Mark Foote
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Posts posted by Mark Foote
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On 3/2/2024 at 10:21 PM, old3bob said:it's late so just a partial reply for now, I'd say the quote is partly right, "the good person does not imagine" the good person knows beyond normal knowing without a shadow of doubt, otherwise it would all be the "vanity of Vanities" . The historic Buddha knew that he went "beyond the beyond" (beyond the 8th liberation) from the witness he gave, did he not (?) and knew and said in realization, "wonder of Wonders!
A nice translation:
“Wonder of wonders! All sentient beings inherently possess the wisdom and virtues of the tathagata. But because of delusion and attachment, they are unable to actualize these qualities.”
(translation from: https://www.ctworld.org.tw/english-96/html/01_3Periods.html)The source is not cited in the above link, but I see that on another site, the source is referred to as the "Garland Sutra". I assume that's the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra. From Wikipedia:
The Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra was written in stages, beginning from at least 500 years after the death of the Buddha. One source claims that it is "a very long text composed of a number of originally independent scriptures of diverse provenance, all of which were combined, probably in Central Asia, in the late third or the fourth century CE." Japanese scholars such as Akira Hirakawa and Otake Susumu meanwhile argue that the Sanskrit original was compiled in India from sutras already in circulation which also bore the name "Buddhavatamsaka".
So, no, I don't believe Gautama the Shakyan ever said that, although it's a lovely sentiment.
Meanwhile, as far as being able "to actualize these qualities":When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.
When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point…
Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.(Dogen, "Genjo Koan", tr Tanahashi)
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21 hours ago, Bindi said:So, I had a dream about this topic which I’d like to share. “I” was driving along, and there was a bit of water on the road so I started to fishtail from left to right repeatedly, always just managing to stay in control. I was then sitting in a University lecture hall and I noticed on the stage where the lecturer was that there was a tree. In the next scene I was barging through a couple to get somewhere, and then I was under the tree and taking a piece of fruit and eating it. The fruit looked like a baby squash and had the texture of dates and tasted a bit like a fig, and it had a small bunch of spinach leaves growing downwards from its underside. I felt a bit ashamed that I had barged through the couple so I offered a piece of fruit to the man and he accepted it and ate it.
Then the trunk of the tree disappeared and only the branches and leaves and fruit remained, suspended in the air. I sat at a dining table under the suspended crown of the tree thinking I would like to get more fruit, but that it would be too uncouth to stand up on the table, so I just sat there waiting and the dream ended.
I do think this dream refers to kundalini by the action of my driving, the constant fishtailing which is the same motion as a snake, and the fact that I was driving the car suggests to me that “i” was in the role of kundalini consciousness. The couple that I barged through to me were the subtle energy channels on the side of the central channel where they cross, and my offering the fruit to the man because I was a bit ashamed (immense overtones of the Adam Eve story here) in my interpretation was offering the fruit of the tree of knowledge to the masculine subtle energy channel which I equate with the mental plane - this image is where I get the idea that the mundane mental level is brought along on the ‘spiritual’ journey.
I found it interesting that I only had one piece of fruit and the man only had one also, I also found it interesting that the trunk disappeared and that I was left waiting at the dining table underneath “the crown” for more.
A fundamental question must be am I mapping my experience onto a Christian format, or is this the reality of the subtle energy system. I strongly think the latter myself. Bums thoughts welcome.
What a profound dream!
I follow a progression like this in my sitting, for awhile now. I drive, I'm at a tree with a trunk, there's a man and woman in the active and receptive aspects of my effort, there's a taste of action by virtue of the placement of attention rather than volition, then there's no trunk but just a recognition of something that I have already partaken of.
Forgive me if you've already read this, from a post of mine last fall:
Although attention can be directed to the movement of breath, necessity in the movement of breath can also direct attention, as I wrote previously:
There can… come a moment when the movement of breath necessitates the placement of attention at a certain location in the body, or at a series of locations, with the ability to remain awake as the location of attention shifts retained through the exercise of presence.
There’s a frailty in the structure of the lower spine, and the movement of breath can place the point of awareness in such a fashion as to engage a mechanism of support for the spine, often in stages.
