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@Citta said:
Languages evolve to express different world views.
English is excellent for expressing technology for example.
To describe a gear stick in Pali takes dozens of words...I have seen it done. The writer was making the same point that I am making.
Conversely, Pali and Sanskrit evolved to express the results of spiritual practice.
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Yes language is difficult . Word choice is difficult. For instance I put quotes around some words because while they may be appropriate they also may have connotation I personally might not want to convey. Hence misinterpretation ensues.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited May 2014
@Earthninja said:
ourself I wouldn't say it's predetermined, does a tree growing have a destiny? Does a moth? A monkey?
It's one big dance of energy. You don't watch a dance to see the end. It's the dance that's the whole point.
I don't think the universe is dumb, humans are no fluke. We are grown out of the earth as everything else.
I wouldn't say it's predetermined either... Hence the "if".
If certain conditions are met, certain things manifest and if not they stay hidden. There are many conditions we affect with our decisions and the ability to put decisions to action is free will.
physics shows that the location of electrons in atoms is actually a probability. I think that there are probabilities of things happening. Maybe the mind (not matter) affects which probabilities arise. My psychologist believes that we have electromagnetic fields around people that change with time, but they affect propensities for various seeds to ripen.
I think we do have a small fraction of free will. It remains hidden, awaiting its potential. Perhaps it is this minute freewill that enables us to make wise choices.
No- one is driving your life. It’s all on automatic pilot. It’s like flying in the aircraft at 10,000 meters, going into the cockpit, and seeing there’s no pilot at the controls. That would scare a lot of people. But that’s what life is like.
When you realise there’s no-one there pushing the buttons, clicking the mouse, steering the wheel, or controlling in any imaginable way, you stop complaining, because there’s no-one to complain to. You just go back to your seat and shut.
Nice scenery; shut up! No more craving. No more ill will. Peace and happiness at last!
FREEDOM is realising you are out of control.
Often when you start to delve into non-self, there comes a time when you don’t want to go any further because you’re afraid. I’m not talking about ordinary fear; I’m talking about fear that goes to what you take to be your very “core”. You’re challenging all you ever thought about yourself, and you’re undermining your whole essence of existence. Your whole reason to be is being challenged by imagining what it would be like if there were nothing there. If you have the courage and the faith to go through that fear and find that what you were afraid of was nothing, you will receive the most beautiful gift — the gift of freedom, the gift of the ending of things, of the work being finished.
Years ago I gave the simile of “the driverless bus”. It’s like you’re driving through life in a bus, and you get pleasant experiences and unpleasant experiences. You think it’s your fault; or you think that it’s the driver’s fault. “Why is it that the driver doesn’t drive into pleasant country and stay there for a long time? Why does he always drive into unpleasant territory and stay there a long time?” You want to find out who is controlling this journey called “my life”. Why is it that you experience so much pain and suffering? You want to find out where the driver is, the driver of these five aggregates (khandhas): body, feeling, perception, mentality and consciousness — the driver of you. After doing a lot of meditation and listening to the Dhamma, you finally go up to where the driver’s seat is in the bus, and you find it’s empty!
It shocks you at first, but it gives you so much relief to know there’s no one to blame.
We do have an important amount of free will when it comes to choosing how we'll act or react before a given situation.
But we are part of a bigger system of interconnection, a bolt in a bigger machinery. Not a single action on our part is altogether independent nor will leave the system unaffected.
We are also the product of a particular set of skandhas and heirs to a particular karma, so our choices will be as limited as the sensory tools through which we perceive reality.
(As the abhidharma requires, the mind is included in the sensory tools)
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
For the early Buddhists, karma was non-linear and complex. Other Indian schools believed that karma operated in a simple straight line, with actions from the past influencing the present, and present actions influencing the future.
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As a result, they saw little room for free will. Buddhists, however, saw that karma acts in multiple feedback loops, with the present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions; present actions shape not only the future but also the present.
