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Some of us out here believe, no witness, that there is direct experience outside of the mind, (AKA outside of Mara or Samsara). This something outside is apprehended directly, it is intrinsic, and is not experienced in the same way that mind experiences through the thought process. I believe that we first apprehend this, as the Buddha Urge.
So by definition, “Being” is not an imputation, or as you say "a fabrication." Being is what you find when you have thrown off everything that it is possible to throw off, even what you thought was your self, and stand there naked and alone. This is often on the other side of dispair or when Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and refused to move. {Refusing to move is a metaphor for stepping out of the (ever moving) mind}
You are so naked at this point, that at first you do not even know what you have come upon, (The Dark Night of the Soul), and the mind quickly tells you that it is nothing or empty. But this certainly isn’t true. The thing that puts the lie to what mind is saying about "Being" is that, for the very first time you feel satisfied beyond any further need.
Some of us out here believe, no witness, that there is direct experience outside of the mind, (AKA outside of Mara or Samsara). This something outside is apprehended directly, it is intrinsic, and is not experienced in the same way that mind experiences through the thought process. I believe that we first apprehend this, as the Buddha Urge.
Are you saying that becoming Dr. Manhattan is the ultimate goal in Buddhism? :wtf:
I agree with Fivebells. You use the words "apprehended" and "experienced"; so what Fivebells said is still true:
how is it apprehended? It is imputed from experience. This imputation is a fabrication. One result of Buddhist practice is development of the capacity to fully experience the process of fabrication.
Subjectivity, your second two paragraphs are a very moving description of the peace which comes from Buddhist practice. The first paragraph confuses me, though. What does it mean for something to be "outside the mind," and why is it important that you infer this from an experience which is in some way extraordinary?
If I didn't have my own answer, for what you have just shown me here, would what you have just done here, been of any help to me at all?
Actually, no!
I believe it was you who recently worried about confusing others.
Although Being cannot be said, words are certainly a fine instrument for pointing, as in “Don’t look at my finger.” But, you may notice that the masters are both dedicating their lives to pointing, and writing copiously.
When meditating, after a while, you begin to notice just what thoughts are, their nature, how very temporary thoughts are.
But some time later, what else do you notice? There is something; what some call awareness, which is always there in the background. This background awareness is like the sky, and the thoughts are more like the clouds playing across the sky. The sky is unchanging and it is not a thought like the clouds are. The sky is “Being.”
So first there is Being, (previous to the conceptual mind), and only afterwards the multiple clouds/thought come up and go down continually.
The experience of Being is not extraordinary. Perhaps this is why it is so easily overlooked. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that the mind has, and so mind continuously grabs center stage.
But this is the thing about mind. It is full of promises but it cannot deliver. We are constantly running after what mind promises only to be once again disappointed. Mind is insubstantial. Or said differently, becoming never arrives.
Being on the other hand promises no thing, It simply IS, that is the real meaning of Suchness.
But when we stop believing minds promise and simply stop running, we find out that we were home all along, home in Being, and that is enough.
You are not going to find me to be consistent with any one particular school. My journey is far too diverse for this. I cannot claim any ism.
However, I am not therefore scattered. My feet remain directly on the ground, and I do not indulge in flights of fancy, because I look directly and witness every truth I hold as a personal discovery. Isn’t this what Buddha told us to do? Look and see directly for our self?
Ah, I think I understand, now. You're using "Being" to refer to awareness, and "mind" to refer to cognition. You're accidentally going to get a lot of push back on that in English-speaking Buddhist circles, because "being" is commonly used to translate one of the limbs of dependent origination, and it is the goal of Buddhist practice to bring and end to that. But I see the difference in how you're using it.
When I say it is not for me to say, I mean that. I cant speak for you. Your spiritual journey is yours and the authenticity is yours. There is an Advaita Vedanta teacher (now deceased) who's writings are right up your alley. His name is Jean Klein, and he is just beautiful, perhaps you have heard of him. You can find him online.
But if the matter is Buddha Dharma, then there are certain distinct and well established "Right Views". The Eightfold path as you know includes "Right view". There are probably other practitioners on this site who would say I play fast and loose with "Right View", but you probably won't find me going too far astray.
If you want to self-identify as a Buddhist that is your perogative. But if you have never taken refuge, accepted a Dharma name, practiced within the relationship of a Sangha, and presented yourself to a lineage holding teacher. Then there are certain key disciplines you have not undergone, and key relationships you have not experienced.
That in and of itself is neither here nor there, but if your going to proclaim the true Dharma, it seems you aught to at least speak to a teacher.
Subjectivity9 is simply sharing their own understanding, and in reality, that's all any of us are doing. None of us are Enlightenend and none of us are purely speaking True Dharma. You can only experience it, anyway. Even the Buddha's words are interpreted in an infinite number of ways. Subjectivity9's posts even included "It is my understanding..."
But if you have never taken refuge, accepted a Dharma name, practiced within the relationship of a Sangha, and presented yourself to a lineage holding teacher. Then there are certain key disciplines you have not undergone, and key relationships you have not experienced.
I'm not saying things like seeking guidance from those more experienced isn't important, but really, what does a Dharma name have to do with anything? If someone has done those things then they can claim to be speaking "True Dharma"? Where did he say "True Dharma" anyway?
He also never said he's never spoken with a teacher. In fact he said before that he did have a teacher.
"Being on the other hand promises no thing, It simply IS, that is the real meaning of Suchness." Really?
I already said I speak from my own practice (and refrain from quoting teachers and sutras), but that doesnt mean Buddha Dharma is a matter of opinion. It is not just a catch-all basket for everything-is-one spirituality. I am also an active member of Sangha who job is, among other things, to conduct public sittings and facilitate newcomers, and have done so for 15 years and have seen it all. It is ok to say "Whoa" when goofy statements are made. Say "whoa" when I make a goofy statement please. I would appreciate it.
Taking Refuge in and entering into practice with Sangha is obviously not a compulsion. But diminishing the importance of it is.... up to you.
but that doesnt mean Buddha Dharma is a matter of opinion.
I didn't say it is. Buddha Dharma is the ultimate, universal, unchanging truth. When conveyed through words, an individual chooses terms that they feel best express their understanding. And the Buddha's own words, although true, still have to be processed through the filter of an unenlightened mind. Buddha Dharma is the understanding behind the words, not the words themself.
There is also clearly a bit of a language barrier here and he/she is using terms in ways we normally wouldn't.
I'm not saying their understanding is 100% correct, or their way of expressing their understanding in written words is flawless. But whose is? No one, including Subjectivity, is claiming to be Enlightened.
"Being on the other hand promises no thing, It simply IS, that is the real meaning of Suchness." Really?
Yes. Really. They were trying to explain their understanding, and also understand yours. They did not say "This is Buddha Dharma, this is what the Buddha meant, you are all wrong and my explanation is the only one that is right, and my understanding is flawless." Their posts are filled with "it is my understanding," "perhaps this is why the Buddha said," "perhaps...," "some of us believe that...," etc.
Seriously though. it is all a matter of language. There are all those discourses where monks go back and forth about whether the Tathagata is, is not, is not not, is is, is is not not, is not is......not.
When talking about non-duality we can dance around and point, but not make direct positive assertions. Some things demand "Noble Silence"
I am addressing this post to you, not because this is your particular problem, far from it. But I feel that you will give it a good and thoughtful answer.
I have been traveling on the path accompanied by a spiritual friend for many decades now. We are so close and have shared so much of this journey together that, we can practically read each others minds, finish the other guy sentence for them closeness, and still the choice of words can be a problem at time, esp. if we have recently moved into new territory on this topic.
Very often we will say something about some new insight we have had, and then have to turn around and say it differently, in order to get our meaning across. This is everyone’s constant struggle with language, I believe.
I do think however, that we need to be careful about insisting on certain words, as that is a little like the special hand shakes between gang members. It starts to be more about belonging and convenience than actually seeking. We really, in this area (esp.), need to be bold both in our thoughts and our word choices. After all, if we are doing this right, we are continually breaking new ground.
I think new blood coming into any group is very important, because it throws open the windows and lets in a little fresh air. Without this, I believe our journey could grow comfortably stale.
Subjectivity. I'm sorry if I have offended you. But you cant just walk onto a commons and say you will only address so and so. If that is what you want to do, stick to direct messaging. We are all here and all free to adress and respond to who we want to. ok?:smilec:
Subjectivity, I'm not objecting to your terminology out of any personal bias, just saying it's going to cause you the kinds of communication problems you've had here. Subject to the understanding I outlined in my previous comment, I agree with you completely.
