thuscomeone

Yea I can't find it. Where is it?

 

People like you laugh at the most basic questions such as "who am I?" not realizing their pinnacle importance to deconstructing basic assumptions such as "this is my mind." Or even when we say "I am using my mind?" or that my mind is communicating, or that the mind dependently originated, we have to look at with how the mind, an immaterial existence, comes about from material causes such as the eye, computer, words, and actions, moreover we must ask who is "using" the mind" whether the mind is thoughts or intentions, whether thoughts and intention are different, and so on. The entire book of Bodhidharma is actually an exploration into the concept of mind, it is not something to be easily glanced over. You still have much to learn, don't be so arrogant.

 

 

Words such as "dependent arising" "impermanence" and "no-self" are incredibly flexible in their use when we begin to actually apply them to reality. Use "nature" along with those words and you have more flexibility and the terms themselves seem equally interchangeable. I've given my own interpretations of them over and over, and even recently to you which you do not understand due to laziness, shrouded by emotions.

 

If this is not something you take likely, you would not be overcome with personal bias. Come here to learn.

 

HAHHAHAHAHHA! YOU'VE SPENT DAYS AND DAYS HOURS AND HOURS!!!!

 

MY GOD!! HAHAHAHHAAHAAHA!

 

DAYS AND HOURS???? :lol: :lol:

 

 

This is precisely the kind of attitude you should warn yourself against. Again, concepts of impermanence, dependent arising, and no separate self can all be used to arrived at a different conclusion when deciphering reality. If you've been cheerleading correctly, you'd know that Xabir and I are not arguing about the correctness of these concepts, but rather slightly differing interpretations of them.

 

Remember that Buddhism is not reality, but that there is reality which Buddhism tries to understand, as with all traditions of insight.

I just told you. When you said "where is it?", it is right there. It is that which knows, it is that knowingness, that awakeness. It is formless, that is you cannot see that basic illuminating quality of awareness yet, really, it is also all forms. Because there is no seeing apart from the seen, hearing apart from the sound, etc. I'll quote Bodhidharma for you in his "Bloodstream Sermon"

"Student: But if they don't define it, what do they mean by mind?

Bodhidharma: You ask. That's your mind. I answer. That's my mind. If I had no mind how could I answer? If you had no mind, how could you ask? That which asks is your mind. Through endless kalpas" without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that's your real mind, that's your real buddha. This mind is the buddha" says the same thing. Beyond this mind you'll never find another Buddha. To search for enlightenment or nirvana beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature the absence of cause and effect, is what's meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana. You might think you can find a Buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond the mind', but such a place doesn't exist."

Got it?

If you deny that you have a mind, you are a nihilist and you are not following any tradition of Buddhism. As I've said numerous times, the mind is obviously present. For instance, in order to deny you had a mind, you would have to use your mind thereby refuting your own position. The mind may be the one and only thing that we absolutely cannot doubt the existence of because it as sensations, thoughts, etc. is the first and final basis of our reality. It is present but it just that it is dependently arisen and impermanent (always changing). Dependent arising means that there is something (well not a "thing") present. That is what it implies. There is something there that is arising dependently. That is why it avoids nihilism. This "something" is sometimes called a "clearly apparent non existent" or a "mere appearance." It is clearly apparent because you can't deny that there is something there yet it is not truly existent.

I don't laugh at the question of "who am I?." I've thoroughly investigated that and I have found that "I" am a individual mindstream which has currently taken the form of a human being and which continuously changes and arises dependently and is thus empty. This mindstream is not nothing but it is not something (truly existent). It is beginningless and endless. There is no controller in this mindstream which is outside of the sensations manipulating the sensations. Any supposed controller would be inseparable from the sensations themselves. That is, there are not "two" things in this mindstream - a hearer and hearing. There is just one happening in which the hearer and hearing are undivided. Now I don't know everything about who "I" am yet but I do know some very very important things. And I am not going to deny that.

No, no, no no, those words are not flexible at all. They have very precise meanings within Buddhism. Dependent arising can't be used to mean independent and impermanence cannot be used to mean permanence. You can't just have words mean whatever you want them to mean. You will get absolutely nowhere and will only confuse yourself.

As to how the mind "comes" from immaterial things, you have to understand that at the deepest level, the mind and material things are said to be undivided. There is no border between them. You can see this for yourself if you investigate deeply. Now this particular area - the "all is mind" stuff is something that I'm just getting into right now. So bear with me here. The ways I see this is that the mind is the all and the mind has parts and whatever has parts if empty. For instance, the mind as hearing is the all - yet that mind as hearing has parts - the person, the stick, the bell, the ears, etc. So it is empty because that mind does not have own being apart from all those parts. The whole which is the mind does not have independent being apart from the parts which make it up and the parts do not have independent being apart from other parts. Thus the parts and whole (the mind) are both empty.

