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@caz said:
Zen is an excellent method, but it can be a little foggy without continuous guidance of a master
Agreed! Because with a question like this, it helps a great deal to have someone to tell you you're wrong when you think you have the answer!
@grackle said:
I would think that searching for what is more arduous than searching for who. At least that has been my experience.
I've always preferred "what is this" over "what am I" because "this" includes "I" along with everything else too. I don't care about understanding just myself. I want to understand everything! Other beings, the stars, the moon, the earth, the universe, the whole entire phenomenon of what we call reality.
On that note, ""What is my life's purpose?" is also not a question that leads to freedom.
It would seem to me that life IS the purpose.
@Cinorjer interesting. If we are karma playing itself out and nothing more or less what purpose does karma serve itself? What does karma 'get' out of working itself out?
The four imponderables are identified in the Acintita Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 4.77, as follows:[5]
-- The Buddha-range of the Buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a Buddha];
-- The jhana-range of one absorbed in jhana [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in jhana];
-- The [precise working out of the] results of kamma;
-- Speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos is an imponderable that is not to be speculated about.
The imponderables are partly defined as:
That which cannot or should not be thought, the unthinkable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, that which transcends the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.
@karasti -- One of the definitions of the word "purpose" is:
The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.
"the purpose of the meeting is to appoint a trustee"
Are you suggesting that life is somehow in play as a facilitator of something else???? That seems an odd suggestion, don't you think? What else besides life might that be?
On that note, ""What is my life's purpose?" is also not a question that leads to freedom.
It would seem to me that life IS the purpose.
@Cinorjer interesting. If we are karma playing itself out and nothing more or less what purpose does karma serve itself? What does karma 'get' out of working itself out?
I suppose it's the same answer to what does a soul or atman or consciousness get in the end? The satisfaction of finishing the game of life with more good karma points? I can only shrug my shoulders at the question, because everyone has a different answer. You might as well ask why the universe exists. I don't know.
I was just curious what you thought, not expecting a definitive answer, @Cinorjer. I've never thought of Karma as a sort of self-containing mechanism but something that relies on a vehicle of some sort.
@genkaku I was thinking more about people who go around trying to figure out their singular purpose in life, as if living itself isn't the purpose. Then they get upset because they can't "find" their purpose, when what they really mean is that are looking for a way to gratify their ego by wanting to mean something to the world in a way they will be remembered, to want the world to remember their legacy in some way. Simply being alive is really the only purpose there is, because it's all we are doing in any given moment. You aren't missing your "purpose in life" if you are sleeping because you aren't doing anything. That IS your purpose in that moment. My mom is turning 60 this year, and she was telling me yesterday how frustrating it has been to live 60 years and she is just starting to figure out what her purpose is. To me, that kind of thinking marginalizes everything else in her life, including having and raising us. As if the entire 60 years she has lived, she wished she had been doing something else when in reality where she is now is a direct result of everything else that happened over those 60 years.
It's just like when people say "well, I guess was meant to happen!' as if there is a source that caused something in life to play out ahead of time-fate, if you will. When really, when you think about it, everything that happens was meant to happen, because what happened it is the only thing that was possible to happen at the point that it actually happened. Yes, you can look back and think "I could have made another choice and had another result" but such thinking is useless for the most part because it changes nothing and we have no choice but to accept where we are.
@karasti said:
I was just curious what you thought, not expecting a definitive answer, @Cinorjer. I've never thought of Karma as a sort of self-containing mechanism but something that relies on a vehicle of some sort.
@genkaku I was thinking more about people who go around trying to figure out their singular purpose in life, as if living itself isn't the purpose. Then they get upset because they can't "find" their purpose, when what they really mean is that are looking for a way to gratify their ego by wanting to mean something to the world in a way they will be remembered, to want the world to remember their legacy in some way. Simply being alive is really the only purpose there is, because it's all we are doing in any given moment. You aren't missing your "purpose in life" if you are sleeping because you aren't doing anything. That IS your purpose in that moment. My mom is turning 60 this year, and she was telling me yesterday how frustrating it has been to live 60 years and she is just starting to figure out what her purpose is. To me, that kind of thinking marginalizes everything else in her life, including having and raising us. As if the entire 60 years she has lived, she wished she had been doing something else when in reality where she is now is a direct result of everything else that happened over those 60 years.
It's just like when people say "well, I guess was meant to happen!' as if there is a source that caused something in life to play out ahead of time-fate, if you will. When really, when you think about it, everything that happens was meant to happen, because what happened it is the only thing that was possible to happen at the point that it actually happened. Yes, you can look back and think "I could have made another choice and had another result" but such thinking is useless for the most part because it changes nothing and we have no choice but to accept where we are.