I am sorry, too. I don’t seem to be able to do/say anything that doesn’t disturb you in some way. I actually mean you no harm.
Believe it or not, I was trying to spare your feelings by addressing my question to fivebells. I didn’t want you to take my question as a personal reprimand, which it was not meant to be.
But, oh, I thought, “I hope fivebells doesn’t think it is a personal reprimand," and so explained, as clearly as I could think how to, that I didn’t mean that it was a personal problem of fivebells.
I am walking on eggshells here. I think I need a big old break, at least until I can find the exact words/actions that would please you. How about it?
There is always a problem with words or terminology even between Buddhist schools. But I believe that, if I came on, and said something with the exact right words, I would still have a problem with some persons, because my perspective on those words would be different.
The path isn’t one of length so much as it is one of deepening. And so, these same exact words actually morph as we grow more deeply within our own personal understanding.
So it is with a beginner thinking one thing on reading a passage and an advanced person thinking entirely something different.
One of the things that seems to blind people, quite often, is their thinking that they already know something. You use their words in order not to confuse them, and they think, “Yah, I know that,” and so simply set what you are saying aside as something they have accomplished. But say the very same thing with different words, and even though at first they may be thrown off, at least they look more closely. I don’t know where the middle path lies in this dilemma, do you?
I have refrained from some of my favorite words here, simply because I didn’t want to completely confuse people. It is a real shame, because some of my favorite words are so very clarifying in extremely subtle areas.
I am going to take what you have said quite seriously, and look over my old Buddhist notes in order, by refreshing myself, to begin thinking more in those words again. So thanx, 4 the heads up. You are very kind.
You are quite right in saying that Buddha Dharma is all about the understanding behind the words, and not the words themselves. In the end we will abandon words completely and understand more directly than words. Words being the finger pointing.
To me, being totally 100% wrong is the exact the same thing as questioning. At least it isn’t passive.
Using words, in a way that we normally wouldn’t, may be a little bit like brainstorming. Very often, we set up barriers to new ways of seeing though our preference for certain old ways of say/seeing things. This is laying down deep grooves in our habitual mind. If these grooves are deep enough, the sides of these groove actually become walls that are hard to climb over.
I think this is why Masters Lin Chi would wait until a conversation was over and his student was leaving. He would then loudly scream, “Look…Look.” As the person turned around, complete taken by surprise, his conceptual mind was temporarily in shock/quiet. This was a great opportunity for his student to recognize what was right there, outside of mind.
When meditating, after a while, you begin to notice just what thoughts are, their nature, how very temporary thoughts are.
But some time later, what else do you notice? There is something; what some call awareness, which is always there in the background. This background awareness is like the sky, and the thoughts are more like the clouds playing across the sky. The sky is unchanging and it is not a thought like the clouds are. The sky is “Being.”
So first there is Being, (previous to the conceptual mind), and only afterwards the multiple clouds/thought come up and go down continually.
The experience of Being is not extraordinary. Perhaps this is why it is so easily overlooked. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that the mind has, and so mind continuously grabs center stage.
But this is the thing about mind. It is full of promises but it cannot deliver. We are constantly running after what mind promises only to be once again disappointed. Mind is insubstantial. Or said differently, becoming never arrives.
Being on the other hand promises no thing, It simply IS, that is the real meaning of Suchness.
But when we stop believing minds promise and simply stop running, we find out that we were home all along, home in Being, and that is enough.
S9
The awareness that is the vast space-like background or the Witness, and the changing phenomena rolling past (Witnessed) and yet the awareness remains unchanged, passive, unaffected, is precisely the duality that is negated.
When a person realises I AM, he will always want to sink back and abide in the background witnessing space. However this is because non-dual insight has not arisen.
The practitioner must eventually realise: All along the transience rolls and knows; no separate watcher is real or needed.
The 'background' consciousness is a direct experience of our inner most essence we called “Self”. It is a most direct, immediate experience of “I”; no thoughts, no concepts, nothing at all, just simply a pure sense of existence. Simply a sense of presence, before birth, this I; after death, this I. There can be no other, just this, I. Perfectly still, thoughtless, unmoved, unchanging I. This ‘I’ is very real pristine, clear and alive. In fact more real than the real, nothing can be more real that this ‘I’. This is not the sort of observer observing something as the experience is non-dual, it is not so much of you knowing it as you BEING it. Just wholly ‘YOU’ as Existence itself. This Existence, Presence-Awareness, is Self-Knowing without an Observer, hence it does not have a subject-object division, it is non-dual. This is not a second hand form of knowledge and once a practitioner experiences that, he is absolutely certain and unmoved -- a very powerful experience as it contrasts so much with our ordinary discursive thoughts.
But what exactly is the ‘background’? Actually it doesn’t exist. It is only an image of a ‘non-dual’ experience that is already gone. The dualistic mind fabricates a ‘background’ due to the poverty of its dualistic and inherent thinking mechanism. It ‘cannot’ understand or function without something to hold on to. That experience of the ‘I’ is a complete, non-dual foreground experience.
When the background subject is understood as an illusion, all transience phenomena reveal themselves as Presence. It is like naturally 'vipassanic' throughout. From the hissing sound of PC, to the vibration of the moving MRT train, to the sensation when the feet touches the ground, all these experiences are crystal clear, no less “I AM” than “I AM”. The Presence is still fully present, nothing is denied. So the “I AM” is just like any other experiences when the subject-object split is gone. No different from an arising sound. It only becomes a static background as an after thought when our dualistic and inherent tendencies are in action.
The problem with the initial I AM experience is that the mind grasps this experience and turns it into the ultimate Knower or Observer, the Eternal Witness. In actuality, everything is equally Awareness. A sound, a sight, everything is equally self-aware without an observer, hence everything is Non-Dual, and no less “I AM” than “I AM”.
That is why the analogy:
The first 'I-ness' stage of experiencing awareness face to face is like a point on a sphere which you called it the center. You marked it.
Then later you realized that when you marked other points on the surface of a sphere, they have the same characteristics. This is the initial experience of non-dual. Once the insight of No-Self is stabilized, you just freely point to any point on the surface of the sphere -- all points are a center, hence there is no 'the' center. 'The' center does not exist: all points are a center.
After then practice move from 'concentrative' to 'effortlessness'. That said, after this initial non-dual insight, 'background' will still surface occasionally for another few years due to latent tendencies.
Having said so much, even the realisation of non-dual is not yet the final realisation. Non-Dual is only Stage 4 of Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment - do read the article. The Non-Dual insight leads to the realisation of 'All is Mind'.
After this, not to be too overwhelmed or over-claimed what is more than necessary; rather investigate further. Does this non-dual luminosity exhibits any characteristic of self-nature that is independent, unchanging and permanent? A practitioner can still get stuck for quite sometimes solidifying non-dual presence unknowingly. This is leaving marks of the 'One mirror' or the 'Universal Brahman' as described in the stage 4 of the Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment. Although experience is non-dual, the insight of emptiness is still not there. Though the dualistic bond has loosen sufficiently, the 'inherent' view remains strong.
So what is at the root of ‘all this’ going on? What either supports it, or merely allows it?
S9
In the Sutta cleverly called 'The Root', the Buddha addressed this issue by rejecting the notion that Awareness is The Ultimate Source of everything. If Awareness is non-dual from the beginning, and all manifestation is the 'Source', in other words Awareness is not other than the arising sound, the arising thought, then to try to make Awareness into 'The Source' is forcing to fit a dualistic framework on what is by nature non-dual and empty.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(Mulapariyaya Sutta: The Root Sequence)
..."He directly knows water as water... the All as the All...
"He directly knows Unbinding as Unbinding. Directly knowing Unbinding as Unbinding, he does not conceive things about Unbinding, does not conceive things in Unbinding, does not conceive things coming out of Unbinding, does not conceive Unbinding as 'mine,' does not delight in Unbinding. Why is that? Because he has known that delight is the root of suffering & stress, that from coming-into-being there is birth, and that for what has come into being there is aging & death. Therefore, with the total ending, fading away, cessation, letting go, relinquishment of craving, the Tathagata has totally awakened to the unexcelled right self-awakening, I tell you."
That is what the Blessed One said. Displeased, the monks did not delight in the Blessed One's words.
