meditation

refractorist

For anyone else kowtaaia's quote is from post number 69.

I think he was refering in that statement to the difference in our relative and absolute selves. From a certain standpoint we are both buddhanature and ego nature at the same time. However the ego is the illusory, conditioned nature while the buddhanature is unborn, unconditioned, and to be realized. To say we contain the five aggregates is true, relatively speaking. He was responding to a statment where you were saying (in post 68) that the buddhanature in not within, "because the within is the reality of the phenomenon of thought."
He responded that this is true from a conditioned point of view. From an absolute, unconditioned point of view our buddhanature is within us.

Keith

zenmonk_genryu

Kowtaaia, one thing I'd be curious to know is whether you do in fact practice and if so, do you do so with a Sangha?

beebuddy

Personal information is irrelevent in debate. Arguments are judged by their merit, not the merit of the arguer.

sharpiegirl

Beebuddy,
I think whether a person practices is quite relevant. Scholar knowledge is quite different than knowledge from practice.

beebuddy

Sharpiegirl,

It is generally accepted to be inappropriate. Debaters don't win arguments by accusing each other of various and sundry things. It's considered petty.

edit: not that ZMG was accusing anyone of anything. It is very hard to imagine that line of questioning going anywhere else though.

In other words Sharpiegirl, not being "buddhist enough" is irrelevent because none of us are qualfied to judge one anothers "buddhistness".

refractorist

I dont think Genryu intends to accuse kowtaaia of anything. More likely it is as he says "I'd be curious".

Keith

beebuddy

See edit.

buddhafoot

Unless I'm sitting here telling you exactly what it's like going through childbirth - and I'm a man.

There is a difference between theory and practice. Many theorist have an idea what something is "like" - but they have no idea what "doing it" means. Going through the physical attributes (and trials and tribulations) of doing something is much different from reading about it in a book.

At least, that's my stupid opinion.

-bf

beebuddy

You are free to come to the conclusion that "Kowtaaia" is simply repeating what he read in a book and has had no experience with the subject (or vice versa), it does not change the fact that personal information is considered irrelevent in debate.

buddhafoot

I disagree, my friend.

In some debates, it may not matter.

In others, to me as a listener of the debate, it does. Like hearing a wealthy politician debate with a blue collar senior citizen that has worked hard and honest throughout their entire life and paid their taxes and dues. We get to hear the politician "prove" with numbers and charts that a senior citizen "can" get by on meager Medicare payments. While the senior citizen's argument is based upon "living" with the meagerness of Medicare.

And the politician? They will never need nor see Medicare because of the wealth they've accumulated over their career - they sure can talk the talk - but not walk the walk.

To me? Yeah... sometimes it does make a difference.

But, to each our own, eh?

-bf

zenmonk_genryu

First of all, this is not about whether or not this is a debate. What it is about is an aspect of the Dharma and for that personal experience is indeed relevant, especially as one of the main points here is that some aspects of the Dharma cannot really be properly understood intellectually.

federica

I had no idea this was a debate.... debate? I thought we were just discussing different aspects and experiences of meditation?
And while we're at it, then....
I further understood from Brian that he doesn't intend opening a debate thread, because it does not serve the goals of the site....
I'm sure Brian must have contacted you by now.
So attempting to create or generate a debate is at best inadvisable, and at most, unauthorised....

I trust this clears the matter up once and for all.

Thank you.

zenmonk_genryu

Thank you Federica.

kowtaaia

zenmonk_genryu wrote:

First of all, this is not about whether or not this is a debate. What it is about is an aspect of the Dharma and for that personal experience is indeed relevant, especially as one of the main points here is that some aspects of the Dharma cannot really be properly understood intellectually.

What a kerfuffle!:cheer:

After all these years on b-net, you should know that 'kow' speaks from direct perception and that he is not a "Buddhist". There is no such thing as intellectual understanding.

Jason

kowtaaia,

First [even after I agreed to play along], you still have not answered my questions and assertions from posts #78 and #79. But, it doesn't really matter much anyway, since I have already provided a Sutta in which the Buddha rejects that were are merely thought.

This line speaks very clearly for itself:

"He/she does not see thought-fabrications as self, or self as possessing thought-fabrications, or thought-fabrications as in self, or self as in thought-fabrications."

Thought is not our sum total:

Elohim wrote:

The mind is not just thought. The Buddha divides nama (mind) into four seperate khandhas (aggregates/heaps), not just one. The mind is a combination of sanna (perceptions), vedana (feelings), sankhara (mental formations) [which includes thought], and vinnana (consciousness). So, I do not see the statement "The mind is thought, for godsake!" to be completely accurate.