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Furthermore, present actions need not be determined by past actions. In other words, there is free will, although its range is somewhat dictated by the past.
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The nature of this freedom is symbolized in an image used by the early Buddhists: flowing water. Sometimes the flow from the past is so strong that little can be done except to stand fast, but there are also times when the flow is gentle enough to be diverted in almost any direction.
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited May 2014
@Earthninja said:
ourself agreed but, how do you decide? Think about this deeply.
If you can't answer this then it must be involuntary, no?
@ourself@federica@dharmamom I'm not saying I'm right, I could be wrong about all this... Free will etc. it sure feels like we make choices!
@ourself when you weigh up options, who is doing the weighing? It's thought isn't it?
Just for a moment consider... When you sit in meditation and observe thought. It feels like there's a separate "witness" watching thoughts and making decisions based on these. What if this is just a space between experiences, has no substance. It is all just mind watching mind.
There is no witness of ANY experience, just thoughts, feeling, experience. So there are decisions made, just nobody making them.
I'm on my mobile so my resources and education about all this I haven't figured how to copy/paste links!
One is a blog called insight into reality, other is Alan Watts. Both maintain that the feeling of there being any witness to anything is an illusion created by the mind. Realising this means you are free. There is no more wrong choices because there are no choices.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@pegembara, Sure there is no one driving the bus but does the bus still have the ability to go one way or the other or is its destination dictated by the multitude of past conditions it found itself in?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
There is no permanent entity making choices for my temporary self but I do make decisions. Thought is the process used for weighing options but thinking about a blue sky doesn't chase away actual rain. I can think about doing one of many things for an eternity but no thing gets done unless I put that thought to action even as this temporary "I" depends on certain conditions of its own.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited May 2014
@Earthninja said:
I'm on my mobile so my resources and education about all this I haven't figured how to copy/paste links!
One is a blog called insight into reality, other is Alan Watts. Both maintain that the feeling of there being any witness to anything is an illusion created by the mind. Realising this means you are free. There is no more wrong choices because there are no choices.
That sounds like the opposite of being responsible for our actions to me. Kinda makes a mockery of the 8fp too.
No witness to anything suggests everything is its own witness.
Put it this way... If there is no witness then there can be no illusion.
@person, it has always been causes and conditions. If you were a moderator on a forum, you have to act like one(it's a job description). Otherwise you would not be called a moderator. Your choices are determined by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc.
Choice is only an appearance. It is all impersonal.
@Earthninja: Aren't you bursting at the seams of your intellect already?
Just sit back and enjoy the landscape.
Why should you care who ties those shoes, anyway?
@dharmamom said:
Why should you care who ties those shoes, anyway?
Because who I think is tying the shoes and who really is are different. It took me 25 years to see this, I'm going to do my best to see through this
@ourself can we not still have right speech? Yes everything is it's own experience. It's non dual.
There isn't any illusion In reality, we just have to see that for ourselves.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@pegembara said:
person, it has always been causes and conditions. If you were a moderator on a forum, you have to act like one(it's a job description). Otherwise you would not be called a moderator. Your choices are determined by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc.
Choice is only an appearance. It is all impersonal.
I wasn't really trying to make any kind of argument around free will before. I was only trying to say that simply because there is no driver doesn't automatically mean that there is no choice.
Regarding the clip. That experiment is very enlightening about when we become conscious of the workings of the brain but doesn't really say anything about the decision making process. If our conscious experience is the result of the workings of our brain then if you want to say no free will you have to say how the brain can't choose, not simply say that our experience of the choice is an illusion. At any rate the experiment, though important, is still rather simple in what it is measuring. The subject is required to make a choice, they can't choose not to. The experimenter himself says you can't really extrapolate into more complicated decisions like getting married or something in the Through the Wormhole episode.