... Foyan (12th-century Chinese Zen teacher) spoke of “looking for a donkey riding on the donkey”. The degree of “self-surrender” required to allow necessity to place attention, and the presence of mind required to “lay hold” as the placement of attention shifts, make the conscious experience of “riding the donkey” elusive. (Shunryu) Suzuki provided an analogy:
If you are going to fall, you know, from, for instance, from the tree to the ground, the moment you, you know, leave the branch you lose your function of the body. But if you don’t, you know, there is a pretty long time before you reach to the ground. And there may be some branch, you know. So you can catch the branch or you can do something. But because you lose function of your body, you know [laughs], before you reach to the ground, you may lose your conscious[ness].
(“To Actually Practice Selflessness”, August Sesshin Lecture Wednesday, August 6, 1969, San Francisco; “fell” corrected to “fall”; transcript from shunryusuzuki.com)
Suzuki offered the analogy in response to the travails of his students, who were experiencing pain in their legs sitting cross-legged on the floor. In his analogy, he suggested the possibility of an escape from pain through a presence of mind with the function of the body.
The difficulty is that most people will lose consciousness before they cede activity to the location of attention–they lose the presence of mind with the placement of attention, because they can’t believe that action in the body is possible without “doing something”:
... When a presence of mind is retained as the placement of attention shifts, then the natural tendency toward the free placement of attention can draw out thought initial and sustained, and bring on the stages of concentration:
… there is no need to depend on teaching. But the most important thing is to practice and realize our true nature… [laughs]. This is, you know, Zen.
(Shunryu Suzuki, Tassajara 68-07-24 transcript from shunryusuzuki.com)
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On 3/3/2024 at 9:00 AM, Cobie said:
There are myriad differences, none of which end talk about reunification; Filioque does.
Learned a lot today, just from a brief reading of Wikipedia entries under "Filioque" and related topics. Thanks to you, Cobie, and snowymountains.
Cobie, how come you know so much about the topic?
The outcomes, with regard to the world's faiths, don't speak well for mechanisms of transmission (so to speak).
Science has its usefulness, in standardizing methodology and especially in predicting physical outcomes. Religion as the science of arriving at the deathless, not so much. -
Photo by Bob Edwards.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco California
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For snowymountains:
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30 minutes ago, snowymountains said:Thanks Mark, very interesting, the Schism happened a long time after Constantine though, different era.
Yes, I just thought that was an interesting follow-on from the article you linked. I wonder what differences there are in the practice of Christianity, between the two churches.
Nothing to do with the best translation of "The Golden Flower", of course.
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8 hours ago, snowymountains said:Constantine saw Christianity’s belief in one god as a way to unify the empire that had been so badly divided for two decades. But he discovered that Christianity itself was not unified. So, he called the Council of Nicea in 325 to bring together the 1,800 bishops from around the empire to work out official doctrine and provide the basis for a unified Church. Constantine paid for the entire council and even paid for travel, giving bishops the right of free transportation on the imperial postal system.
The council laid the foundation of orthodox theology (Catholic theology) and declared several differing theologies heresies. Constantine’s support initially gave Orthodoxy the ability to require Christians to adopt their doctrinal formulation. While during the next few decades, the church’s fortunes waxed and waned, within a century, Christianity had been declared the official religion of the Roman Empire and non-Christian religions were in steep decline.
On July 16, 1054, Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius was excommunicated from the Christian church based in Rome, Italy. Cerularius’s excommunication was a breaking point in long-rising tensions between the Roman church based in Rome and the Byzantine church based in Constantinople (now called Istanbul). The resulting split divided the European Christian church into two major branches: the Western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. This split is known as the Great Schism, or sometimes the “East-West Schism” or the “Schism of 1054.”
The Great Schism came about due to a complex mix of religious disagreements and political conflicts. One of the many religious disagreements between the western (Roman) and eastern (Byzantine) branches of the church had to do with whether or not it was acceptable to use unleavened bread for the sacrament of communion. (The west supported the practice, while the east did not.) Other objects of religious dispute include the exact wording of the Nicene Creed and the Western belief that clerics should remain celibate.
