goldisheavy

You are confused. My language is not less sophisticated at all. I can express everything with subtlety and nuance using the English language. On the contrary, importing big words from the Indian language without first appreciating what the English language can do on its own is pure buffoonery.

ZOOM, you are obsessed with "objectivity" aren't you? That's going to be a huge stumbling block for you in your practice, assuming you even practice anything beyond TTB posting and speculation. By worrying how you look on the outside from a 3rd person perspective, you cannot actually release your mind properly. In fact, by conceiving of other people as substances, you are blocking your mind. You should realize that all authentic Dzogchen practitioners do not view a human being as a substance, and therefore, what would customarily be considered external, is no longer viewed as external, since it has no own-being, so it cannot be granted externality. This is standard Yogacara and Madhyamaka which are accepted in the Dzogchen circles. The human beings you encounter in this waking experience are no different from the human beings you encounter in your dreams. They're not real in an objective sense. The whole of life is a visionary experience. And Dzogchen practice takes advantage of this realization in order to do what they call "allowing all phenomena to self-liberate." In order to even attempt this practice, you must already have a firm understanding of the mind. If you think the mind has something to do with the brain, you can't even attempt Dzogchen. Like I said before, Dzogchen requires a capacity higher than tantrism. So test your capacity for tantrism to see if you meet it first. If you do meet it, go ahead and look into Dzogchen more. Otherwise you're wasting your time chasing miracles and immortality. Here's a test: take a sip of plain clean water into your mouth and make it taste like honey in your own mouth. Test #2: Go out when it's cold, and allow your limbs to freeze. Then visualize heat streaming in your body and by comparing the visualized heat with the non-visualized cold, allow the heat phenomena to cross over into the non-visualized domain. In other words, allow the subtle visualized heat to gain so much vibrancy and visceral feel that it becomes phenomenally real. The result should be a detectable warming of your body. Test #3: The same as #2, but in hot weather. Visualize ice or cool water/wind inside your body. If you can pass one or all of these tests, maybe it's not a complete waste of time to investigate Dzogchen. Otherwise your mind is too dense for Dzogchen and you should practice something simpler.

That's the problem with bringing Indian jargon into English. Not only do we not understand the Indian words, but we also destroy perfectly good English words by redefining them to fit with the Indian narrative. Using intuitively understood English words is infinitely superior. That's what I do myself. I can explain anything using normal English. With the way you defined "mind" you now have no word to talk about mind. This is crazy. Now if you really wanted to talk about mind you'd have to say "antawhatever", which is absurd.

So what is "the seer" in your view? Give me some examples. If your concepts aren't tied to anything, they're just free-floating words which mean nothing. When I talk everything I say connects meaningfully to everything else I say. I don't rely on free-floating words. I can relate everything back to experience as well. So not only are my words meaningfully related to each other, but they also relate meaningfully to my experience as well. Yea, my attitude is quite different from yours. I know what I am talking about. There is a world of difference between someone who reads Buddhist or Indian rhetoric, where a lot of the criticism of "the seer" comes from, and someone who actually contemplates for oneself. Don't be content with the rhetorical formulas. You need to investigate your own experience for yourself and on your own terms, if your goal is wisdom as opposed to mere cultural affiliation. Of course if you are happy with cultural affiliation without any wisdom, then it's sufficient to parrot whatever schools of thought sound best to you. There is no need to actually contemplate or think critically.

What do you mean by "recognizer"? Depending on how you construe it I will need to give different answers here. Most people construe "-ers" as phenomenal objects with specific characteristics such as tall, short, heavy, slow, etc. If this is what you mean, then no, it doesn't imply such a recognizer. But you can make your "recognizer" sufficiently abstract, and then it will be implied, yes. For example, you can say that recognizer is a point of view. Of course a point of view is implied in any absorption. Or you can make your recognizer volitional formation. Again, that too will be implied, because all absorptions are volitional formations.

All this is wrong. Definitely wrong.

It's in the recognition of that same full absorption as "full absorption without seed."

I do know what the mind is, however. A close cousin of cognition is recognition. It's easier for people to think of recognition than it is to think of cognition which isn't linked to the past. Recognition is associated with the past, and so recognition is a specific type of cognizance (one "unit" of cognizance being cognition as I term it). Now, for example, when light is lit, you recognize light. However, in a perfectly dark room, what happens to your ability to recognize light? It's unaffected. This continual ability to recognize that is not affected by the momentary phenomena is a clue about mind's nature.

The mind should not be defined in terms of the momentary appearances. Appearances come and go, but the mind doesn't come and go. The mind is impossible to switch off or on. People confuse appearances with the mind all the time. When appearances stop people wrongly believe the mind has stopped, when the entire cognition of "stopping" is evidence of mind functioning just fine. This is similar to how Ananda was confused about seeing in the Shurangama Sutra. Ananda thought that if the room is dark, seeing stops. He was not recognizing darkness as a phenomenon, in other words. He thought seeing only happened when the light was on. And then Buddha goes on to correct his misapprehension.