Out of discord and debate oft times comes gems, and I think this is the best I've seen you do. I'm really starting to get the basic idea from this. I do believe that insults are not your way, and hope you won't be leaving.

You are right, they aren't my way. It's all a result of a lack of mindfulness. It's so easy to blame somebody else for your getting angry when in fact it is YOU yourself who gets angry.

Yea, Twit and grade a idiot are meaningless insults that teach nothing. The mods should have struck it down.

 

BTW I don't call myself Ghandi or the self-proclaimed and oft quoted THUSCOMEONE. That's your friend's trip, and he should know - anyone can see the real thuscomeone wouldn't be using twit or grade a idiot. Hey he should thank me for telling it like it is, and apologize.

 

Yea, like lucky7strikes said, he is the one who is on a ghandi-guru trip -

It's a USERNAME! What is with people on this board thinking that I think I am better than other people because of my username? I like the name, it sounds cool! I like the avatar, it looks cool in my mind! Get over it already. Good lord. I like how anybody who claims that they understand the way things are is on a "guru trip." I'm so sick of this mentality. Like this pseudo zen "true knowing is not knowing" stuff. That shtick is outdone and it's tired - get over it.

And Lucky as regards your subtle jab at my crying over dependent arising thing, if you truly knew what it meant in regards to suffering and end of suffering, you would see the beauty of it. To be in the world at the same time you are out of it. To be completely present yet completely unaffected and unmoved by events around you. Now I don't claim to be unmoved all the times but the implications of seeing dependent arising in ever experience are to be unmoved. I am not at the level of mindfulness yet where I can see it in every situation. It is as if you go back to where you always were but now it is as if there is a shield around you protecting you from all harm. I wish you could know, I really do.

As I said before, I do not usually insult people on forums. This time I just absolutely could not resist. Xabir and Lucky have been arguing for 14 pages and it's obvious that lucky7strikes is just not getting it. Or I should say that he is very confused, in one post it seems like he almost gets it and yet in another it seems like he is further away than ever.

Thuscomeone, whose first thread was named "clearing up Buddhism by Thuscomeone,"

 

Who names himself Thuscomeone,

 

Whose avatar is the Buddha looking down,

 

Who cries with joy at dependent origination and believes he has understood,

 

Get over yourself.

 

And what is this "mind" you speak of? Where is it? How exactly does it see?

 

Oh and let me re write what you wrote: Your awareness is not an "I"ness to begin with so you wrongly conflate the two. Your awareness is by nature "I"less . . Now, what does conflate mean again? I think you did it right there.

 

I never said I refuted the Buddha. I'm refuting Xabir and his posse. Buddhism has hundreds of different interpretations, tens of different schools.

 

I abide by the Buddha precisely because I am willing to say that he is wrong. If you don't understand this, you shouldn't even be in these discussions.

 

Ahem, now go cheer on the sidelines. .

I didn't want to get back into this discussion but I can't resist. You can't even find your own mind? How pathetic. You shouldn't be arguing with anybody about anything if you don't even know that you have a mind. Your mind is what is communicating with me right now. Your mind is what is seeing the words on your screen. Your mind is undeniably present, it is just ever changing, a series of mind moments rather than a solid thing and it is dependently arisen. Guess what? Do you know what you are using to ask me where my mind is? YOUR MIND. It sees forms right now dependently on the eyes, on the computer in front of it, on you and the words that you are typing, on this website and all the people who have created it, on a million different conditions and causes.

"who believes he has understood." I can cite find you numerous article, numerous books, numerous quotes straight from the mouths of Buddhist masters from all different traditions that all agree with my spin on dependent arising and impermanence and no separate self. This is not something I take lightly. I know that I have the correct understanding of these things from the Buddhist perspective because I have spent days and days, hours upon hours confirming these insights. Please don't try to tell me what I don't know. You really have no idea.

Sure there are different interpretations of Buddhism but I can guarantee you that 95% of them - zen, dzogchen, theravada, mahayana, vajrayana - agree that things like impermanence, dependent arising and no separate self are the basic facts of reality. Know why? Because these are the basic teachings of the buddha. So any school which calls themselves buddhist is going to have these. It just so happens that thusness and xabir talk about all these things (in the correct way).

