Best Of
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
I’m trying my hand at ‘dusking’ which is a meditative observation of sunset and the arrival of dusk…
Jeroen
Re: Buddhist quotes
“The Buddha said, “You should know the world. It dazzles like a king’s royal carriage. Fools are entranced, but the wise are not deceived.” It’s not that he wanted us to go all over the world looking at everything, studying everything about it. He simply wanted us to watch this mind which attaches to the world. When the Buddha told us to look at the world he didn’t want us to get stuck in it, he wanted us to investigate it, because the world is born just in this mind. Sitting in the shade of a tree you can look at the world. When there is desire the world comes into being right there. Wanting is the birth place of the world. To extinguish wanting is to extinguish the world.”
— Ajahn Chah
Jeroen
Re: Linji yu lu
Yes, Linji Yixuan was an early Chan master who died 866 CE. The Linji Yu Lu is the record of Linji, the main source of information about his life. In Japan he is known as Rinzai. These texts are machine translations of a Dutch translation that I came across in a blog.
Linji is described as using the Three Mysterious Gates to maintain the Chán emphasis on the nonconceptual nature of reality, while employing sūtras and teachings to instruct his students:
The First Gate is the "mystery in the essence", the use of Buddhist philosophy, such as Huayan, to explain the interpenetration of all phenomena.
The Second Gate is the "mystery in the word", using the Hua Tou for "the process of gradually disentangling the students from the conceptual workings of the mind". The Chinese term Hua-t’ou can be translated as “critical phrase.” Literally it means the “head of speech” or the “point beyond which speech exhausts itself.”
The Third Gate is the "mystery in the mystery", "involving completely nonconceptual expressions such as striking or shouting, which are intended to remove all of the defects implicit in conceptual understanding".
From the Wikipedia page.
Jeroen
Re: The importance of forgetting
@Jeroen said:
Memorising is a form of clinging.
Interesting. VERY interesting.
I suppose then, if memorization is clinging, then any sort of regular, repetitive practice would be clinging as well. Then you add in the Buddhist tradition of not finding an essence. .......
Do terms such as "Exercise In Futility" come to mind? Big headache? Yeah. Pretty much.
Fortunately (for me, anyway), and at the end of the day, so to speak, I don't believe that memorization = clinging.
Re: No Buddhist Quotes
“We have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us – the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.”
— Terence McKenna
Jeroen
Re: Realising ‘I am not the body’
@person said:
But when looking at who sits behind the eyes — the watcher and the instinct that directs our attention — there is something that to me is mysterious and as-yet unrealised.
This, I think, is the crux of the difference between more Hindu centered views and Buddhist views.
In a way, what we understand ourselves to be is quite important, because to a certain extent we shape ourselves to be that. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So investigating what we are naturally is a good idea.
The thing is, I believe we have to do more than just investigate through thinking and reason. If we just listen to the Buddha’s teaching we have at great distance and through many layers of translation fragments of wisdom which come to our thinking minds. Is that enough, considering how modern man may differ from ancient man?
Certainly what we are has evolved from being born. You start from an egg and a sperm, and eventually you are a hundred-and-sixty pounds of apelike human male with all kinds of cultural, linguistic and physical achievements and accoutrements. That process certainly has an effect on whatever form of being started out that journey.
Jeroen
Re: The Medical Model of Mental Illness
@Vastmind said:
Being the work horses/labor slaves for the haves in this country is mentally and physically exhausting and a struggle, to say the least.No amount of meditation fixes that kind of shit. Period. Even the best of prayers go unanswered when it comes to someone making money at your expense.
My approach has always been to do what I love doing. Whether that’s been graphic design, engineering, software development, technical directing, as long as I’ve been able to find joy and enthusiasm in it I’ve done it with pleasure. Then as long as you get paid decently, it doesn’t matter so much whether you’re wealthy or not.
Jeroen
Re: Realising ‘I am not the body’
Hmm
There was a young (wo)man who said though it seems I know that I know...But what I would like to see is the "I" that knows me when "I" know that "I" know that "I" know
~Alan Watts~
Awareness is fundamentally non-conceptual before thinking splits experience into subject and object...It is empty and so can contain everything, including thought...It is boundless...And amazingly it is intrinsically knowing...
Acceptance of change stills the mind and as the mind settles awareness arises...
Realising ‘I am not the body’
I've found that realisation happens when attachment to words/thinking stops...
Shoshin1
Re: The Medical Model of Mental Illness
Being the work horses/labor slaves for the haves in this country is mentally and physically exhausting and a struggle, to say the least.
No amount of meditation fixes that kind of shit. Period. Even the best of prayers go unanswered when it comes to someone making money at your expense.
If you know, you know.
@Jason …. I hear ya….and I feel ya. ❤️. Life IS short, don’t let ‘em get all of you. Find and make the moments that belong to you. Take care of you for me.
Vastmind
Re: Realising ‘I am not the body’
@how said:
Today, behind my eyes lies an ever-shifting collective of divergent interests. Finding a consistent "who" there is like looking for some solidity in the rotating reflections of a kaleidoscope. Usually, such searches for that "who" reveal little more than an attempted herding of cats.
Well, if the mind is quiet, you can search for what is. Nisargadatta once said, you are not whatever you can perceive, because it lies outside you. So you are not the world, not the body, not your thoughts… you continue and you are eventually led just to consciousness, which like a mirror just acknowledges what is perceived.
There is a link with knowledge, in that perception adds meaning to the perceived by understanding symbolic values, like in written language or mathematical equations or a uniform or even a number plate or a door handle. Any number of things in the natural or man-made world can acquire meaning based on past experience. An iceberg melts, an oyster opens, a fruit can be eaten.
Jeroen