Then you don't agree with me.

I am not a machine. My mind isn't a machine. My body is not a machine. In fact, I don't even think the so-called "universe" is mechanical at all. There are habits which produce machine-like behaviors. That's as close as I get to machines.

Definitely not. The mind is a capacity to know, to experience, and to will.

You didn't get what I was saying if you say you agree with me and then say "yes we are machines."

The problem is, possibilities are essential to all cognition and are ineliminable from experience. For example, I only know the location of my keyboard on the table because I am aware of other possible locations for it. Without those other possible locations the present location would make no sense at all. The only way to rid oneself of possibilities and imagination is by willfully ignoring them.

We can say the same about a toaster. When I push some bread into it, the toaster thinks it's good to toast the bread. Your ability to "determine" things has nothing behind it beyond pure chance. You're not actually intelligent and you are not cognizant of meanings. This is similar to a toaster not giving a fuck whether it toasts bread or paper, it just toasts anything, because it doesn't care. Your molecules do not care. They bump around and the result is a meat puppet that has the same level of cognition and intelligence as a toaster. That's what you're saying about yourself. You're saying you're fundamentally like a toaster, but with more moving parts, and that's it. So I should treat you the way I treat any machine. If I need to cut your arm off to use as a door stop, I will do it with the same attitude that I'd use a toaster for a door stop. Both are machines. So why not? I don't see any problem.

I didn't mean to offend, although I don't really care about your emotions either way (I feel the same way about my toaster). What I was trying to do was to illustrate the consequences of your ideas. If you self-define as a mindless machine, then please don't be surprised when you get treated as a mindless machine. That's all I am saying. In other words, don't be surprised when the world begins treating you in a way that's consistent with your own self-image. That's all I was trying to say. If this offends you, then what you are really offended by is your creation. Don't break the mirror just because you see a booger in it.

Are you imagining anyone else?

Why would I listen to a mindless outburst like that? You say you have no mind? I agree. You are a mindless puppet, just as you have self-defined.

This is where you are confused. My point of view is not objectively real. It doesn't mean it's not real. Reality is not objective. Your suggestions are worthless. You are dismissed.

"What is" blinds the mind toward "would could be."

The brain is just a hallucination. There is no brain. Only mind.

Duh. That's kind of half the point of what I was trying to say. The other half of my point is that what you call "stepping over eternity" is just a personal choice which is not objectively superior to any other alternative you can exercise. You have a choice. I love talking about perspectives. Perspectives are the very essence of subjectivity. Whom are you trying to convince?

Buddha was very much a "my way or the highway" type of person. There are some Suttas that describe a situation where Buddha receives a compliment from a person, and it's interesting how the Buddha reacts. Usually, paraphrased, it goes like this, "I hear that you say my wisdom is great and I see everything just as it is. However, you are a moron, and when you praise me like this, you actually have no idea what you're talking about. You're talking out of your arse. Therefore, I reject your praise. I find your praise to lack meaning and purpose. Nonetheless, you are absolutely correct that I am the best, but that's pretty much by dumb luck, and not because you understand me." The Buddha was spiritually brutal to people. He'd skewer everyone who disagreed without any compromises or seeking some middle mutual ground. He'd only ever accept people's opinions if they were mirror copies of his own, and even then, he'd often deny people the validity of those opinions, even when they were mirror copies, if the Buddha didn't consider those people sufficiently elevated. The Buddha wasn't perfected. For example, there is one Sutta that describes how Buddha became annoyed and ran away from the monastery to spend time alone in the forest. This is not someone who has a patience perfection. The Buddha very often used fear mongering. He often presented karmic consequences in dramatically exaggerated ways. For example, for throwing a rock at himself Devadatta was said to have entered Avici hell. Obviously to anyone with the understanding of how intentionality produces the various realms we find ourselves in, this is incoherent. A tiny crime toward someone who is patient and tolerating, and therefore presumable doesn't mind, is answered by a punishment/reaction out of all proportion? Of course not. The Buddha was just being petty. In fact the Buddha admitted that he was spiritually brutal to people on purpose, if he considered people to be dumb. Which Sutta? The one where Buddha uses the simile of a horse trainer. He even discusses the case where some unruly horses must be killed. Some must be whipped. And some are guided gently. The Buddha was conflicted about psychic powers and couldn't arrive at a consistent doctrine. He heavily praised psychic powers on numerous occasions, but he also had reservations connected with the ignorant people drawing the wrong conclusions after witnessing amazing displays. He never was able to reconcile this issue in his own mind, apparently, because he expressed anger and admiration and praise toward psychic powers on different occasions. The Buddha was a monk who didn't follow the rules for monks. That's hypocritical. Example: Buddha displayed psychic power to Angulimala when Angulimala was a lay person. Of course the Buddha also had a loophole. At the high level of realization, attachment to precepts and practices as a fetter is given up. So Buddha was not 100% hypocritical, but there is a level of hypocrisy there because there is no clear guidance when it's OK to break the rules. Obviously at some point it's OK. If Buddha really wanted the rules to stick 100%, he should have followed them himself. And indeed, as far as I know, the Buddha never broke 1 meal a day rule, so that rule he did keep, even though he wasn't attached to precepts and practices, supposedly. Now, people should not misunderstand my intent. I still consider the Buddha to be one of the best publicly known teachers in this realm! And in a way, his flaws only make him an even better teacher. You can learn from the flawed person more than from some idealized caricature of a person.

