Nature of God is also Sunyata?

[ralis]

2 minutes ago, steve said:

 

In other words, words are empty also...

 

This is one reason I left the Buddhist trip! Along with the Lama Dharma Kings sitting on their golden thrones dispensing their own brand of reality. 
 

Empty has become a hip Buddhist buzz word!

[rideforever]

The theory  of "emptiness" in Buddhism is very much like the theory that "you are saved" in Chritianity.

So that as you slowly move towards the edge of the cliff, not going anywhere, and not doing anything at all like Buddha or Jesus ... then you have a real good excuse to give yourself.

...

Buddha first port of call was to find a teacher who had already reached Jhana no 7.  And from him he learnt and he also reached Jhana 7.  If you also approach in the same manner, you won't have any problem.  Then you are a "Buddhist".

Otherwise not.

Edited March 1, 2020 by rideforever

[Earl Grey]

1 hour ago, rideforever said:

 

Of course you do.

Your personal intelligence has reached the level when you can agree with groups of people ... "what Buddhist say" or "what other people say" ..

Well .. it's a start, just build on that, perhaps one day you can have an opinion that does not come from a group ... but comes from your self.

 

rudeforever, you're conflating definitions and concepts commonly understood by people who know what they are talking about with groupthink. The consensus doesn't mean that they don't know what they're talking about and rely on one another, it means that it's fact and paradigm.

 

Your self-serving logic is akin to denying basic facts and reconstituting them to match your opinions, much like a guy who once looked at his girlfriend's pregnancy test and said that she shouldn't worry because "she was only a little pregnant and might feel better later". Her flabbergast at the audacity to conflate pregnancy with a cough or a fever is not unlike some of us here listening to your bold statements of absolute certainty on Taoist and Buddhist things some of us are formally trained in and qualified to discuss, which you summarily dismiss. 

 

Being unique is not bad. Being stupid is not unique. Being uniquely stupid is something that takes a special level of effort worthy of the collective bemusement and inevitable mockery that it invites (and deserves). 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Earl Grey

[Wu Ming Jen]

I could be wrong the the concept of emptiness in Buddhism was a latter addition.

 

I prefer the Taoist version of emptiness and the unique position of Lao Tzu that ultimate reality and ultimate source are one and the same thing.

[steve]

I prefer to simply practice and leave concepts and theory be as it is...

[ralis]

Just now, steve said:

I prefer to simply practice and leave concepts and theory be as it is...

Why did you respond to my post that words are empty? 

[steve]

3 minutes ago, ralis said:

Why did you respond to my post that words are empty? 

Because that is what your post said to me and I thought it was both germane and amusing to point that out... 

 

PS - I didn’t mean that your comments weren’t worthwhile, rather that they emphasized an aspect of the meaning of emptiness

Edited March 1, 2020 by steve

[ilumairen]

 

9 minutes ago, ralis said:

 

Empty has become a hip Buddhist buzz word!

 

It seems both hip, and amazingly (and easily) misunderstood..

 

 

[ilumairen]

10 minutes ago, rideforever said:

The theory  of "emptiness" in Buddhism is very much like the theory that "you are saved" in Chritianity.

 

How did you arrive at this conclusion?

 

 

[forestofemptiness]

To get back to OP, I've heard Buddhist teachers say that if God exists, then God is empty. I don't think that Buddhists (at least not all Buddhists) necessarily deny God, but rather the existence of nonexistence of God has no bearing on whether you suffer.  

[liminal_luke]

2 hours ago, rideforever said:

The thing is that ... many people are career Buddhists.

 

Buddhism makes for a fine spiritual path but a poor career choice.  Way too many professional Buddhists have empty wallets.

[ilumairen]

5 hours ago, tantien said:

Most Buddhists I've heard from claim the true nature of everything is empty - or Sunyata. Or rather, emptiness is the underlying nature of everything. Does this include God?

Thanks.

 

May I ask how you define God?

 

[ralis]

39 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

 

It seems both hip, and amazingly (and easily) misunderstood..

 

 

As for myself I feel words and the usual Buddhist rant is to just say empty without any elaboration. Just because a Lama said it doesn’t make it so. Translating cultural meaning of terms to other cultures usually doesn’t work well. In fact most of the Buddhist terminology is bastardized Sanskrit. See Snellgrove’s comments in the Hevajra Tantra. 

[ilumairen]

Just now, ralis said:

As for myself I feel words and the usual Buddhist rant is to just say empty without any elaboration. Just because a Lama said it doesn’t make it so. Translating cultural meaning of terms to other cultures usually doesn’t work well. In fact most of the Buddhist terminology is bastardized Sanskrit. See Snellgrove’s comments in the Hevajra Tantra. 

 

This hazard of translating across cultures is readily apparent as it regards this discussion...

 

The teachings have never struck me as something which should be considered "so" just because a Lama spoke them, but something to be explored, considered, and verified (or not) for oneself. 

 

I have, however, never claimed to be Buddhist, although I've expressed affinity for some teachings - including emptiness..

 

Thanks for the reading recommendation, and as usual, warm regards.

[ralis]

16 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

This hazard of translating across cultures is readily apparent as it regards this discussion...

 

The teachings have never struck me as something which should be considered "so" just because a Lama spoke them, but something to be explored, considered, and verified (or not) for oneself. 

 

I have, however, never claimed to be Buddhist, although I've expressed affinity for some teachings - including emptiness..

 

Thanks for the reading recommendation, and as usual, warm regards.

I prefer the Kabbalah description Ain Sof (totality). Or as Gurdjieff framed it, all and everything. 