I guess I would change one word in your sentence, "Your choices are determined by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc."
to Your choices are conditioned by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc. because I feel that by being aware of our mental arisings in the present other options become available.
@person, "Choices" are being made but no one is actually making them. We only think that we are making them. Actions don't happen without intentions.
In one of the satipatthana exercises, you watch every action until it becomes quite clear that there is no self.
That include watching tying your shoe laces.
[2] "Furthermore, when walking, the monk discerns, 'I am walking.' When standing, he discerns, 'I am standing.' When sitting, he discerns, 'I am sitting.' When lying down, he discerns, 'I am lying down.' Or however his body is disposed, that is how he discerns it.
"In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or focused externally... unsustained by anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.
[3] "Furthermore, when going forward & returning, he makes himself fully alert; when looking toward & looking away... when bending & extending his limbs... when carrying his outer cloak, his upper robe & his bowl... when eating, drinking, chewing, & savoring... when urinating & defecating... when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, & remaining silent, he makes himself fully alert.
"In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or focused externally... unsustained by anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.
In his outstanding book Nonduality, scholar David Loy provides a concise account of shunyata: “It comes from the root shunya, which means “to swell” in two senses: hollow or empty, and also like the womb of a pregnant woman. Both are implied in the Mahayana usage: the first denies any fixed self-nature to anything; the second implies that this is also fullness and limitless possibility, for lack of any fixed characteristics allows the infinite diversity of impermanent phenomena.” Those who experience shunyata know that all things have eternally been in a perfect state of tranquility, and that as Buddhaghosa says in the Visuddhimagga:
Suffering alone exists, none who suffers;
The deed there is, but no doer thereof;
Nirvana is, but no one seeking it;
The Path there is, but none who travel it.
How do I move my hand to type? If you really think about it it is quite amazing.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited May 2014
@Earthninja said: @ourself can we not still have right speech? Yes everything is it's own experience. It's non dual.
There isn't any illusion In reality, we just have to see that for ourselves.
What is Right Speech if there are no right decisions? In your scenario, there is no way I could decide to use right speech so it would either happen on its own or it wouldn't and there is little reason I should feel responsible either way.
I must admit, it's a tempting belief but I know that my actions are my only true possessions so I apologize if I seemed in any way rude.
@pegembara said:
person, "Choices" are being made but no one is actually making them. We only think that we are making them. Actions don't happen without intentions.
What is being tricked into thinking it makes a decision? What is this "we" if there is no doer, just the doing?
I realise I am not a walker when I am walking any more than I am a typer while typing this. I am not even a human being but I am being human at the moment.
Reading Bhikkhu Bodhi today, I found these tiny snippets which I thought had a bit to do with the OP. He says about Karma as opposed to determination:
"As it [the principle of kamma] affirms that people can choose their actions freely, within limits set by their conditions, it opposes the 'hard deterministic' line that our choices are always made subject to necessitation, and hence that free volition is unreal and moral responsibility untenable."
And when he explains Right View:
"The importance of right view can be gauged from the fact that our perspectives on the crucial issues of reality and value have a bearing that goes beyond mere theoretical convictions. They govern our attitudes, our actions, our whole orientation to existence. Our views might not be clearly formulated in our mind; we might have only a hazy conceptual grasp of our beliefs. But whether formulated or not, expressed or maintained in silence, these views have a far-reaching influence. They structure our perceptions, order our values, crystallize into the ideational framework through which we interpret to ourselves the meaning of our being in the world.
These views then condition action. They lie behind our choices and goals, and our efforts to turn these goals from ideals into actuality. The actions themselves might determine consequences, but the actions along with their consequences hinge on the views from which they spring. [...]
Though our conceptual orientation towards the world might seem innocuous and inconsequential, when looked at closely it reveals itself to be the decisive determinant of our whole course of future development."
I guess you would say believe? Maybe I should of phrased it differently.
Neither do I in a religious sense but I believe in more than we can understand intellectually. It's a deeper feeling. How you would put this in English I don't know haha!