I strongly recommend not to bother reading introductory books or commentary of any sort. 99.9% of commentary is junk and introductory books are garbage by and large, where you can expect severe distortions and dilutions of the message as a rule. I strongly recommend going to primary sources. This means Sutras, Suttas, and Tantras if you fancy Tibetan stuff. That's it. End of story. Period. So, Mahayana canon, Theravada canon, and Vajrayana canon. Only read canon. Only read primary sources. Absolutely 100% stay the fuck away from anything that isn't an original source, because even very highly elevated names have said incredibly limiting and dumb stuff that isn't found in the original sources. At the same time, the original sources have a rough surface. If you read the Pali Canon you'll see how flawed Buddha's personal character was. But you won't see any of these flaws if you keep reading commentary and intro books which always paint Buddha as beyond reproach in every conceivable way. So the original sources are more nuanced, they have more rough surface, they are stranger, more challenging, more mind-blowing, harder to swallow in some ways, but vastly more liberating than anything else. The originals are simultaneously more beautiful and more ugly, with some real warts that will be papered over by the sycophantic, drooling, star-struck commentators. Almost all the original sources are available for free reading online too, unlike the commentaries and other fluff. This advice of mine is in line with my general advice: always strike the heart. Don't strike the extremities. Don't waste time.

Correct. Have you ever done eyelid gazing? This is a passive visualization exercise where you close your eyes and watch the darkened space behind your eyelids. At first you see what people call "phosphenes" and maybe some splotches of color. Later you may see some abstract geometric shapes. Eventually you may see some what looks like gears or machines. Then you may see faces. They may appear static. Later they might seem like they're smiling or saying something, more animated. Then you may see bodies in addition to faces. Then you may see something that resembles an open space, and a vague sense of environment. Eventually a full blown dream scene can develop from this. Now consider how these people, with seemingly independent minds and personalities emerge from the space of your own mind, when given half a chance, such as during an eyelid gazing exercise. Subjectivities represent viewpoints, and viewpoints can evolve arbitrarily. Because of the possibility for viewpoints evolving arbitrarily, it's possible to experience what I call subjective convergence and subjective divergence. Subjective convergence happens when your perspective gets closer to some other perspectives. When this happens, it feels like you're sharing an experience. The more convergent the subjectivities, the more sharing seems to happen. And the opposite is true for divergence. So one example of divergence would be you going to sleep while your friend stays in your room to watch. Your friend will then see your body laying motionlessly on the bed. While you will experience a world that is perhaps nothing like this Earth realm, and the friend in your room may no longer be present in your dream world. That's what I call subjective divergence. That's just one example of it. You can choose to involve other people into your visionary process. Depending on how you involve other people, you can grant them powers or you can rob them of powers. This will not improve or hurt anyone because everyone has the same power, and when two subjectivities dream incompatible dreams, they simply diverge each into their own worlds with their own sets of relatively compatible beings. That's the manifestation process. Yes, this can happen assuming I've involved enough other beings into my vision. If I consider other beings as truly independent observers, I can no longer dictate what their vision will be like. When I wave my hand in front of your face, you are almost forced to see it. Why? And why "almost"? Well, "almost" because you can ignore my waving around to such a profound extent, that you won't see anything at all. This is what's known as a negative hallucination in hypnosis. It's when you can't see something that is "actually" "there." So even if I am waving my hand in front of your face, in truth, I am not able to 100% force you to see anything. You still maintain sovereignty of your experience. But assuming you're an ordinary being, your sovereignty is lost in a drunken stupor, since most of your activity is a result of habituation and craving with virtually no intent left open for something creative and amazing. So as an ordinary being, you can be abused pretty easily, because people can exploit your habits and cravings against you. So if I know you crave contact with your family, I can take your family hostage and demand a ransom. That's what I mean by exploitation. If I know your cravings, I can take advantage of you. But this exploitation can be very very subtle. It doesn't have to be something stupid like a kidnapping. It can be psychological and spiritual manipulation of the most subtle kind that you'd never be able to detect as an ordinary being. And how do you think I'd know what your habituations and cravings were? Well, I'd judge them by my own! Haha.. I mean, I know your weakness by judging my own weakness, and then reasonably assuming that if our subjectivities intersect, we must share a very significant portion of weaknesses. If you were too different from me, I'd not be able to see you at all, because you'd then be in a realm different from my realm. In other words, we tend to witness beings similar to ourselves, plus or minus a few points. Of course there can be some exceptions to this. There are no hard rules. But that's the tendency as I see it.