I didn't side step your question at all. I explained clearly my position in regards to seeing. You scanned it without any real efforts to understand. So I simply copied and pasted the same answer again, at which point you said it was a bit clearer, which moreorless showed not only your lack of comprehension but also the unwillingness to consider a different view of reality. I know completely what Xabir is talking about, and no they are no the most basic facts of reality. I've again and again pointed out its flaws, which Xabir is reluctant to actually investigate for himself, he simply parrots quotes and excerpts.

 

The trick to thinking the way you do: "when I investigate the seer, there is no one there but seeing" is that you are consciously moving your awareness, the "I" ness into the seeing. It is like a man who tries to find point B, and upon arriving at point B and looking out from it, wrongly concludes "there is no point B" or "I am point B." Moreover, there is no such distinguishable experience of "seeing." in the first place. There are many ways sight can be experienced, just as point B can be seen from different angles. For example, conscious sight, where you put all your awareness into the act of seeing, is a different experience than habitual sight, where you are perhaps engrossed with listening to music and so your "seeing" rolls on through habits instead.

 

You must again investigate into seeing. It's not as simple as you'd like to put it: "there is just seeing." Seeing is usually experienced by the disparity of the seer, the origin or visual perspective (the eye,) and that which is not the make up of that agent of perspective (the "outside"). However, when meditation reaches certain stages into out of body experiences, one realizes that seeing is not limited to the physical make up of the eye, but that it is wholly a matter of a localized perspective of "here" and "there." Yet there is no inherent beingness to these locations, just as the eye is not the only way to see. We can enter states of being where the localized "here" becomes global, at which point the seen becomes the seer, the state of I"ness."

 

By the way, you are contributing absolutely nothing to the content of this discussion.

 

Cheerleaders can just stay on the sidelines please.

I am not a cheerleader you twit. Sure there is no inherent beingness to any locations. But there is still the distinguishable act of seeing which dependently arises. Seeing a bird in the sky, that is a distinguishable act of seeing of which the seer is contained within. You see, it is that simple. But you don't want it to be simple do you? Why are you making this so hard on yourself? You may not need the eye to see but you need the mind. You need the eye to see forms but you can still see darkness without the eye. In which case, you still have a mind. Wherever there is any type of seeing, forms or formless or whatever there must be the mind. That is really all there is to it. What are you talking about, moving your "I"ness. Your awareness is not an "I"ness to begin with so you wrongly conflate the two. Your awareness is by nature "I"less (devoid of a separate controller/doer). You need to stop acting like you have refuted the Buddha and all who have followed him. You are the one who has found all these flaws in their model of reality. Right. Get over yourself.

Impermanence, change is not a basic fact of reality? Dependent arising is not a basic fact of reality? No separate self (the presence of the mind and sensations basically) is not a basic fact of reality?

I don't usually get mad at people in discussions but you are a grade A idiot.

I am out of this discussion for good and I want nothing further to do with you. Goodbye.

You cannot see beyond this, and it is due to your conditioning and the amount you have invested in Thusness and this view. You have an extensive blog dedicated to your views, probably have practiced for a long time under this doctrine and have made much sacrifices to confirm your points.

 

The difference here is I have absolutely no problem with admitting that I am wrong at any given moment if what you say is pertinent to reality and reasonable, which I find it not to be.In past discussions, you've probably seen me do this, and I have expressed my gratitude likewise.

 

ON the other hand, Xabir, after all that we've discussed, tell me what I've been saying, what my perspective is, because I honestly believe you never do give a shit about what the other person says in these discussions, I see this to be absolutely arrogant.

You kidding me? Dude, what is so absurd about what Xabir is talking about? This stuff is obvious to any sane person out there - impermanence, dependent arising, no separate self. That's all he is talking about. These are the most basic facts of reality. Furthermore, you sidestepped and dodged my question about whether there is a seer apart from seeing. Sure there are different types of seeing, but there is still seeing. And there is still no seer to be found outside of that seeing. Honestly at this point I have to give you one of these

There are many ways sight can be experienced, just as point B can be seen from different angles. For example, conscious sight, where you put all your awareness into the act of seeing, is a different experience than habitual sight, where you are perhaps engrossed with listening to music and so your "seeing" rolls on through habits.

 

Now close your eyes. There is darkness you see. But we can't really call this the same "seeing" as when you have your eyes open. So what can we say is seeing and what can we say is not seeing?

 

The experiences of seeing are hence different.

 

I'm sorry this is a bit beyond you. I try to be as concise as possible. There are no difficult sentence structures or vocabulary used. You are just caught up in your admiration for Xabir to give effort to understanding what I write.

 

Also, you shouldn't just scan through people's posts, complain about not understanding it, call them a moron or expect to understand clearly, citing it as the author's fault and not yours.