One time the Buddha went to a group of monks and he basically told them not to see Awareness as The Source of all things. So this sense of there being a vast awareness and everything just appears out of that and disappears back into it, beautiful as that is, he told them that’s actually not a skillful way of viewing reality. And that is a very interesting sutta, because it’s one of the only suttas where at the end it doesn’t say the monks rejoiced in his words.
This group of monks didn’t want to hear that. They were quite happy with that level of insight, lovely as it was, and it said the monks did not rejoice in the Buddha’s words. (laughter) And similarly, one runs into this as a teacher, I have to say. This level is so attractive, it has so much of the flavor of something ultimate, that often times people are unbudgeable there.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu:
The Buddha taught that clinging to views is one of the four forms of clinging that tie the mind to the processes of suffering. He thus recommended that his followers relinquish their clinging, not only to views in their full-blown form as specific positions, but also in their rudimentary form as the categories & relationships that the mind reads into experience. This is a point he makes in the following discourse, which is apparently his response to a particular school of Brahmanical thought that was developing in his time — the Samkhya, or classification school.
This school had its beginnings in the thought of Uddalaka, a ninth-century B.C. philosopher who posited a "root": an abstract principle out of which all things emanated and which was immanent in all things. Philosophers who carried on this line of thinking offered a variety of theories, based on logic and meditative experience, about the nature of the ultimate root and about the hierarchy of the emanation. Many of their theories were recorded in the Upanishads and eventually developed into the classical Samkhya system around the time of the Buddha.
Although the present discourse says nothing about the background of the monks listening to it, the Commentary states that before their ordination they were brahmans, and that even after their ordination they continued to interpret the Buddha's teachings in light of their previous training, which may well have been proto-Samkhya. If this is so, then the Buddha's opening lines — "I will teach you the sequence of the root of all phenomena" — would have them prepared to hear his contribution to their line of thinking. And, in fact, the list of topics he covers reads like a Buddhist Samkhya. Paralleling the classical Samkhya, it contains 24 items, begins with the physical world (here, the four physical properties), and leads back through ever more refined & inclusive levels of being & experience, culminating with the ultimate Buddhist concept: Unbinding (nibbana). In the pattern of Samkhya thought, Unbinding would thus be the ultimate "root" or ground of being immanent in all things and out of which they all emanate.
However, instead of following this pattern of thinking, the Buddha attacks it at its very root: the notion of a principle in the abstract, the "in" (immanence) & "out of" (emanation) superimposed on experience. Only an uninstructed, run of the mill person, he says, would read experience in this way. In contrast, a person in training should look for a different kind of "root" — the root of suffering experienced in the present — and find it in the act of delight. Developing dispassion for that delight, the trainee can then comprehend the process of coming-into-being for what it is, drop all participation in it, and thus achieve true Awakening.
If the listeners present at this discourse were indeed interested in fitting Buddhist teachings into a Samkhyan mold, then it's small wonder that they were displeased — one of the few places where we read of a negative reaction to the Buddha's words. They had hoped to hear his contribution to their project, but instead they hear their whole pattern of thinking & theorizing attacked as ignorant & ill-informed. The Commentary tells us, though, they were later able to overcome their displeasure and eventually attain Awakening on listening to the discourse reported in AN 3.123.
Although at present we rarely think in the same terms as the Samkhya philosophers, there has long been — and still is — a common tendency to create a "Buddhist" metaphysics in which the experience of emptiness, the Unconditioned, the Dharma-body, Buddha-nature, rigpa, etc., is said to function as the ground of being from which the "All" — the entirety of our sensory & mental experience — is said to spring and to which we return when we meditate. Some people think that these theories are the inventions of scholars without any direct meditative experience, but actually they have most often originated among meditators, who label (or in the words of the discourse, "perceive") a particular meditative experience as the ultimate goal, identify with it in a subtle way (as when we are told that "we are the knowing"), and then view that level of experience as the ground of being out of which all other experience comes.
Any teaching that follows these lines would be subject to the same criticism that the Buddha directed against the monks who first heard this discourse.
p.s. With due respects to Thanissaro Bhikkhu who is a venerable from the Theravadin tradition of Buddhism, his comments on "the Dharma-body, Buddha-nature, rigpa" is not in accord with what is taught in the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions, since in these traditions the Dharmakaya (dharma body)/Buddha Nature/Rigpa is explained as empty as well. It is however a common misunderstanding even among Buddhists.
Ah, but this is not at all what Rigpa or Dharmakaya means. Rigpa is basically the consciousness of emptiness of dependent origination, so also originates dependently and is not some self supporting universal awareness. But since all aspects of the so called "universe" are inherently empty always, so Rigpa is always, only in as much as it is recognized.
p.s. Namdrol could clear this up, as he has access to untranslated Tibetan texts and could talk about what Rigpa means. He has said that it is not established as well. Rigpa is only inherent in the sense that all compounded things are inherently empty always. Just like the Buddhas first statement. "Mind and it's phenomena are luminous, uncompounded and free since beginningless time." Or something to that effect in maybe not that order. If someone has the quote?
And also Loppon Namdrol said:
Loppon Namdrol:
There is no teaching in Buddhism higher than dependent origination. Whatever originates in dependence is empty. The view of Dzogchen, according to ChNN (Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche) in his rdzogs chen skor dri len is the same as Prasanga Madhyamaka, with one difference only - Madhyamaka view is a result of intellectual analysis, Dzogchen view is not. Philosophically, however, they are the same. The view of Madhyamaka does not go beyond the view of dependent origination, since the Madhyamaka view is dependent origination. He also cites Sakya Pandita "If there were something beyond freedom from extremes, that would be an extreme."
Further, there is no rigpa to speak of that exists separate from the earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness that make up the universe and sentient beings. Rigpa is merely a different way of talking about these six things. In their pure state (their actual state) we talk about the radiance of the five wisdoms of rig pa. In their impure state we talk about how the five elements arise from consciousness. One coin, two sides. And it is completely empty from beginning to end, and top to bottom, free from all extremes and not established in anyway.
Dzogchen teachings also describe the process of how sentient being continue in an afflicted state (suffering), what is the cause of that afflicted state (suffering), that fact that afflicted state can cease (the cessation of suffering) and the correct path to end that suffering (the truth of the path). Dzogchen teachings describe the four noble truths in terms of dependent origination also.
Ergo, Dzogchen also does not go beyond Buddha's teaching of dependent origination which Nagarjuna describes in the following fashion:
I bow to him, the greatest of the teachers,
the Sambuddha, by whom dependent origination --
not ceasing, not arising
not annihilated, not permanent,
not going, not coming,
not diverse, not single,
was taught as peace
in order to pacify proliferation.
Thanks for your descriptions and analysis. They are interesting and relevant.
I think of it this way, from a very high but still vipassana point of view, as you are framing this question in a vipassana context:
First, the breath is nice, but at that level of manifesting sensations, some other points of view are helpful:
Assume something really simple about sensations and awareness: they are exactly the same. In fact, make it more simple: there are sensations, and this includes all sensations that make up space, thought, image, body, anything you can imagine being mind, and all qualities that are experienced, meaning the sum total of the world.
In this very simple framework, rigpa is all sensations, but there can be this subtle attachment and lack of investigation when high terms are used that we want there to be this super-rigpa, this awareness that is other. You mention that you feel there is a larger awareness, an awareness that is not just there the limits of your senses. I would claim otherwise: that the whole sensate universe by definition can't arise without the quality of awareness by definition, and so some very subtle sensations are tricking you into thinking they are bigger than the rest of the sensate field and are actually the awareness that is aware of other sensations.
Awareness is simply manifestation. All sensations are simply present.
Thus, be wary of anything that wants to be a super-awareness, a rigpa that is larger than everything else, as it can't be, by definition. Investigate at the level of bare sensate experience just what arises and see that it can't possibly be different from awareness, as this is actually an extraneous concept and there are actually just sensations as the first and final basis of reality.
As you like the Tibetan stuff, and to quote Padmasambhava in the root text of the book The Light of Wisdom:
"The mind that observes is also devoid of an ego or self-entity. It is neither seen as something different from the aggregates Nor as identical with these five aggregates. If the first were true, there would exist some other substance.
This is not the case, so were the second true, That would contradict a permanent self, since the aggregates are impermanent. Therefore, based on the five aggregates, The self is a mere imputation based on the power of the ego-clinging.
As to that which imputes, the past thought has vanished and is nonexistent. The future thought has not occurred, and the present thought does not withstand scrutiny."
I really found this little block of tight philosophy helpful. It is also very vipassana at its core, but it is no surprise the wisdom traditions converge.
