Can something be understood?
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
hi all,
if we try to be in here and now, then since the present moment is so small that it cannot be held, the question which arises is - can something be understood if we try to be in here and now? logically thinking the answer comes as no, because for understanding, thinking is needed and where is the time to think in here and now. may be i am asking a stupid question, but will like to know that if we try to be in present moment, then can something be understood?
moreover, how will wisdom arise, if we are in the present moment - without thinking anything? how will we know what is skillful and what is not skillful without thinking? can being in here and now be really practiced through even just half a day completely in reality, or may be even 1 hour - is it possible?
any ideas, please. thanks in advance.
Comments
Actually since there is no smallest moment the here and now cannot be found. Yet there can be understanding outside space and time. Staying in the now can result in 'the watcher' which is just a layer of concepts. We can understand things because our mind is luminous. How can you think of what to say? The words just come out and it is an action of 'mind' rather than consecutive moments parsing out a sentence. How do you have a sentence 'come to you'?
It is possible. Some do it for years or their whole lives.
Good question. Try shorter times to get into the practice . . .
The thing is we are always in the present moment. Even thinking about past or future is happening now. Where else? You don't even have to try. It is all happening here and now.
But don't **dwell **in the past or future or even the present!
The point of setting aside some time daily for the practice of an activity that requires mindful presence in the present moment such as meditation, and the fact that in order to make the most of your practice you must try to silence the ceaseless mind chatter, does not mean you can't think the rest of the time.
The practice of mindful meditation sharpens your mind, helps you think more clearly, develop right thought, and that practice results in an improved life quality as a result of a more skillful thinking (or should I say, as a result of using your head in a more skillful way?)
Wisdom naturally develops as the sum total of those present moments you devoted to your practice and applied the insight gained in making more enlightened choices about your daily life.
That's why I make it a point to always highlight to people who don't know about Buddhism, how important the practice of meditation is, and the fact of, mind the pun, putting into practice the theory you learn.
Be mindfully aware in your present moment, and whatever you choose to do with your life, aim to make it a mindful experience. Making more skillful choices will become second nature as a result. Wisdom will sneak up on you without your even noticing.
It is as simple as actually watching the thoughts that come up in the mind rather than being carried away by them. (Simple yet not easy.) The unwatched mind is like being on autopilot. Worse an autopilot that doesnt work very well- or maybe too well since we think we know what we are doing and where we are going... lol! Bob
Jon Kabot-Zinn on mindfulness.
"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes us up to the fact that our
lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.
The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. This includes a lack of awareness and understanding of our own mind and how it influences our perceptions and our actions. It severely limits our perspective on what it means to be a person and how we are connected to each other and to the world around us.
When we commit ourselves to paying attention in an open way, without falling prey to our own likes and dislikes, opinions and prejudices, projections and expectations, new possibilities open up and we have a chance to free ourselves from the straitjacket of unconsciousness. I like to think of mindfulness simply as the art of conscious living. You don't have to be a Buddhist or a yogi to practice it. In fact, if you know anything about Buddhism, you will know that the most important point is to be yourself and not try to become anything that you are not already. Buddhism is fundamentally about being in touch with your own deepest nature and letting it flow out of you unimpeded. It has to do with waking up and seeing things as they are. In fact, the word "Buddha" simply
means one who has awakened to his or her own true nature."
As words are all we have to describe something or not, we can never fully understand what we are trying to describe when we focus on the words and concepts they seek to describe. That is why you need to experience them for what they really are. Words are merely a device consisting of symbols or mental representations, of that thing being experienced and described, but not the thing. That is why you do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon as the moon, it is merely a pointing.
For instance let us look at anatman anitya and duhkha in turn. Can we really understand what these terms are seeking to describe?
Anatman was buddhas device or antidote to believing we are a permanent self. After all we have set up this symbol for ourselves so well that it has fooled us into thinking there really is a permanent self. Whilst it may be interpreted as we are nothing, a void, emptiness, it is really drawing attention to the fact that we are chasing after a permanent self, and by going to the other extreme we see that actually, our real self when in contemplative mode, is actually neither and both.
Similarly, when we look at ourself as permanent nitya, we stumble across the same problem, because when we properly examine and analyse our bodies and every particular object in the world, it is really a composite, and therefore has no permanent basis. So teaching anitya as an extreme, is the antidote to nitya. Again the things in the world are neither and both.