Hm... If pushed, I've always thought of karma as not something we accumulate or carry around, like bags of brownie points, but as a vector or direction our life takes. Our actions point us in a particular direction, and like a ship sailing with the wind, that direction might take us to a rocky doom or across clear waters. I have never been one to believe in accumulated or past life karma because of this. Our present direction or karma is all there is. But that's just how I think about it so it makes sense to me and reminds me karma isn't a good or bad luck token to be cashed in the future.
The four imponderables are identified in the Acintita Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 4.77, as follows:[5]
-- The Buddha-range of the Buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a Buddha];
-- The jhana-range of one absorbed in jhana [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in jhana];
-- The [precise working out of the] results of kamma;
-- Speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos is an imponderable that is not to be speculated about.
The imponderables are partly defined as:
That which cannot or should not be thought, the unthinkable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, that which transcends the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.
-I've always had a bit of an issue with the Imponderables, especially the fourth one. It strikes me as being akin to the Tree of Knowledge as described in the book of genesis.: Don't eat the apple off of that tree or ask that question...
@Will_Baker -- I don't think of the imponderables as a threat -- some God's-gonna-hit=you-with-a-rolled-up-newspaper-if -you-pee-on-the-livingroom-carpet. Rather I think of them as an avuncular warning: Don't waste your time, nitwit! But if you do insist on wasting your time, then do try to stop banging your head against the wall as soon as possible... it feels so good when you stop, dontcha know.
I never took it as "don't bother ever asking the question" but rather to limit how much time you spend thinking yourself in circles over questions that we are not privy to the answers to in our basic human-embodied form. Perhaps there is a good reason for it. Perhaps humanity is not prepared to live life as it should live if if they have all the answers.
The need to believe that "everything happens for a reason" is pretty peculiar when you take a closer look. Would things be better or worse if everything didn't happen for a reason?
3
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited April 2016
I think calling something imponderable is kind of silly. We've had numerous threads here discussing imponderable and as far as I'm aware, none of us went mad over it yet.
Everything we can imagine is ponderable.
Personally, I think somewhere along the lines somebody mistook pondering (mulling things over) for conjecture (forming a conclusion) and screwed up the point of the teaching. Big time.
Pondering the origin of the universe (or whatever the focus) is quite a different thing than forming conjecture on the matter.
0
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
The four imponderables are identified in the Acintita Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 4.77, as follows:[5]
-- The Buddha-range of the Buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a Buddha];
-- The jhana-range of one absorbed in jhana [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in jhana];
-- The [precise working out of the] results of kamma;
-- Speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos is an imponderable that is not to be speculated about.
The imponderables are partly defined as:
That which cannot or should not be thought, the unthinkable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, that which transcends the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.
-I've always had a bit of an issue with the Imponderables, especially the fourth one. It strikes me as being akin to the Tree of Knowledge as described in the book of genesis.: Don't eat the apple off of that tree or ask that question...
That's just it.
I think pondering is healthy given the time and place but conjecture gives rise to dogma and it is dogma which should be avoided, not a healthy sense of wonder.
@lobster nice article. The kids and I are laying in a lazy, Saturday bed pile, and I passed the tablet to Kofi. He read it out loud, and we discussed the different points. I saw a couple of A-ha! moments hit them, as in " There is no little self in here to be true to".
Easy for them to connect the dots and expand on some of the writing.
Gratitude for the moment you gave us.
This thread is the gift that keeps on giving, hahaha. Nice conversation going on everyone!
1
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@lobster said:
Here are some ideas where self is a construct, karma is make believe and solutions to the dilemma ..
Nice article. I'm not that familiar with the history of Chinese philosophy but I believe there was some contention between the approach of Confucianism, which this article is based on, and Taoism, and by extension Zen, which this post is based on.
There are several similarities between the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism and the religion of Buddhism. However, there are some important differences as well. This chart compares the two belief systems and their practices.
Ha! Thanks for sharing the article. I vacillated between "That's not it at all" and "That's starting to get there." There's a reason Confucianism went head to head with Buddhism, sometimes in physical battles. The Confucianism I studied claimed individual happiness arose from accepting one's place in society and embracing the various roles you were called upon to play. Taoists and Buddhists on the other hand, did not do battle and instead merged eventually into Chan or Zen Buddhism under the ever-present threat of Confucianism. And for the scholars out there, I'm aware this is a vast oversimplification of a complicated, confusing thousand years or so.
Part of our problem in understanding the philosophy and appeal of Confucianism is that we don't come from a static, homogeneous society, highly stratified, where everyone was identified by their position in life instead of their individual merits. If you were born to a farmer, you were a farmer and trying to be anything but a farmer was punishable by death. To a Confucian, the answer to "Who am I?" is "You're a farmer, the same as your father and his father. Accept this and you'll be content. That's all you need to know."
