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How are we chairs?
Mateeah
Explorer
I was listening to Ken Wilber's description of non-duality.
He said when you observe a mountain, notice this feeling of consciousness and the feeling of the mountain is the same feeling.
But don't we know, for example, objects like a chair aren't alive, or conscious? Or are they?
How are we chairs?
He said when you observe a mountain, notice this feeling of consciousness and the feeling of the mountain is the same feeling.
But don't we know, for example, objects like a chair aren't alive, or conscious? Or are they?
How are we chairs?
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Then there is the tactile dimension of the chair. Points of sensations chained together to create the wholeness of chair.
Everything is a projection of wholeness on the basis of parts, which are also units (wholeness).
And then ideas to link visual and tactile information. There is also smell, taste, sound, etc. But I'd like to isolate the chair.
Now also add in space, time, subjects and objects into the imputation mix.
So space and time is created by a contraction called self generally behind the eyes. I am here "watching" the chair "out there". So in that there is inside and outside (subjective and objective). Points of reference imputed here and there. So subject/object duality.
That is all made from ignorance. Ignorance which posits inherent existence or realness to appearances. So I AM or the subjective reference point is given a sense of solidity and realness which automatically creates the external world, and vice versa. Time, motion and change is constructed in the same way as objecthood (self and other).
Okay that is a lot to take in and is basically useless unless one realizes this.
So here is an example you can try in meditation.
In seeing, there is just the seen, no seer.
The seer is just an idea or mental impression after the fact of SEEING.
Seeing is a process and it is exactly the color.
Now notice that the mental idea of self or seer or even the color or even the chair is not linked to the actual process of Seeing the color. It is just the color and the color has no story about itself. It doesn't assert its a color, or a chair, etc. It just is what it is.
We give color to color. We give chair to color.
Notice how chair also seems to be a singular thing called chair.
Notice how chair also depends on various causes/condtions. Such as a chair needs parts such as legs, wood. It also needs someone to make it.
Notice the confliction. We see it as inherently existent. there is a chair. duh!
Notice how when we examine the parts and conditions there is a conflict.
How the chair actually is verse how we perceive the chair.
Chair is an idea placed on top of sense perceptions.
So non duality points to no subject or object. THUS no sentience and no non-sentience. That is a false duality from the start.
So we generally formulate language and perception as follows:
I AM (seer/noun/subject) seeing (verb) the chair (object/noun/phenomena)
This is subject/object duality.
Just like we say lightning strikes.
We posit that there is a lightning that is striking. The striking is the lightning, not two.
What if we say striking or lightning. Then the positing of a verb changes the perception.
What if everything is seen as motion or a verb or process. Then everything is required together as one activity. Driving a car is fully everything. Driving and the driver are one and unique. You cannot separate the driver from the driving as both are required. There cannot be a surfer without surfing.
So in the previous post I said IN SEEING THERE IS JUST THE SEEN NO SEER.
What this is positing is a different structure of language and perception.
Seeing is the seen. Color is the knowing (consciousness/awareness/presence). There is no consciousness then color. So rather its just SEEN. As a distinct moment of consciousness.
But people can also posit a SEEN AND SEER = ONE THING. That is a mistake. It is a one activity rather than thing.
Hope this helps you out.
Ken generally posits a one consciousness.
So he falls into the camp of objectifying consciousness as a thing.
He talks a lot about The witness and the merging of witness with everything.
In Buddhism emptiness of both self and phenomena are stressed. There is no inherently existent witness or phenomena. That is because everything, EVERYTHING arises dependent upon causes/conditions. Without an EYE sense organ you cannot see anything. Having an eye is pretty useful condition. But at the same time the condtion of eye is only nominally distinct from the vision of color. There is one process, one activity with no remainders.
So it is always the ONE perception. That means no arising, abiding, cessation. And that is what dependent arising and emptiness point to.
But this may be off topic so I'll shut up!