Finally duhkha was taught by the buddha as an antidote to the pursuit of pleasure. To have a pleasurable experience, we have to know what is unpleasurable. You can't have one without the other. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but when you take it samsara becomes nirvana, and vice versa, there is both pain and pleasure, and experiences are neither and both, depending on what feelings and thoughts arise.
So can something be understood? My answer to that is no, not by grasping at the meaning of the words in isolation. However, being at the same time aware of what it is that is being described, and not clinging to the words, then the answer is yes.
Hope that is as crystal clear, as muddied water! ... \ lol / ...
I dont think that the Buddha taught Dukkha merely as an antidote to anything.
He described it as one of the characteristics of being. As much a part and parcel of our sentient existence in this loka as is gravity or any of the laws of physics.
We cannot change that.
We can change our reaction to it.
So that in our case it is transcended.
Similarly anicca. There is nothing complex about it. Everything changes constantly.
That is the way things are.
Anatta is the logical conclusion of Anicca when applied to ourselves.
It is the practices that lead to Panna/Prajna that renders the meaning that concepts can only point to.
They are only words, trying to get something across
Dukkha, Anicca and Anatta describe objective conditions that arise in this world.
If you doubt that those terms and the Buddha's Dharma in general relate to objective conditions whose reality is not discoverable by logic or cognitions then you will need to explain the uniqueness of the concept of Dependent Origination.
It occurs no where else in the history of ideas. It is above all what makes the Buddha's Dharma unique.
And would not occur to you or me or any unenlightened being in a million years of reading , reflection, and watching videos.
The Buddha was Enlightened. He points to reality.
Are you suggesting we can't see that reality?
By natural unaided means...? No.
Interesting thought. From a scientific standpoint we can experience "reality" but can't say what is is.
All even the" enlightened " can say about reality is that it is unknowable.
Why do you think I posed the question: For instance let us look at anatman anitya and duhkha in turn. Can we really understand what these terms are seeking to describe?
I agree they are objective conditions, as are there opposites, and must be seen in conjunction with their opposites. The words I used are not even a shadow of what they represent, if experienced fully.
In the context of the OP I was demonstrating a point, something can be understood, but not fully if you cling to the words, unless it is at one and the same time experienced. You have to be fully in the picture to know what the sky and green grass is.
When you use any words you are demonstrating a particular view, and there is no one right view from a particular perspective, and as @Citta has clearly shown, any particular view can be effectively challenged and brought down as also being a wrong view. From the buddha's, or universal, standpoint that embraces all particular views, even that view can only be expressed in a particular way, and depends on what circumstances it is expressed in.
Directly experiencing them leaves one speechless. Trying to use words to describe objective reality is impossible to say the least.
To experience reality you have to let go and avoid all extremes, and not become attached. Words are then no longer needed. However, that means we all become dumb!
That's no fun...
Lol! Well the pondering of the unknowable keeps things in perspective for me. Helps me remember that my perceptions of relative reality are seen through distortions of my mind... The liking, disliking, judging...oh my lions tigers and bears!...
Its ok.
It means being realistic about what words can achieve.
Some words are less misleading than others.
And SOME can actually help us towards an essentially non verbal truth.
" Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you Julia " As John Lennon sang to his dead mum.
' Half ' is actually optimistic..
To recycle the old Zen cliche...the only reason that we mistake fingers for the moon is because there really IS a moon.
Couldn't agree with your words more @Citta. I like going out to the extremities, it makes coming back to the now even better...
Words are very useful at times, and the poet oft uses them to express the inexpressible... By not saying anything at all.
Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.
attributed to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
Life Is a Mystery to Be Lived
"The best way to miss life is to have a certain attitude towards it. Attitudes originate in the mind, and life is beyond mind. Attitudes are our fabrications, our prejudices, our inventions. Life is not our fabrication; on the contrary, we are just ripples in the lake of life."
Osho
"I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are not important so I can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary."
"And it is not only here, but far away... anywhere in the world where people will be listening to the video or to the audio, they will come to the same silence."
Osho
Welcome to the silence! ... \ lol / ...
Yeees, probably doesn't really help your position to quote someone universally seen as not exactly a living exemplar of what he preached...
But lets put that to one side.
Hey, I like to build myself up just to be taken apart! See it as handing you a sledge hammer, to crack my nut! lol.
Put it this way, the concept of time is just a concept humans invented for convenience. All we have is now. I think understanding is always subjective. Truly understood in reality? Probably not but from our own human perspective id say yes.
Wisdom arises when you experience what you understand. Like falling into water, you don't have to think. You know it's water.