No it really is not beyond me. You said "there is no distinguishable experience of seeing" which is a stupid statement. You did not say that there are different types of seeing which is what you say here. Much of what you have said in this topic is just jumbled nonsense that leads nowhere. That is not my fault. Yet that last little summary paragraph was pretty good so I have to give you credit for that.

Did you read anything I've written in the past threads carefully?

 

Obviously not.

 

Where is outside, where is inside? Where does one thing begin and end? What does it mean to distinguish? What does it mean for a thing to arise? What is interdependence? What is individuality? What is phenomena? You have to go back to ABC, and see what A, B, and C are.

 

I have addressed your question over and over.

 

Space and matter are not one not two. It is as with consciousness and manifestation. Awareness and phenomena therefore are dependent. Hearing arises in consciousness, as the ear arises, and the brain arises, due to past intentions and habits. All creation and experience come about due to a cyclical nature (habits) or a spontaneous will (free will). The interplay of consciousness and matter create the experience of "I" ness, of identification with that immediate experience, such as the body, and consequently arises the "other". Ignorance is believing in an inherent identity, clinging, to a phenomena as the origin of consciousness, this is where the slave becomes the master.

 

The exchange of "I" and "other" is where intentions arise.

 

You see, consciousness does not create any of these things out of thin air, but rather orders the void together into a coherent experience, creating distinctions in the process. Light separates from darkness, sound from silence, etc.

 

The trick to thinking the way you do: "when I investigate the seer, there is no one there but seeing" is that you are consciously moving your awareness, the "I" ness into the seeing. It is like a man who tries to find point B, and upon arriving at point B and looking out from it, wrongly concludes "there is no point B" or "I am point B." Moreover, there is no such distinguishable experience of "seeing." in the first place. There are many ways sight can be experienced, just as point B can be seen from different angles. For example, conscious sight, where you put all your awareness into the act of seeing, is a different experience than habitual sight, where you are perhaps engrossed with listening to music and so your "seeing" rolls on through habits.

There is no distinguishable act of seeing? I'm sorry...but are you a moron? You are so caught up in intellectual games that you can't see what is right in front of your face. I honestly cannot understand three quarters of what you are spewing out here. You see, I like to cut through the bullshit. And I can tell by scanning your posts that there is a lot of bullshit. And honestly, the fact that I cannot understand what you are saying is your problem, not mine. So you're watching TV using your eyes right now. That is not a distinguishable act of seeing? Really?

I have no idea why Daniel is being so ignorant. It's not about "those that can perceive this" or not. Perception and non-perception are just rising universal characteristics at that moment, same with meditative training, frameworks, teachers, etc. He must believe that his perceptions were somehow earned by him or is a superstar, when there was no one ever to earn anything in the first place, the yearning for enlightenment simply arose, then the thought to meditate, then meditation, than whatever newly developed perception. These are all just simply happenings without a doer, the universe just rolling on, rain is falling again on the other side.

 

 

Daniel didn't do any of this. There was never a Daniel to begin with. Anyways, he seems to be clinging to experiences, which one shouldn't do when investigating into the nature of reality. It's another thing to develop skills to navigate through reality, but seeing into its foundations is different.

 

 

Daniel is scared. He is scared that all those experiences and insights and effort actually means absolutely nothing under his own view of reality. He can't face his own truth.

 

 

WHAT? What the hell does this have to do with what I wrote above?

 

I never said there cannot be compassion. What I wrote above has nothing to do with arhats or arising compassion. Compassion was just an example of the three I used to illustrate another point.

 

I also never mentioned suffering being permanent or impermanent.

 

Your no-self and denial of free will is precisely nihilistic.

 

 

This is not true under your own ideology. Because there is no-self but only arising sensations and appearances and thoughts all at expense of no doer but the universe manifesting, enlightenment, the view and realization of no self (which comes about without a doer) can simply fade away as the rain evaporated back into the sky.

 

I see contradictions everywhere. Is is due to your clinging to Thusness's teachings without personal courage to re digest and re investigate them. But it is also due to your tendency to jumble together illogical ideas and random terms/quotes based on seeming similarities to give yourself a sense of understanding and confirmation when it isn't there at all.

Once again you miss the point. There is not and never has been a "daniel" as a controller outside of the controlled, a seer outside of the seeing. But there IS a "daniel" as an individual human body and individual mindstream which is simply present. For godsakes, read some of what xabir is posting for you. He is giving you gold and you are shitting all over him.

The way I see the whole "you are already enlightened, you don't have to practice thing" is that everyone already has the potential for enlightenment. Just like you have the potential to punch someone in the face. Yet just having that potential doesn't mean that you will actualize that potential, which is what enlightenment is.