TLDR whole convo:
What chairs? And if there is no truly established referents, then what we?
The world is unestablished, and even that is unestablished. Conceive of this and that and then you have the whole world.
But then again where is it?
Beyond nothing and something. And beyond those false notions. The world made dependent upon thought imputation. How fucking hilarious!
Good question.
Which leads me to... are karma and nonduality mutually exclusive?
Don't try to make too much of Ken Wilber's stuff. He thought that he was some sort of superintelligent thinker who could take every field of study from biology to physics to philosophy and religion and create a "Theory of everything" that was going to make existing religions and sciences obsolete and transform the world with a new paradigm and new ways of thinking. Had a lot of very enthusiastic followers. I think it was a fantastic experiment in seeing how far we can expand our theories about reality before they snap and get crushed under the actual world around us.
Well, the movement came and went, and the world stumbles on using the same old ways of thinking and acting.
Wilber took the non-duality concept of Zen Buddhism and combined it with the guru "Oneness" talk and gave it a definition different from what is actually said in Buddhism. No, the "feeling of consciousness and the feeling of the mountain" are not the same feeling because you are not the mountain and the mountain is not you.
The chair is a chair. It is not a conscious human being. A mountain is a huge hunk of rock pushed up from the Earth and used to be a sea floor in some instances and eventually will go back to being molten rock. A mountain might or might not have a mountain consciousness, but it certainly doesn't have a human consciousness. And that is the reality that Wilber sets his theories against.
“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” - Alan Watts
Mountains are just mountains, by the way.
For instance I am pooping and if I decide to breath in then there arises smell consciousness of poop. Then I decide not to smell inward, thus severing the condition for smell consciousness to arise.
Awareness is dependent upon perception as well.
For instance if we emphasize the spaciousness or openness then awareness takes the form of spaciousness.
If we emphasize awareness as a stream of constantly changing things, then thats what awareness appears to be as.
Not sure if this answers your question. What is it that you mean by limitation? Like one vantage point?
there are multiple mindstreams in buddhism.
for instance if I kill someone then the guilt of that becomes my karma, not yours.
just so the previous moments of consciousness condition the present arising of consciousness.
another thing to think about.
when examining say a table there is always a point of view. But when there is in seeing just the seen no seer. It is as if one has a panoramic view with no depth and dimensions or reference points. No center, or source, but rather the center is the very arising. If it is the very arising then there cannot be a hierarchy.
now without the insight into anatta then there is a center of here and there. Foreground, midground, background, space and time, etc. It is all distinct entities that have inherent existence.
and yes those are all imputation of inherent existence. Through insight and letting go of identification of self and phenomena this building process is ended.
That is the crux of what Buddhism offers. A cause of suffering and an end.
See how the world is built, then unbuild it.
Let go of the hubris, referents become immaterial (or at the very least utterly change). I can only hope, though, that it does not mean everything becomes instantly un-funny.
"Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter."
-Longchenpa
Not sure if this answers your question. What is it that you mean by limitation? Like one vantage point?
@Taiyaki Thank you for your insight! Now I have somethings to think and meditate about. and yes, like one vantage point.
Not sure if this answers your question. What is it that you mean by limitation? Like one vantage point?
@Taiyaki Thank you for your insight! Now I have somethings to think and meditate about. and yes, like one vantage point.
But hopefully we can all do some inner work and live in the world to influence good change with our practice and insights.
We can hope but we can also get our shit together and shine.
Thoughts are thoughts - without thoughts there cannot be a thinker. They are dependently coarisen: thoughts-thinker, sounds-hearer, experiences-experiencer, the observed-observer. Without thinking, there is no thoughts or thinker. Hence the labelling used in meditation - thinking2, hearing2 etc.
So is there really an observer without the observed, an experiencer without the experiences? Can there be consciousness when there is nothing to be conscious of?
Deep thanks for everyones' wisdom!
Which is significantly different than saying nothing exists.