Skillful and unskillful I would say depends on you
I read in a Achaan Chah book that he gave a challenge to a monk. If you can remain completely in the moment for 7 days. You will be enlightened. The monk didn't last the day.
I didn't last 5 minutes( personal best though!)
The brief times when I stay in the moment lead me to suspect that its a by product, rather than something that can be practised.
It comes when you are focussed on what is occurring in the moment to the exclusion of thoughts of past or present.
What like this:
This is a bit like that Two Ronnies sketch where they answer the question before last...lol.
The most obvious ways is to do things slowly (half speed is fine) and being aware or mindful of ones activity. I am always bemused when in a retreat setting, some people stop their chores practice and rush off mindlessly to practice formal mindfulness . . .
Another example frequently encountered is mindful eating. Mindful wolfing of food is too advanced for me. Gradually more and more mundane tasks become practice . . .
Surprisingly more can be achieved mindfully and often of a higher quality.
So again. Yes it is possible, useful and practical. :wave: .
I think we don't need to struggle to learn and understand as much as we think we do. I think when we are able to rid ourselves of all the garbage, the knowledge and understanding is just there. We don't need to spend hours, or longer, pondering it. I've read more than once that when you can operate from a completely calm and clear mind, you already know the right thing to do, you don't have to think about it. Same idea. Our desire to understand comes from our disconnection with that part of ourselves and the universe. Once the connection is made, the struggle to understand is gone.
@Citta, what do you mean by saying dukkha is objective? If dukkha is objective then the self that experiences it would also have to be objective.
What I said @Jeffrey is that dukkha is an objective description of one of the three characteristics that mark all arising phenomena.
Those phenomena are both objective and transient, as is the self that observes them.
What does objective mean?
Personal objectivity is mutually exclusive...lol Still is anything "objective"? ...
Yes @Citta, what does objective mean? I'm a nut trying to crack a sledgehammer now!
No need to answer, it's all just ridunculous! Isn't that what we were talking about, back then, when, what?
>
Oh new portmanteau word!lol!
Anything to get a voidematter point across
Or was I just creating a substavoidence!
Whoo cares ... \ lol / ...
You're looking at it too deeply, philosophically, and scientifically. It just means to be more aware. Not thinking about the future or past, but aware of what's happening now. The same goes for "look inward", to be more aware of what goes on within.
Being here and now does not mean you do not think. When you are here and now, you are focused and think better. Your mind does not wander unnecessarily like a monkey and you deal with what is in your mind like you held a bull by its horns.
As a matter of fact, you're probably overthinking it. Just live more out here, not so much up there ..
:screwy: ..
I agree with what you said.
At the same time that deep looking is also a freeing perspective. It allows to glimpse how deeply in bedded I am with the cosmos. I love pictures from Hubble for instance and macro photography as well. Bob
Hey misecmisc1 the first big thing to understand is that you can't do anything towards finding the present moment at all, & you was right what you said & for the reasons you stated..However anything you have done where you was loving what you we're doing so much that you lost all track of yourself & time, that was you in the present moment..You won't be aware of it mentally while your in the present moment, but from your point of view in the present moment your mind doesn't exist, & neither does the concept of time because your mind can't refer to time in the present moment..In the present moment we would only be operating on our senses/instinct/intuition, & obviously our senses alone (without the mind) can't record time..I honestly believe that all you have to keep doing is practicing mindfulness & emotions & feelings control, & as you master them your thinking will revert back to being neutral & logical thinking..As that happens the present moment will start to slowly over the months reveal itself to you, as opposed to you looking for it..That's what i think they mean by saying you can't try anything towards gaining enlightenment, but you can't try not trying either..All you can do is try other things/practices that will gradually shift your mind into a neutral logical thinking position, & so your neither trying or not trying to gain enlightenment..It's a lot deeper than just being aware of the now because if there was any awareness of the now, there would have to be awareness of a past & a future..So in the now there is no awareness by the mind, & from our perspective in the now moment our mind never existed.
hi all,
thanks for your replies.
@how, @Cinorjer, @seeker242 : your views on the above topic also, please as this is slightly zen related.
also one more query - in Hsin Hsin Ming, it says to just fully accept whatever is happening in present moment, so my question is by just fully accepting whatever is happening in present moment, how will our defilements get reduced? means we are not working on anything right, just accepting whatever is happening in now, so how will our defilements get reduced in our mind by this method? may be this is a stupid question to ask, but i am still asking, so any ideas, please suggest. thanks in advance.
