Is Buddhism a complete path?

[stirling]

 

6 hours ago, snowymountains said:

That is a view, if the view however happens to be a wrong one, then taking it at face value may be a blocker, among other things for spiritual progress itself.

 

Agreed. I would say that ALL views are wrong. Just as teachings are merely pointers at something ineffable, a definition cannot completely describe enlightenment. Some definitions will be recognizable to those that have insight, however, even though they are incomplete. I advise students to hold all teachings (and indeed all events in this life) lightly - to avoid concreted and solidified views. 

 

6 hours ago, snowymountains said:

Jung used to say "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate.”

 

the part of this comment on fate, or karma if you prefer, part is spot on.

 

Yes. Removing obscurations is certainly a substantial part of the main body of work for us in this lifetime, but it IS entirely possible to vanquish karma.

 

6 hours ago, snowymountains said:

Without acceptance of rebirth and karma, the khandhas are no longer empty ( of self ) and instead of attributing talent to efforts in past lives, it becomes part of self.

 

I'm not sure I follow you here. Can you elaborate.

 

6 hours ago, snowymountains said:

Whatever is ignored still rules us, from our unconscious, ignoring it wont make it go away, to the contrary. This is independently of whether we assign a religious origin to it, including non theistic origins, and call it empty of self.

 

Definitely. This is how karma presents. Our story about ourselves and the world follows us as long as we are telling it. 

[Maddie]

1 hour ago, Keith108 said:

No attachments. Dharmawheel is good for Buddhist arguments.

 

No offense intended. Just hate seeing the practice dragged this way.

 

🙏

Keith

 

Hey Keith 

 

It's not being dragged but I would argue that the spirit of the Buddha's invitation to open inquiry is being honored here. The Buddha encouraged questioning, and asking "why is the thing that I think to be true, actually true?" 

[Keith108]

5 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

Hey Keith 

 

It's not being dragged but I would argue that the spirit of the Buddha's invitation to open inquiry is being honored here. The Buddha encouraged questioning, and asking "why is the thing that I think to be true, actually true?" 

 

Thanks Maddie. All good. As I have said before, I am not here to talk about Buddhist practice. It's my fault for butting in. I trust experience, not philosophy and intellectualizing. This conversation is not one I really should have entered in the first place.  

 

_/|\_

[silent thunder]

In so far as the map is never the terrain, and that our mentation and perceptual process is an aproximation of reality,  I would not ascribe completeness to any lineage or system.

 

This does not imply irrelevance or lack of utility and benefit.

 

We may use maps to navigate effectively.

[Maddie]

5 minutes ago, Keith108 said:

 

Thanks Maddie. All good. As I have said before, I am not here to talk about Buddhist practice. It's my fault for butting in. I trust experience, not philosophy and intellectualizing. This conversation is not one I really should have entered in the first place.  

 

_/|\_

 

I would say it is about practice, because we want to make sure we are doing the right practice to accomplish what we want to accomplish. For that we need to know not only what we are doing, but if what we are doing is going to accomplish what it claims. After all right view is listed before right effort.

Edited February 13 by Maddie

[blue eyed snake]

Once, decades ago I had a conversation with the abbot of a Buddhist cloister/temple

I was unexpectedly taken by strange happenings and had asked whether someone in that cloister/temple could have a word with me to help me understand and get back some balance.

 

Thinking back to the meeting with that abbot,

there's no doubt at all in my mind that Buddhism is a legit and complete spiritual path, for those practitioners that are ready to be "toppled over" it will lead to the endgame so to say.

my words may not sound very respectful but I do mean it respectful. 

 

It's not my path, it has been though, I am very sure I've been a Buddhist in a former life, there are memories...

but in this life it's not my path. Interestingly that is exactly what that abbot told me...: "You are welcome to stay here, for a while or indefinitely but I do not think Buddhism is your path"

in this life it's the solo experience that is needed.

 

There are many paths that we can follow, to each its own and very slowly, maybe even invisible, we progress on some hard to understand 'scale'.

 

some "useless" paths may be very worthwhile, simply because there is no reason to travel to the city were the university is located when there is a preschool in every village.