@genkaku said:
The need to believe that "everything happens for a reason" is pretty peculiar when you take a closer look. Would things be better or worse if everything didn't happen for a reason?
We are questing pattern seekers. Order imposers but fluid in potential. I like the hard questions. The hard answers I have only a temporary head for ...
Good discussion points and derailments from others. Thanks guys
... I rather liked what @Cinorjer said; understanding beliefs from the historical culture in which they arose. That's why the Abrahamics are so feisty, the dharmic so fatalistic and the Truth whirling around us ... removing unused heads ...
@genkaku said: @Will_Baker -- I don't think of the imponderables as a threat -- some God's-gonna-hit=you-with-a-rolled-up-newspaper-if -you-pee-on-the-livingroom-carpet. Rather I think of them as an avuncular warning: Don't waste your time, nitwit! But if you do insist on wasting your time, then do try to stop banging your head against the wall as soon as possible... it feels so good when you stop, dontcha know.
:-) I try not to perceive of anything in the universe, seen or unseen, as a threat; it is exactly what it is, and when I can avoid it, I certainly try not to bang my head on walls. But, given the obvious progression of developing thought and bodies of knowledge that's taken place over the past 3,000 +/- years, the idea of not exploring a given line of inquiry, simply due to dogma, strikes me as an opportunity lost. And please know, I mean no insult by saying this. Of course, this is just my opinion and I respect yours...
The four imponderables are identified in the Acintita Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 4.77, as follows:[5]
-- The Buddha-range of the Buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a Buddha];
-- The jhana-range of one absorbed in jhana [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in jhana];
-- The [precise working out of the] results of kamma;
-- Speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos is an imponderable that is not to be speculated about.
The imponderables are partly defined as:
That which cannot or should not be thought, the unthinkable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, that which transcends the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.
-I've always had a bit of an issue with the Imponderables, especially the fourth one. It strikes me as being akin to the Tree of Knowledge as described in the book of genesis.: Don't eat the apple off of that tree or ask that question...
That's just it.
I think pondering is healthy given the time and place but conjecture gives rise to dogma and it is dogma which should be avoided, not a healthy sense of wonder.
Comments
Agreed! Because with a question like this, it helps a great deal to have someone to tell you you're wrong when you think you have the answer!
I've always preferred "what is this" over "what am I" because "this" includes "I" along with everything else too. I don't care about understanding just myself. I want to understand everything!
Other beings, the stars, the moon, the earth, the universe, the whole entire phenomenon of what we call reality.
>
It would seem to me that life IS the purpose.
@Cinorjer interesting. If we are karma playing itself out and nothing more or less what purpose does karma serve itself? What does karma 'get' out of working itself out?
The imponderables as defined in Wikipedia:
The imponderables are partly defined as:
@karasti -- One of the definitions of the word "purpose" is:
Are you suggesting that life is somehow in play as a facilitator of something else???? That seems an odd suggestion, don't you think? What else besides life might that be?
I suppose it's the same answer to what does a soul or atman or consciousness get in the end? The satisfaction of finishing the game of life with more good karma points? I can only shrug my shoulders at the question, because everyone has a different answer. You might as well ask why the universe exists. I don't know.
I was just curious what you thought, not expecting a definitive answer, @Cinorjer. I've never thought of Karma as a sort of self-containing mechanism but something that relies on a vehicle of some sort.
@genkaku I was thinking more about people who go around trying to figure out their singular purpose in life, as if living itself isn't the purpose. Then they get upset because they can't "find" their purpose, when what they really mean is that are looking for a way to gratify their ego by wanting to mean something to the world in a way they will be remembered, to want the world to remember their legacy in some way. Simply being alive is really the only purpose there is, because it's all we are doing in any given moment. You aren't missing your "purpose in life" if you are sleeping because you aren't doing anything. That IS your purpose in that moment. My mom is turning 60 this year, and she was telling me yesterday how frustrating it has been to live 60 years and she is just starting to figure out what her purpose is. To me, that kind of thinking marginalizes everything else in her life, including having and raising us. As if the entire 60 years she has lived, she wished she had been doing something else when in reality where she is now is a direct result of everything else that happened over those 60 years.
It's just like when people say "well, I guess was meant to happen!' as if there is a source that caused something in life to play out ahead of time-fate, if you will. When really, when you think about it, everything that happens was meant to happen, because what happened it is the only thing that was possible to happen at the point that it actually happened. Yes, you can look back and think "I could have made another choice and had another result" but such thinking is useless for the most part because it changes nothing and we have no choice but to accept where we are.
Hm... If pushed, I've always thought of karma as not something we accumulate or carry around, like bags of brownie points, but as a vector or direction our life takes. Our actions point us in a particular direction, and like a ship sailing with the wind, that direction might take us to a rocky doom or across clear waters. I have never been one to believe in accumulated or past life karma because of this. Our present direction or karma is all there is. But that's just how I think about it so it makes sense to me and reminds me karma isn't a good or bad luck token to be cashed in the future.
