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.
i suppose it doesn't have much to do with the original post. i am just curious how one can denote emptiness as not central to the teachings of the buddha.
i don't see a disconnect between emptiness and the three marks. it's basically pointing to the same non dual reality.
I've alwasy thought emptiness was kind of a conglomeration of the 3 marks.
Emptiness = dukkha, impermanence, not-self
I have read other things as well, however. That emptiness denotes "empty of something." So more a mix of just impermanence and not-self. Not so much Dukkha.
I understand emptiness to mean ungraspable... We suffer dukkha because we are grasping at selfs which are impermanent..
Emptiness remains when the dukkha is gone.
In my teaching there is a self but it is unconditioned. Since it is not conditioned it is not conceptual. Without a concept there is no danger that we would try to grasp it. The problem is we have so many concepts to grasp at. Its like your mouth is full of gravel. You have to spit all the gravel out and rinse your mouth out before you can enjoy the fine feast of life.
It is a quality of phenomena. But its just a view. If you try to fixate the view and KNOW THE ANSWER then you are filled with gravel.
Emptiness means that dukkha ends when you stop grasping for 'the answer' it doesn't mean that there is no answer though. the question of an answer or not an answer doesn't apply. Emptiness just means that there is dukkha when we try to grasp to an answer.
Insight is when we see directly. Then the dead hand of mara comes in and makes it into one of the five skandas which is not the self. The self is the clarity openness and sensitivity.. openness is the spacious quality of the self.. the empty quality. From that we know the self is empty because it is clear open and sensitive.
OCS referes to the nature of mind rather than conceptual objects. Suranangama sutra.
But if phenomena are a product of the function to discern, and nirvana necessitates the cessation of this function, then there are no longer phenomena to be descerned, and thus no emptiness to be discerned either.
They are not a product that would be conditional and relative.. (and conceptual)
nirvana is a cessation of suffering. When you stop grasping. Phenomena are still there.
I like your question though. You are trying to understand letting go of concepts by using concepts. You CAN sink this ship. All concepts are dukkha including this one.
Instead stop just stop grasping and see for yourself.
It doesn't mean to stop questioning I shouldn't have spoken out of turn. Or stopping studying. It means to zero in on your experience. In meditation or out. Find out what grasping is. That is the second noble truth. Whenever you contact one of the nobles you contact all of them. To the depth that you go?
Clarity is the function to see clearly. This is like discernment. If our awareness were not empty and we were angry... then we would always be angry. Forever.
But because awareness is empty we can let go and our emotions pacify. (eventually)
See I don't study sutras I listen to dharma talks of teachers who have studied sutras and then devised curriculum for westerners. That is where this comes from.
See I don't study sutras I listen to dharma talks of teachers who have studied sutras and then devised curriculum for westerners. That is where this comes from.
I study the sutras, and came to my own conclusion based on practice.
emptyness was a later invention, of a nihilist. I don't need to "understand emptyness".
emptyness was a later invention, of a nihilist. I don't need to "understand emptyness".
Lol. The "I" can't understand emptiness because while the mind is busy sustaining the "I" its cloudy. We can't see the sun on a cloudy day, or the stars on a sunny day. Emptiness is quite reasonable.
Talisman,
I appreciate the effort you took in the OP. It seems easy to apply your view to the present moment also, where we have the ability to examine the cycle pushing new versions of self-clinging into becoming.
I also like the analogy you use of lines of causality.
Thank you for the lesson about Buddhism Vincenzi. It is about cessation of suffering ultimately (if conceptualized as such). I have found emptiness teachings helpful in my life. It is very liberating to see our differences and let go of the stress of not seeing things in the same way (for me).
I also found the original post stimulating it is challenging for me to think any other way than the 'becoming' being localized to a body. And hopping to another body. So that was the most difficult part for me to understand. I apologize for blathering on so long.
The mind isn't something you inspect like a scientist. It is something you DO But as an object the scriptural term is citta. Awakened mind is bodhicitta. It is also translated as heart.
A student writes:
"In a world of samsara where everything is always shifting, where we cannot be sure of anything, where there is both horrific tragedy and great happiness and joy, how do we maintain stability, how do we manage these huge waves of sadness and happiness, where is the truth of these feelings?"
Lama Shenpen:
The feelings that change are the ones to let come and let go. The heart qualities do not change. Our nature is open and spacious - it doesn't change. However much we close down and feel oppressed there is always, always that possibility of opening, of turning towards that pain and opening to it in the space of awareness.
