Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Well if you choose to take everything as abstract then yes. With that attitude though we wouldnt have the internet to type our thoughts and share them with each other.
and how is brother a conceptual projection from our mind? Its not that at all, its a description of a person who share the same mother and father. It has nothing to do with our minds. Its a description of a fact.
Jeffrey, I see your point, but when you are no longer attached to your body and no longer breathing, modern medicine describes you as a dead person. If you are medically described as a dead person, others you encounter in your same condition and dimension would be described as "dead people" too. There are a lot of dead people hanging around hospitals. Messengers are quite different than dead people.
if it something given to you meaning taught to you and not coming from you. then it isn't real. sure your brother is real, but your brother is also a human being. you can see him as your brother, but i can just see him as another person. see he is only a brother to YOUR MIND.
thus all things are projections from OUR MINDS. They are concepts projected onto a reality.
aura I said messenger in the sense that they were a messenger from the circle of awakening. Like you described a vaster vision. Pema chodron says that in retreat it is like her eyes had been slits and then when she comes bac they are wide open. My only intention was for you to rest easy with your experience and not deaden it by thinking about it too much. Maybe a reflection of my own experiences. I have had some unusual experiences with energetic states being a schizoaffective person. I have to be careful to not judge everything by the standard of my awareness in those states and to just let everything fall apart and be how they are in the newness however that compares to the previous light. Make sense?
no bud, he isnt only a brother to my mind. He is my brother to other minds as well. In your perspective he isnt your brother but he is still my brother.
think about that.
I agree that it is a concept but its not an abstract concept. Justice is an abstract concept...brother is not.
It is abstract in the sense that there is a just mouthing of words. He is my brother. I am standing on the floor. That is very boring. But the actual experience of standing on the floor is quite...well what is it I don't know. Yet there is a floor and there is a brother. And there is a conceptual overlay.
all concepts are abstract in that you're dividing a reality which isn't divided to begin with. sure we have different form and there are different people. but this is merely all mind. things aren't inherently different, nor do they inherently hold characteristics or concepts.
all things are empty. this isn't denying that your brother doesn't exist. it is merely that he is ultimately empty of all views. such brotherness is a projection from you. where as humaness is a projection from me. your brother is empty. thus he can be really anything we want him to be because we project ideas onto him.
now brother is an idea that was taught to you from society, thus it isn't inherently coming from you. i don't know if i can make that more clear.
this relates back to the notion of time and change. is time and change happening right now? sure it is. but is it "time" and "change"? the labels we project? yes in that we project theses onto an empty reality. no in that the reality themselves don't have these conceptual frameworks underlying and intrinsically a quality of such reality.
thus is it all mind.
0
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited June 2011
Sometimes its percieved that time slows down when we are in a traumatic situation. Here's an experiment that shows that maybe time does slow down in such a situation.
Jeffrey, what is "a messenger from the circle of awakening"? I only know what I saw, and the guy I talked to was just this ordinary guy who was really sad that he could not get a message through to his miserably grieving wife. He had died very suddenly and unexpectedly after a surgery and it was a horrific shock for her that he died. He wanted her to know that although he had died, he was just fine and all was well, but she just couldn't see him no matter what he tried. I asked why she couldn't see him. He said she had too much fear, and too much desire for him not to be dead, and that fear and desire block the living from seeing the dead. I don't know how he figured that out, other than that he had apparently been trying for some time to get through to her without success. I don't know anything about judging the relative value of incidents of altered states of consciousness. I haven't got incidents of altered states of consciousness. All I know is what I experienced during a period of time that the medical staff said that I got as close to dying as a human being can possibly get without dying and without anesthesia of any kind.