I wrote about a christian friend of mine, for me it would be one of the the worst paths I could possible take, but for her it is just right.

it took me quite a while to understand that though.

 

Also, the 'path', whatever shape it takes, is not a rational thing, precisely because enlightenment, what many people see as the endgame, is not rational. To get through that invisible "wall" you leave your attachments, your proclivities and your sense of "rational thinking" the analytical part of mind. Although, anecdotally, the people I've known that had progressed far on that  hard to understand scale were all very smart.

 

imho, in the rationalized academic mind enlightenment does not, cannot exist. Smart people can be very attached to their analytical thinking. By analyzing the steps you break the ladder, you break the possibility to leave some of your proclivities behind.

.

in the same way you ruin the perfect, wholesome beauty of a flower by pulling it apart.

 

I would like to see all daobums have some respect for the path other people are walking.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[snowymountains]

1 hour ago, stirling said:

 

 

Agreed. I would say that ALL views are wrong. Just as teachings are merely pointers at something ineffable, a definition cannot completely describe enlightenment. Some definitions will be recognizable to those that have insight, however, even though they are incomplete. I advise students to hold all teachings (and indeed all events in this life) lightly - to avoid concreted and solidified views. 

 

 

Yes. Removing obscurations is certainly a substantial part of the main body of work for us in this lifetime, but it IS entirely possible to vanquish karma.

Yes - all views can only be approximate. But a later view that's more elaborate can be used to complement what's missing from an older view etc. This applies to Jung too ofc as his views have been further refined and superseded.

 

On the karma always being vanquish-able, I'm not sure it is, e.g. in Theravada if a toddler dies at war it's attributed to Karma from past lives, haven't discussed this topic in Zen but the Theravadan view implies Karma is not always vanquishable as there may not even be a chance to vanquish it.

 

1 hour ago, stirling said:

I'm not sure I follow you here. Can you elaborate.

 

 

Re a more elaborate version, I wrote here .

The TLDR is that the skandhas cannot be seen as empty purely on grounds of dependent origination, e.g. talent is "washed away" because due to past lives efforts ( so due to rebirth and karma ). 

Without belief in past lives or karma (I don't believe in them) the skandhas cannot be considered empty either !

 

This doesn't mean that everything in the skandhas is self, e.g. some mental formations are clearly not self, otherwise advertisers would be out of business.

But the skandhas not entirely empty of self either, e.g. talent can only be part of self when there's no karma to attribute it to.

 

1 hour ago, stirling said:

Definitely. This is how karma presents. Our story about ourselves and the world follows us as long as we are telling it. 

 

Jung's point is that non-integrated parts of self will drive behavior and will be interpreted as fate/karma post-ante.

 

To follow a slightly different route, if we ignore parts of self because consciously we believe they're empty self, they will be pushed to the unconscious and will rule us from there. We may later call them fate or karma but it was us ignoring them ( by believing they're not part of us ) that caused it.

 

It's a difference between psychoanalytic models and Buddhist psychology - I fully agree with Jung here, though a Buddhist practitioner, this is a gap in Buddhism, which has been superseded by discoveries that took place after the Buddha's passing.

Edited February 13 by snowymountains

[liminal_luke]

Life is a complete system for enlightenment.  All practicing Buddhists are alive so I guess they have as good a chance as anybody else.

[snowymountains]

Just now, liminal_luke said:

Life is a complete system for enlightenment.  All practicing Buddhists are alive so I guess they have as good a chance as anybody else.

 

This is actually way deep, I would like to add that fully living life is the system of complete enlightenment ( and won't quote Jung nor expand to keep it in the short discourses😁 )

[Apech]

26 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

Life is a complete system for enlightenment.  All practicing Buddhists are alive so I guess they have as good a chance as anybody else.

Brother Luke as always another pearl.

[steve]

4 hours ago, snowymountains said:

Eg Buddhism largely ignores talent/creativity.

 

My experience has been the opposite, although I’m coming from the Bön tradition so it may be a bit different. In my training, creativity is a sign or manifestation of the quality and depth our connection to the nature of mind.  It’s something that is emphasized often and incorporated into our practices in a variety of ways. This could be something unique to my teacher but I think it is more a characteristic of the dzogchen teachings.