The stick does not begin or end anywhere, the sound does not begin or end anywhere, the bell does not begin or end anywhere. Every disparity made is false, non of these are individual.

You really have no idea what you are talking about do you? So a stick is the same as the sound of a bell? You, a human, are the same as a tree? No distinction can be made between either of these? There is no difference between my mind and your mind? If you try to play this card, you are really just going to end up in a senseless position. Come on now, don't be stupid. There is a phenomenal world of appearances out there which is dependently arisen which labels like same and different apply to and point to. It's just that all the things that same and different and such and such point to are dependently arisen and thus empty. Everything is contained within and interdependent with everything else yet everything is individual. In my mind, denying distinctions means denying the phenomenal world and denying the phenomenal world means nihilism. Then there is no difference between right and wrong, good and evil. That is not where you want to be. You really need to study the difference between the relative and absolute. I see you are still going on about the no doer thing. And I see that you have still not addressed my point I made a while ago. Is there a seer apart from seeing, hearer apart from hearing, etc.? That is, can seeing and the seer be separated so that there are TWO things - a seer OUTSIDE of the seeing which controls and manipulates that seeing and the seeing itself? Or is the seer contained within that very seeing itself?

Not same, not different. Old Zen Koan. If you say the same, I smack you 40 times. If you say different, I smack you 40 times. Haven't you heard it?

Oh cut that out. This is one reason I sometimes don't like zen. These little games and ambiguous sayings rather than just getting down to business and cutting through the bullshit. I'm not interested in that anymore. I'm interested in clear distinctions between right knowledge and wrong knowledge. I certainly have heard this koan. And It doesn't mean that there are no correct conceptual answers, if that is what you are implying. Ever heard of "right view?" You think Zen masters don't believe in right and wrong answers? Read some dogen and get back to me. What happened to concepts are no different than non conceptuality?

Because there is a false identification with the objects, while forgetting about the light. The light can stand on it's own without any objects. Why? Because it is so. Objects are objects only because they are in the light. Otherwise they don't exist. I understand your line of questioning, but I think they are based on the mistaken premise that the Light and Objects don't have value without each other.

 

The objects don't have value without the light, but the light being self-existent and self-conscious (I'm not literally talking about Light here but consciousness), is perfectly happy to be it self (this is called Sat Chit Ananda of Existent Consciousness Bliss)

 

I know what your next question might be (potentially), as in, if Consciousness is self-existent and self-conscious, then why the need for this "ignorance"? Why are the objects needed at all?

 

Advaita's answer is that since Consciousness (Pure) cannot be categorized into a name of form, it cannot be objectively analyzed to find out the "Why". When one is stable in Objectless Consciousness, then neither the questions matter, nor any answers.

Drew, please read this article, written by another experienced scholar:

 

The Four Mahavakyas (Great Statements)

Ok, from my experience and study there are The 5 sensory consciousness', the thinking/ideation consciousness and the alaya. None of these are self existent/independent or unchanging. Try as I may, I can't find this self existent consciousness that you are talking about here. And I can't find any sort of watcher or pure subject which is witnessing the thoughts and which stands apart from the thoughts. That is you seem to be saying that there is consciousness as a light which illuminates and then there is a thought. So if I have a thought at this moment, that means there are two things involved, the light and the thought. Yet all I find from moment to moment is thought/thinking, hearing, seeing, etc. going by in rapid succession. If one were to presume that there is this light which is behind thoughts, I could only say that it couldn't be other than the thoughts themselves because the thoughts are all I can find! So then for me, there are not two things - the light/subject and the thought/object. In a moment of thinking, these two are completely one/inseparable/undivided in my own experience.

Thoughts are objects in consciousness. Think of Light and how it illuminates objects. Pure consciousness is like the Light and thoughts are like those objects, illuminated by consciousness. Like the article mentions, objects can be in both space and time or only time. Thoughts are objects/phenomena in time.

I'm still curious as to why you would divide the light which illuminates and the objects which are illuminated. It seems to me that they are the same thing.

Pure Consciousness is in the gap between thoughts. Consciousness and Awareness are not the same thing. Awareness is of objects/phenomena, and a result of consciousness with objects.

Why isn't pure consciousness thoughts themselves? Aren't thoughts part of consciousness?

Both Thusness and Longchen have stucked at the I AM stage of experience for 15 years since their teenage years before realising Anatta and Emptiness. The I AM is experienced as not limited, but all pervading, timeless and spaceless. So obviously they knew what the I AM is through their experience and meditation. But this is not the final realisation. For Longchen he only realised Anatta in 2006 after a series of conversations with Thusness. He was very grateful and said he would be stuck at 'I AM' stage 'forever' if he did not met Thusness.