Well that makes sense aura. I don't fully grasp the messenger thing but it is something in my studies from my teacher. The idea is that there are different mandalas or circles with some principle at the center of the mandala and then further and further from the center there are patterns of how the center radiates its message or energy. Awakening has a mandala. I thought you had been inspired by your experience so I thought the people who you saw could have been messengers. To show you encouragement. I did not know of your experience with the man. It does seem plausible, but I wouldn't know. In my experiences I have mostly experienced states of energy where everything is more touching. The human voice very touching and precious. Colors. And a sense that people are more than the stories we tell ourselves about them.
for the subjective observer when they sleep the universe is gone. now for others the universe probably exists still. you don't know for sure because you only can know your own experience. it's a safe assumption, but an assumption none the less.
for the subjective observer when they sleep the universe is gone. now for others the universe probably exists still. you don't know for sure because you only can know your own experience. it's a safe assumption, but an assumption none the less.
meow.
But I can ask somebody else what happened while I was asleep.....
but you can only trust/believe/interpret them. you can never know what they feel, think, or what they themselves are observing. thus it is always an assumption.
you can only be aware of what you are aware of. you cannot 100% objectively know what the other is aware of and thinking. even if they tell you, it is still an assumption.
very cut and dry and rational but it is true. i will never know what another is thinking, feeling, or experiencing 100%. i can only believe what they say, interpret, or just assume that they have the same experience as i do.
Your awareness of a fact doesnt make a fact. If someone was shot on the leg and you were NOT there to witness it the person was still shot on the leg.
Even when you are there you cannot know 100% objectively anything, experience itself is subjective.
but it seems like a pointless answer with no substance, kinda like answering "why not?". Its like a stock answer that can be used to anything but really contributes nothing.
Time and space are concepts. Any that is impermanent, leads to suffering, and non self are all concepts. A convention in our minds of what we perceive them to be and not beyond. Anything that we can become attached to that leads us to suffering and rebirth are all concepts in our minds.
Thanks Jeffrey, I understand what you are saying now. The words “a messenger” brought to mind a discrete person/self/mind-body combination like you or I on this plane, but if you are talking about the circles, the ripples on the pond that go out from some distant center with a message or energy or force…I did most definitely encounter that. That was what picked me up and put me back in my body. It was not like meeting an individual person. All I can compare it to is an ocean wave that comes up out of nowhere and slides one gently back down onto the beach. You’re sitting in a room, yes? Imagine something picking up that entire dimensional time and space and gently folding it in all around you and tucking you gently into a much narrower but comfortable time and space which is a spacious but narrower dimension with a lot less of everything visible in it. It was just like a big wave on a pond emanating out from some center point, some vibration, some dropped rock at the distant center of the pond, except it was the softest most gentle of ocean waves gently picking me up and sliding me back down into my body and saying “not yet” in my ear. You’d never believe how incredibly heavy and awkward and mechanical and miserable it feels to have to re-start a body and go back to the dreariness of breathing again! And on top of that, one’s entire personal history re-boots like a long embarrassing (but gratefully fast moving) movie of unfortunately all those life issues one is stuck here dealing with…yada yada yada). Sigh. Taiyaki is right.... attach too much mind to anything and you're stuck there (man oh man is one ever stuck there!) until you learn to resolve and heal and release and let it go. Ok, so I'm the "queen of stuck" still dealing with those issues from the last great war that didn't end all wars.... shovel please! Back to trying to dig myself out.... gassho!
I agree with Taiyaki. If scientists hooked you up to a machine that could tell what you were thinking and they told you you were thinking of an elephant but really you were thinking of tomato soup I would believe myself rather than the 'objective' reality. The basis of buddhism is the discernment of the clarity openness and sensitivity of awareness. Without that there is no buddha. No sutras. No sangha. For you wouldn't be able to discern any of their message or discern in fact anything at all. The basis is awareness rather than a conceptually overlayed 'material' 'mind' dichotomy which is fabricated.
How does someone getting shot in the leg get into your awareness? If they are separate. Does your awareness have pseuodopodia that go out into the 'material' and detect it? Surangama sutra.
If a dog is barking in your meditation you have to incorporate that into your awareness. Viewing the dog as 'out there' interfering in your sacred space is a delusion.
"Pseudopodia (which translates to "false feet") are temporary cytoplasm-filled projections of the cell wall that certain eukaryotic cells use for motion or for ingesting nutrients. Most cells with this capability are referred to as amoeboids." ??? how can awareness even be linked by this word.