Just because you need to accept what is happening right now, doesn't mean you can't affect, change or modify it. It just means not FIGHTING or resisting it. See what is happening, do not permit adverse emotions to arise but remain calm and act accordingly....
Hi, @misecmisc1! One idea of accepting whatever is happening in your present moment, is that by focusing on the reality you have at hand, you prevent your mind from straying backwards towards the past (which you can't obviously do anything about) or forward into the future (also, a time you can't do much about, for the time being).
If you tune into your mind chatter, you will realize that most of the time you're either pining over something in the past, or getting anxious about the future. The present moment totally elludes you.
Since you seem to like the Zen take, in her book "Everyday Zen," Charlotte Joko Beck places a lot of emphasis on the importance of zazen sitting, because "all we must do is constantly to create a little shift from the spinning world we've got in our heads to right-here-now."
She goes on to say: "Our Zen training is designed to enable us to live comfortable lives. But the only people who live comfortably are those who learn not to dream their lives away, but to be with what's right-here-now, no matter what it is: good, bad, nice, not nice. [...]
One mark of a mature Zen student is a sense of groundedness. They're with life as it's happening, no as a fantasy version of it. And of course, the storms of life eventually hit them more lightly. If we can accept things just the way they are, we're not going to be greatly upset by anything. And if we do become upset it's over more quickly."
@misecmisc1
CAN SOMETHING BE UNDERSTOOD?
Until you can move your interest in Zen from the theoretical to the practical, all the explanations in the world will not take you to the understandings of Zen that you ask for.
You can not think your way out of an identification to your own thoughts.
You can though, learn how to stop feeding that identification through a concerted practice of Zen meditation. (or any other Buddhist meditation practice.)
That would give you answers that 2 years of same questions here have obviously not.
That gives the impression, @how, that either you already have all the answers, or you have no questions to ponder.... :scratch: .
I haven't answered yet because, quite frankly, this is the type of question that drives Zen teachers to reaching for a big stick. It's one of the innumerable variations on "How can sitting in meditation make you a Buddha?"
It can't. How can experiencing the present without comment or thinking make you a Buddha? It can't. A Buddha isn't something you can become, but it's something you can be. I'll bet that true answer only brings more questions, doesn't it? The monkey mind is never satisfied. So have some tea, relax and clear your mind. Isn't it a lovely day?
Saying to just accept what is happening around you implies that enlightenment is passive non-action. A clear mind is required to see a clear situation, that's all. Only when you see the world around you as it truly is instead of how we expect or want it to be can we react correctly. It's that simple. Thinking about the world is not wrong or bad, it's part of how our minds work. We are thinkers. But we have to practice to learn the difference between our thoughts and the reality going on around us.
If I asked such a question of a Zen master, I'd probably be told to sit down, quiet my mind, and discover the answer for myself. After he hit me with that stick.
And the koan he'd probably give me would be "Why did Bodhidharma come from the East?"
Hey misecmisc1 i 100% agree with you, & that's only because i have done over 1000 hours of actual practice myself in the last 10 months..I wasted months in the beginning reading about everything from all angles, trying to get it all intellectually & nothing changed..So it was only when i started practicing that over the months my mind actually shifted, & now thinks logically 99% of the time..In my opinion it's 10% reading about how to train, & then it's 90% practice from then on..The way i see it is the training is to reduce our negative thoughts, & to eliminate our identification of our i as our mind..Over the months of practice the less we think in general by mindful distraction, the less strength we give to our emotional mind..I found that as my emotional negative mind & my identification of my i being my mind became clear that my i wasn't my mind, my logical thinking neutral mind gained strength & gained back control of my thoughts..Then i became a person that only reacts if it's the logical thing to do at the time (most of the time), & in general i only think of what I'm doing at the time (i still use mindfulness for that sometimes)..I just wondered if you noticed trees & nature starting to look different, like as if there more defined or something?.
Can something be understood?
Short answer- no.
Does it need to be?
Short answer- no. lol!
Do I find it "inspiring" to look deeply?
Short answer- You betcha!
Bob
@misecmisc1
When the mind settles so do the poisons in the mind. You are left with peace. That is shamata.
When you see that the mind by nature is just clarity and awareness that is vision that the poisons are essenceless and they transform from pain to just sensation/sensitivity. Feelings are dependent on sense contact and they are passing through. The contact comes and goes. We just let them go. Because we see that they are essenceless we let go.