Edited March 1, 2020 by ralis

[Wu Ming Jen]

I prefer pie the emptiness of a tasteful flaky crust is divine. Once the pie tin is empty I fill it again. Emptiness of a pie tin makes it useful.

 

Buddha observed that People prefer to suffer, lost in eternal emptiness that is not useful.

[ralis]

Humans create terms laden with meaning for a feeling of security, superiority, or whatever the theological feel good flavor of the day is. As to my experience with Buddhism, I did quite a bit of exploration and in no way will attempt to characterize my experiences in a lengthy essay. All direct experience is essentially nonverbal. That includes what I learned and directly experienced from Namkhai Norbu. 

[ralis]

3 minutes ago, Wu Ming Jen said:

I prefer pie the emptiness of a tasteful flaky crust is divine. Once the pie tin is empty I fill it again. Emptiness of a pie tin makes it useful.

 

Buddha observed that People prefer to suffer, lost in eternal emptiness that is not useful.

‘Suffering was his observation of a few people and he projected that universally which I don’t agree with.
‘Prefer to suffer” is a poor choice of words being a non-sequiter. 

Edited March 1, 2020 by ralis

[Geof Nanto]

4 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

As others have pointed out, God as understood in classic theist traditions doesn’t really have a place in Buddhism. That is, God being understood as the ultimate ground of being and not just the most powerful being among other beings. But if we do take the dubious path of trying to find a correspondence then the closest thing in Buddhism to God would be sunyata itself.

 

Agreed in the sense that Meister Eckhart speaks of the Godhead:

 

Meister Eckhart's theology knows a "Godhead" of which no qualities, except unity and being ¹, can be predicated ²; it "is becoming," it is not yet Lord of itself, and it represents an absolute coincidence of opposites: "But its simple nature is of forms formless; of becoming becomingless; of beings beingless; of things thingless," etc.

 

 Union of opposites is equivalent to unconsciousness, so far as human logic goes, for consciousness presupposes a differentiation into subject and object and a relation between them. Where there is no "other," or it does not yet exist, all possibility of consciousness ceases. Only the Father, the God "welling" out of the Godhead, "notices himself," becomes "beknown to himself," and "confronts himself as a Person." So, from the Father, comes the Son, as the Father's thought of his own being. In his original unity "he knows nothing" except the "suprareal" One which he is. As the Godhead is essentially unconscious so too is the man who lives in God.

 

In his sermon on "The Poor in Spirit" (Matt. 5 : 3), the Meister says: "The man who has this poverty has everything he was when he lived not in any wise, neither in himself, nor in truth, nor in God. He is so quit and empty of all knowing that no knowledge of God is alive in him; for while he stood in the eternal nature of God, there lived in him not another: what lived there was himself. And so we say this man is as empty of his own knowledge as he was when he was not anything; he lets God work what he will, and he stands empty as when he came from God." Therefore he should love God in the following way: "Love him as he is: a not-God, a not-spirit, a not-person, a not-image; as a sheer, pure, dear One, which he is, sundered from all secondness; and in this One let us sink eternally, from nothing to nothing. So help us God. Amen."

 

Notes:

1.       "Being" is controversial. The Master says: "God in the Godhead is a spiritual substance, so unfathomable that we can say nothing about it except that it is naught [niht ensi]. To say it is aught [iht] were more lying than true."

2.       The Master says: “To this end there is no way, it is beyond all ways.”

 

 

(from C G Jung,  Aion)

Edited March 1, 2020 by Yueya

[Wu Ming Jen]

15 minutes ago, ralis said:

‘Suffering was his observation of a few people and he projected that universally which I don’t agree with.
‘Prefer to suffer” is a poor choice of words being a non-sequiter. 

It is a joke, health wealth and happiness compared to suffering. prefer because it is a choice to adapt or suffer. Suffering and content  are one and the same thing we cant have one with out the other.

[thelerner]

6 hours ago, rideforever said:

..

Vipassana

The next item on my hit list is the technique of Vipassana where you scan your body in a minute and subtle way and then determine its emptiness and therefore your emptiness.  Right ... or not right?
Well the obvious question is ... who is doing the fking scanning?  Forget about the body, who is scanning?  Can you feel ... who it is.
That's you.

... you are the one doing the scanning.
Forget about the body, and turn the scanning beam around.

 

Start there.
In fact Samatha (anapana) practice is much closer to turning the beam around and imo is the real practice.  Samatha should include Vipassana within it.  As you "concentrate" (i.e. focus your attention) you should sensitively feel the origin of emanation of the concentration ... i.e. you.  And you should merge with this origin in the forehead and wake the fk up.
It requires sensitive feeling inside.
As your attention rests on the nostrils .. feel inside the forehead for he who is the origin of attention and merge with it like you are getting into a warm bath.

 

I like this..  some good food for thought.

Feels very Golden Flower-ish.

 

[ilumairen]

3 hours ago, Wu Ming Jen said:

I could be wrong the the concept of emptiness in Buddhism was a latter addition.

 

https://tricycle.org/magazine/emptiness-buddhism/

 

 

[rideforever]

.

Edited March 2, 2020 by rideforever

[old3bob]

things woven together including mind stuff are not eternal or remain the same as an indestructible form, only the eternal (aka Self) is eternal and indestructible right now...check out the Upanishads for more reflections on the matter.   "God" is free, free of categories, free of birth and death and free of concepts and being nailed down by concepts.  (or anti-concepts)

Edited March 2, 2020 by old3bob

[Apech]

8 hours ago, rideforever said:

.

 

well said