There is the thought consciousness of "red" onto the visual consciousness (field of red). Those are two distinct arising of consciousness.
There appears to be a knowing prior to and after because of the mental consciousness. But that is an assumption of continuity and a whole lot of things but I want to keep this very simple.
The very seeing of color is the condition of attention, eye sense organ and an external object. When those are all there then there is color (pre conceptual).
Then there is the mental consciousness that labels the visual phenomena as color.
If one closes their eyes then there is no condition for color to arise.
Well unless there is a mental consciousness arising of full blown color, which is day dreaming (etc).
But I am just isolating the appearance of color via the eye meeting object arising of eye consciousness. Prior to even the mental labeling there isn't even a distinction of colors, yet alone a thing called color.
Hope this clarifies.
Then I am not sure what you meant by this statement. Nagarjuna has no proofs or affirmations prior to or after any non-affirming negation. Sorry I am nit picking but its important to understand and point out to everyone that emptiness does not mean non-existence or any form of Nihilism.
He also said you cannot establish the unconditioned if you cannot establish the conditioned.
I had a great Naga J website but I cannot find it. It had a list of the statements he promoted and how they were reasoned out.
So color happens.. color happens with the eye sensory organ as a support.
Color is just color. Objects in our world appear from habit, but things are really more like a seamless fluid than like items in space.
In fact, if you separate color / seeing from the other sensory data mind can play with, the world of color is silent and odorless. It includes all color, so the physical appearance of the body, distant stars, all color can be seen as "one thing" more-or-less
Perceptual snapshot of a chair. Well, let's look at it scientifically. The chair is made up of atoms and molecules, all vibrating, all changing and shifting. From one moment to the next one whole chair arises and disintegrates and a whole new chair appears in its place. With limited and unpracticed awareness this is how things instinctually appear to be. But really, it is not the same chair from moment to moment, nor is it the same you experiencing the scene moment to moment.
Now if we walk along this line of reasoning a bit further, without asserting that there's a "smallest bit" we can isolate, then we can see that the chair actually comes from many different streams colliding at once, but all flowing continuously. We can look at it as physical matter and space that rhythm and glide or even as higher-level causes and conditions, such as the lumberjack's effort turned into a felled tree, turned into blocks of wood ... to a carpenter's effort to the appearance and function of a chair, and eventually to an item in a yard sale or some fuel for a fire, or termite food. All things in flux, this is the truth of impermanence. We see objects as permanent because deep down we have been ignoring that objects change continuously. This type of clear vision can be honed and practiced and perfected, and when one sees all objects and items as in-process, one can safely and comfortably arrive at the expression "no objects inherently exist" (that is, from their own side.. the chair is just a snapshot of processes that don't stop but continue to change) and the sister expression "objects do not not-exist" because we experience them. Nagarjuna does not say nothing exists, he says nothing exists inherently and things don't not-exist. This is subtle, take your time. Take walks. Ponder joyously and don't forget to laugh, especially when it makes sense.
What is refuted is that without affirming nothing. Emptiness is a non affirming negation.
When one sees that lack of asserted something and at times nothing then one concludes dependent arising not nihilism.
It seems like a moot intellectual point but its not. When we meditatively explore these issues we have to understand that the goal isn't to negate the world but rather the exaggeration is negated without positing a nothing.
So not something or nothing but the lack of something, which is much more subtle because one has to isolate what exactly that something is and one has to not jump to conclusions of nothing.
in meditative and contemplative logic there are actually four possible logical options.
An example: western convention would say this blade of grass outside in the cemetary across the street is
long
not long
which we reduce to also mean
not short
short
However, in meditation we have a more precise understanding of things, since knowing is not limited to words (and in fact can occur before and even without them) :
this blade of grass growing in the cemetary across the street is:
long
short
both long and short
neither long nor short
Thus, instead of just limiting our understandings to A and B, we open up our world of logical understanding with A, B, both A and B, and neither A nor B.
