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.
Intrinsic value (derail from Buddhist Mythology thread)
Why would I bother. Greater minds than mine have illuminated it. I get it. If you don't get it from reading them you most certainly won't get it from reading my words.
You should have made your point before the thread got sunk. lol I wasn't feeling that that topic was convoluted. As you said a, pretty basic idea. You will get used to @Taiyaki. He is very dedicated.
It's not an obvious statement - one answer I suppose to 'why' may be 'It just is'.
The conclusion, I believe, is reached by breaking the quandary down into steps and then integrating the results - it seems that the sticking point is often dependance on mind as that is a direct attack on the 'I' we all rely upon to make sense of it all - once we tackle the dependance on mind, we are left with no observer position so 'existence' as defined by observation ceases.
I think ultimately, this doesn't answer the question - it pushes it back into a definition that may be used to continue calculating (let's call them) the 'lesser' mysteries! (a concept that is commonplace in even the most elementary pure maths conundrum) - The ultimate mystery itself is incapable of resolution (in concepts rooted only to this view of reality) as its very creation is concurrent and dependant to our continuing consciousness of it.
Very similarly in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics it is proposed that manifested reality is not a concrete affair, in the sense that an object does not apparently 'exist' (on a sub-atomic level at least) without an observer (but objective existence is somewhat paradoxically alluded to by measure of observation) - it may therefore be said (for quantum mechanics in the context of matter that we are aware of under observation) that there is 'potential' for manifestation along any point from origin to end (space/time observation period) which is broadly the square of the amplitude of the integrated functions for that particular event (this is the probablity for the event to occur but it is not quite classical view of probablity as all the chances are included rather than focusing on one particular event).
Which kind of translates into... we know it works for manifested reality as the experimental results are more accurate in prediction that classical physics results (mainly as classical physics results are a gross over-simplification due to the utterly unfathomable chaos scenario) however, we cannot say it is so when there is no observer position - that is a paradox that is best described by what it isn't rather than what it is (or may be) - in that analysis, we conclude that it isnt anything that we can define in a concept that applies to this reality's observer position.
My question to you is what is the ignorance of the 2nd truth if it is not misapprehending the world?
It's said to be ignorance of our true nature, which is emptiness.
Thank you. We are in agreement then. True nature, emptiness=lack of inherent/ intrinsic existence.
In attempt to un-convolute the issue I ask you and/or Taiyaki:
Why is there a "lack of inherent/intrinsic existence" ?
Idk if why is the best question.
Its better to pose it how does inherent existence work and how does that relate to experience from a ignorant (dualstic view and perception).
And how does non-inherency work in relationship to experience from wisdom (non dualstic view and perception).
When the Buddhas speak about dependent arising they are speaking of emptiness and when emptiness is spoken of they are speaking of dependent arising.
Things lack inherent existence because they are concocted, fabricated, built through causes and conditions.
So for example we can only speak about this using language thus this all just becomes intellectualism. But I shall try my best.
There is a sensation which is the result of hand touching table and mental attention then we have sensation or sense consciousness as the effect.
So we can test this. We put our hands on the table and there is sensation. Say if we take one of the conditions our. Like for instance attention, then we don't really experience the sensation. Or if there is no table then there cannot be that specific sensation.
So the tactile experience is one instant of certain causes/conditions coming into play and when those are not in play then we cannot experience that.
Hence we cannot give status of existence, non-existence, both or neither. We cannot say something exists, because that presupposes that there is something there that can be independent and change.
What is being implied is that there are no such things as "things". That is a fabrication of conceptuality. And if there are no things there are no relationships, time, space, subjects, objects, motion, etc.
Yet like a magical illusion all of these things happen. So there is something fishy going on. Experience isn't like what it seems to be conveyed when using language. And meditation becomes the tool for such investigations.
This is all theoretical. But when it comes to suffering its very real. Suffering in any form feels real and permanent. We automatically give more power, value, meaning, and attention to suffering. And what the Buddha is saying in essence is that this suffering is built and we are part of that process. So if we know how to work with the conditions then we can eliminate suffering.