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Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
edited May 2014
@Earthninja I'd say you know that you don't know everything, and that the totality can't possibly be grasped by a relatively insignificant portion of itself. I wouldn't call that a (mere) belief though. The belief would be that you know everything (and it'd be false) -- I'd say it easily counts as knowledge that there's "more", in many regards.
Things only get sticky when specific claims are made about the "more" that aren't falsifiable, like people claiming the existence of other dimensions or of gods. There's plenty that we still don't know without the mountain of stuff we've made up obscuring the view. The best way to get at the truth is to develop a rigorous standard of epistemology (combined of course with critical thinking skills, logic, etc.), to question everything and see for yourself.
An alternative way to get at the truth is to sit down and watch the breath.
I am afraid that critical thinking skills and epistemology..rigorous or otherwise, can't help us there.
Although I am sure that they have their place in the grand scheme of things.
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Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
edited May 2014
@Citta said:
An alternative way to get at the truth is to sit down and watch the breath.
Yessir, the truth of what's happening in the here-and-now and the processes that intermingle to produce those experiences, hopefully leading to an understanding of the true nature of all conditioned things and the true causes of our suffering. Meditation rules!
That's what leads to panna/prajna. Which is what leads to the way things are.
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Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
edited May 2014
Well I'd say the way things are leads to prajna, but I think that's what you meant. It's not like we're changing our true natures, we're only discovering what that nature is (which destroys ignorance/delusion and all the suffering it brings).
We are just the temporary vehicle of prajna/panna.
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Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
edited May 2014
@Citta Wisdom's degrees are ways of being, but not a being. Still no puppet master. This may be a confusing tangential conversation to some, so I'll leave it at that.
What you describe is not for example the Dzogchen view. It sees no steps.
But other views are available.
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Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
@Citta That was just learning in general that I was talking about, coming to a greater understanding through increased clarity of things as they are, not something specific to Buddhism... but nevermind. Leaving it, like I said.
I tend to assume that on a Buddhist website the topic unless otherwise stated, is Buddhadharma.
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Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
edited May 2014
@Citta Layman's terms, when appropriate, are not only sufficient but sometimes superior to "Buddhadharma". Reality trumps all views, and we've gotten pretty good at expressing some fundamental concepts over the past few hundred years (through our investigations that we call "science") that don't require us to stick specifically to Buddhist sutras or concepts... even when we're talking about something that applies to Buddhism also. It's all fundamentally a discussion about "reality". Thinks like cause and effect, and how we learn, don't need to be couched in esoteric language. That's my final word on that! Really, I'm done.
@Earthninja said:
I guess you would say believe? Maybe I should of phrased it differently.
Neither do I in a religious sense but I believe in more than we can understand intellectually. It's a deeper feeling. How you would put this in English I don't know haha!
@federica said:
I don't know...I don't believe in God.
I'm just not sure what the opposite to 'believe intellectually' is....
Well, the opposite of using your reasoning ability to grasp certain higher truths would be blind faith, one of the pre-requisites to make sense of some of the contradictions in the Christian religion. Wasn't it St Augustine who appealed to the use of faith where the use of intellect began to run short? So if two and two don't make four, just believe! Snap of fingers...
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited May 2014
@Earthninja said:
ourself no I value your points, I believe it's all dependant arising. It's not blind causation.
So my mind can do right speech and right action, through decisions yes. But there is no owner if this. How can you be free if you hold onto anything?
Thanks, I value yours also. That being said, whether we bother to check or not, our actions do have consequence not only for our individual self but others too. To be free is not to shirk responsibility to each other... If that were the case, Buddha would never have gotten up from that tree.
We own our actions because they are traced back to us whether we hold onto them or not. If they hurt another, they also hurt us whether we see it or not. Making the decision to cultivate Right Action can save a lot of grief and making a vow pretty much implies the free will to do so. Otherwise, why the reminder?