 

As Longchen put in his own words in some of his many posts on my Buddhist forum after his realisation of Anatta:

 

In an experience of 'no thought' and 'no sense impressions', the Presence will be felt as all-pervading. It is not vast, but all pervading. There is a difference here. Vast denotes great distance. All-pervading denotes infinity... no border... no center.

 

Further insight of this infinity may allow you to understanding why space, location and distance are merely impressions.

 

.......

 

Just my opinion only,

 

I think Eckhart Tolle may have been suffering alot and suddenly he 'let go' of trying to work out his problems. This results in a dissociation from thoughts which give rise to the experience of Presence.

 

To me, 'I AM' is an experience of Presence, it is just that only one aspect of Presence is experienced which is the 'all-pervading' aspect. The non-dual and emptiness aspect are not experienced.. Because non-dual is not realised (at I AM stage), a person may still use effort in an attempt to 'enter' the Presence. This is because, at the I AM stage, there is an erroneous concept that there is a relative world make up of thoughts AND there is an 'absolute source' that is watching it. The I AM stage person will make attempts to 'dissociated from the relative world' in order to enter the 'absolute source'.

 

However, at Non-dual (& further..) stage understanding, one have understood that the division into a relative world and an absolute source has NEVER occcured and cannot be... Thus no attempt/effort is truly required.

 

.......

 

Thanks for the interesting article. It really contain many useful insights.

 

Just a sharing...

 

The author say that thought is a problem. It may not be entirely accurate.

 

IMO, when visual vision and thought imagery arise, there is a tendency to compartmentalise certain sections as entities, focus or objects. Next, there is a desire to modify that section. For example, in the visual sense, from the environment you are engaging a conversation with someone. The mind desires to change the 'person' into what it imagines will be the desired outcome. Example, you want to make the person think the way you think and so on so forth. The mind fails to see that this is 'hit and miss' and that the changes is really not dependent on the desire to modify the subject. Rather, it has got to do with the 'person' own willing or not.

 

So... to me, thought is the not the problem. Instead, the desire to modify and change 'what is' is the cause of suffering.

 

Also, when we say that we are not the thoughts or the body, unconsciously we have separated 'phemonena' from a 'untouchable' portion of ourself.

 

The difference at the non-duality stage is that, no attempt is made... Sensations are left as they are...

 

At the I AM/eternal witness stage, there is a seeking for the place beyond thoughts.

 

Also, at the I AM/eternal witness, no-suffering is preferred over suffering. There is no understanding that there is really NO blissful place that is beyond pain. When there is pain, there is nothing beyond it too.

 

So at the I AM/eternal witness stage, attempts may be employed by the mind to get rid of the pain... to go a place beyond the pain. The understanding that 'sensation and pain' is inseparable from Presence/Buddha Nature is not there yet.

This is a beautiful insight and one I didn't even think of.

Dwai, I just want to ask you something. Two things in fact. Does your awareness change? Does it arise dependently from certain conditions and causes? If not, where is this unchanging and independent awareness? Point it out for me.

I found this interesting article which explains many of the mysterious workings of the Taobums over the years.

 

http://www.hsuyun.org/chan/en/features/out...eck-stages.html

 

The short view is: there are four basic stages of spiritual development. The author noticed a trend in his psychotherapy practice: some people would become religious after therapy, and others less so. So he discovered the pattern of evolution:

 

I. Selfish, self-centered, willing to lie, cheat, and steal.

 

II. Fundamentalist view. Attached to the outward forms of religion. Ranges from light to extreme.

 

III. Atheist/Agnostic/Skeptic. Questions things. Uses logic and reason.

 

IV. Mystic, communal. All things are unified.

 

Accordingly, the phases will increase in number, but those 2 steps ahead will not be understood.

 

So now we can answer things like:

 

Why can't the Taobums agree on even simple spiritual matters? Because we're all in different phases.

 

Why do Taoists argue with Buddhists, and vice versa? Obviously some Phase II views, missing the forest for the trees (or attaching to the manifest over the transcendental) (or seeing the 10,000 things over the Tao).

 

Why are the Buddhabums always arguing with Dwai about atman/anatta? Phase II views, whereas drawing analogies between Advaita and Buddhism is a phase IV activity. Phase II will never see it.

 

Why are there atheists/agnostics here? They may be going through spiritual growth, from III - IV.

 

Let the arguing begin. Or not. Whatever.

I'm curious, does number 2 mean sticking to what you believe no matter what and continuing to claim that it is correct? I used to think this was a wrong attitude. Nowadays I am starting to believe otherwise. Why do some people seem to call anybody who believes they are correct and sticks to it a fundamentalist?