These religious disagreements were made worse by a variety of political conflicts, particularly regarding the power of Rome. Rome believed that the pope—the religious leader of the western church—should have authority over the patriarch—the religious authority of the eastern church. Constantinople disagreed. Each church recognized their own leaders, and when the western church eventually excommunicated Michael Cerularius and the entire eastern church. The eastern church retaliated by excommunicating the Roman pope Leo III and the Roman church with him.
While the two churches have never reunited, over a thousand years after their split, the western and eastern branches of Christianity came to more peaceable terms. In 1965, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I lifted the longstanding mutual excommunication decrees made by their respective churches.
(https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-schism/)-
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On 2/29/2024 at 9:59 PM, old3bob said:Well Mark do you think or have come across it in Buddhist texts that the historic Buddha saw that there is only one of us in countless quadrillions of forms which are all relative?
Seriously, though:
... a good [person], by passing quite beyond the plane of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, enters on and abides in the stopping of perception and feeling; and when [such a person] has seen by means of wisdom [their] cankers are caused to be destroyed. And… this [person] does not imagine [him or her self] to be aught or anywhere or in anything.
(MN III 42-45, Vol III pg 92-94)
I don't expect to get there (conscious experience of feeling and perceiving in the absence of volition). As I wrote in my most recent post:
Shunryu Suzuki described the true practice of seated meditation as “just sitting”, meaning that “doing something” in the act of sitting has ceased. I believe, as Gautama the Buddha said, that the cessation of “doing something” in speech, body, or mind is a contact of freedom.
... I practice more now, as I see that the cessation I experience in “just sitting” helps to provide a sense of timing in my life, a sense of timing that seems related to a whole beyond what I can know.
"A whole beyond what I can know"--that's more of a "self" than Gautama acknowledged, I'll admit, but it's really not about a "thing" but about action. As Dogen put it:
Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.
(Genjo Koan, tr Tanahashi) -
On 2/29/2024 at 9:59 PM, old3bob said:Well Mark do you think or have come across it in Buddhist texts that the historic Buddha saw that there is only one of us in countless quadrillions of forms which are all relative?
old3bob and the notion of Self:
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16 hours ago, oak said:And they better be daoist beers...
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On 2/28/2024 at 12:34 PM, steve said:... With persistence, through coming to know who I am not, I have the opportunity to actually discover the truth of who I am, which is far more powerful and has far greater potential than I ever imagined.
It's an interesting point. I believe that in the first four Nikayas, at least, Gautama usually stopped at "who I am not", as here:Whatever… is material shape, past, future or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, or whatever is far or near, (a person), thinking of all this material shape as ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self’, sees it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Whatever is feeling… perception… the habitual tendencies… whatever is consciousness, past, future, or present (that person), thinking of all this consciousness as ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self’, sees it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. (For one) knowing thus, seeing thus, there are no latent conceits that ‘I am the doer, mine is the doer’ in regard to this consciousness-informed body.”
(MN III 18-19, Pali Text Society Vol. III pg 68)I see that as a major difference between the teachings of Gautama, and the teachings found in most other wisdom traditions.
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On 2/27/2024 at 4:49 PM, moment said:still, a sight to see
I got tired of myself
maybe more later
maybe more later
but for right now, gone splashing
out in the desert -
22 hours ago, silent thunder said:
Of late my experience has evolved from the notion of a human teacher arriving, to that of when one is listening and present in life... all of nature reveals as a teacher.
... in the end I am convinced that everything I need to know I learn by being where I am, as I am. I just have to be open to it.
(yers truly, from Post: “I tried your practice last night”- humbleone, from “The Dao Bums”)-
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This place is goin' to the dogs...
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On 1/5/2021 at 5:23 AM, Maddie said:The teaching that initially got my attention was the four Noble truths, specifically the second Noble Truth that desire is the cause of suffering. This still seems to be my main focus in Buddhism and the thing that makes the most sense to me.
I wonder which teachings got other people's attention and what teachings are other people's primary approach and practice?
The classic cases of Ch'an and Zen were what got my attention. Read a lot of Alan Watts, back in the high school days, but although I understood what he had to say, I was not satisfied with my mind. A friend turned me on to the zazen instructions in the back of "Three Pillars of Zen", so I began to sit--it was hard to sit even five minutes with my legs crossed, at first.
In college, a friend took me down to hear Kobun Chino Otogawa speak at the Santa Cruz Zen Center, in California. I attended a number of his lectures, and found him remarkable.