And this is possible because of emptiness. In a way things have to exist with no inherent existence. If things had inherency or essencehood then things could not change.
That is one way to look and understand what this is all pointing to.
And these as a whole are never taken as ontological truth or stances. Emptiness is not a stance but a negation of the asserted position and mode of existence we assume on the basis of our ignorance, which proliferates suffering.
Hope this answers your question.
It does seem that what is being said is overly complex and there are a multitude of simple thing we can say to sound profound.
But I ask people. Why do we cherish and treat simplicity better than complexity. Isn't this a bias? What about anti intellectualism?
Why make an arbitrary distinction between experience and knowledge.
We can all say yes things are empty of inherent existence.
These are just words. But how has that worked in the heart as an individual and in practice and life. Has it brought more freedom, love and compassion?
So two individuals can spit the same words out, but the significance of such words is highly dependent upon the individual level of understand and experience.
In an infinite multi-verse wouldn't it be possible to think virtually anything is possible. I think anything possible is a manner of speech. Buddhism isn't about 'outer space' it is about earth.
As far as inherent existence I refer back to my dots example. The first dot is already one dot as dependent on non-manifest dots.
If things had inherency or essencehood then things could not change.
I think what you're trying to say is that if anything could not change it would be completely static. Everything appears to change, and this is the essence of emptiness, simply.
But how can something be independent yet changing?
The very nature of change implies that it cannot be independent.
Yet there appears to be something changing.
What if there is just change, without something changing. But then what use is it calling it change other than convention?
Because if everything is change and there are no things changing.
Maybe the noun, verb and object do not apply other than conventions.
Just some fun thoughts about emptiness/d.o I've been having.
But I do not just equate change with emptiness. Its a much deeper insight than that. What is being implied is that everything is none other than conventional language and apart from that language there is no "things" established.
And understanding that is freedom from the four extremes: is, isn't, both, or neither.
Thus the buddha asserts nirvana as cessation/unbinding, which doesn't arrive at something or somewhere but rather is the end of fabricating this/that duality or to put in essence (inherent existence).
Q: If the nature of mind is this all-pervading, brilliant union of luminosity and emptiness, ungraspable, how is it that it could be obscured, even for a moment, let alone for lifetime after lifetime?
{Tibetan translation}
A: Because it's too brilliant, that's the short answer. {laughter} It's like this. Luminous, brilliant emptiness, is the nature of mind. And it's been there with us inseparably for beginningless time. But the brilliance is a bit too strong. If you take the two, the factor of luminosity and the factor of emptiness, the former one, the factor of luminosity is a bit strong. A bit stronger. And because it's so strong, we don't see the empty factor. We don't see the factor of emptiness. Because of the brilliance of the mind, all these things appear, and they look so real, and we get so fascinated with it. {laughter} We're really stuck. We're really stuck on them, and we're confused, and becoming bewildered and confused by them, then we don't realize the nature of our minds. We become completely intoxicated with the brilliance and the luminosity, and what all of what it displays to us, and we don't see the emptiness.
Now when Buddhists talk about ignorance, they don't mean some sort of black darkness, just shrouded... they actually mean it's so brilliant. It's so vivid, that we become confused by it. So we have to turn inwards and look, and see the emptiness that we've not been seeing, because we've been following after the luminosity for so long. Good example is a movie, movie comes on, we know it's just a movie, pretty soon {laughter}. We know it's somebody... picture, you know. There's human beings, and there's mountains, and there's rivers, and these wild life and plains, and we're completely drawn to it. And it's just because its brilliance is too strong, that's why we have to turn and look at the emptiness.
If there are no reference points then the change is just a sensation, a yielding movement. Of course you can place a cup closer to another cup and say there is change, so that is kinda shot down. It's hard to wrap your mind around some of the madyamaka stuff. Personally I focus on the qualities of my awareness: the openness to be a blank slate, the clarity to see what is there, and the response that comes. I know how to pour liquid from one cup to another, but I have no idea how my hands are able to do this. I'm not a robot who has a program to pour a cup, rather I balance the cup and at every motion have openness to redirect the cup to the right spot. So I see the changes and act appropriately. This is where mind meets DO.