 

I also know the monastics are encouraged to develop talent and creativity in their lives and some I’ve met are marvelous painters, singers, musicians, storytellers… and joyfully share their talents, even modest ones, with little concern for what others think.

[liminal_luke]

1 minute ago, steve said:

 

 joyfully share their talents, even modest ones, with little concern for what others think.

 

Joyfully sharing modest talents with little concern for what others think -- this has got to be a major siddhi right up there with levitation.  

[snowymountains]

30 minutes ago, steve said:

 

My experience has been the opposite, although I’m coming from the Bön tradition so it may be a bit different. In my training, creativity is a sign or manifestation of the quality and depth our connection to the nature of mind.  It’s something that is emphasized often and incorporated into our practices in a variety of ways. This could be something unique to my teacher but I think it is more a characteristic of the dzogchen teachings.

 

I also know the monastics are encouraged to develop talent and creativity in their lives and some I’ve met are marvelous painters, singers, musicians, storytellers… and joyfully share their talents, even modest ones, with little concern for what others think.

 

In Theravada or Zen as all mental formations, talent manifestations too, are seen as empty of self. There's no special attention paid to talents during practice, mental formations related to talents are treated as in they rise and fall and appear in chains of dependent events.

Basically they're treated on equal footing as a thoughts to pay the bills, both in Theravada Insight meditation and Zen Shikantaza.

Imo this omission is a glaring one and needs to be complemented outside the practice.

 

If you are aware of the background on why the Bon pay attention to talent, I'd be interested to hear.

I'm aware Bon do not rely on Suttas nor Agamas nor Mahayana Sutras at all - their Buddha is not Gautama, it's Tonpa Shenrab.

I don't know his teachings on the skandhas being empty or not of self - or if the difference is there in practice even if a similar view is taken in their suttas.

 

This is the right thing to do btw, talent is of course very important and connected to enlightenment too. 

Jung attributed talent to connections to the collective unconscious.

This is how deep he considered the connection between talent and enlightenment ( his view is contested today in that it is not universal/complete, but there still is truth to it ).

Edited February 13 by snowymountains

[Apech]

32 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Joyfully sharing modest talents with little concern for what others think -- this has got to be a major siddhi right up there with levitation.  

but…but … what do I do if my talents are far from modest?

[Maddie]

I think one reason I am having this line of questioning now is because I've relatively recently been realizing some attitudes that I brought with me into Buddhism were from the particular evangelical Christian cult I had been in, in the past. Namely buying the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker without a lot of questioning.

   Naturally I was not aware I had carried this attitude with me into Buddhism, but it caused me to practice a very extreme form of Buddhism that was really not any different than a monk. The thing was, this mentality in my Christian cult made me miserable, and it made me miserable in Buddhism as well. The hard core attitude. 

   Once I began to realize that I had carried this attitude with me into Buddhism I also realized I had carried the attitude of just accepting everything you were told or read as absolute truth without much questioning. I'm not saying Buddhism is bad, what I am saying is that the mindset that I brought with me into Buddhism was not a healthy approach, and now it does a lot to explain why a lot of my time practicing Buddhism was miserable. It is also the reason I now want to evaluate Buddhism in a more objective way. 

[liminal_luke]

15 minutes ago, Apech said:

but…but … what do I do if my talents are far from modest?

 

Not to worry.  Public success and adulation will bring their own character-building challenges.  My partner Jose used to write stories.  His therapist encouraged him to really go for it and put his heart into his creative writing -- what's the worst that could happen?  Jose said that he was afraid he'd hit the big time like J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter series, and then he wouldn't be able to tell if people wanted to know him for who he really was or if they just wanted to be close to money and fame.  I suspect you'll find yourself in a similar boat -- good luck!

Edited February 13 by liminal_luke

[snowymountains]

2 minutes ago, Maddie said:

I think one reason I am having this line of questioning now is because I've relatively recently been realizing some attitudes that I brought with me into Buddhism were from the particular evangelical Christian cult I had been in, in the past. Namely buying the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker without a lot of questioning.