@Earthninja said:
There is nothing that is self, no object subject, no inner no outer. Just experience .
This is what I believe intellectually anyway, you can't have free will because this implys object subject duality. It can't be
Nouns are misleading tools but tools is all they are. There is no thing that we are because we are action and not a bunch of "separate things".
Object/subject duality doesn't have to be a paradox... We are all unique aspects of the same process.
The Middle Way teachings allows some to see that subjective reality is just a natural part of the objective reality.
Duality is just a labelling tool. Once it is seen for what it is, there is no reason to shy away from it.
Mountains are once again mountains and rivers are once again rivers.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
@federica said:
I don't know...I don't believe in God.
I'm just not sure what the opposite to 'believe intellectually' is....
@ourself hmm I'm not sure you grasp what im trying to say, in a conventional sense I agree with all you have said and that's not what I'm debating.
Reality is where we are in right now, the only difference is how we choose to see it.
Non duality is the only paradox because the word itself is duality lol.
If you we have free will, then we are holding onto something. Because your free will is going to die some day. If this stores sonething inside you like it does me then we have work to do!
Comments
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Yes language is difficult . Word choice is difficult. For instance I put quotes around some words because while they may be appropriate they also may have connotation I personally might not want to convey. Hence misinterpretation ensues.
I wouldn't say it's predetermined either... Hence the "if".
If certain conditions are met, certain things manifest and if not they stay hidden. There are many conditions we affect with our decisions and the ability to put decisions to action is free will.
@ourself agreed but, how do you decide? Think about this deeply.
If you can't answer this then it must be involuntary, no?
physics shows that the location of electrons in atoms is actually a probability. I think that there are probabilities of things happening. Maybe the mind (not matter) affects which probabilities arise. My psychologist believes that we have electromagnetic fields around people that change with time, but they affect propensities for various seeds to ripen.
I think we do have a small fraction of free will. It remains hidden, awaiting its potential. Perhaps it is this minute freewill that enables us to make wise choices.
Samsara and all that associated being determines our choices and mode of being. The delusion is very strong that we make free choices.
When free and only when Free, we make choices independent of deluded being. The choices are clear.
_Go Cushion . . . _
No- one is driving your life. It’s all on automatic pilot. It’s like flying in the aircraft at 10,000 meters, going into the cockpit, and seeing there’s no pilot at the controls. That would scare a lot of people. But that’s what life is like.
When you realise there’s no-one there pushing the buttons, clicking the mouse, steering the wheel, or controlling in any imaginable way, you stop complaining, because there’s no-one to complain to. You just go back to your seat and shut.
Nice scenery; shut up! No more craving. No more ill will. Peace and happiness at last!
FREEDOM is realising you are out of control.
Often when you start to delve into non-self, there comes a time when you don’t want to go any further because you’re afraid. I’m not talking about ordinary fear; I’m talking about fear that goes to what you take to be your very “core”. You’re challenging all you ever thought about yourself, and you’re undermining your whole essence of existence. Your whole reason to be is being challenged by imagining what it would be like if there were nothing there. If you have the courage and the faith to go through that fear and find that what you were afraid of was nothing, you will receive the most beautiful gift — the gift of freedom, the gift of the ending of things, of the work being finished.
Years ago I gave the simile of “the driverless bus”. It’s like you’re driving through life in a bus, and you get pleasant experiences and unpleasant experiences. You think it’s your fault; or you think that it’s the driver’s fault. “Why is it that the driver doesn’t drive into pleasant country and stay there for a long time? Why does he always drive into unpleasant territory and stay there a long time?” You want to find out who is controlling this journey called “my life”. Why is it that you experience so much pain and suffering? You want to find out where the driver is, the driver of these five aggregates (khandhas): body, feeling, perception, mentality and consciousness — the driver of you. After doing a lot of meditation and listening to the Dhamma, you finally go up to where the driver’s seat is in the bus, and you find it’s empty!