But I do not just equate change with emptiness. Its a much deeper insight than that. What is being implied is that everything is none other than conventional language and apart from that language there is no "things" established.
You can fantasize about it all you want, but after all the tiring convolutions and bizarre abstractions all we can really see is that everything appears to change.
But I do not just equate change with emptiness. Its a much deeper insight than that. What is being implied is that everything is none other than conventional language and apart from that language there is no "things" established.
You can fantasize about it all you want, but after all the tiring convolutions and bizarre abstractions all we can really see is that everything appears to change.
It's the labor of fabrication (and un-fabrication) that give meaning and solidity to otherwise meaninglessness. We can't have meaninglessness of course, because it's evil.
Why is meaningless evil? Because it doesn't feel good in the present moment?
Meaninglessness means that we have an intuitive sense that there could be meaning. Otherwise we would just be zombies who just trudge along. But no, when we feel a lack of meaning we search for all we are worth.
So meaninglessness is just a distortion of the natural quality of well-being and our search for well-being.
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śūnyatā
For some reason the link does not include Sunyata. You will have to type it into the search function.
I wasn't feeling that that topic was convoluted. As you said a, pretty basic idea.
You will get used to @Taiyaki. He is very dedicated.
The conclusion, I believe, is reached by breaking the quandary down into steps and then integrating the results - it seems that the sticking point is often dependance on mind as that is a direct attack on the 'I' we all rely upon to make sense of it all - once we tackle the dependance on mind, we are left with no observer position so 'existence' as defined by observation ceases.
I think ultimately, this doesn't answer the question - it pushes it back into a definition that may be used to continue calculating (let's call them) the 'lesser' mysteries! (a concept that is commonplace in even the most elementary pure maths conundrum) - The ultimate mystery itself is incapable of resolution (in concepts rooted only to this view of reality) as its very creation is concurrent and dependant to our continuing consciousness of it.
Very similarly in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics it is proposed that manifested reality is not a concrete affair, in the sense that an object does not apparently 'exist' (on a sub-atomic level at least) without an observer (but objective existence is somewhat paradoxically alluded to by measure of observation) - it may therefore be said (for quantum mechanics in the context of matter that we are aware of under observation) that there is 'potential' for manifestation along any point from origin to end (space/time observation period) which is broadly the square of the amplitude of the integrated functions for that particular event (this is the probablity for the event to occur but it is not quite classical view of probablity as all the chances are included rather than focusing on one particular event).
Which kind of translates into... we know it works for manifested reality as the experimental results are more accurate in prediction that classical physics results (mainly as classical physics results are a gross over-simplification due to the utterly unfathomable chaos scenario) however, we cannot say it is so when there is no observer position - that is a paradox that is best described by what it isn't rather than what it is (or may be) - in that analysis, we conclude that it isnt anything that we can define in a concept that applies to this reality's observer position.
Its better to pose it how does inherent existence work and how does that relate to experience from a ignorant (dualstic view and perception).
And how does non-inherency work in relationship to experience from wisdom (non dualstic view and perception).
When the Buddhas speak about dependent arising they are speaking of emptiness and when emptiness is spoken of they are speaking of dependent arising.
Things lack inherent existence because they are concocted, fabricated, built through causes and conditions.
So for example we can only speak about this using language thus this all just becomes intellectualism. But I shall try my best.
There is a sensation which is the result of hand touching table and mental attention then we have sensation or sense consciousness as the effect.
So we can test this. We put our hands on the table and there is sensation. Say if we take one of the conditions our. Like for instance attention, then we don't really experience the sensation. Or if there is no table then there cannot be that specific sensation.
So the tactile experience is one instant of certain causes/conditions coming into play and when those are not in play then we cannot experience that.
Hence we cannot give status of existence, non-existence, both or neither. We cannot say something exists, because that presupposes that there is something there that can be independent and change.
What is being implied is that there are no such things as "things". That is a fabrication of conceptuality. And if there are no things there are no relationships, time, space, subjects, objects, motion, etc.