Does number 4 mean believing that nobody is more right than anybody else? If so, I have some qualms with those who believe that the most spiritually developed are they who believe that everyone is right and nobody is more right than anyone else.

Also, what does it mean by attaching to the "outward" forms of religion?

Insentient causes and conditions cannot give rise to sentience, awareness. Simple as that. You can create all these conditions artificially, but the interaction will not BE awareness. No complex chemical reaction can give rise to life.

Good we agree here. BUt I'm gonna take this further and say that those causes and conditions are created by awareness interacting with phenomena, the mind.

What exactly have you read of all the things I wrote. Why, it seems you can' think beyond your own paradigm of "reification," "Thusness stage 5," "Brahman is sooo different from Buddhism." You've been absolutely scared away from pondering what exactly "subjectivity" is. I've said for the millionth time that subject and object dependently arise for any experience existence to come about. BOth positions of "All is subject" and "all is object" are extremes. Experience works through reflection. Moreover, the subject, the "I-ness" is not a source, not an all encompassing thing, not a locality (although it CAN be experienced as all these things) it changes in relation to the object of experience. There is just the NATURE, the relationship, the dependence of subject and object.

I've heard your broken record player many times and understand it. Now please listen to mine, because yours doesn't make sense. I've never said awareness has self-existence, or that it has a fixed location, or an essence. Why don't you at least try to understand what I'm saying because you clearly don't after all the these posts.

He should've just rolled a blunt. No experience is more delusional or more truer than the other. Sure, there can be happier ways to exist and sadder, but there is no such thing as illusional reality. Reality is whatever is experienced; Truth is not experience, it is the way existence works.

It doesn't matter whether it's a new phenomena or not. First of all, dependent origination means that the cause goes both ways. To say sound dependently originates with the drum and drum stick means that the sound also causes the existence or the arising of drum and drumstick, which is stupid.

YOUR ATTENTION! Where is this YOU?

 

When you say "combination of causes and conditions" you are saying that there is a set border, a boundary, a definition, to these causes and conditions. For example where does the eye end and begin, where does light end and begin, where is this attention? Causes and conditions are the quantifying of phenomena which is absolutely subjective to interpretation and experience.

HUH? AND AREN'T ALL MANIFESTATIONS JUST CONDITIONS UPON CONDITIONS? Where do you draw the line between condition and manifestation? There's so much inconsistency in your thinking.

There is no INHERENT, INHERENT subject and object. This is very different from saying there is NO subject and NO object.

 

LISTEN WILL YOU? Just let all those quotes and lingo go for a second. AND LISTEN. At lease try to understand.

OF COURSE THE LISTENER CAN"T BE LOCATED!!!!!!!!!!

 

Run around, LOOKING FOR YOUR OWN BODY!!!

Insentient causes and conditions are definitely required for moments of seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. to come about. I don't know how you can deny this. Say you have a moment of hearing the sound of a bell. Well the hearing of the sound of that bell would not come about if it weren't for the bell, the stick that was used to hit the bell and the person using the stick. These are all conditions which allow that moment of hearing.

What are you talking about? Of course sound does not cause the existence of the drum stick. There are different conditions for the arising of sound and for the arising of a drum stick.

There is no actual boundary to causes and conditions. They stretch back into beginnningless time. It's obviously impossible to know every single cause for something but we can know the causes and condition that are present NOW. Since that is what we can know, we have to create some sort of artificial boundary.

On second thought, I think we all need to read up on karma before we say anything else about it in this topic. It has been said that karma is even more complex and difficult to understand than emptiness.

Maybe it's just me but I've never understood how karma is such a hard concept to understand. As it has been said before, it's just cause and effect and the fact that your actions have consequences. Really difficult right? Now there are many nuances to it but the basic idea is very simple. I look at it as, for instance, hate only leads to more hate, ignorance only leads to further ignorance, etc.

Yeah that's why I said I'm not sure what you meant. There is an end to samsara individually - nirvana. So when you achieve Buddhahood samsara for you is finished. But for other sentient beings it's still there.

Well one could see samsara and nirvana as mental states. In that sense, mental states have no beginning or end, they just change. The "end" of samsara is the changing of it as a mental state into nirvana as a mental state.

We both agree that there is no established self or an inherent self. So the quote from the sutra applies to both our paradigms.