Opening in that way is also a feeling - opening our heart is a feeling - the heart could always open any time because it is its nature. Closings down and despairing is also a possibility but it would be conditioned. You would have to work at it to keep yourself closed down and despairing - you would get tense or dull and not very happy.
But when we laugh and open out and relax we don't need to work at being happy � it's simply our nature to be sensitive and responsive and joyful actually. We don't have to work at being joyful, we have to work at letting go of what we are holding on to that stops that joy manifesting.
We can work at trying to keep up a pretence of happiness but we know perfectly well that that is not true happiness and that is why it is such hard work. Samsara is hard work - and yet still that Buddha Nature bursts through even in the most desperate of situations - just a smile or a laugh and somehow its all there again even if ever so briefly.
Comments
i don't see a disconnect between emptiness and the three marks. it's basically pointing to the same non dual reality.
either way sorry about getting off topic.
Emptiness = dukkha, impermanence, not-self
I have read other things as well, however. That emptiness denotes "empty of something." So more a mix of just impermanence and not-self. Not so much Dukkha.
Emptiness remains when the dukkha is gone.
In my teaching there is a self but it is unconditioned. Since it is not conditioned it is not conceptual. Without a concept there is no danger that we would try to grasp it. The problem is we have so many concepts to grasp at. Its like your mouth is full of gravel. You have to spit all the gravel out and rinse your mouth out before you can enjoy the fine feast of life.
Emptiness means that dukkha ends when you stop grasping for 'the answer' it doesn't mean that there is no answer though. the question of an answer or not an answer doesn't apply. Emptiness just means that there is dukkha when we try to grasp to an answer.
Insight is when we see directly. Then the dead hand of mara comes in and makes it into one of the five skandas which is not the self. The self is the clarity openness and sensitivity.. openness is the spacious quality of the self.. the empty quality. From that we know the self is empty because it is clear open and sensitive.
OCS referes to the nature of mind rather than conceptual objects. Suranangama sutra.
nirvana is a cessation of suffering. When you stop grasping. Phenomena are still there.
I like your question though. You are trying to understand letting go of concepts by using concepts. You CAN sink this ship. All concepts are dukkha including this one.
Instead stop just stop grasping and see for yourself.
But because awareness is empty we can let go and our emotions pacify. (eventually)
emptyness was a later invention, of a nihilist. I don't need to "understand emptyness".
Talisman,
I appreciate the effort you took in the OP. It seems easy to apply your view to the present moment also, where we have the ability to examine the cycle pushing new versions of self-clinging into becoming.
I also like the analogy you use of lines of causality.
Thank you for the pictures.
it was a reference to a prior Jeffrey post... don't split hairs.
I also found the original post stimulating it is challenging for me to think any other way than the 'becoming' being localized to a body. And hopping to another body. So that was the most difficult part for me to understand. I apologize for blathering on so long.
Spiny
or a buddha loses his mind :hair:
You need to define what you mean by mind. Exactly the functions you are talking about.
But as an object the scriptural term is citta. Awakened mind is bodhicitta. It is also translated as heart.
A student writes:
"In a world of samsara where everything is always shifting, where we cannot be sure of anything, where there is both horrific tragedy and great happiness and joy, how do we maintain stability, how do we manage these huge waves of sadness and happiness, where is the truth of these feelings?"
Lama Shenpen:
The feelings that change are the ones to let come and let go. The heart qualities do not change. Our nature is open and spacious - it doesn't change. However much we close down and feel oppressed there is always, always that possibility of opening, of turning towards that pain and opening to it in the space of awareness.
Opening in that way is also a feeling - opening our heart is a feeling - the heart could always open any time because it is its nature. Closings down and despairing is also a possibility but it would be conditioned. You would have to work at it to keep yourself closed down and despairing - you would get tense or dull and not very happy.
But when we laugh and open out and relax we don't need to work at being happy � it's simply our nature to be sensitive and responsive and joyful actually. We don't have to work at being joyful, we have to work at letting go of what we are holding on to that stops that joy manifesting.
We can work at trying to keep up a pretence of happiness but we know perfectly well that that is not true happiness and that is why it is such hard work. Samsara is hard work - and yet still that Buddha Nature bursts through even in the most desperate of situations - just a smile or a laugh and somehow its all there again even if ever so briefly.