And intention preceeds even thought:

"Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect." - AN VI.63

From this line you can see that one has intention before one acts by way of body, speech, and intellect [i.e. mind]. Logically, for you to assert thought first is in direct contradiction to the Buddha's teaching on kamma (action). One has intention before[/] one even thinks. Also, this statement shows that intention is seperate from intellect [it preceeds it], so you cannot say that they are the same.

And, if this is not enough to prove my point, just saying that "we are thought" is to place an assertion of self on said mental construct. But, when you get right down to it, there really is nothing to debate. Any such idea or assertion dealing with what we are is in fact a form of self view. Not only did the Buddha refute [and reject] all the possible forms of self view url=http://www.buddhistinformation.com/ida_b_wells_memorial_sutra_library/brahmajala_sutta.htm]DN 1[/url, but so did many others like Nagarjuna. In the Buddha's teachings, there is no room for any kind of self view [no matter how subtle or gross]. To assert one in any way, shape, or form is simply absurd.

Now, unless you restate you assertion, there is nothing left to say.



Jason

kowtaaia

Elohim,

Intention is thought. It is thought that feels. Perception thought. Thought is consciousness. The Buddha stated very clearly the closest and most obvious of all perceptions. "We are what we think. All that we are, arises with our thoughts."

kowtaaia

Elohim,


As per your request: You posted your understanding of what was being said as this: "sees form as self, or self as possessing form, or form as in self, or self as in form."
You are in error. That is why it was said that you were disagreeing with your own erroneous interpretation rather than what was actually said. Your post #78? did not include that.

kowtaaia

fed,

Debate is quite simply a discussion involving opposing points. It's not to be feared.

refractorist

Kowtaiaa,

You seem to be suggesting that phenomena cannot exist other than as projections of one's own mind. That there is no objective world seperate from our labels and stories about it. Is this true?

Im not suggesting that phenomena are automomous, independent, or have an uncaused existence and are thus empty.

Keith

Jason

kowtaaia,

Forgive my bluntness, but I do not believe that you even know what you're talking about. I will not even bother to tear apart the false assertions that you are making [about me, or thought for that matter]. I am quite done with this debate, as you have been thoroughly refuted in my opinion [with ample evidence]. Feel free to continue this with everyone else, but I no longer wish to participate. As much as you like to parade the word "debate" around, you do not follow the generally accepted guidlines very well. You never even give references with your quotes, let alone make any clear assertions.

:wtf:

Jason

Palzang

Personally, I think the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is a finite number.

Palzang

refractorist

The laws that govern the activity of angels must be very different than those that govern our much less compacted lives.

Keith

kowtaaia

refractorist wrote:

Kowtaiaa,

You seem to be suggesting that phenomena cannot exist other than as projections of one's own mind. That there is no objective world seperate from our labels and stories about it. Is this true?

Im not suggesting that phenomena are automomous, independent, or have an uncaused existence and are thus empty.

Keith

The physical world (inc. the body) exists in non-duality with a field of awareness. The subjective state, the "inner" or psychological phenomenon is the reality of thought, which is duality. If there is self, there is other.

refractorist

Im sure glad Im not an angel. Packed in with even a finite number other angels on the head of a pin, never knowing when you might just slip off or get stepped on. Talking about pain and suffering! Who would have time to even think about enlightment in that sort of situation. It kinda makes you feel sorry for the poor little things.

Keith

refractorist

kowtaiaa,

So, basically your answer is yes. Interesting.

keith

kowtaaia

Elohim,

Bye, bye.
You also don't think that Bhikkhu Bodhi is correct about rebirth; so the company is good. .

kowtaaia

refractorist wrote:

kowtaiaa,

So, basically your answer is yes. Interesting.

keith

That was a yes?

refractorist

Yep.

non-duality = not seperate from, not two but one

field of awareness = feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness

So, you statement could also read, "The physical world is not seperate from feelings, perceptions, mental formations, or consciousness." Which sounds a lot like a yes.

refractorist

You had a bhikku Bodhi quote up earlier that isnt coming up in the search. I can seem to find it either. Did you delete it?

Keith

kowtaaia

refractorist wrote:

Yep.

non-duality = not seperate from, not two but one

field of awareness = feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness

So, you statement could also read, "The physical world is not seperate from feelings, perceptions, mental formations, or consciousness." Which sounds a lot like a yes.

Goodness no! That's not what it is at all!

Firstly, nonduality is 'not two'. Period! 'Oneness' applies to the psychological realm; the fact that there is really only one human BEING: humanity.

Secondly, the field of awareness is only manifest when the psychological, what you call the aggregates is extinct, however brief in chronological time the cessation may be.

