goldisheavy

No, I'm not talking about a habit formation in the ultimate sense, that's just your interpretation of my words. But, on the other hand, it does become a habit formation in the physical brain, that's why various yogic adepts talk about samadhi samskaras in the brain, neuron patterns in the brain that actually reflect states of realization that one makes more prevalent in life through focus, and then one doesn't need to focus intentionally as it's integrated naturally through direct cognition with absolutely every phenomenal arising due to practice and application, integration and finally complete realization of all nature as it arises.

Forget all this talk about the brain.

Samsara is a habit formation that can last indefinitely.

Nirvana can last indefinitely for the exact same reason as Samsara!

You change the samsaric mental habits into the nirvanic ones. It's precisely because samsara is in actuality nothing other than mental habits that it can be changed. And when you change a habit you get another habit as a result. You don't get any kind of absence of habit. You just get a different habit. Changing a habit in a determined, focused, specific way results in a new habit. And Dharma training is indeed determined, focused and very very specific, so as you can imagine, it results in a nirvanic habit formation. This habit is beyond the brain just like the samsaric habit is beyond the brain as well (since it persists from birth to birth).

What is relative, is ultimately empty, while empty, does not deny appearances. Emptiness and appearances are inseparable.

 

You can dream many different unicorns, each with different colours. Are they ultimately different or same? Everything is dream-like.

Crap answer. You're weaseling here by slipping into the doctrine-talk. Instead you should try to confront the discrepancy between the ultimate truth as you tell it and appearances. And I mean, confront it in personal terms. Don't run to the doctrine for help. Tell me how you resolve this dichotomy. Why doesn't the relative realm look anything like what you explain the ultimate truth is?

In what sense is intentionality dependent and in what sense is it not dependent?

As I told Simple Jack:

 

"The deluded mind is what projects inherent nature to the aggregates and the interacting conditions.

 

Since all that dependently originates are like magical appearances, without a real place of origin, abidance, and destination, there is no true interaction of different entities - and therefore seeing from the perspective of this natural state of interconnectedness, all is self originated."

 

 

And because I am going to have my driving lessons now and I'm a lazy hearer, I'm going to quote David Loy:

 

"...the hierarchy that causality constructs must collapse into an interpenetration in which each event is equally conditioned by the whole and manifests that whole as the only thing in the universe.

 

"...we find ourselves in a universe of sunya-events, none of which can be said to occur for the sake of any other. Each nondual event -- every leaf-flutter, wandering thought, and piece of litter -- is whole and complete in itself, because although conditioned by everything else in the universe and thus a manifestation of it, for precisely that reason it is not subordinated to anything else but becomes an unconditioned end-in-itself..."

 

"...the hierarchy that causality constructs must collapse into an interpenetration in which each event is equally conditioned by the whole and manifests that whole as the only thing in the universe..."

This is a terrible "answer." Next time try to answer 1) directly and 2) from your personal experience and understanding. Don't preach at me. Just answer my question in the most straightforward and direct way you can. Don't use my questions as an opportunity to preach dependent origination, because I understand DO better than you do, so there's no need to preach at me. I want you to simply answer my questions as if we were having a real discussion.

My question has two parts to it, so I expect a two part answer. I can answer my own question in two small paragraphs, one talking about the dependent aspect and one talking about the independent aspect. I expect no less from you.

Ultimately there is no (inherently existing) causes and conditions that can be established, precisely because everything is dependently originated and empty.

 

So ultimately speaking, there are no differences, nor sameness.

So if what you describe is the ultimate truth, how do you explain the appearance of the relative realm, which is nothing like what you describe in the ultimate truth?

The bliss/direct insight of realization is steady and unending and naturally integrated with every phenomenal arising.

You're describing an intentional habit formation. It's not permanent just because it can be sustained indefinitely.

Also dependently originated. Due to imprints, influences, thought processes, etc. I do not believe in free will and I do not believe in determinism since these necessarily imply a dualistic split and each pole having control over the other.

In what sense is intentionality dependent and in what sense is it not dependent?

Different causes and conditions give rise to different appearance.

I assume causes and conditions don't have any inherent self either. If you agree, how can you talk about different causes and conditions? How do you differentiate something that has no identity?

Different causes and conditions give rise to different appearance.

How about intent?

There is no universal soul, there are only diverse appearances. Even 'there is' does not apply ultimately.

 

To share experiences it implies there is a universal experiencer. No such thing can be found.

Try to get to the meat of my question. You're over there, and I am over here. You answer to the name xabir and I answer to the name goldisheavy. Why is that? Why are you unique?

Question 2: if I were standing in the same room with you, would you get instantly confused as to which being you were?

Hmm, I am not sure I agree. The Absolute has an experience level to it as well, otherwise it would be completely meaningless and irrelevant.

I disagree.

There is no 'me'. Just: appearances playing.

If that's the case, why don't all beings share your experiences? For example, when you're in your room typing on the forums, why don't all beings experience being in the same room typing on the same forum? If there is no you, surely this would be the logical consequence. As it stands, it seems like your experiences enjoy a degree of uniqueness and specialness, since they are private to you and other people don't find themselves in the same situations you find yourself in. So how do you account for this if there is no "you".