Fact doesn't matter if you are aware of it or not. If someone got shot, they got shot it doesn't matter if you know about it or not. Not being able to understand that is the delusion.
You might have not known there was a tsunami in Japan, doesn't matter. It still happened. Your awareness doesn't make facts. Nobody might have taught you the world is round, doesn't matter. It still is whether you know it or not.
believe it or not, things exist outside of your awareness.
How do they get into your awareness if they are separate? I think we mean two different things by awareness. I don't have a concept of 'material' which I consider real (which that concept exists in my awareness). Well actually I do but I don't take that concept too seriously. You are categorizing things in your awareness and then saying there is something outside of awareness. The distinction is fabricated. There is no boundary to awareness. Boundless space.
If you have a dream and you discover somebody got shot in that dream. Does that mean it is a fact. And that fact somehow entered a sphere that is limited. Called your awareness. Or are you saying there is an infinite regression of awarness which can establish what is real and what is not?
What I mean by reality is an experience. Thats all we have. As taiyaki says the rest is just an assumption. Itself a thought. An experience.
To clarify you need a second awareness to establish that the first awareness is not dreaming. And a third to establish the second. Infinite regression....
Buddha said to stick to your own experience. Your experience is not a 'fact' world outside of your awareness. Indeed your experience of learning new information is an indication that awareness is boundless.
One way to explain emptiness. "and also" "and also" "and also" "and also"
Know all things to be like this: A mirage, a cloud castle, A dream, an apparition, Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.
Know all things to be like this: As the moon in a bright sky In some clear lake reflected, Though to that lake the moon has never moved.
Know all things to be like this: As an echo that derives From music, sounds, and weeping, Yet in that echo is no melody.
Know all things to be like this: As a magician makes illusions Of horses, oxen, carts and other things, Nothing is as it appears. The Buddha
0
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
The Cittimatra or Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism is also called "mind only school" and is conciousness only. The Madhyamaka rejects this view though and says that there is conventional existence and its the mind that gives it definition and meaning. The difference could be said that Yogacara says mind "creates" reality and Madhyamaka says mind "interprets" and thus gives seeming solidity to reality. If someone is shot while they're in a coma or otherwise unconcious they'd still die. They'd just need to be concious to know or understand that they've been shot.
Thats interesting. The Yogacara is based on the madhyamaka. You mean that the sautantrika is also based on the madhyamaka. Shravaka is not based on madyamaka.
What if you have the experience of dying in your dream? Who establishes that you have really died? Who establishes that that person exists? Nothing real ever comes into existence or goes out of it. Where is the boundary between a rotten tomato and not a tomato? Thinking.
All of these are views. Shravaka and sautantrika. Sautantrika is a refinement based on the flaws of cittimatra. Prasangika a refinement of sautantrika. Shentong a refinement. Thats my teacher's teacher take on it anyhow You are free!
Well yes, it all hinges on what mind is in the first place. As far as I am concerned the materialists have failed to convince me they have any idea at all what mind as I understand it is. If you tell me that a brain function, a spark of energy in the brain is experience I have to beg to differ. That is not what I mean by 'experience'. Experience is subjective and brain functions are objective. The one cannot be equated with the other. Since in my terms the materialist is not saying anything about what I mean by experience, they are not in a position to say what happens to subjective experience when the body dies.
......
Absolutely. All this is true. There only possibility is that through meditation and insight one can come to a direct understanding of what subjective experience actually is and it might turn out to be something that is not conditioned and impermanent. It may turn out to be primary and what we call 'material' might turn out to be more intimately involved with the nature of subjective experience or awareness than had previously been thought - and evidence based on direct experience may turn out to be profoundly significant and meaningful. It could be couldnt it?
.......