Yet like a magical illusion all of these things happen. So there is something fishy going on. Experience isn't like what it seems to be conveyed when using language. And meditation becomes the tool for such investigations.
This is all theoretical. But when it comes to suffering its very real. Suffering in any form feels real and permanent. We automatically give more power, value, meaning, and attention to suffering. And what the Buddha is saying in essence is that this suffering is built and we are part of that process. So if we know how to work with the conditions then we can eliminate suffering.
And this is possible because of emptiness. In a way things have to exist with no inherent existence. If things had inherency or essencehood then things could not change.
That is one way to look and understand what this is all pointing to.
And these as a whole are never taken as ontological truth or stances. Emptiness is not a stance but a negation of the asserted position and mode of existence we assume on the basis of our ignorance, which proliferates suffering.
Hope this answers your question.
It does seem that what is being said is overly complex and there are a multitude of simple thing we can say to sound profound.
But I ask people. Why do we cherish and treat simplicity better than complexity. Isn't this a bias? What about anti intellectualism?
Why make an arbitrary distinction between experience and knowledge.
We can all say yes things are empty of inherent existence.
These are just words. But how has that worked in the heart as an individual and in practice and life. Has it brought more freedom, love and compassion?
So two individuals can spit the same words out, but the significance of such words is highly dependent upon the individual level of understand and experience.
As far as inherent existence I refer back to my dots example. The first dot is already one dot as dependent on non-manifest dots.
But how can something be independent yet changing?
The very nature of change implies that it cannot be independent.
Yet there appears to be something changing.
What if there is just change, without something changing. But then what use is it calling it change other than convention?
Because if everything is change and there are no things changing.
Maybe the noun, verb and object do not apply other than conventions.
Just some fun thoughts about emptiness/d.o I've been having.
But I do not just equate change with emptiness. Its a much deeper insight than that. What is being implied is that everything is none other than conventional language and apart from that language there is no "things" established.
And understanding that is freedom from the four extremes: is, isn't, both, or neither.
Thus the buddha asserts nirvana as cessation/unbinding, which doesn't arrive at something or somewhere but rather is the end of fabricating this/that duality or to put in essence (inherent existence).
http://www.rinpoche.com/q&a.htm
Q: If the nature of mind is this all-pervading, brilliant union of luminosity and emptiness, ungraspable, how is it that it could be obscured, even for a moment, let alone for lifetime after lifetime?
{Tibetan translation}
A: Because it's too brilliant, that's the short answer. {laughter} It's like this. Luminous, brilliant emptiness, is the nature of mind. And it's been there with us inseparably for beginningless time. But the brilliance is a bit too strong. If you take the two, the factor of luminosity and the factor of emptiness, the former one, the factor of luminosity is a bit strong. A bit stronger. And because it's so strong, we don't see the empty factor. We don't see the factor of emptiness. Because of the brilliance of the mind, all these things appear, and they look so real, and we get so fascinated with it. {laughter} We're really stuck. We're really stuck on them, and we're confused, and becoming bewildered and confused by them, then we don't realize the nature of our minds. We become completely intoxicated with the brilliance and the luminosity, and what all of what it displays to us, and we don't see the emptiness.
Now when Buddhists talk about ignorance, they don't mean some sort of black darkness, just shrouded... they actually mean it's so brilliant. It's so vivid, that we become confused by it. So we have to turn inwards and look, and see the emptiness that we've not been seeing, because we've been following after the luminosity for so long. Good example is a movie, movie comes on, we know it's just a movie, pretty soon {laughter}. We know it's somebody... picture, you know. There's human beings, and there's mountains, and there's rivers, and these wild life and plains, and we're completely drawn to it. And it's just because its brilliance is too strong, that's why we have to turn and look at the emptiness.
{Questioner: Wow. Laugher}
or is change itself the unfabricated?
Meaninglessness means that we have an intuitive sense that there could be meaning. Otherwise we would just be zombies who just trudge along. But no, when we feel a lack of meaning we search for all we are worth.
So meaninglessness is just a distortion of the natural quality of well-being and our search for well-being.
May we all practice hard!
But everyone comes to life with different desires.