Didn't you say possibilities extend into the infinite and are in fact known in context of that very potentiality?

Do you mean the idea that if you know one meaning, you ultimately know them all?

Ok, I think I understand you now.

 

So all possible meanings. Now, as you've said, this total array of meanings does not change. Why and how so?

Just think about it. We're talking about possibilities here and not actualities. Focus on the meaning of possibility and try to understand why possibility is something that cannot change. Try to follow the implications of what it would mean if possibilities changed.

You don't understand how absurd the implications of permanence would be.

http://www.cttbusa.o...shurangama6.asp

I suggest reading the whole chapter, but if you're in a hurry (or just lazy), start with 2:41:

The Buddha told the great king, "By watching the ceaseless changes of these transformations, you awaken and know of your extinction, but do you also know that at the time of extinction there is something in your body which does not become extinct?

Buddha was the best troll.

Here's my problem with this. It's clear that insight and wisdom liberate. But, if one constantly trys to maintain this insight, or a state of being insightful, isn't that making this insight into another permanent self to guard against impermanence? Isn't that the very tendency which is the cause of suffering, which we seek to eliminate in the first place?

When insight becomes a habit, it doesn't require a huge energy output to be sustained. Still, even in this state it's not permanent. But it lasts indefinitely as long as you're intent on it.

You don't understand how absurd the implications of permanence would be.

Keep looking. Not everything changes. Notice something that doesn't change? (hint: might want to check in with the Surangama Sutra for hints)

Ok, so what doesn't change is the total array of meaning.

 

I'm still not clear on what you mean by "total array of meaning."

OK, before you can imagine total array of meaning, you should see if you recognize that meanings are diverse and infinitely contextualized.

For example, when you talk about a tea cup, what do you mean? Well, you mean it's something used to hold tea. Tea is usually served hot, so it's something that's not likely to snap and break when hot tea is poured into it. So a tea cup is unlikely to be made of glass, which has a tendency to fracture under rapid temperature change. What does it mean for something to fracture? It means the object loses its integrity. How do things fracture and why? Physics talks about this. Why is object integrity important? It's important because we don't want tea to hit the ground. We want tea to be contained in the cup. Why would tea hit the ground without the cup? Gravity. Etc.

So there are two things to notice. One thing is that the meaning of tea cup is tied to every other meaning. You can realize this if you keep going. You can't know what a tea cup means unless you know all that other stuff, which is a huge amount of stuff.

But aren't there alternatives? Well, sure. Instead of tea cup you can talk about a tea pot. A tea pot is not a tea cup. It's something different. What else can we talk about? We can talk about tea bags. that's different again. Or just bags. Again that's different. Or we can talk about up and down, left and right, north and south. Etc. All these meanings can become dominant at some point in time, which is to say, not only do they enter conscious awareness, but they perch themselves on the tip of that consciousness, front and center.

But besides all these things we have things like wurblers, fooramers, grozufici, and so on. These are meanings that are not currently known because they fall below even the subconscious level. It would be nearly impossible to describe right now, given our current conditions, what a wurbler is and what is its importance and so on. There are other realms where terms like "gravity" make no sense, nor do "up/down" etc.

So this alerts you to the context which stretches toward all the knowns and even toward all the unknowns.

So if you can imagine considering all possible meanings, then we're talking about the total array of meaning as I've used that term in this thread.

Independent as in unchanged, unaffected by its contents.

Cognition has aspects that are dependent and aspects that are not. Read my post again because I've edited more to it to make this clear. The aspect of cognition that doesn't change is the total array of meaning. What changes is the selection.

Does the totality have parts? What do you mean by totality?

It's an abstract concept. It asks you to consider more than what is instantly obvious.

Is there cognition independent of the contents of cognition?

What do you mean by "independent"?

Do you see the non existent divide you are creating between cognition and the contents of cognition?

What's the difference!

There is a difference. When you examine the conscious aspect of cognition, which is the obvious self-evident aspect, you find such contents to be partial in some way. For example just the cup, or just the table, or just the room you are in, etc... they are always specific and exclude other possibilities (both imaginable and unimaginable possibilities), as well as excluding aspects and parts of the total situation.

So the contents are always fragmentary, partial, incomplete, while cognition is beyond that in its totality. The totality of cognition is always complete, including even the totality of the unimaginable into its context.

The truth of cognition is deeper and more profound than the truth of the teacup or any other content. Contents are always partial. In other words, the possibilities for various diverse perceptions always greatly exceed the specific manifestations present now. Your sense of vision could be experiencing so many other things than it is experiencing now. That's what I mean here. Whatever you experience consciously is incomplete with regard to the total array of possibilities.

