Your thoughts

Theswingisyellow

Any new or old ideas, concepts, constructs, or beliefs that one holds one should challenge them and hold them to deep scrutiny. I have been doing this specifically with ideas I hold as cornerstones to my practice, not-self and impermanence. Specifically impermanence. From whose perspective does everything change? From a self perspective everything appears linear and from that a point appears to change. Without that self perspective what can be said to "change?" From a whole or a perspective of totality it's simply existence, one that I am intertwined with. The flag is not moving, the wind is not moving, even the mind is not moving.
All the best,
Todd

Jeffrey

That makes sense to me. But there is some life to the world even from a perspective of timelessness and changeless. There is a response to the world in the heart. Ebbs and flows.

Theswingisyellow

Jeffrey, maybe I sounded to sterile. To me that view of totality, the ebb and flow if you will, is broader and encompasses life. To countenance the idea that things change I have to withdraw from that totality to, in my view, a much narrower perspective.
All the best,
Todd

Jeffrey

I didn't want to contradict you I was just thinking that you still see the flag moving and well... you yourself might be 'moved' emotionally. It's an emotional timelessness.

Theswingisyellow

I found no contradiction. I am sometime very poor at explaining ideas well. I am dealing with concepts. Change is a concept to me. To recognize the concept change one has to recognize the concept of self. Without the concept of self, what can be changing? It's the difference of being on top of a mountain with a vast view as opposed to being on the ground in a forest.
Jeffery I am unclear what you mean by this: "It's an emotional timelessness"
Thanks for talking
All the best,
Todd

lobster

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass

Theswingisyellow

But Lobster WHAT shall pass away?

lobster

. . . and what is it that arises?

Jeffrey

timeless emotionality means there is always moving and always emotions wherever you are!

how

You name it.

lobster

Be kind to yourself.
It is a worthy means, worthy end, what else . . .
. . . metta to all . . . :wave:

pegembara

“….Following the teaching of the Buddha, the practice is to know the known. To know what? What do Buddhists know? What does the “One Who Knows” know, anyway? “The One Who Knows” knows that these changing conditions are not-self. There is not any eternal or soul-like quality, no substance in these things that one could call a permanent possession. “The One Who Knows” knows that if it arises, it passes away. You don’t have to know any more to be a Buddha.

Being the Buddha means knowing by observing, not by believing the Scriptures or me. See for yourself. Just try to find a condition that arises that doesn’t pass away. Is there something that’s born that doesn’t die? Be that Buddha who knows, by putting energy into experiencing your life here and now, not by getting lost in the delusion of the idea of being Buddha – ‘I’m the Buddha; I know it all.’ Sometimes desire even takes the form of a Buddha. Actually, there is no one who knows, and to conceive of being Buddha is not just being Buddha….”

From “Listening to the mind” by Ajahn Sumedho

The Buddha continued: "I will now show you the nature which is beyond birth and death. Great King, how old were you when you first saw the Ganges?"

The King replied: "When I was three my mother took me to worship the deva Jiva. As we crossed the river, I knew it was the Ganges."

The Buddha asked: "Great King, as you just said, you were older at twenty than at ten; and until you were sixty, as days, months and years succeeded one another, your (body) changed in every moment of thought. When you saw the Ganges at three, was its water (the same as it was) when you were thirteen?"

The King replied: "It was the same when I was three and thirteen, and still is now that I am sixty two."

The Buddha said: "As you now notice your white hair and wrinkled face, there must be many more wrinkles than when you were a child. Today when you see the Ganges, do you notice that your seeing is 'old' now while it was 'young' then?"

The King replied: "It has always been the same, World Honoured One."

The Buddha said: "Great King, though your face is wrinkled, the nature of this essence of your seeing is not. Therefore, that which is wrinkled changes and that which is free from wrinkles is unchanging."


Extract from "The Surangama Sutra" (translated by Lu K'an Yu, BI Publications 1978, p.26).

Theswingisyellow

Regarding impermenance:
Could the thought be entertained that change happens at such a rapid pace, that it is because of this constant that no "change" really occurrs at all? From a superficial point of view, impermenance can be seen only if I conceptualize or freze a moment in time then I can see events as "changing." But really in the end all that we can really see or percieve is now, all I have is this moment-this everpresent moment continuously.

Jeffrey

Could we be denying spring summer fall winter?

What you say @Theswingisyellow, sounds a lot like what my teacher mentions with math graph of 'points'.

If you pick a point and then try to show what the point is it is a dot. The dot has thickness whereas the point is precisely a point with no thickness. Making it a dot is like the mind establishing what something is. We know there must be points, but all we see are dots and these are concocted. So I think your change is seeing dot change into dot. But there is still a reality there that goes beyond mind labels.

I think what you say about freezing or finding points is like the madyamaka but you are talking about experience and I am talking about math.

Che

I found a little video to remind me how to calm myself in times of indecision...amongst other debilitating emotions. I think it's actually for children....now where my Tonka Truck