Lucky, maybe I'm wrong here, but I think you need to see that there is no doer apart from doing. No hearer apart from hearing, seer apart from seeing, etc. No separation can be made between hearer and hearing. That is a very liberating thing to discover because we usually divide the hearer from the hearing and we believe that there is a hearer who stands apart from/outside of the hearing and controls the hearing. Thus we get into all sorts of frustrations based on this fundamental error. When you see this, since the hearer is no longer an agent outside the hearing which controls the hearing, since it IS the very hearing itself, all attempts to manipulate and control experience just fade away. There is no longer anything OUTSIDE the hearing which could exert control or manipulate. Then there is just what is. I personally feel this is liberating. How much do we suffer because of our constant attempts to manipulate and control?

There is a good quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti on this

"Are not the thinker and his thought an inseparable phenomenon? Why do we separate the thought from the thinker? Is it not one of the cunning tricks of the mind so that the thinker can change his garb according to circumstances, yet remain the same? Outwardly there is the appearance of change but inwardly the thinker continues to be as he is. The craving for continuity, for permanency, creates this division between the thinker and his thoughts. When the thinker and his thought become inseparable then only is duality transcended. Only then is there the true religious experience. Only when the thinker ceases is there Reality. This inseparable unity of the thinker and his thought is to be experienced but not to be speculated upon. This experience is liberation; in it there is inexpressible joy."

- Authentic Report of Sixteen Talks given in 1945 & 1946 ...p.14.

There is a good video on control and freedom by Ajahn Brahm that I just watched the other day

One more thing, I've found that you shouldn't make effort to block out the thoughts of a "doer apart from doing." Just recognize that they are more arising thoughts without a controller apart from them. This helped me because, if these thoughts give you comfort, you don't need to shun them and you can just let them remain free and unmanipulated. There is a passage from thusness' blog that I have always liked.

"Good sons, all hindrances are none other than ultimate enlightenment. Whether you attain mindfulness or lose mindfulness, there is no non-liberation. Establishing the Dharma and refuting the Dharma are both called nirvana; wisdom and folly are equally prajna; the method that is perfected by bodhisattvas and false teachers is the same bodhi; ignorance and suchness are not different realms; morality, concentration and wisdom, as well as desire, hatred and ignorance are all divine practices; sentient beings and lands share the same dharma nature; hell and heaven are both the Pure Land; those having Buddha-nature and those not having it equally accomplish the Buddha's enlightenment. All defilements are ultimately liberation. The reality-realms's ocean-like wisdom completely illumines all marks to be just like empty space. This is called 'the Tathāgata's accordance with the nature of enlightenment.' "

~ The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment

Shayne's wrong. He is reifying a state of awareness as reality.

 

You must be have the ear to hear sounds. And the ear arises from the creative habit of awareness to see itself as a human body, and experience the human realm.

No we must be aware of the world by choice and intent. When awareness cuts through the limitations of the body, it can transition into different states/realms of being. In it, the sounds the body hears is no longer heard. Hearing arises depedently with the conditioned state of awareness.

....

Attention is a form of awareness.

 

The self, a presumed locality of the "I" is always empty, because it arises dependently to whatever the experience is. Not one, not two. . But other than that, it was beautifully written!

 

But Xabir, I'm still waiting for a valid explanation why your paradigm is not determinism, since there is no doer, there is also no free will. According to you, phenomena liberates and enters illusion on its on accord and has always been so.

What if there is no free will. So what? What if free will, this constant need to control and choose is actually the cause of much of our suffering? What if letting go, surrendering, not trying to control or manipulate anymore is true freedom? Just a thought...

Awareness and phenomena are not one, but not two.

This is true and I think it needs to be stressed. On the one hand, there is absolutely nothing outside of awareness in one's own experience. So for instance, say you are looking at another person. That person is only known through your mind. In that sense, they could be said to be only your awareness. Yet that person is not just your mind because they have their own mindstream, their own body, own history, etc. And to say they were just your mind would be solipsism. So yes, not two but not one either.

Where does this moment end and the next moment begin?

 

Then what is cause and effect?

I don't see that cause and effect is being denied. It's just a different way of looking at it. Yes the present may be ungraspable in a sense yet it is still really all there is. Typing on these keys, that is the present, the "now" moment.

I should add that dogen says that each moment fully contains past and future yet is independent of past and future.

If you are at one with coming, as in you BECOME the motion of coming, no actual relative coming is seen or experienced. Same with going.

I think I understand it now. It relates to what Dogen said about firewood and ash. There is continuity in the sense that this body never becomes a tree or a dog and has a linear span from birth to death. Yet each moment is complete and new, unique/disjoint on it's own because things are always changing. So there is no coming to this moment, in that, all moments that have come before this have NOT been this moment. Nothing that has come before is this moment right now. There is no going from this moment to another moment because each moment is unique unto itself. This moment does not turn into "that" moment because this moment and that moment are two completely different unique/disjoint manifestations.