To say it in a different way it will be like this. There is a total array of possibilities. Out of this array, an infinitely tiny bundle of possibilities will be raised to the foreground of consciousness, while the rest will remain split between near total unconsciousness and subconsciousness. We could express this with a value from 0 to 100. 0 means definitely unconscious and 100 means definitely conscious. So all the things in this vast array have values approaching 0 but never quite 0 (that would be too extreme), and things at the peak of your conscious focus have value approaching 100 but never 100. Thanks to the principle of uncertainty these values are not numbers like 4.5. Rather they are values like 4.5(+/-0.5) and so on. +/- part reflect uncertainty and instability (impossible to pin anything to a number, only to a range). The contents of the infinite array of possibilities only have meaning with respect to each other. So you need the entire infinite array to make sense of any of its specific elements, because all the meanings within the array are dependent on each other. And yet, only an infinitely tiny part of that array will expose itself to the conscious awareness. So let's say you look at the tea cup, you get something like tea cup 99.0(+/-0.5), meaning, you're pretty damn sure you're seeing a real tea cup. If you saw the same teacup vividly, but had doubts about its reality, it would be like tea cup 90.0(+/-8.5). Something like that. On the scale of 0 to 100, let's say 0 to 30 is unconscious, 30 to 70 is subconscious, and 70+ is conscious. Obviously tea cup will be surrounded by other objects and knowledges that make sense of it, all with various values. These objects and knowledges will be further surrounded and so on up to infinity. And as we move away from the center of attention things drop off into subconsciousness and unconsciousness.

This model is not to be taken literally. (Habit is not part of the model, for example) But the purpose of all this is to get one simple idea across: whatever you are conscious off depends for its meaning on an infinite array of meanings, vast number of which are beyond even imagination. So when we talk of the contents of cognition, we're just talking about the tip of the iceberg, just the conscious contents, and at best, perhaps, the subconscious, but practically never the whole process as such. Intent is practically never talked about. Selecting elements from the bag of possibilities is intentional. You choose what you want to see and how to see it and so on. Intent is something that guides the contents, or selects them, but it is not in itself something that can be selected or deselected. So intent is something that exists over and above the infinite bag of meaning. That's another reason why cognition is not the same thing as its contents.

So the selections vary, but the infinite array is always the same one. Intent changes direction (changes how it selects meanings out of the total array of meanings), but it never goes away or comes into being. The closest intent can get to "going away" is to enter a relaxed (less selective) state.

I don't know of any thing in the universe that is permanent.

Look harder.

It is unchangeable, in the sense that the insight is permanent.

Insight is not permanent. If insight was permanent there is no way it could be developed or realized.

In the DL's tradition, as is Buddhism in general, the emphasis has always been on awareness - awareness of the relative, in which an "I" can be found, and awareness of the absolute, where "I" can be deconstructed if one so chooses. Both can be beneficial, depending on one's disposition. Each complements the other when the right View and choices are put in place.

Both the self and no-self are relative in the way Seth is talking about them, because both are specific experiences that only have meaning with respect to each other. So for example, lack of a story tying everything together was meaningful in comparison with previously being aware of just such a story. As the experience of a unifying story faded, a new kind of experience was born. From one relative to the next.

So all these experiences are relative: closed/open, self/no-self, ignorance/wisdom, etc.

In Buddhism the idea of not-self (different from no self) is not an experience, but the truth of all experiences. In other words, the experience of self is not-self (in that it has only meaning relative to other possibilities, and no inherent meaning), and the experience of no self is also not-self.

A person cannot get closer to (or further away from) the absolute by changing one experience for another.

In fact it's precisely by confusing the relative with the absolute that the problem starts. Confusing the relative experience of self and confusing the relative experience of no self for the absolute are both undesirable sorts of confusions to have.

In what sense is it not dependent on its contents?

 

In other words, what is the difference between "it" and its "contents"?

When we talk about the mind as an "it" we're not being precise. But we have to discuss something, so it's natural to use loose language. Specifically when we use words like "it" we're using a word that normally refers to some kind of object, or something specific.

So with this in mind, with great caution, we can say that the mind is not dependent on its contents in the sense that there is always cognition occurring. The details of cognition vary, but cognition has no beginning and no end, it just keeps happening. There no specific content of cognition that can stop cognition.

You are so scared of answering this. It's hilarious. You have no idea, do you?

I'm not scared. I just don't want to promote ignorance.

Ok, I believe that the mind you're talking about is independent of thought. Apart here means independent. It is the source of thoughts, but yet is unchanged by thoughts.

Well, the state of mind depends on its content. So in some sense the mind is dependent on various content in it, and in some sense it's not.

What I believe you are talking about is the alaya -- rebirth consciousness.

Not necessarily. I don't like to use sanskrit jargon for that very reason. It just brings confusion. Let's use English. The mind is a word everyone understands. People have misconceptions regarding the mind, but we can clear those up. On the other hand, talking about alaya is a waste of time because none of us have a strong intuitive connection to that word. It's not part of our culture.

The mind is not just alayavijnana. The mind is your day to day mind -- this is the most important starting point. I think alaya is something like the subconscious mind the way hypnotists understand it, but that's just part of the mind, or an aspect of mind.

Semantics. You're playing games again.

Semantics is the study of meaning. You're asking me about the meaning of something very subtle and hard to understand. I am right to be cautious.

Is this mind independent and permanent?

 

Is it an independent and permanent source of thoughts?

I'm not going to answer these questions if you disregard my questions to you. I'm still waiting for you to clarify what you mean by "apart."