It is all very interesting. It is fascinating. What we can find out about the intricacies of the way the universe works is amazing and fascinating. However, when it comes to questions about mind, we have to start with a clear sense of what we are talking about. Are we talking about experience or something 'out there' that somehow is separate from experience. If is is separate, how do we know about it? What is knowing? In any scientific experiment, the experiment can be set up and things can happen but if nothing knows that.............then there is no knowledge. I find that fascinating. At the end of the line there has to be the subjective experience of knowing something and the suggestion is that that something is not the mind but if it is not the mind, how do we know it? How does something external and objectively known 'out there' ever become subjective knowledge? To me it seems obvious that there was never any real separation - knowing and what is known are not separate and yet they are distinct..........and knowing cannot really be in time or space in the way we objectify those concepts. Knowing creates concepts by means of which we intuit something like time and space - but the knowing came first and time and space remain knowledge. There is no time and space without knowing and knowing seems to be what we mean by mind - although it is very hard to define what we mean by mind. Its more an intuitive sense of subjective experience which turns out to be primary. Without that there is no question of a universe. Isnt that amazing. I often ponder that one. What would all this be if there were no knowing of it?
0
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@Jeffrey I didn't think anyone had a wrong view or anything you guys just seemed to be talking past each other.
What if you have the experience of dying in your dream? Who establishes that you have really died? Who establishes that that person exists? Nothing real ever comes into existence or goes out of it. Where is the boundary between a rotten tomato and not a tomato? Thinking.
A Prasaṅgika asserts that something exists conventionally if it meets all of the following three conditions:
if it is known to a conventional consciousness if no other conventional cognition contradicts its being as it is thus known if reason that accurately analyses reality (that is, analyses whether something intrinsically exists) does not contradict it
Is the consciousness conventional post-meditation and real during meditation? Why not murder people with the conventional consciousness if it is not the real nature of reality anyhow?
Why is compassion meaningful? Even if its practice leads to enlightenment if it ends at death then it is a whiff of poppers a toke of grass. Chocolate cake.
0
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited June 2011
Is the consciousness conventional post-meditation and real during meditation? Why not murder people with the conventional consciousness if it is not the real nature of reality anyhow?
Why is compassion meaningful? Even if its practice leads to enlightenment if it ends at death then it is a whiff of poppers a toke of grass. Chocolate cake.
Karma is also illusiory and unreal. I'd agree with your take on compassion leading to enlightenment, that's what makes it meaningful. Plus illusiory happiness is better than illusiory suffering. I don't follow the part about poppers and chocolate cake though.
0
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
Is the consciousness conventional post-meditation and real during meditation?
I think its both all the time. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form.
Enlightenment is not meaningful if it is only avoiding something. Rather it is alive. I don't know what karma is. That is how it is illusory. Not because I know. That is just an objective classification of karma.
And form is distinct from emptiness, however it is not separate. Form is taking things as solid and emptiness is letting go of that. They are not separate for things are just as they are. Designating them conventional or not is a distinction but things are just as they are. Ungraspable yet distinct.
MODERATOR NOTE This thread has really gotten off on a tangent. Please take it back to "time" and whether it's a concept in the mind or not, per the OP, please. Thank you.
I would define a "fact" as a pattern or structure that exists within the parameters of a set of given dimensions (x,y,z and time is our standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters). Within that set of operating parameters, a "fact" would constitute a small segment of "reality" (with "reality" defined as the sum total of everything that exists within the parameters of a set of given dimensions).
Space-time is a part of our standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters. Space-time apparently also exists beyond and is not confined by our standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters. Difficulties of description and communication arise when attempting to describe any pattern or structure that apparently exists beyond our standard set of operating parameters.
I would say that the experience of dying gives a perception of one's existence, one's "mind," as extending on an additional dimension beyond the standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters that we experience in every day life. I would also say that the experience of having been born with memories of a past life and death before ever having been born as a child in this life also gives a perception of one's existence, one's "mind" as extending on a dimension beyond the standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters.
Do human beings have a pan-dimensional existence or "mind" that extends beyond our standard 4 dimensional world? (irregardless of any chicken-and-egg questions about what generates what) I would say that has been my experience. Your own experience of course may differ.
