hermes) and Anubis and Wepwajet part double triple with the Egyptians? Where is the exact difference in their ‚function‘? Both are (spirit) guides for the dead, no?

On 31.1.2023 at 9:36 PM, Nungali said:

On 31.1.2023 at 8:25 PM, schroedingerscat said:

Not aimed at anyone in particular, but what is it that makes a precept moral? 

 

The will of the people of the particular culture in question ,  or their  ruling class .

In the sake of clarity: 

This seems like you are advocating a relativism of values: it‘s only the will of the people (intersubjective consensus / majority/ sovereign) that gives a set of values the stamp of ‚morality‘.

On the other hand you refer to Ma‘at and dharma, as a cosmological (decidingly moral) law that can be recognized intersubjectively (with some differences in details) or objectively (depending on your definition of this). 
 

It seems to me that there is a contradiction there, isn’t there? 
 

Then, you do have a value system of your own, in your Nungali specific way, as you mention. 
 

So those are three different aspects of morality? Can all three be true at the same time? What happens if they do conflict with each other? Personal values? Are those always in concurrence with dharma? How can one be sure? Never? 

 

What’s with experiential gnosis? Why doesn’t that necessarily lead to nihilism? Because of the potentiality of absolute negation that allows for relative values who pave the way for most possible frictionless interaction between humans? 
 

I‘m sorry if this is only halfway understandable, it‘s part bookmark to myself (bc I have a headache) and I‘d be curious if @stirling would like to chime in, please feel invited! 
Would you see the values of Buddhism (which I remember is your tradition) grounded in the texts alone? Do you believe in a natural (moral) cosmological law (despite or because of personal/subjective experiential gnosis)?

I‘m sorry if the questions seem to personal, I can reframe or edit them later, but didn’t want to lose them. 

A sweatshirt with the title and wording: 

Be kind to your mind: 

tune into the calmest and clearest frequency you can find!

It showed a television with an antenna and a brain. 
 

Less funnier was a shirt some other day with a three eyed smiley and the saying „Stop tripping!“ 

On 4.10.2023 at 7:43 AM, Nungali said:

, its her feather on one side, she is observing . The actual weighing is the business of 'underworld desert jackals ' , and the recording done by , the early version of 'Hermes'  ( from whom the term Heremetic comes )

I am sorry, I do not understand. Can you explain this? What do desert dogs of the underworld (e.g. a death layer) have to do with the weighing process? And what’s with the symbolical feather? How is Hermes recording? Is there a fable or something about this? 

Thanks @Apech and @Nungali, - enjoyable read, would like to hear more, if there is any. 

7 hours ago, mat said:

The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.” (…) 

 

 

For him (Aristotle), humans were the rational beings. Through reason and virtuous action

Do you remember, how Aristotle defined „rational“ again?

Now I remember one other European thinker, for whom reason or rationality was the decision process (to (re)act or not (re)act) to one’s emotions or passions. That rationality would always be a matter of personal choice, and never sth. objective.
 

What could be the measuring criteria for being unduly or righteously absorbed? 
 

On 25.9.2023 at 12:09 AM, Mark Foote said:

mispronouncing lionn

--money talks, their thirst for beer

quenched like fire in rain

Quenched like fire in rain.
A stone cave and gravity’s
Purpose? What’s true north?

Title says it all. I know you shouldn’t self prescribe, see a doctor if critical etc. etc. If I remember correctly: curcuma and goji may help, if I remember more, I might add some. 

Thank you.

9 hours ago, Unota said:

Something beautiful always comes from the bad, even if the beauty isn't as obvious as in a broken tulip.

How do you come to this conclusion? Is that necessarily so in your opinion? Why?