Thus, if you want to crack the nut, notice that everything is 5 aggregates, including everything you think is super-awareness, and be less concerned with what every little type of consciousness is than with just perceiving them directly and noticing the gaps that section off this from that, such as rigpa from thought stream, or awareness from sensations, as these are golden chains.
Please let me clarify where I stand, right from the get/go. I do not see the Witness as being something separate from ego-mind. I see the Witness rather as just a highbrid of ego, and yes perhaps this Witness too is the root of all the imaginings that we affectionately call finitude, or what you may call sensation and thought. But this being said, I do not believe that the ‘I Am’ is synonymous with unity.
The reason that Samsara and Nirvana are said to be the same, is because Samsara is simply the I Am wrongly viewed by the mind, or a mistaken perspective, which we readily identify with. Nirvana on the other hand is simply the opposite of Samara, and like you say just the other side of the coin, within duality. This is because once again, The true experience of I Am, quickly becomes an explanation of the mind called Nirvana, and morphs into one more mind object in this way, which ego-mind feels at some point in future time it will possess.
Loose your wrong views and you loose Samsara. Or said slightly differently Samsara isn’t. It was just a mistaken idea.
The I Am is not a substance, or in any way an extension of minds little zoo of animated thoughts. Furthermore the I Am is not actually background. Background to what? To say that the I Am is the One, is already to have fallen into duality. (The duality of definitions.)
To say that non-dual insight has not arisen also gives an erroneous impression that the I Am Presence isn’t always present. Perhaps you do not mean to do this. Words can be very tricky at times. Perhaps this is exactly why we must look directly, as any theory cannot contain the I Am.
Here are a few quotes I like:
“One understands that the external world has nothing to do with
One’s real Self, and if one acts accordingly, then one will return
To one's original nature.” (Fa-yung)
“You should not search through others, lest the Truth recede farther
from you. When alone I proceed through myself, I meet him wherever
I go. He is the same as me, yet I am not he! Only if you
understand this will you identify with Tathata.” (Liang-chieh)
If there is something in particular that you would like me to address, please bring this to my attention and I will do so. But thank you for your lengthy reply, I found it most interesting. You certainly have given this some thought.
I fully understand that in some of my replies here, I may have misunderstood your original intention, words can be used so differently by each of us. We may actually be closer to being on the same page than I first believe. I can however see that you are quite advanced through much of what you have said here.
"Our birth and death, being born and dying, dying and being born again, is birth and death on a great scale. We also have birth and death on a small scale. There is the day we are born. Although we are born, we will have to die. The day of our death is already set the day we are born. Therefore, our life is birth and death on a great scale. Each passing year brings the death of that year. Thus if we are born one day, we will have to die one day, because once there is birth, there is death. If there is no birth, then there is no death."
Where would you say all these living beings that have appeared since beginningless kalpas come from? Let's investigate. Take human beings, for example. Did man exist before woman, or woman before man? If you say man appeared before woman, then without a woman how could there be any men? If you say woman appeared before man, then without a man how could there be any women? This is the "beginningless"--we don't know where it started. Chickens are another example. Would you say the chicken came before the egg, or the egg before the chicken? For beginningless kalpas there were no chickens. Then how did one come into existence? We may say it was born from an egg. Well, if there were no chickens, how could there be eggs? Our investigation cannot provide a clear understanding of this principle; it comes from the beginningless. People also came from the beginningless, from the O.
This O is beginningless and endless; it has neither inside nor outside; it is neither big nor small. In its minutest aspect, the O equals a dust mote. If we expand it, it is equal to the Dharma Realm. To the ends of the empty space, throughout the Dharma Realm, nothing is beyond this O. If the empty space throughout the Dharma Realm is smashed into dust motes, not a single dust mote is apart from this O. Therefore, the O is the source of the myriad births and transformations. It is the principle of true emptiness and wonderful existence without beginning or end. When this O is expanded, it becomes empty space, the Dharma Realm. That is true emptiness. When it is shrunk, it becomes a dust mote. Though a dust mote is tiny, it is wonderful existence. Therefore, beginningless kalpas have no beginning. This O is true emptiness, and it is wonderful existence. All of you, think about this! If you can understand this principle, you understand the true Dharma. If you can't understand this principle, you're still a confused person, having no real wisdom.
"Living beings are forever adding a head on top of a head, or looking for the mule while riding on one. They all run around seeking outside, and don't know that they should reflect upon themselves. This true Dharma is inherent in the self-nature, it abides constantly and originally in the self-nature. One doesn't need to seek outside for it. If you go outside to try to find it, you can spend eighty thousand great kalpas and you still won't be able to find it. However, if you can return the light and look within, it's there instantly. It is said, "The sea of suffering is boundless, but a turn of the head is the other shore." That is to say, when you seek outside, just that is the boundless sea of suffering; when you reflect within and work on your self-nature, just that is the other shore you find upon turning your head."
The great brightness of self-mastery is just this O. When you have perfected your cultivation, the great bright store will manifest, the great awesome spiritual power of self-mastery will appear. This great bright store pervades empty space and the Dharma Realm. Thus the Buddha comes to universally guide all living beings in this world through the Dharma-doors of leaving birth and death, of reflecting upon oneself, and of returning to the source. Your great bright wisdom can shatter ignorance and reveal the inherent Dharma nature. If you don't believe what I say, just go ahead and try it out. When the time is ripe, you won't be able to disbelieve it. You'll believe it even if you don't want to. Because that's the way it is. How can you not believe? This great bright store is originally your own, it's not given to you by other people, nor is it given to you by the Buddhas. It is inherently yours
Please let me clarify where I stand, right from the get/go. I do not see the Witness as being something separate from ego-mind. I see the Witness rather as just a highbrid of ego, and yes perhaps this Witness too is the root of all the imaginings that we affectionately call finitude, or what you may call sensation and thought. But this being said, I do not believe that the ‘I Am’ is synonymous with unity.
It's important to first realise the I AM (Thusness Stage 1). But this is not the final insight. This is not yet non-duality. When one realises that 'I AM' is not more I AM than a passing sight, a passing sound, then Awareness is not behind transient phenomena but arises AS transient phenomena. It's not going to be easy to be convinced or understood until one has a direct insight about non-duality.
However at Stage 4, non-duality is seen as more like the unity of Brahman and World. As in the famous statement: Brahman is the World. It is more like the unity of Ultimate Subject and all phenomena or objects. However even at this stage, non-duality is no longer experienced as a 'merging experience' -- experiences of unity can be induced by strong concentration or letting go, but it is not the realisation of non-duality. Once you realised non-duality, the realisation/insight is permanent, you realise reality never was divided in the first place, so there is no need to merge the experiencer and experience, and thus non-duality can never be lost. Thus, realisation and experience are different.
In Stage 5, there is just manifestation, there is no subject and object, and if there is no Subject to begin with there can be no union of subject and object (even if it is seen as 'Brahman is by nature non-dual'). Awareness is not in any way 'ultimate' or exhibiting the characteristic of a metaphysical essence. Any metaphysical essence is not in accords with Buddhism's teaching of shunyata and anatta.
The reason that Samsara and Nirvana are said to be the same, is because Samsara is simply the I Am wrongly viewed by the mind, or a mistaken perspective, which we readily identify with. Nirvana on the other hand is simply the opposite of Samara, and like you say just the other side of the coin, within duality. This is because once again, The true experience of I Am, quickly becomes an explanation of the mind called Nirvana, and morphs into one more mind object in this way, which ego-mind feels at some point in future time it will possess. Loose your wrong views and you loose Samsara. Or said slightly differently Samsara isn’t. It was just a mistaken idea.
True reality is beyond words and concepts, this is experienced even at Thusness Stage 1 (I AM). However it is not the same as the non-duality of subject and object. On this aspect I think David Loy puts it very well:
That saṁsāra is nirvāṇa is a major tenet of Mahāyāna philosophy. "Nothing of saṁsāra is different from nirvāṇa, nothing of nirvāṇa is different from saṁsāra. That which is the limit of nirvāṇa is also the limit of saṁsāra; there is not the slightest difference between the two." [1] And yet there must be some difference between them, for otherwise no distinction would have been made and there would be no need for two words to describe the same state. So Nāgārjuna also distinguishes them: "That which, taken as causal or dependent, is the process of being born and passing on, is, taken noncausally and beyond all dependence, declared to be nirvāṇa." [2] There is only one reality -- this world, right here -- but this world may be experienced in two different ways. Saṁsāra is the "relative" world as usually experienced, in which "I" dualistically perceive "it" as a collection of objects which interact causally in space and time. Nirvāṇa is the world as it is in itself, nondualistic in that it incorporates both subject and object into a whole which, Mādhyamika insists, cannot be characterized (Chandrakīrti: "Nirvāṇa or Reality is that which is absolved of all thought-construction"), but which Yogācāra nevertheless sometimes calls "Mind" or "Buddhanature," and so forth.