-I've always had a bit of an issue with the Imponderables, especially the fourth one. It strikes me as being akin to the Tree of Knowledge as described in the book of genesis.: Don't eat the apple off of that tree or ask that question...
@Will_Baker -- I don't think of the imponderables as a threat -- some God's-gonna-hit=you-with-a-rolled-up-newspaper-if -you-pee-on-the-livingroom-carpet. Rather I think of them as an avuncular warning: Don't waste your time, nitwit! But if you do insist on wasting your time, then do try to stop banging your head against the wall as soon as possible... it feels so good when you stop, dontcha know.
I never took it as "don't bother ever asking the question" but rather to limit how much time you spend thinking yourself in circles over questions that we are not privy to the answers to in our basic human-embodied form. Perhaps there is a good reason for it. Perhaps humanity is not prepared to live life as it should live if if they have all the answers.
The need to believe that "everything happens for a reason" is pretty peculiar when you take a closer look. Would things be better or worse if everything didn't happen for a reason?
I think calling something imponderable is kind of silly. We've had numerous threads here discussing imponderable and as far as I'm aware, none of us went mad over it yet.
Everything we can imagine is ponderable.
Personally, I think somewhere along the lines somebody mistook pondering (mulling things over) for conjecture (forming a conclusion) and screwed up the point of the teaching. Big time.
Pondering the origin of the universe (or whatever the focus) is quite a different thing than forming conjecture on the matter.
That's just it.
I think pondering is healthy given the time and place but conjecture gives rise to dogma and it is dogma which should be avoided, not a healthy sense of wonder.
Here are some ideas where self is a construct, karma is make believe and solutions to the dilemma ..
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/09/forget-mindfulness-stop-trying-to-find-yourself-start-faking-it-confucius
@lobster nice article. The kids and I are laying in a lazy, Saturday bed pile, and I passed the tablet to Kofi. He read it out loud, and we discussed the different points. I saw a couple of A-ha! moments hit them, as in " There is no little self in here to be true to".
Easy for them to connect the dots and expand on some of the writing.
Gratitude for the moment you gave us.
This thread is the gift that keeps on giving, hahaha. Nice conversation going on everyone!
Nice article. I'm not that familiar with the history of Chinese philosophy but I believe there was some contention between the approach of Confucianism, which this article is based on, and Taoism, and by extension Zen, which this post is based on.
Just for reference...I found this:
There are several similarities between the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism and the religion of Buddhism. However, there are some important differences as well. This chart compares the two belief systems and their practices.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Buddhism_vs_Confucianism
Contention/suffering...what else is new? hahahaha
Very interchangable, though. Especially from an Engaged Buddhism POV
I'll let someone waaaaaay smarter than me explain the correlation with the OP/Zen.
Sorry if I derailed
Ha! Thanks for sharing the article. I vacillated between "That's not it at all" and "That's starting to get there." There's a reason Confucianism went head to head with Buddhism, sometimes in physical battles. The Confucianism I studied claimed individual happiness arose from accepting one's place in society and embracing the various roles you were called upon to play. Taoists and Buddhists on the other hand, did not do battle and instead merged eventually into Chan or Zen Buddhism under the ever-present threat of Confucianism. And for the scholars out there, I'm aware this is a vast oversimplification of a complicated, confusing thousand years or so.
Part of our problem in understanding the philosophy and appeal of Confucianism is that we don't come from a static, homogeneous society, highly stratified, where everyone was identified by their position in life instead of their individual merits. If you were born to a farmer, you were a farmer and trying to be anything but a farmer was punishable by death. To a Confucian, the answer to "Who am I?" is "You're a farmer, the same as your father and his father. Accept this and you'll be content. That's all you need to know."
We are questing pattern seekers. Order imposers but fluid in potential. I like the hard questions. The hard answers I have only a temporary head for ...
Good discussion points and derailments from others. Thanks guys
... I rather liked what @Cinorjer said; understanding beliefs from the historical culture in which they arose. That's why the Abrahamics are so feisty, the dharmic so fatalistic and the Truth whirling around us ... removing unused heads ...
:-) I try not to perceive of anything in the universe, seen or unseen, as a threat; it is exactly what it is, and when I can avoid it, I certainly try not to bang my head on walls. But, given the obvious progression of developing thought and bodies of knowledge that's taken place over the past 3,000 +/- years, the idea of not exploring a given line of inquiry, simply due to dogma, strikes me as an opportunity lost. And please know, I mean no insult by saying this. Of course, this is just my opinion and I respect yours...
-Perhaps there's dogma and there's dogma...
I went ahead and opened a separate thread just so we can explore the old imponderable/conjecture debate.