Jason

kowtaaia,

I never said anything about disagreeing with the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi. Please do not place words in my mouth. In fact, I happen to agree entirely with his essay Dhamma Without Rebirth?:

In line with the present-day stress on the need for religious teachings to be personally relevant and directly verifiable, in certain Dhamma circles the time-honored Buddhist doctrine of rebirth has come up for severe re-examination. Although only a few contemporary Buddhist thinkers still go so far as to suggest that this doctrine be scrapped as "unscientific," another opinion has been gaining ground to the effect that whether or not rebirth itself be a fact, the doctrine of rebirth has no essential bearings on the practice of Dhamma and thence no claim to an assured place in the Buddhist teachings. The Dhamma, it is said, is concerned solely with the here and now, with helping us to resolve our personal hangups through increased self-awareness and inner honesty. All the rest of Buddhism we can now let go as the religious trappings of an ancient culture utterly inappropriate for the Dhamma of our technological age.

If we suspend our own predilections for the moment and instead go directly to our sources, we come upon the indisputable fact that the Buddha himself taught rebirth and taught it as a basic tenet of his teaching. Viewed in their totality, the Buddha's discourses show us that far from being a mere concession to the outlook prevalent in his time or an Asiatic cultural contrivance, the doctrine of rebirth has tremendous implications for the entire course of Dhamma practice, affecting both the aim with which the practice is taken up and the motivation with which it is followed through to completion.

The aim of the Buddhist path is liberation from suffering, and the Buddha makes it abundantly clear that the suffering from which liberation is needed is the suffering of bondage to samsara, the round of repeated birth and death. To be sure, the Dhamma does have an aspect which is directly visible and personally verifiable. By direct inspection of our own experience we can see that sorrow, tension, fear and grief always arise from our greed, aversion and ignorance, and thus can be eliminated with the removal of those defilements. The importance of this directly visible side of Dhamma practice cannot be underestimated, as it serves to confirm our confidence in the liberating efficacy of the Buddhist path. However, to downplay the doctrine of rebirth and explain the entire import of the Dhamma as the amelioration of mental suffering through enhanced self-awareness is to deprive the Dhamma of those wider perspectives from which it derives its full breadth and profundity. By doing so one seriously risks reducing it in the end to little more than a sophisticated ancient system of humanistic psychotherapy.

The Buddha himself has clearly indicated that the root problem of human existence is not simply the fact that we are vulnerable to sorrow, grief and fear, but that we tie ourselves through our egoistic clinging to a constantly self-regenerating pattern of birth, aging, sickness and death within which we undergo the more specific forms of mental affliction. He has also shown that the primary danger in the defilements is their causal role in sustaining the round of rebirths. As long as they remain unabandoned in the deep strata of the mind, they drag us through the round of becoming in which we shed a flood of tears "greater than the waters of the ocean." When these points are carefully considered, we then see that the practice of Dhamma does not aim at providing us with a comfortable reconciliation with our present personalities and our situation in the world, but at initiating a far-reaching inner transformation which will issue in our deliverance from the cycle of worldly existence in its entirety.

Admittedly, for most of us the primary motivation for entering upon the path of Dhamma has been a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction with the routine course of our unenlightened lives rather than a keen perception of the dangers in the round of rebirths. However, if we are going to follow the Dhamma through to its end and tap its full potential for conferring peace and higher wisdom, it is necessary for the motivation of our practice to mature beyond that which originally induced us to enter the path. Our underlying motivation must grow toward those essential truths disclosed to us by the Buddha and, encompassing those truths, must use them to nourish its own capacity to lead us toward the realization of the goal.

Our motivation acquires the requisite maturity by the cultivation of right view, the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, which as explained by the Buddha includes an understanding of the principles of kamma and rebirth as fundamental to the structure of our existence. Though contemplating the moment is the key to the development of insight meditation, it would be an erroneous extreme to hold that the practice of Dhamma consists wholly in maintaining mindfulness of the present. The Buddhist path stresses the role of wisdom as the instrument of deliverance, and wisdom must comprise not only a penetration of the moment in its vertical depths, but a comprehension of the past and future horizons within which our present existence unfolds. To take full cognizance of the principle of rebirth will give us that panoramic perspective from which we can survey our lives in their broader context and total network of relationships. This will spur us on in our own pursuit of the path and will reveal the profound significance of the goal toward which our practice points, the end of the cycle of rebirths as mind's final liberation from suffering.

Jason

kowtaaia

refractorist wrote:

You had a bhikku Bodhi quote up earlier that isnt coming up in the search. I can seem to find it either. Did you delete it?

Keith

AFTER DEATH thread

kowtaaia
Member




Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 68

---

This thread hasn't been read, so apologies if the following Bhikkhu Bodhi piece has already been posted. Only characteristics continue, because they continue in the human race.