This is sort-of the direction "quantum" understanding is going, kinda awesome that dudes were writing about this thousands of years ago. Acclimate your mind to this and it will be of great benefit in meditational analysis.
The chair when investigated is not found as a singular, indepedent, inherently existent thing (negating eternalism) thus we can conclude that the chair exists dependently upon various causes and condition (air, wood, carpender, designer) and parts (legs, top, etc) and designation (chair). (Negating nihilism).
When we affirm the view of dependent coarising then existence and non existence do not apply. Yet what emptiness points to is the conventional world. We are examine the how things are. Either they have to be empty/dependeny arising or independent and inherently existent.
Going for a direct non conceptual realization of emptiness.
Unestablished yet clear and uninterupted, non dual.
Dependent arising is non arising.
emptiness is understood through compassion, neglect not the human element of experience. perfect compassion is possible through emptiness.
awareness of one's own wish for happiness and contentment
remind yourself that all sentient beings wish for happiness, strive for contentment, ease, relaxation, comfort, peace, joy
perhaps concretely at first; my neighbor has a lot of homework, may she know ease... my friend must walk home late through a dark street, may s/he be free of fear and at ease..
the fundamental sufferings of change, illness, aging, death
how good it would be that there were no suffering in this world, that no beings had to suffer..
let these thoughtivations steep and marinate into your bones. muster up one's resolve for suffering to be dispelled, plant a powerful seed, wet one's pallet with deep understanding of sorrow and lamentation, and think deeply .. all beings wish for happiness and to be happy
breathe sit and wait
as understanding sprouts and grows
rest mind
reflect
rest mind
..closing a session..
when closing a session, develop and cultivate the deep yearning beyond words that by these actions and this practice all beings may taste the glorious fruits of liberation and be freed from suffering, nirvana without remainder
(this is known as dedicating the merit)
let your feelings flow
try and do this once to a few times each day.
with diligence and a sense of ease
with proper conditions it is amazing how quickly a tiny watermelon seed
becomes a water melon (filled to the brim with seeds!)
on your sit bones in your ass
that comes 'round full-circle for the chair thing.
When the characteristics of a chair are present there is a singular, independent, inherently existing thing.
One must make a clear distinction between reality as it is and how we perceive/project/conceive/construe/fabricate.
Its like saying a chair has parts. Where is the chair that has parts? The independent chair apart from the parts? There isn't one because its a play of language/assumption of inherent existence.
lots of times people are trying to provide answers to questions... like completing a quiz in school or something, but in this part of the world it's all about introspection. use these descriptions as a way to delve more deeply into understanding.
use your mind to consider scales of time hitherto unknown, think about the life of a chair over a hundred years, over a thousand years, over a million years. the sun explodes and the earth is consumed in fire, or whatever. "chair" is impermanent. put an imaginary line around any stuff the senses participate in and it's a "phenomenon"
..."independent, inherently existing"
also, independent means that it can exist alone. well, can it? what about the trees and the water and rain that grew the seed of the tree and the sunlight and the decomposing bodies of animals that nurtured the sprout? already there is a huge chain of necessary components for the chair to come to be; however briefly it "is"
inherently existing would mean that the chair could be without our perception of the chair. really the chair's existence IS our perception of the chair, as taiyaki said very elegantly, it is projection from within us, not the other way around.
you can investigate this for yourself
conventionally, we say "hey there is a chair over there" and when you turn around or close your eyes, you say "it's still there, it's just out of view" -- well, in buddhism we are much more realistic about things. if something is not in current sensory perception then it doesn't exist. and when you turn back around, it's actually a brand new chair, because every moment is new, fresh, infinitely obliterated and infinitely created with great rapidity. try looking at things this way, and then sit down and be still, and let your body relax, and use body and mind in balance and ease to truly investigate the heart of the matter. just like you would use a telescope to look into deep space, use your body and mind as an instrument to investigate reality, and furthermore use it in a beneficial way to oneself and others, to alleviate the stresses of this world