“One understands that the external world has nothing to do with
One’s real Self, and if one acts accordingly, then one will return
To one's original nature.” (Fa-yung)
It should be more like, the notion of an objective world is not in accord with one's nature. The notion of the world having objective existence apart from Mind/Awareness, and the notion of Mind/Awareness as somehow something 'in here' watching things 'out there' is an illusion. Thus, external world is an illusion. All manifestation is only Awareness/Mind. This is non-duality and an important insight, but there is a danger to continue interpreting it according to ultimate subjectivity. Awareness is simply a point of luminous clarity but is empty of any essence.
The I Am is not a substance, or in any way an extension of minds little zoo of animated thoughts. Furthermore the I Am is not actually background. Background to what? To say that the I Am is the One, is already to have fallen into duality. (The duality of definitions.)
If I AM is an eternal essence or have any subjectivity, that is by definition a metaphysical essence, some sort of unchanging substance of reality.
As for background, it is in your own words:
But some time later, what else do you notice? There is something; what some call awareness, which is always there in the background. This background awareness is like the sky, and the thoughts are more like the clouds playing across the sky. The sky is unchanging and it is not a thought like the clouds are. The sky is “Being.”
So first there is Being, (previous to the conceptual mind), and only afterwards the multiple clouds/thought come up and go down continually.
In other words, Awareness remains unchanging behind all passing phenomena. It is the background reality. However, a further insight will be that Awareness is not other than those passing phenomena. There are three ways to experience non-dual:
1. There is an Awareness reflecting thoughts and manifestation.
2. Thoughts and manifestation are required for the mirror to see itself. (Thusness Stage 4)
3. Thoughts and manifestation have always been the mirror (Thusness Stage 5)
In 3 not even a quantum line can be drawn from whatever arises; whatever that appears to come and goes is the Awareness itself. There is no Awareness other than that. We should use the teachings of Anatta (no-self), DO (dependent origination) and Emptiness to see the 'forms' of awareness.
To say that non-dual insight has not arisen also gives an erroneous impression that the I Am Presence isn’t always present.
Presence is ever-present, never lost, but one will always continue to suffer in ignorance until it's nature is realised. Having a billion dollars in the bank is useless if you didn't realise it's in your bank. And there are many degrees of insight -- many people think that enlightenment is just one type of insight or realisation. In actuality most of them are only referring to the initial glimpse or realisation of the I AM.
One can change the conditioned but not the unconditioned.
Therefore one may wish to occupy oneself to the changing of the conditioned to improve one's life and that of others. If possible.
What we are talking about here, I believe, is the non-existence of separation. But just because there is no such thing as separation, or a separate self, does not mean that anything that the brain-mind can come up with is consequently a part of the I Am, or our Original Nature.
So, Samsara, one of the dreamlike stories that ego-mind has come up with is not a part of the I Am, and definitely not equal to it.
Just like there are multiple levels of understanding, there are multiple levels of speaking about what is understood, perspectives. For instance, one moment, I may be speaking from the ego-mind’s perspective and then I might say there is a background behind my thoughts, which would be accurate so far as it goes. This is because in the ego-mind everything requires a background to play across.
Whereas in speaking from the I Am, which is 100% non-dual, speaking about background would be pure foolishness.
When I look at the Original Nature of the I Am, I do this in one of two ways. I look at It with my mind, and immediately start thinking up adjectives like ultimate silence, or satisfaction, or emptiness of all ego-mind, and such. In this way, my mind tries to capture what I am looking at. That is okay, because that is what mind does naturally. This VIEW is very pleasing, and I don’t take it away from my mind, because that is all that she (Psyche) will ever have, and that would be cruel. The mind is just a little animal, doing the best that it can.
Secondly, I look, but it is more like stepping back into it. Mind still play her games before my eyes, but I fully know that mind is no “Me.” If asked what my I Am is, this thing that I have backed into and taken my seat in, I cannot explain ‘Being I Am’ in words. But I do know, only too well, that it is “Me,” the only Real Me, and I am whole, and 100% totally satisfied.
If one thinks that they realize that the I Am is a passing thing, than what they have realized is in imposter, put up before their eyes only temporarily. The I Am never wavers, not for a second.
I see finitude as nothing more than a dream. It has no real personal substance and that includes my physical/mental manifestation.
The closer to waking we become, the more dreamlike it all seems, until like Buddha, we Wake Up.
Hi Subjectivity. From the traditional perspective quoted in the sutras below , what you are describing is an incomplete process. The "I am" you are describing is phenomenal, not noumenal. When you have Zen teacher talking about True Mind and so forth they are using skillful means to facilitate the process. They are not referring to an ontological absolute. I realize that it seems like what you are saying. But if you keep pushing back you will find That there are indeed profoundly subtle objects of awarenes that you are taking as the subject.
Have you ever done Jhana meditation? In Jhana meditation you directly strip away all objects of awareness in order to uncover the true subject. This requires absolute perfection of Samadhi. Single pointed, without so much as a fluctuation, sustained indefinitely. When you can do this you can enter Jhana. To cut to the chase even the highest Jhana "Niether Perception nor non-Perception" is not-self. It is the pure subjective pole. But in Buddhadharma this is pointedly not reified as Self. The reason for this is because it is not primary to the objective pole.
In other words the "true self" is a phase in the process that is followed by a "turning about".
This turning about is the dawning of non-dual realization.
This non-duality is described by the Buddha as...
There is Seeing, but no seer therein
There is Hearing, but no hearer therein.
There is Feeling, but no feeler therein
etc.
I look forward to hearing you response to this. This debate can be enjoyable.
The I Am is beyond both the material manifestation, and our sensing of the material, and I Am is also beyond any possible thought process. Sitting in I Am, no rather Being I Am, you witness material sensing and thought as not being there with you. Not because you look at these and think, “No they are not me,” but rather when the I Am looks only at I Am constantly, they are simply never present in I Am, ever. The I Am is devoid of these.
I don’t know how you can call what I am experiencing an incomplete process, when it is certainly complete unto itself, and never once claimed to be a process. Mind is the king in the land of process. I Am is not tainted by mind or process.
The I Am does not require skillful means; this would be effort no matter how skillful. The I Am is what it is, completely void of any effort, whatsoever.
I have done many meditations (Dhyana), and I have also used my mind as my main path, (Jnana).
The I Am does not turn about. It doesn’t need to. It is everywhere present, omnipresent. Every perception only borrows the light of Awareness, which is I Am. All perceptions are temporary dreaming only.
Yes. I know exactly what you speak of. The difference in what we are describing is profoundly subtle. We may discuss further, with great subtlelty or we can just aknowledge that the traditional training parts ways at this point. There is no value judgement involved, no assertion of superiority or inferiority. I honor your realization.
The I Am is beyond both the material manifestation, and our sensing of the material, and I Am is also beyond any possible thought process. Sitting in I Am, no rather Being I Am, you witness material sensing and thought as not being there with you. Not because you look at these and think, “No they are not me,” but rather when the I Am looks only at I Am constantly, they are simply never present in I Am, ever. The I Am is devoid of these.
Yes, this is all the description of I AM. But it is not yet the non-dual insight. There are further insights that clarify the non-division of awareness and phenomena.
When you realise that everything is consciousness, including manifestations, thoughts, sensations, there is no 'Beyond'. And as someone pointed out, "Since it is this true ground of reality and there is nothing further beyond this, it could be said to be 'ultimate'. But since it is always present in all things (and always has been), it would mean that everything is ultimate. Since there is nothing for which the ultimate can stand in contradistinction against, what is the point of labeling it such?"
In the traditional Theravada texts, they don't talk about Awareness or Consciousness with a capital 'A' or 'C', because they do not see it as a metaphysical essence, however, it is already implicit in everything. Awareness is not seen as more ultimate than a passing thought and a passing sound. Everything is the so called 'ultimate reality' but nevertheless is without essence.