In about 1975, I found a copy of Henry Clarke Warren's "Buddhism in Translations". The material from Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga was clearly garbage to me, and there's a lot of it in Warren's work, but the material from the Nikayas about the concentrations fascinated me. In the early '80's, I bought the books of the first four Nikayas from the Pali Text Society, and over the course of a few years read them.
They're not different from Zen, when you get right down to it (A reconciliation of Theravadin and Zen practice).-
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On 1/5/2021 at 10:19 AM, EmeraldHead said:Did Gautama ever answer WHAT he was? not a self, not a nonself...but what?
Your worship will become a deva?
No indeed, brahmin. I'll not become a deva.
Then your worship will become a gandarva?
No indeed, brahmin, I'll not become a gandarva.
A yakka, then?
No indeed, brahmin. Not a yakka.
Then your worship will become a human being?
No indeed, brahmin. I'll not become a human being.
... Who then, pray, will your worship become?
... Just as, brahmin, a lotus, blue, red, or white, though born in the water, grown up in the water, when it reaches the surface stands there unsoiled by the water,--just so, brahmin, though born in the world, grown up in the world, having overcome the world, I abide unsoiled by the world. Take it that I am a Buddha, brahmin.
(AN Book of Fours 36, Pali Text Society AN Vol 2 p 44)
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On 2/11/2024 at 10:57 AM, Maddie said:
Just curious what everyone's favorite or least favorite Suttas/Sutras were and why?
As far as favorites, I think that would have to be Maha-Parinibbana Sutta, because of a few things Gautama said in that sutta:(from Part Two: The Journey to Vesali)
32. ... What more does the community of bhikkhus expect from me, Ananda? I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back.
Now I am frail, Ananda, old, aged, far gone in years. This is my eightieth year, and my life is spent. Even as an old cart, Ananda, is held together with much difficulty, so the body of the Tathagata is kept going only with supports. It is, Ananda, only when the Tathagata, disregarding external objects, with the cessation of certain feelings, attains to and abides in the signless concentration of mind, [19] that his body is more comfortable.
33. "Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.
"And how, Ananda, is a bhikkhu an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge?
34. "When he dwells contemplating the body in the body, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world; when he dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, the mind in the mind, and mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world, then, truly, he is an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; having the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge.
35. "Those bhikkhus of mine, Ananda, who now or after I am gone, abide as an island unto themselves, as a refuge unto themselves, seeking no other refuge; having the Dhamma as their island and refuge, seeking no other refuge: it is they who will become the highest, [20] if they have the desire to learn."
(from Part Six: The Passing Away)
8. ... Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!
(DN 16 PTS: D ii 72 chapters 1-6 "Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha", tr Sister Vajira & Francis Story, © 1998)My favorite translation of that last would be: "Everything changes. Work out your own salvation!"
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20 hours ago, moment said:
Lakes in the desert,
Mirage whispers of cool blue,
Deceptive relief
Deceptive relief,'cause it's only a foot deep
still, a sight to see
photo by James Marvin Phelps, Lake Manly in the Mojave a few days ago
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On 2/26/2024 at 1:43 PM, thelerner said:
I read somewhere that the GF instructions had an oral component- teacher to student. I'm inclined to agree. That there's an ingredient X.. missing in the instructions.
There's a missing ingredient in all the wisdom traditions, IMHO--it's missing because it must be supplied through the experience of the individual.
But usually in counting breathing or following breathing, you feel as if you are doing something, you know– you are following breathing, and you are counting breathing. This is, you know, why counting breathing or following breathing practice is, you know, for us it is some preparation– preparatory practice for shikantaza because for most people it is rather difficult to sit, you know, just to sit.
(“The Background of Shikantaza”, Shunryu Suzuki; San Francisco, February 22, 1970)Suzuki said that directing attention to the movement of breath (“following breathing… counting breathing”) has the feeling of “doing something”, and that “doing something” makes such practice only preparatory.
Although attention can be directed to the movement of breath, necessity in the movement of breath can also direct attention, as I wrote previously:
There can… come a moment when the movement of breath necessitates the placement of attention at a certain location in the body, or at a series of locations, with the ability to remain awake as the location of attention shifts retained through the exercise of presence.