The Cittimatra or Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism is also called "mind only school" and is conciousness only. The Madhyamaka rejects this view though and says that there is conventional existence and its the mind that gives it definition and meaning. The difference could be said that Yogacara says mind "creates" reality and Madhyamaka says mind "interprets" and thus gives seeming solidity to reality. If someone is shot while they're in a coma or otherwise unconcious they'd still die. They'd just need to be concious to know or understand that they've been shot.
i like this. time is a creation of mind, but that doesn't negate its existence. thus staying in the middle way.
During sunrise, the space is brighten up in the moring, while sunset, the space is darken in evening. The space neither has its brightness nor darkness :thumbsup:
Comments
and how is brother a conceptual projection from our mind? Its not that at all, its a description of a person who share the same mother and father. It has nothing to do with our minds. Its a description of a fact.
@aura
I said close to the speed of light.
then it isn't real. sure your brother is real, but your brother is also a human being. you can see him as your brother, but i can just see him as another person. see he is only a brother to YOUR MIND.
thus all things are projections from OUR MINDS. They are concepts projected onto a reality.
Think about it.
think about that.
I agree that it is a concept but its not an abstract concept. Justice is an abstract concept...brother is not.
all things are empty. this isn't denying that your brother doesn't exist. it is merely that he is ultimately empty of all views. such brotherness is a projection from you. where as humaness is a projection from me. your brother is empty. thus he can be really anything we want him to be because we project ideas onto him.
now brother is an idea that was taught to you from society, thus it isn't inherently coming from you. i don't know if i can make that more clear.
this relates back to the notion of time and change.
is time and change happening right now? sure it is.
but is it "time" and "change"? the labels we project? yes in that we project theses onto an empty reality. no in that the reality themselves don't have these conceptual frameworks underlying and intrinsically a quality of such reality.
thus is it all mind.
http://www.snotr.com/video/1004/Can_time_slow_down
I don't know anything about judging the relative value of incidents of altered states of consciousness. I haven't got incidents of altered states of consciousness. All I know is what I experienced during a period of time that the medical staff said that I got as close to dying as a human being can possibly get without dying and without anesthesia of any kind.
Spiny
now for others the universe probably exists still. you don't know for sure because you
only can know your own experience. it's a safe assumption, but an assumption none the less.
meow.
Spiny
you can only be aware of what you are aware of. you cannot 100% objectively know what the other is aware of and thinking.
even if they tell you, it is still an assumption.
very cut and dry and rational but it is true. i will never know what another is thinking, feeling, or experiencing 100%. i can only believe what they say, interpret, or just assume that they have the same experience as i do.
Your awareness of a fact doesnt make a fact. If someone was shot on the leg and you were NOT there to witness it the person was still shot on the leg.
Even when you are there you cannot know 100% objectively anything, experience itself is subjective.
but it seems like a pointless answer with no substance, kinda like answering "why not?". Its like a stock answer that can be used to anything but really contributes nothing.
Taiyaki is right....
attach too much mind to anything and you're stuck there
(man oh man is one ever stuck there!)
until you learn to resolve and heal and release and let it go.
Ok, so I'm the "queen of stuck" still dealing with those issues from the last great war that didn't end all wars.... shovel please!
Back to trying to dig myself out....
gassho!
If a dog is barking in your meditation you have to incorporate that into your awareness. Viewing the dog as 'out there' interfering in your sacred space is a delusion.
Fact doesn't matter if you are aware of it or not. If someone got shot, they got shot it doesn't matter if you know about it or not. Not being able to understand that is the delusion.
You might have not known there was a tsunami in Japan, doesn't matter. It still happened. Your awareness doesn't make facts. Nobody might have taught you the world is round, doesn't matter. It still is whether you know it or not.
believe it or not, things exist outside of your awareness.
If you have a dream and you discover somebody got shot in that dream. Does that mean it is a fact. And that fact somehow entered a sphere that is limited. Called your awareness. Or are you saying there is an infinite regression of awarness which can establish what is real and what is not?