Because the karmic propensity of perceiving subject/object duality is so strong, pristine awareness is quickly attributed to 'I', Atman, the ultimate Subject, Witness, background, eternal, formless, odorless, colorless, thoughtless and void of any attributes, and we unknowingly objectified these attributes into an ‘entity’ and make it an eternal background or an emptiness void. When this is done, it prevents us from experiencing the color, texture, fabric and manifesting nature of awareness. Suddenly thoughts are being grouped into another category and disowned. In actual case, thoughts think and sound hears. The observer has always been the observed. No watcher needed, the process itself knows and rolls as Venerable Buddhaghosa writes in the Visuddhi Magga.
In naked awareness, there is no splitting of attributes and objectification of these attributes into different groups of the same experience. So thoughts and sense perceptions are not disowned and the nature of impermanence is taken in wholeheartedly in the experience of no-self. ‘Impermanence’ is never what it seems to be, never what that is understood in conceptual thoughts. ‘Impermanence’ is not what the mind has conceptualized it to be. In non-dual experience, the true face of impermanence nature is experienced as happening without movement, change without going anywhere. This is the “what is” of impermanence. It is just so.
....
Although there is non-duality in Advaita Vedanta, and no-self in Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta rest in an “Ultimate Background” (making it dualistic), whereas Buddhism eliminates the background completely and rest in the emptiness nature of phenomena; arising and ceasing is where pristine awareness is. In Buddhism, there is no eternality, only timeless continuity (timeless as in vividness in present moment but change and continue like a wave pattern). There is no changing thing, only change.
Thoughts, feelings and perceptions come and go; they are not ‘me’; they are transient in nature. Isn’t it clear that if I am aware of these passing thoughts, feelings and perceptions, then it proves some entity is immutable and unchanging? This is a logical conclusion rather than experiential truth. The formless reality seems real and unchanging because of propensities (conditioning) and the power to recall a previous experience. (See The Spell of Karmic Propensities)
There is also another experience, this experience does not discard or disown the transients -- forms, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. It is the experience that thought thinks and sound hears. Thought knows not because there is a separate knower but because it is that which is known. It knows because it's it. It gives rise to the insight that isness never exists in an undifferentiated state but as transient manifestation; each moment of manifestation is an entirely new reality, complete in its own.
The mind likes to categorize and is quick to identify. When we think that awareness is permanent, we fail to 'see' the impermanence aspect of it. When we see it as formless, we missed the vividness of the fabric and texture of awareness as forms. When we are attached to ocean, we seek a waveless ocean, not knowing that both ocean and wave are one and the same. Manifestations are not dust on the mirror, the dust is the mirror. All along there is no dust, it becomes dust when we identify with a particular speck and the rest becomes dust.
Unmanifested is the manifestation,
The no-thing of everything,
Completely still yet ever flowing,
This is the spontaneous arising nature of the source.
Simply Self-So.
Use self-so to overcome conceptualization.
Dwell completely into the incredible realness of the phenomenal world.
I don’t know how you can call what I am experiencing an incomplete process, when it is certainly complete unto itself, and never once claimed to be a process. Mind is the king in the land of process. I Am is not tainted by mind or process.
It is easy to misunderstand any phase of insight as final and complete, as Adyashanti puts it, "Emptiness is not the totality of what you are. Emptiness is a profound aspect of what you are, it's a profound taste of your true nature, it's not the totality of what you are any than getting up in the morning and feeling good is the totality of what you are, or feeling bad is a totality of what you are... ...Whenever you touch upon a deep truth, suchness of reality, your true nature, each aspect feels like it's total and complete and all-inclusive at that moment. So that's why teachers have a very hard time getting through to people when they have an initial experience of anything because if it's an initial experience of reality it feels totally complete and there is a certain innate confidence that arises within you. Not an egoic confidence but a confidence that comes from reality." (Note: 'Emptiness' used by Adyashanti here is referring to the initial experience of I AMness, it is not referring to the insight of dependent origination that Thusness is talking about at Stage 6)
What we are talking about here, I believe, is the non-existence of separation. But just because there is no such thing as separation, or a separate self, does not mean that anything that the brain-mind can come up with is consequently a part of the I Am, or our Original Nature.
So, Samsara, one of the dreamlike stories that ego-mind has come up with is not a part of the I Am, and definitely not equal to it.
It's definitely not made up by anything. However, be careful not to reify this 'unborn' into some substance apart from phenomena.
In reality, every phenomena is naturally luminous and empty -- nothing is ever born or has an origin, they interdependently originate. Example, sound is awareness. The person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears...are conditions. When causes and conditions is, manifestation is, when manifestation is, Awareness is. Even if you don't want to smell garbage, it is naturally perceived through/as Awareness whether you want it or not if you walk pass a garbage truck. And it is naturally perceived through/as Unborn Awareness even if you are paying attention to something else, or thinking about something else. And even if you are paying attention to your breathe, the sound of bird chirping is spontaneously perceived. This is what Bankei means by everything is naturally resolved in the Unborn. The awareness of/as smell is not fabricated, it is not created by anything, and is definitely not the result of your intentions or attention or your thoughts, it is naturally and spontaneously manifesting due to dependent origination, it is not something born/created by something else, and it has no inherent existence of its own but naturally presents itself choicelessly, relative to all other conditions. The sound itself is not fabricated, the notion of yourself as a hearer of sound is what is fabricated.
Also, at no moment is something created nor will anything experience gradual dissolution. We think that things are somehow created in time by something, exists for a while, and then subside back in our awareness, thus creating a duality/dichotomy between 'thing arising out of and subsiding back into awareness'/transient phenomena, and some unchanging awareness behind those phenomena (as explained well by Greg Goode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g1zwdTRxrU ). In actuality, Awareness is just This Sound, a spontaneous manifestation which has no origin and does not go anywhere. It has no movement. It is unborn. But it is not other than the impermanence (which has no movement). Everything is a spontaneous manifestation, disjoint and complete of itself, so firewood does not turn into ash and birth does not turn into death. Firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash. (Dogen) Hence the manifestation of birth and death is itself no-birth and no-death. Everything is by nature luminous and empty, unborn, unmade, unfabricated. We live deluded when we fabricate our notions of them as otherwise. Anyway Emptiness and Dependent Origination is one of the most subtle points to grasp in Buddhism, it is easily misunderstood.
Another word that has confounded many Hindu Svamis is ‘unborn’ (Skt. ajat), ‘unproduced’ (Skt. anutpada). In the context of the Hindu Vedanta, it means that there is this Ultimate Reality called the Brahma which is unborn i.e. never produced by anything or at any time, which means it always was. A thing or ‘super thing’ even a ‘non-thing’ that always existed and was never ever produced at any period in time which is separate from this born, illusory Samsara. In the Buddhist context, it is the true nature of Samsara itself which although relatively appears to be ‘born’, ultimately is never born. Advayavajra in his Tatvaratnavali says, “The world is unborn says the Buddha”. As Buddha Ekaputra Tantra (Tib. sangye tse tsig tantra) says, the base of DzogChen is the Samsara itself stirred from its depth. Since the Samsara stirred from its depth is interdependently originated, i.e. not really originated i.e. unborn and since Samsara is only relatively an interdependently originated thing but ultimately neither a thing nor a non-thing (bhava or abhava) that truly exists, the use of the word ‘unborn’ for Brahma (which is definitely not Samsara) and for Samsara itself in Buddhism are diametrically opposed. The true meaning of unborn (anutpada) is dependently originated (pratityasamutpanna), which is as already mentioned, the meaning of a nisvabhava (non-real existence) or Shunyata (emptiness). None of these can be a synonym for Brahma or anything that has kind of ultimate real existence, even if it is called Tathagatagarbha. There is no acceptance of an Ultimate Existence in any Buddhist Sutra. It is interesting that an exact word for Ultimate Existence (Skt. paramartha satta) in Tibetan Buddhism is very rarely used. It shows how non-Buddhist the whole concept is. One has to differentiate between existence (Skt. satta) and truth (Skt. satya) although they are so close and come from the same root in Sanskrit. Even in the Ratnagotra there is one single sentence (Skt. Yad yatra tat tena shunyam iti samanupasyati yat punartravasistam bhavati tad sad ihasthiti yathabhutam prajanati): “whatever is not found, know that to be empty by that itself, if something remains, know that to exist as it is).” This statement is straight out of the Vaibhasika Sutras of the Theravada (Sunnatavagga) and Sautrantika Abhidharma Samuccaya. It seems to imply an affirming negative. First of all, this statement contradicts the rest of the Ratnagotravibhaga if it is taken as the ultimate meaning in the Sutra (as the Shentongpas have done). Secondly, since it is a statement of the Vaibhasika school (stating that an ultimate unit of the consciousness and matter remains), it cannot be superior to the Rangtong Madhyamika. Thirdly, its interpretation as what remains is the ultimately existing Tathagatagarbha contradicts not only the interpretation that is found in other Buddhist sutras as “itar etar shunyata” (emptiness of what is different from it) but also the Shentong interpretation of Tathagatagarbha contradicts all the other definitions of the Tathagatagarbha found in the Ratnagotravibhaga itself.