It shocks you at first, but it gives you so much relief to know there’s no one to blame.
Simile of the driverless bus
http://www.dhammaloka.org.au/articles/item/1193-the-ending-of-things.html
I happen to know we have plenty of free will.
I can prove it.
You have no idea how many times a week I COULD ban a member here, or suspend another member there - and I don't.
Trust me, I have the choice....
We do have an important amount of free will when it comes to choosing how we'll act or react before a given situation.
But we are part of a bigger system of interconnection, a bolt in a bigger machinery. Not a single action on our part is altogether independent nor will leave the system unaffected.
We are also the product of a particular set of skandhas and heirs to a particular karma, so our choices will be as limited as the sensory tools through which we perceive reality.
(As the abhidharma requires, the mind is included in the sensory tools)
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From here.
By weighing options, how else?
@ourself @federica @dharmamom I'm not saying I'm right, I could be wrong about all this... Free will etc. it sure feels like we make choices!
@ourself when you weigh up options, who is doing the weighing? It's thought isn't it?
Just for a moment consider... When you sit in meditation and observe thought. It feels like there's a separate "witness" watching thoughts and making decisions based on these. What if this is just a space between experiences, has no substance. It is all just mind watching mind.
There is no witness of ANY experience, just thoughts, feeling, experience. So there are decisions made, just nobody making them.
I'm on my mobile so my resources and education about all this I haven't figured how to copy/paste links!
One is a blog called insight into reality, other is Alan Watts. Both maintain that the feeling of there being any witness to anything is an illusion created by the mind. Realising this means you are free. There is no more wrong choices because there are no choices.
@pegembara, Sure there is no one driving the bus but does the bus still have the ability to go one way or the other or is its destination dictated by the multitude of past conditions it found itself in?
There is no permanent entity making choices for my temporary self but I do make decisions. Thought is the process used for weighing options but thinking about a blue sky doesn't chase away actual rain. I can think about doing one of many things for an eternity but no thing gets done unless I put that thought to action even as this temporary "I" depends on certain conditions of its own.
That sounds like the opposite of being responsible for our actions to me. Kinda makes a mockery of the 8fp too.
No witness to anything suggests everything is its own witness.
Put it this way... If there is no witness then there can be no illusion.
@person, it has always been causes and conditions. If you were a moderator on a forum, you have to act like one(it's a job description). Otherwise you would not be called a moderator. Your choices are determined by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc.
Choice is only an appearance. It is all impersonal.
Look at this BBC program
@Earthninja: Aren't you bursting at the seams of your intellect already?
Just sit back and enjoy the landscape.
Why should you care who ties those shoes, anyway?
@pegembara I like the way you put it. great stuff.
@dharmamom , I am enjoying the landscape, more so than in a long time
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Because who I think is tying the shoes and who really is are different. It took me 25 years to see this, I'm going to do my best to see through this
@ourself can we not still have right speech? Yes everything is it's own experience. It's non dual.
There isn't any illusion In reality, we just have to see that for ourselves.
I wasn't really trying to make any kind of argument around free will before. I was only trying to say that simply because there is no driver doesn't automatically mean that there is no choice.
Regarding the clip. That experiment is very enlightening about when we become conscious of the workings of the brain but doesn't really say anything about the decision making process. If our conscious experience is the result of the workings of our brain then if you want to say no free will you have to say how the brain can't choose, not simply say that our experience of the choice is an illusion. At any rate the experiment, though important, is still rather simple in what it is measuring. The subject is required to make a choice, they can't choose not to. The experimenter himself says you can't really extrapolate into more complicated decisions like getting married or something in the Through the Wormhole episode.
I guess I would change one word in your sentence, "Your choices are determined by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc."
to Your choices are conditioned by past conditionings, expectations of the other members etc etc. because I feel that by being aware of our mental arisings in the present other options become available.