   Naturally I was not aware I had carried this attitude with me into Buddhism, but it caused me to practice a very extreme form of Buddhism that was really not any different than a monk. The thing was, this mentality in my Christian cult made me miserable, and it made me miserable in Buddhism as well. The hard core attitude. 

   Once I began to realize that I had carried this attitude with me into Buddhism I also realized I had carried the attitude of just accepting everything you were told or read as absolute truth without much questioning. I'm not saying Buddhism is bad, what I am saying is that the mindset that I brought with me into Buddhism was not a healthy approach, and now it does a lot to explain why a lot of my time practicing Buddhism was miserable. It is also the reason I now want to evaluate Buddhism in a more objective way. 

Learn from a tradition their tools and methods, question everything, and keep what's good & safe, separate what's superstition.

 

If a teacher doesn't like critical thinking, others do, so work with them.

 

Only you can create the perfect practice for you, though to get there it takes trial and error, blind faith often leads (at best) to nowhere.

[Maddie]

8 minutes ago, snowymountains said:

Learn from a tradition their tools and methods, question everything, and keep what's good & safe, separate what's superstition.

 

If a teacher doesn't like critical thinking, others do, so work with them.

 

Only you can create the perfect practice for you, though to get there it takes trial and error, blind faith often leads (at best) to nowhere.

 

This is where I'm at now. It's new territory.

[blue eyed snake]

31 minutes ago, Apech said:

but…but … what do I do if my talents are far from modest?

 

we'll put you on a pedestal and then you have to deal with the troubles of that.

 

Spoiler

 

[blue eyed snake]

7 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

This is where I'm at now. It's new territory.

 

thats a good place to be, although it can be scary. 

 

[snowymountains]

19 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

This is where I'm at now. It's new territory.

 

Enjoy !

Saying "no" is a powerful thing🙂it's your life.

Edited February 13 by snowymountains

[Geof Nanto]

3 hours ago, snowymountains said:

 

This is actually way deep, I would like to add that fully living life is the system of complete enlightenment ( and won't quote Jung nor expand to keep it in the short discourses😁 )

 

Here's a quotation from Jung's Red Book which provides some necessary nuance to this very general statement:

 

The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.       

 

But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think. You will say: "But I cannot live or think everything that others live or think." But you should say: "The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think." It appears as though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to live what remains unlived until now. But you cannot flee from yourself. It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign being blind and deaf to yourself This way you will never reach the knowledge of the heart.    

 

The knowledge of your heart is how your heart is.     

 

From a cunning heart you will know cunning. From a good heart you will know goodness.     

 

So that your understanding becomes perfect, consider that your heart is both good and evil. 

 

You ask, "What? Should I also live evil?"    

 

The spirit of the depths demands: "The life that you could still live, you should live. Well-being decides, not your well-being, not the well-being of the others, but only well-being."   

 

Well-being is between me and others, in society. I, too, lived — which I had not done before, and which I could still do. I lived into the depths, and the depths began to speak. The depths taught me the other truth. It thus united sense and nonsense in me.  
I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in this visible world a symbol of my soul, and I am thoroughly a serf, completely subjugated, utterly obedient. The spirit of the depths taught me to say: "I am the servant of a child." Through this dictum I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need.     
The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child. This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child. 
 

[Geof Nanto]

As Jung has been mentioned a number of times in this discussion, here’s some further insight into his worldview for those who want to follow it up with their own research.

 

Jung was very much a Daoist in the classical sense of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi in that he believed we should allow Nature to take its course within ourselves (wuwei). He viewed the psyche (Mind in the greater sense) as a self-regulating system (like the body).   For Jung, the psyche strives to maintain a balance between opposing qualities while at the same time actively seeking its own development or as he called it, individuation.  Hence he decried so-called spiritual paths that told people how they should be, rather than simply freeing us to allow the Dao (or whatever other name one chooses to refer to the ineffable) to express itself fully through us: 

 

Spoiler

 

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic text from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth—the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better!