.....
So in the Buddhist paradigm, it is not only not necessary to have an eternal ground for liberation, but in fact the belief in such a ground itself is part of the dynamics of ignorance. We move here to another to major difference within the two paradigms. In Hinduism liberation occurs when this illusory Samsara is completely relinquished and it vanishes; what remains is the eternal Brahma, which is the same as liberation. Since the thesis is that Samsara is merely an illusion, when it vanishes through knowledge, if there were no eternal Brahma remaining, it would be a disaster. So in the Hindu paradigm (or according to Buddhism all paradigms based on ignorance), an eternal unchanging, independent, really existing substratum (Skt. mahavastu) is a necessity for liberation, else one would fall into nihilism. But since the Buddhist paradigm is totally different, the question posed by Hindu scholars: “How can there be liberation if a Brahma does not remain after the illusory Samsara vanishes in Gyana?” is a non question with no relevance in the Buddhist paradigm and its Enlightenment or Nirvana.
First of all, to the Buddha and Nagarjuna, Samsara is not an illusion but like an illusion. There is a quantum leap in the meaning of these two statements. Secondly, because it is only ‘like an illusion’ i.e. interdependently arisen like all illusions, it does not and cannot vanish, so Nirvana is not when Samsara vanishes like mist and the Brahma arises like the sun out of the mist but rather when seeing that the true nature of Samsara is itself Nirvana. So whereas Brahma and Samsara are two different entities, one real and the other unreal, one existing and the other non-existing, Samsara and Nirvana in Buddhism are one and not two. Nirvana is the nature of Samsara or in Nagarjuna’s words shunyata is the nature of Samsara. It is the realization of the nature of Samsara as empty which cuts at the very root of ignorance and results in knowledge not of another thing beyond Samsara but of the way Samsara itself actually exists (Skt. vastusthiti), knowledge of Tathata (as it-is-ness) the Yathabhuta (as it really is) of Samsara itself. It is this knowledge that liberates from wrong conceptual experience of Samsara to the unconditioned experience of Samsara itself. That is what is meant by the indivisibility of Samsara and Nirvana (Skt. Samsara nirvana abhinnata, Tib: Khor de yer me). The mind being Samsara in the context of DzogChen, Mahamudra and Anuttara Tantra. Samsara would be substituted by dualistic mind. The Hindu paradigm is world denying, affirming the Brahma. The Buddhist paradigm does not deny the world; it only rectifies our wrong vision (Skt. mithya drsti) of the world. It does not give a dream beyond or separate transcendence from Samsara. Because such a dream is part of the dynamics of ignorance, to present such a dream would be only to perpetuate ignorance.
Samsara is like virtual reality, except that Samsara is far more advanced than anything we have yet developed with our present technology, as it includes sensation.
For instance, if you got on your computer (way too often), and consequently fell into a virtual reality, thereby completely forgetting who you originally were, than that would be very similar to the state, which the Buddha called, not being Awake or Samsara.
I think we have to realize that the Buddha saw through some state, and “Woke up.” So, there must have been an erroneous state previous to his Awakening, which he compared to being asleep. This would be a dreamlike state, if you will.
Now, he didn’t say, after 'Awakeing, “Huh, now I see that dreaming and being ‘Awake’ are the very same thing with absolutely no differences.” Or, he didn’t say, “I sure wasted all of my time in trying to find this new Awakened state.” Also, he didn't say, "Don't waste your time looking into this present state, or finding a way out of ignorance, because everything is okay just the way that it is."
The whole concept of co-dependent arising shows the difference between being asleep (or in the ego-mind), and being ‘Awake.’ Co-dependent arising is like a house of cards, with everything leaning on everything else. Pull out a few cards, and the whole thing begins to fall down.
Being ‘Awake’ on the other hand, speaks about having no dependence, whatsoever. It further speaks of being intrinsically 'Complete' and 'Whole,' and in no need of any other.
So, what exactly happens after one is ‘Awake?’ Obviously Samsara does not just disappear. This is because Samsara continues on as the dream that it always was, or exists as an illusion. We, however, once we are ‘Awake,’ sit beside the river (of life) and simply allow it to continue flowing unimpeded, until the energy that brought it up in the first place, dissipates. This is commonly know as ‘Wu Wei,’ or none interference.
Samsara is like virtual reality, except that Samsara is far more advanced than anything we have yet developed with our present technology, as it includes sensation.
For instance, if you got on your computer (way too often), and consequently fell into a virtual reality, thereby completely forgetting who you originally were, than that would be very similar to the state, which the Buddha called, not being Awake or Samsara.
I think we have to realize that the Buddha saw through some state, and “Woke up.” So, there must have been an erroneous state previous to his Awakening, which he compared to being asleep. This would be a dreamlike state, if you will.
Now, he didn’t say, after 'Awakeing, “Huh, now I see that dreaming and being ‘Awake’ are the very same thing with absolutely no differences.” Or, he didn’t say, “I sure wasted all of my time in trying to find this new Awakened state.” Also, he didn't say, "Don't waste your time looking into this present state, or finding a way out of ignorance, because everything is okay just the way that it is."
The whole concept of co-dependent arising shows the difference between being asleep (or in the ego-mind), and being ‘Awake.’ Co-dependent arising is like a house of cards, with everything leaning on everything else. Pull out a few cards, and the whole thing begins to fall down.
Being ‘Awake’ on the other hand, speaks about having no dependence, whatsoever. It further speaks of being intrinsically 'Complete' and 'Whole,' and in no need of any other.
So, what exactly happens after one is ‘Awake?’ Obviously Samsara does not just disappear. This is because Samsara continues on as the dream that it always was, or exists as an illusion. We, however, once we are ‘Awake,’ sit beside the river (of life) and simply allow it to continue flowing unimpeded, until the energy that brought it up in the first place, dissipates. This is commonly know as ‘Wu Wei,’ or none interference.
S9
Right, except that 'who you are' is in reality not something separate and transcending manifestation. This is seen when one realises non-duality. The observer is the observed. Being awake then, means waking up from our dream of separation and the dream of things having inherent existence. But liberation in Buddhism does not consist of transcending the world but seeing the world correctly. Nirvana is Samsara rightly seen. The world is in fact none other than awareness, vividly shining, but empty like a mirage.
The illusion-like manifestation and the luminosity is not two. All phenomena continue to be dependently originated and empty -- but is perceived as it is. This is not about transcending or realising some eternal substance beyond dependently originated phenomena, it is simply seeing everything as it is.
There is an Advaita teacher 'David Carse' who puts it this way:
After the jungle, there is an intensely odd and very beau-tiful quality to the experience of life. In one sense I can only describe everything, all experience, as having a certain emptiness. This is the sense in which everything used to matter, to be vital and important, and is now seen as unreal, empty, not important, an illusion. Once it is seen that the beyond-brilliance of Sat Chit Ananda is all that is, the dream continues as a kind of shadow. Yet, at the same moment that all of what appears in the dream is experi-enced as empty, it is also seen as more deeply beautiful and perfect than ever imagined, precisely because it is not other than Sat Chit Ananda, than all that is. Everything that does not matter, that is empty illusion, is at the same time itself the beyond-brilliance, the perfect beauty. Somehow there is a balance; these two apparently opposite aspects do not cancel each other out but complement each other. This makes no 'sense,' yet it is how it is.
There is one tradition within Advaita which says that maya, the manifestation of the physical universe, is over-laid or superimposed on Sat Chit Ananda. I'm no scholar of these things, and can only attempt to describe what is seen here; and the Understanding here is that there is no question of one thing superimposed on another. Maya, the manifestation, the physical universe, is precisely Sat Chit Ananda, is not other than it, does not exist on its own as something separate to be overlaid on top of something else. This is the whole point! There is no maya! The only reason it appears to have its own reality and is commonly taken to be real in itself is because of a misperceiving, a mistaken perception which sees the appearance and not What Is. This is the meaning of Huang Po's comment that "no distinction should be made between the Absolute and the sentient world." No distinction! There is only One. There is not ever in any sense two. All perception of distinction and separation, all perception of duality, and all perception of what is known as physical reality, is mind-created illu-sion. When a teacher points at the physical world and says, "All this is maya," what is being said is that what you are seeing is illusion; what all this is is All That Is, pure Being Consciousness Bliss Outpouring; it is your perception of it as a physical world that is maya, illusion.