The Buddhist term for rebirth in Pali is "punabbhava" which means "again existence". Buddhism sees rebirth not as the transmigration of a conscious entity but as the repeated occurrence of the process of existence. There is a continuity, a transmission of influence, a causal connection between one life and another. But there is no soul, no permanent entity which transmigrates from one life to another.

__________________
This holy life is lived for the abandoning of becoming.

refractorist

Ah! I knew it was somewhere.

Now, I also said non-dual mean not two. If something is not two it is either three or more, or one or zero (or negative numbers). However in common use non-dual implies singular or like I said not two but one. If this is not what you meant, I misunderstood.

As well in common usage awareness means something like "The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer." And since we process sense data through the aggregates this is what I assumed you were talking about. I guess Ive never heard the term field of awareness used in the way you are using it.

keith

refractorist

In any case while there has been much diagreement throughout this thread, Ive enjoyed being a part of it.
'Til next time.

keith

Palzang

refractorist wrote:

Im sure glad Im not an angel. Packed in with even a finite number other angels on the head of a pin, never knowing when you might just slip off or get stepped on. Talking about pain and suffering! Who would have time to even think about enlightment in that sort of situation. It kinda makes you feel sorry for the poor little things.

Keith

Of course, I could be wrong. There are those who argue that there is no limit to the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. But I think I'm right.

Palzang :rolleyes:

refractorist

It seems to me, even with my small mind, that an infinite amount of angels would be even more crowded and uncomfortable than a finite amount. Lets hope for their sakes your are right. :tonguec:

Keith

termite

refractorist wrote:

However in common use non-dual implies singular or like I said not two but one.

"Not-two and not-one" would be more like it. As soon as you try to make it "one" you're looking at it from outside (but who's counting?)

And since we process sense data through the aggregates this is what I assumed you were talking about. I guess Ive never heard the term field of awareness used in the way you are using it.

Have you ever heard the term "satori"? Kow's statement "Secondly, the field of awareness is only manifest when the psychological, what you call the aggregates is extinct, however brief in chronological time the cessation may be" would appear to be a description of "satori."

refractorist

Sure, Ive heard of satori. Ive just never heard it described as a field of awareness. Maybe, unconditioned awareness. Or thoughts without a thinker. Obviously I totally misunderstood what he was trying to say. I thought we were talking about awareness within conditioned existence, thus my reference to the aggregates. That is what my original question about the nature of perception was based in.

Keith

edit:

But like I was trying to get at earlier. I think weve talked this topic through and through. So, til next time.

federica

kowtaaia wrote:

fed,

Debate is quite simply a discussion involving opposing points. It's not to be feared.

JUST IN CASE NOBODY HAS GOT IT YET - I AM MODERATING:
Stop throwing your weight about and being patronising. Kowtaaia.
Ever since you and your friend arrived on this forum, you have both been attempting to steer discussions towards a debate, when you already know that (1) there is no official place for a debate, and (2) you have already been advised by the founder member that debates do not aid in fulfilling the goal of this forum. I posted something earlier to this effect.
Furthermore, you always insist on being cryptic in your replies regarding origins, studies, schools and methods. We know nothing about either of you, and your responses are both obscure and distant.
Allow me to suggest that you might perhaps be suited to a forum that does allow for debate. You may find what you seek (and goodness knows what that is! How can anyone tell!!) On there.
if you wish to continue enjoying exchanges and discussions, where opinions are shared, experiences are aired and we all at least know a bit about each other, then I personally would welcome that.
But there is no debate here.
Any more of this one-sided verbal jousting, fencing and provoking, and I'll close the thread.

beebuddy

Hi Federica,

I recognize the fact that you are the powerful person in this situation and that you may close this thread because of this post but I am seriously not buying your last post. One-sided verbal jousting isn't even possible let alone what is happening. There is good ol'fashion discussion happening here and it "takes two to tango". So it is considered very unfair and unkind for you to point your finger in this direction and make accusations.

Nobody is getting hurt or insulted here and if you cherish belief and opinion over the freedom to speak with respect then I feel less than welcome.

And also, there are many instances on this forum that can be cited where posters are not playing by the rules you set forth. For instance, a girl posted that she thought Jesus and Buddha taught the same thing, she was wrong of course but the first response to her was "your beliefs hinder you" or something like that...

It's unfair and it's hypocricy.

kowtaaia

fed,

patronising


That's ridiculous! Everyone, even the rude have been treated with respect. That some are attached to their statments and take insult when those statments are challenged, is regrettable.

By your logic, someone could state that the Buddha was a Martian and no one would be allowed to bring it up for debate.

Meditate. You are too tense. O. K. that one.