 

 I have no wish to disturb such people at their pet pursuits, but when anybody who expects to be taken seriously is deluded enough to think that I use yoga methods and yoga doctrines or that I get my patients, whenever possible, to draw mandalas for the purpose of bringing them to the "right point” – then I really must protest and tax these people with having read my writings with the most horrible inattention. The doctrine that all evil thoughts come from the heart and that the human soul is a sink of iniquity must lie deep in the marrow of their bones. Were that so, then God had made a sorry job of creation, and it were high time for us to go over to Marcion the Gnostic and depose the incompetent demiurge. 

 

Ethically, of course, it is infinitely more convenient to leave God the sole responsibility for such a Home for Idiot Children, where no one is capable of putting a spoon into his own mouth. But it is worth man's while to take pains with himself, and he has something in his soul that can grow. It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference. 

 

 

BTW  I am one of those people like Jung mentions who have done "anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls".  And yet I've gained plenty from these systems of teachings. They've given me a way in. In other writings Jung also speaks of how vital all these ancient spiritual traditions are. 

 

[Maddie]

I hope this doesn't sound bad, but this is making TDB interesting again (to me at least). Fighting about super powers gets old fast lol. 

[snowymountains]

2 minutes ago, Geof Nanto said:

As Jung has been mentioned a number of times in this discussion, here’s some further insight into his worldview for those who want to follow it up with their own research.

 

Jung was very much a Daoist in the classical sense of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi in that he believed we should allow Nature to take its course within ourselves (wuwei). He viewed the psyche (Mind in the greater sense) as a self-regulating system (like the body).   For Jung, the psyche strives to maintain a balance between opposing qualities while at the same time actively seeking its own development or as he called it, individuation.  Hence he decried so-called spiritual paths that told people how they should be, rather than simply freeing us to allow the Dao (or whatever other name one chooses to refer to the ineffable) to express itself fully through us: 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic text from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth—the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better!

 

 I have no wish to disturb such people at their pet pursuits, but when anybody who expects to be taken seriously is deluded enough to think that I use yoga methods and yoga doctrines or that I get my patients, whenever possible, to draw mandalas for the purpose of bringing them to the "right point” – then I really must protest and tax these people with having read my writings with the most horrible inattention. The doctrine that all evil thoughts come from the heart and that the human soul is a sink of iniquity must lie deep in the marrow of their bones. Were that so, then God had made a sorry job of creation, and it were high time for us to go over to Marcion the Gnostic and depose the incompetent demiurge. 

 

Ethically, of course, it is infinitely more convenient to leave God the sole responsibility for such a Home for Idiot Children, where no one is capable of putting a spoon into his own mouth. But it is worth man's while to take pains with himself, and he has something in his soul that can grow. It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference. 

 

 

BTW  I am one of those people like Jung mentions who have done "anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls".  And yet I've gained plenty from these systems of teachings. They've given me a way in. In other writings Jung also speaks of how vital all these ancient spiritual traditions are. 

 

 

Jung studied everything and practiced everything. Then came to his own conclusions.

 

In his library he even had plenty of Buddhist material too, his house is available for guided tours and his library and workroom are restored to match how it was then. It also has many of his paintings on display.

 

One point which I think distinguished him is that while he did study and practice a lot of systems, he made his own, taking what is useful from the ancient systems and discarding what isn't.

Eg instead of Shamanic journeying ( per Eliade, not Harner of course at that time), he made his "Active Imagination".

 

Some practices on the other hand he downright rejected and was critical of. Eg what comes to mind now is his work on not breaking the duality with the deity in tantric practices ( on not identifying with the deity or something like that is the name of his article ).

It's important to spot a damaging practice when we see one.

 

 

He was also scrutinising everything including his own inventions, eg together with Wolfgang Pauli, who was a client of his, he did try to find physical mechanisms for a lot of his concepts ( eg synchronicities, psychoid ), though they didn't succeed in that and we'll find the answers from neuroscience in the future.

 

Imo he was spot on with individuation as the path to enlightenment and rejection of spiritual paths that expect people to live according to a manual with no concern of their individual talents and creative needs.

 

As long as one separates a path's practices from their roadmap, agreed, many of these ancient systems have good practices, which are good as long as their scope of applicability is kept in mind, ie Theravada meditations ( which I practice myself ) are excellent but the lack of focus on creativity and talent is a glaring omission.