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Its not somewhere else.
Citta
Veteran
" When we take a sip of Brunello, savour a piece of chocolate, take a shower, go shopping for a suede shirt or silk underwear, make love or hit our thumb with a hammer, Enlightenment is there.
It is never separate from where we are. "
Nak'chang Rinpoche.
It is never separate from where we are. "
Nak'chang Rinpoche.
5
Comments
He puts emphasis on watching the mind; which I do, for short periods, when I remember; but there doesn't seem to be a lot going on there.
Is there a Tosh within Tosh like Russian dolls ?
Maybe 'experience' is my 'I'?
I do understand the five aggregates at an intellectual level and that there's no inherently existing 'I'. I've done those meditations where you go looking for your 'I'. But it still feels like there is one. No, I don't experience that. I do experience a changing Tosh though, in that my thoughts and feelings regularly change.
I think I'm clued up enough with regards to Buddhist philosophy; I understand relative truths and ultimate truth; emptiness of self, objects and phenomena, that we have no inherently existing 'I', but I'm still very much stuck in the intellectual knowledge. I meditate daily, practise compassion, and try to live an ethical life.
I'm not sure there's much more I can do, apart from being patient.
It's not the actions that change after enlightenment (like eating or drinking in the original post), it's the experience that somehow changes.
I know who my money is on.
That would express that finding it isn't the problem.
Maybe appreciating it is the key?
He says its not somewhere else.
Its not something else either.
Samsara IS Nirvana.
-Dogen
I like it!
This is a fairly old tradition of Buddhism that is widely practiced.
Would you say it's an "impatient" or "modern" practice that has "nothing to do with Buddhism" when it's clearly a form of Buddhism?
Similarly, the idea that we are already enlightened but simply need to realize it is pretty much at the core of Mahayana Buddhism. Not very modern, very Buddhist indeed.
So where are you coming from? If I said "Hey, I know more about physics than Stephen Hawking!" wouldn't you think I'm a bit daft?
It's like saying Black is White. It is NOT.
Samsara is not Nirvana.
Samsara is boring and tiring and it pretty much sucks.
Nirvana is (or so I have been told) not boring, not tiring, and does not suck.
Samsara may happen in the same place as Nirvana... with the same set of sense impression and events that happen to us... but there would be a fundamental difference with how we receive and process that input, with how it is experienced.
Maybe that's what he's talking about... same world and events, radically different perspective.
I still don't get it. I guess it might be one of those things that doesn't work on the intellectual level, and has to be experienced.
Buddhadharma is not about gain. Its about loss of something that we think exists and doesnt.
There are very few such who accept the view of Nagarjuna. There are exceptions..Ajahn Amaro being one.
But its probably more skillful to accept that there are models which do not resonate for us...and leave them alone rather becoming negative.
_/\_
Now accepting reality as it is brings about enlightenment. And that's something we can do at any moment, we just need to see it. In that sense, nirvana is always there. Because when we see there is no self, what is left is nothing. It takes just one blink of the eye to understand the whole of the Teaching.
So both point of views are valid in a way. It's just intellect that clouds. But not many minds are ready to accept they don't exist. That's why there is a path. But it's like climbing a mountain, not to enjoy the view, but only to jump off of it. Then the falling goes by itself.
Don't want to sound like a smart ass, but just to say there is no need to fight or argue over such verses. It's like arguing whether a cup is hollow or bell shaped. Just depends from which side you look at it.
Metta!
Sabre
It's a poor analogy, but analogies are tough.
It took me a while, but it's a cow, and once I've seen it, I can't unsee it.
Can you see it?
By David Loy
Philosophy East and West
Vol. 33, No. 4 (October 1983)
pp. 355-365
Copyright 2000 by University of Hawaii Press
Hawaii, USA
So you can say "samsara is nirvana" and "samsara is not nirvana" and they can both be correct depending if you are speaking from the view of the relative or the absolute. If all 5 Skandha are empty, then they have always been empty regardless of how you experience them. But when you realize that all 5 Skandha are empty and are freed from suffering, nothing about the world itself actually changes. It still the same as it was before. You still take a shower and still hit your thumb with a hammer and go "ouch". The Buddha got enlightenment then what did he do? He went to sleep at night, got up had some food and drink. Walked around the forest, heard the birds go "chirp chirp", etc. The Buddha walked around that forest and that forest was in the realm of nirvana because the Buddha was in the realm of nirvana. Therefore, that forest is and always has been in the realm of nirvana because samsara is just an illusion. To a Buddha, there is no more samsara anywhere. If samsara is just an illusion, then there is no such thing as samsara to begin with. But, the debate over whether or not samsara is nirvana will go on indefinitely when one person is speaking from the relative and the other is speaking from the absolute. Before one can understand what it means, you have to view it from the side it's being spoken from. That is how I see it anyway.
When the Buddha was still alive, was just a few years. Those years were not the aim of his practice, it was his not reappearing in a new life after death. That's the nirvana that matters. Because we are all going to die, we just don't know when.
It is however not the Vajrayana or Dzogchen view.
I suspect that it might not be the Zen view either, but of that I have no first hand knowledge.