There’s a frailty in the structure of the lower spine, and the movement of breath can place the point of awareness in such a fashion as to engage a mechanism of support for the spine, often in stages.
... The flow of “doing something” in the body, of activity initiated by habit or volition, (can cease). Instead, activity is generated purely by the placement of attention, and the location of attention can flow ("just sitting").
... The difficulty is that most people will lose consciousness before they cede activity to the location of attention–they lose the presence of mind with the placement of attention, because they can’t believe that action in the body is possible without “doing something”...
(Shunryu Suzuki on Shikantaza and the Theravadin Stages)
That the activity flows and develops in particular patterns and particular locations, won't matter whose description is in hand if it's all "doing something". Doing nothing, yet everything is done, is an experience.-
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23 hours ago, Taomeow said:You're right, sometimes it's nice to share.
College days, out at Gazos Creek above Santa Cruz, letting the wind play harmonics on the guitar strings:
Learned to play this in the college days--Fahey was so weird, but such a strong alternating thumb beat.
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47 minutes ago, Taomeow said:Ink blooms on paper.
A dream of Japan dissolves.
California dreams.
California dreams
an island of sun and sandlakes in the desert
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I reworked one of my previous posts on this thread into a post on my own website.
Bindi, my apologies--I know anything having to do with the teachings of Gautama the Shakyan is like some kind of shadow-side distraction to you...
The Practice of Time
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
(Carl Jung: The Philosophical Tree; Collected Works 13: Alchemical Studies. Paragraph 335)
Shunryu Suzuki described the true practice of seated meditation as “just sitting”, meaning that “doing something” in the act of sitting has ceased. I believe, as Gautama the Buddha said, that the cessation of “doing something” in speech, body, or mind is a contact of freedom.
I don’t think the integration of childhood memories, pre-speech memories, and inured emotional responses can take place apart from that cessation of “doing something” in the body and mind and that contact of freedom.
I practice more now, as I see that the cessation I experience in “just sitting” helps to provide a sense of timing in my life, a sense of timing that seems related to a whole beyond what I can know.
I’m not looking to become enlightened, or to make the darkness conscious.
… time, just as it is, is being, and being is all time.
(Dogen: “Uji (Being-Time)”; “The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō”, tr by Waddell, Norman; Abe, Masao. SUNY Press. 2001. p 48)
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On 2/16/2024 at 7:49 PM, Keith108 said:Who’s to say what’s real?
Winter’s cold, fireplace crackling
Just now, Yin and Yang
Just now, Yin and Yang
the Siamese cats, went out
should'a seen 'em go-
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Emotions are the path
in General Discussion
Posted
Last question first, never heard of Mrs. Byron's four questions. I googled and found them, interesting.
By the way, I would not go to the website "thework.com" for the questions--within a few seconds, I got a screen saying my version of the Chrome browser needing updating, and informing me that if the update did not start directly, I should click a button prominently displayed on the page.
Chrome updates automatically, so this was clearly bogus, the button an invitation to malware hell.
My latest post (on my own site) is not intended to be a rejection of the examination of emotions, far from it, although it might read that way. I guess for me, the question is more how to proceed to open my experience, of emotions, of dreams, and of daily living. Here's the post:
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
(Carl Jung: The Philosophical Tree; Collected Works 13: Alchemical Studies. Paragraph 335)
Shunryu Suzuki described the true practice of seated meditation as “just sitting”, meaning that “doing something” in the act of sitting has ceased. I believe, as Gautama the Buddha said, that the cessation of “doing something” in speech, body, or mind is a contact of freedom.
I don’t think the integration of childhood memories, pre-speech memories, and inured emotional responses can take place apart from that cessation of “doing something” in the body and mind and that contact of freedom.
I practice more now, as I see that the cessation I experience in “just sitting” helps to provide a sense of timing in my life, a sense of timing that seems related to a whole beyond what I can know.
I’m not looking to become enlightened, or to make the darkness conscious.
… time, just as it is, is being, and being is all time.
(Dogen: “Uji (Being-Time)”; “The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō”, tr by Waddell, Norman; Abe, Masao. SUNY Press. 2001. p 48)
(The Practice of Time)