What I mean by reality is an experience. Thats all we have. As taiyaki says the rest is just an assumption. Itself a thought. An experience.
Buddha said to stick to your own experience. Your experience is not a 'fact' world outside of your awareness. Indeed your experience of learning new information is an indication that awareness is boundless.
One way to explain emptiness. "and also" "and also" "and also" "and also"
Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.
Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected,
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.
Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds, and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.
Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.
The Buddha
Or as Eckardt Tolle refers to it "the now".
Well yes, it all hinges on what mind is in the first place. As far as I am concerned the materialists have failed to convince me they have any idea at all what mind as I understand it is. If you tell me that a brain function, a spark of energy in the brain is experience I have to beg to differ. That is not what I mean by 'experience'. Experience is subjective and brain functions are objective. The one cannot be equated with the other. Since in my terms the materialist is not saying anything about what I mean by experience, they are not in a position to say what happens to subjective experience when the body dies.
......
Absolutely. All this is true. There only possibility is that through meditation and insight one can come to a direct understanding of what subjective experience actually is and it might turn out to be something that is not conditioned and impermanent. It may turn out to be primary and what we call 'material' might turn out to be more intimately involved with the nature of subjective experience or awareness than had previously been thought - and evidence based on direct experience may turn out to be profoundly significant and meaningful. It could be couldnt it?
.......
It is all very interesting. It is fascinating. What we can find out about the intricacies of the way the universe works is amazing and fascinating. However, when it comes to questions about mind, we have to start with a clear sense of what we are talking about. Are we talking about experience or something 'out there' that somehow is separate from experience. If is is separate, how do we know about it? What is knowing? In any scientific experiment, the experiment can be set up and things can happen but if nothing knows that.............then there is no knowledge. I find that fascinating. At the end of the line there has to be the subjective experience of knowing something and the suggestion is that that something is not the mind but if it is not the mind, how do we know it? How does something external and objectively known 'out there' ever become subjective knowledge? To me it seems obvious that there was never any real separation - knowing and what is known are not separate and yet they are distinct..........and knowing cannot really be in time or space in the way we objectify those concepts. Knowing creates concepts by means of which we intuit something like time and space - but the knowing came first and time and space remain knowledge. There is no time and space without knowing and knowing seems to be what we mean by mind - although it is very hard to define what we mean by mind. Its more an intuitive sense of subjective experience which turns out to be primary. Without that there is no question of a universe. Isnt that amazing. I often ponder that one. What would all this be if there were no knowing of it?
A Prasaṅgika asserts that something exists conventionally if it meets all of the following three conditions:
if it is known to a conventional consciousness
if no other conventional cognition contradicts its being as it is thus known
if reason that accurately analyses reality (that is, analyses whether something intrinsically exists) does not contradict it
This is just cut and paste from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka so don't ask me to explain to much.
Why is compassion meaningful? Even if its practice leads to enlightenment if it ends at death then it is a whiff of poppers a toke of grass. Chocolate cake.
This thread has really gotten off on a tangent. Please take it back to "time" and whether it's a concept in the mind or not, per the OP, please. Thank you.
Within that set of operating parameters, a "fact" would constitute a small segment of "reality" (with "reality" defined as the sum total of everything that exists within the parameters of a set of given dimensions).
Space-time is a part of our standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters.
Space-time apparently also exists beyond and is not confined by our standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters.
Difficulties of description and communication arise when attempting to describe any pattern or structure that apparently exists beyond our standard set of operating parameters.
I would say that the experience of dying gives a perception of one's existence, one's "mind," as extending on an additional dimension beyond the standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters that we experience in every day life.
I would also say that the experience of having been born with memories of a past life and death before ever having been born as a child in this life also gives a perception of one's existence, one's "mind" as extending on a dimension beyond the standard 4 dimensional set of operating parameters.
Do human beings have a pan-dimensional existence or "mind" that extends beyond our standard 4 dimensional world? (irregardless of any chicken-and-egg questions about what generates what)
I would say that has been my experience.
Your own experience of course may differ.