@person, "Choices" are being made but no one is actually making them. We only think that we are making them. Actions don't happen without intentions.
In one of the satipatthana exercises, you watch every action until it becomes quite clear that there is no self.
That include watching tying your shoe laces.
In his outstanding book Nonduality, scholar David Loy provides a concise account of shunyata: “It comes from the root shunya, which means “to swell” in two senses: hollow or empty, and also like the womb of a pregnant woman. Both are implied in the Mahayana usage: the first denies any fixed self-nature to anything; the second implies that this is also fullness and limitless possibility, for lack of any fixed characteristics allows the infinite diversity of impermanent phenomena.” Those who experience shunyata know that all things have eternally been in a perfect state of tranquility, and that as Buddhaghosa says in the Visuddhimagga:
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1502&Itemid=0
How do I move my hand to type? If you really think about it it is quite amazing.
What is Right Speech if there are no right decisions? In your scenario, there is no way I could decide to use right speech so it would either happen on its own or it wouldn't and there is little reason I should feel responsible either way.
I must admit, it's a tempting belief but I know that my actions are my only true possessions so I apologize if I seemed in any way rude.
What is being tricked into thinking it makes a decision? What is this "we" if there is no doer, just the doing?
I realise I am not a walker when I am walking any more than I am a typer while typing this. I am not even a human being but I am being human at the moment.
Freewill or predestination are pairs of opposites. They define each other.
We are not that.
Reading Bhikkhu Bodhi today, I found these tiny snippets which I thought had a bit to do with the OP. He says about Karma as opposed to determination:
"As it [the principle of kamma] affirms that people can choose their actions freely, within limits set by their conditions, it opposes the 'hard deterministic' line that our choices are always made subject to necessitation, and hence that free volition is unreal and moral responsibility untenable."
And when he explains Right View:
"The importance of right view can be gauged from the fact that our perspectives on the crucial issues of reality and value have a bearing that goes beyond mere theoretical convictions. They govern our attitudes, our actions, our whole orientation to existence. Our views might not be clearly formulated in our mind; we might have only a hazy conceptual grasp of our beliefs. But whether formulated or not, expressed or maintained in silence, these views have a far-reaching influence. They structure our perceptions, order our values, crystallize into the ideational framework through which we interpret to ourselves the meaning of our being in the world.
These views then condition action. They lie behind our choices and goals, and our efforts to turn these goals from ideals into actuality. The actions themselves might determine consequences, but the actions along with their consequences hinge on the views from which they spring. [...]
Though our conceptual orientation towards the world might seem innocuous and inconsequential, when looked at closely it reveals itself to be the decisive determinant of our whole course of future development."
@ourself no I value your points, I believe it's all dependant arising. It's not blind causation.
So my mind can do right speech and right action, through decisions yes. But there is no owner if this. How can you be free if you hold onto anything?
There is nothing that is self, no object subject, no inner no outer. Just experience .
This is what I believe intellectually anyway, you can't have free will because this implys object subject duality. It can't be
Believe intellectually.
What do you believe NON-Intellectually?
@federica well you can believe In God for instance? This isn't something you can grasp intellectually is it?
Maybe some people can! But I can't, you can feel things rather.
I don't know...I don't believe in God.
I'm just not sure what the opposite to 'believe intellectually' is....
I guess you would say believe? Maybe I should of phrased it differently.
but I believe in more than we can understand intellectually. It's a deeper feeling. How you would put this in English I don't know haha!
Neither do I in a religious sense
@Earthninja I'd say you know that you don't know everything, and that the totality can't possibly be grasped by a relatively insignificant portion of itself. I wouldn't call that a (mere) belief though. The belief would be that you know everything (and it'd be false) -- I'd say it easily counts as knowledge that there's "more", in many regards.
Things only get sticky when specific claims are made about the "more" that aren't falsifiable, like people claiming the existence of other dimensions or of gods. There's plenty that we still don't know without the mountain of stuff we've made up obscuring the view.
The best way to get at the truth is to develop a rigorous standard of epistemology (combined of course with critical thinking skills, logic, etc.), to question everything and see for yourself.
An alternative way to get at the truth is to sit down and watch the breath.
I am afraid that critical thinking skills and epistemology..rigorous or otherwise, can't help us there.
Although I am sure that they have their place in the grand scheme of things.
Yessir, the truth of what's happening in the here-and-now and the processes that intermingle to produce those experiences, hopefully leading to an understanding of the true nature of all conditioned things and the true causes of our suffering. Meditation rules!
That's what leads to panna/prajna. Which is what leads to the way things are.
Well I'd say the way things are leads to prajna, but I think that's what you meant.
It's not like we're changing our true natures, we're only discovering what that nature is (which destroys ignorance/delusion and all the suffering it brings).
No its not what I meant.
We sit.
Prajna/panna arises.
Prajna/panna both reveals and shapes what is.
We are just the temporary vehicle of prajna/panna.
@Citta Wisdom's degrees are ways of being, but not a being. Still no puppet master. This may be a confusing tangential conversation to some, so I'll leave it at that.
There is no one way.
What you describe is not for example the Dzogchen view. It sees no steps.
But other views are available.
@Citta That was just learning in general that I was talking about, coming to a greater understanding through increased clarity of things as they are, not something specific to Buddhism... but nevermind. Leaving it, like I said.
Oh sorry, I am a simple soul.
I tend to assume that on a Buddhist website the topic unless otherwise stated, is Buddhadharma.
@Citta Layman's terms, when appropriate, are not only sufficient but sometimes superior to "Buddhadharma". Reality trumps all views, and we've gotten pretty good at expressing some fundamental concepts over the past few hundred years (through our investigations that we call "science") that don't require us to stick specifically to Buddhist sutras or concepts... even when we're talking about something that applies to Buddhism also. It's all fundamentally a discussion about "reality". Thinks like cause and effect, and how we learn, don't need to be couched in esoteric language. That's my final word on that! Really, I'm done.
Metta to you @AldrisTorvalds.
_/_
Metta to you, too, Citta.
Well, the opposite of using your reasoning ability to grasp certain higher truths would be blind faith, one of the pre-requisites to make sense of some of the contradictions in the Christian religion. Wasn't it St Augustine who appealed to the use of faith where the use of intellect began to run short? So if two and two don't make four, just believe! Snap of fingers...
Thanks, I value yours also. That being said, whether we bother to check or not, our actions do have consequence not only for our individual self but others too. To be free is not to shirk responsibility to each other... If that were the case, Buddha would never have gotten up from that tree.
We own our actions because they are traced back to us whether we hold onto them or not. If they hurt another, they also hurt us whether we see it or not. Making the decision to cultivate Right Action can save a lot of grief and making a vow pretty much implies the free will to do so. Otherwise, why the reminder?
Nouns are misleading tools but tools is all they are. There is no thing that we are because we are action and not a bunch of "separate things".
Object/subject duality doesn't have to be a paradox... We are all unique aspects of the same process.
The Middle Way teachings allows some to see that subjective reality is just a natural part of the objective reality.
Duality is just a labelling tool. Once it is seen for what it is, there is no reason to shy away from it.
Mountains are once again mountains and rivers are once again rivers.
To know instinctively?
@ourself hmm I'm not sure you grasp what im trying to say, in a conventional sense I agree with all you have said and that's not what I'm debating.
Reality is where we are in right now, the only difference is how we choose to see it.
Non duality is the only paradox because the word itself is duality lol.
If you we have free will, then we are holding onto something. Because your free will is going to die some day. If this stores sonething inside you like it does me then we have work to do!
Are we just puppets of the universe?
Or lost socks in the laundromat of oblivion?
Stirs something*. Mobile phones lol