I fully agree with you that the observer is the observed. I am thinking that we both feel there is only the “One.”
Where we are differing, I believe, is in the details about what is observed. Is there one thing observed or is part of this one thing observed actually wrongfully observed, not making an actual two, or a second thing, but certainly a split between what is truth and error? So that in the end, 'One Is' (AKA Truth), and the other simply is not, or a misunderstanding of what is.
Next we have the problem of defining the observer. Is there an erroneous observer who acts as a counterpart to an erroneous observation? Maybe I should put what I was originally saying a little differently. If I am transcendent, it isn’t transcendent to another place, like heaven, or something. It is more like being transcendent of an error, or rather dropping a mistake. Or said slightly differently, I would be “Awake” from a dream world, which we call finitude, a dream state. I would in that case have stopped wrongfully identifying myself as being this temporary ego-self.
Yes, when Awake, and when we therefore see this world correctly, what exactly do we see, in your own words, please?
I don’t believe that either of us is going anywhere else, ever. I am not imagining something other then right here and right now. But I do believe that we may be seeing here and now a bit differently. Am I right?
Let me ask you this, if I may? When you speak of these things, do you look directly at your own personal experience, in this very second, or do you rather depend heavily upon both what you have read and what you have heard from others?
Yes, letting go, seeing through, and allowing everything to melt away, all of these and more. The vanity of our ego self is vanquished from the throne.
Slowly, slowly, we disrobe from this illusion of the temporary, and finally stand naked of all definition.
Strangely enough, this turns out to be both full and satisfying.
Meanwhile, the dream continues its dance, unhampered and strangely with far less suffering, because it is not taken quite so seriously as before. When we know it is a dream, we get off its back.
I fully agree with you that the observer is the observed. I am thinking that we both feel there is only the “One.”
Where we are differing, I believe, is in the details about what is observed. Is there one thing observed or is part of this one thing observed actually wrongfully observed, not making an actual two, or a second thing, but certainly a split between what is truth and error? So that in the end, 'One Is' (AKA Truth), and the other simply is not, or a misunderstanding of what is.
Next we have the problem of defining the observer. Is there an erroneous observer who acts as a counterpart to an erroneous observation?
Perhaps the quote 'Observer is the Observed' is a little confusing. The following clarification by Kenneth Folk is just about right:
"(for instance Kenneth referred to Krishnamurti saying something like the observed and the observer is one)."
Thitatto, I'm glad you picked up on this apparent inconsistency. Krishnamurti would have done better to say that "observing (the sense of observation) and the observed are one." Although we must admit that Krishnamurti's phrase is much more elegant, it has serious problems as there is no observer to be found. There is, however, the sense of observation, and this is what he meant by "observer." By saying that the observer and the observed are one, he was saying that the universe is "one without a second," or "not-two." But, more than making a philosophical statement, he was pointing to a particular situation (experence?) in which duality does not arise.
A related matter is the no-dog. The experience of "Self" described by the advaitists can be seen as both a means and an end. It's an end in that it is a refuge, a trans-personal perspective that is prior to the arising of a separate self, and therefore upstream from suffering. The no-dog knows no suffering. But in the no-dog, there is still a tenuous thread of delusion; the small personal self has been superseded by the universal and impersonal Self. So the no-dog is also a means; by dwelling as the no-dog "Self," you are just one tiny step away from the simplest thing, aka primordial awareness, which has no reference point, either personal or transpersonal. There is no self, big, small or otherwise, from this simplest of all perspectives. It knows Itself. There is no localized sense of knowing standing apart from what is known.There's just the entire phenomenological world, which is self-aware.
I'm sorry if this seems convoluted. It's not nearly so confusing in real life. But you can see why so many have failed so miserably to speak clearly about it; it's just really hard to talk about.
Maybe I should put what I was originally saying a little differently. If I am transcendent, it isn’t transcendent to another place, like heaven, or something. It is more like being transcendent of an error, or rather dropping a mistake. Or said slightly differently, I would be “Awake” from a dream world, which we call finitude, a dream state. I would in that case have stopped wrongfully identifying myself as being this temporary ego-self.
Agree. Except that it's not there is an existing 'temporary ego-self' and you're no longer identifying yourself with that 'temporary ego-self' -- rather, it's realised that, there never was a separate self to begin with. For example, in seeing there always is only just scenery, in hearing just sounds, a seer or a hearer never was real to begin with. And so when you realised there is no such 'self', whether as an egoic personalised identification, nor a transpersonal Self or witnessing principle, and that all phenomena are self-aware as they are without a separate observer, you naturally stop identifying.
To clarify, I quote from something I wrote quite some time ago:
First I do not see Anatta as merely a freeing from personality sort of experience as you mentioned; I see it as that a self/agent, a doer, a thinker, a watcher, etc, cannot be found apart from the moment to moment flow of manifestation or as its commonly expressed as ‘the observer is the observed’; there is no self apart from arising and passing. A very important point here is that Anatta/No-Self is a Dharma Seal, it is the nature of Reality all the time -- and not merely as a state free from personality, ego or the ‘small self’ or a stage to attain. This means that it does not depend on the level of achievement of a practitioner to experience anatta but Reality has always been Anatta and what is important here is the intuitive insight into it as the nature, characteristic, of phenomenon (dharma seal).
To put further emphasis on the importance of this point, I would like to borrow from the Bahiya Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.irel.html) that ‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ as an illustration. When a person says that I have gone beyond the experiences from ‘I hear sound’ to a stage of ‘becoming sound’, he is mistaken. When it is taken to be a stage, it is illusory. For in actual case, there is and always is only sound when hearing; never was there a hearer to begin with. Nothing attained for it is always so. This is the seal of no-self. Therefore to a non dualist, the practice is in understanding the illusionary views of the sense of self and the split. Before the awakening of prajna wisdom, there will always be an unknowing attempt to maintain a purest state of 'presence'. This purest presence is the 'how' of a dualistic mind -- its dualistic attempt to provide a solution due to its lack of clarity of the spontaneous nature of the unconditioned. It is critical to note here that both the doubts/confusions/searches and the solutions that are created for these doubts/confusions/searches actually derive from the same cause -- our karmic propensities of ever seeing things dualistically
Yes, when Awake, and when we therefore see this world correctly, what exactly do we see, in your own words, please?
You see everything as everyone else sees. Except it is no longer 'you see'. The scenery sees. The sound hears. You don't observe the bamboo, you enter into the mode of bamboo-being, there is no you. Everything manifests in its clear suchness and there is no sense of any separate or transcendent self apart. Everything is vivid, self-luminous, yet ungraspable and empty. And it is realised that, this has always been the case. It is always so. It is not that some day the self dissolves -- it is realised that there never was such a self to begin with, so in seeing only just the seen, in hearing just the heard, never was there a seer or hearer.
Let me ask you this, if I may? When you speak of these things, do you look directly at your own personal experience, in this very second, or do you rather depend heavily upon both what you have read and what you have heard from others?
Warm regards,
S9
I'm not enlightened. I have non dual experiences so I know what 'non dual' means experientially, but as explained, temporary glimpses or experiences are not the insight which is permanent. I speak with my friend Thusness (who perceives this in real time in every second) often and that's who I often quote from
I think that “the sense of observation” is a fine way to put it; as you are certainly aware of this observing that seems to be going on. Yet, at the same time, you cannot quite seem to put your finger on what, or who, is looking,
As Lin Chi has said, “Who is this fellow going in and out of my eyes? “
However, I do agree with Krishnamurti in this way, that when speaking about I Am, the observed being the I Am is also the observer, but of one piece.
Yet, we must not take this as dualistic, just because language has a propensity to lean us in this direction. I believe that Krishnamurti was speaking of a more 'Intrinsic Knowing,' which isn’t actually broken up into pieces like observer and observed. You might rather say that, the I Am knows its self to be the I Am, and all that that entails, simply by being its self.
I believe that you are far too dismissive of this intrinsic feeling, of the I Am; or said more intimately, dismissive of your 'Original Me,' simply because the mind cannot flesh it out with description.
I also have to wonder if, in throwing away your ego, you haven’t also thrown away the baby with the bath water?
For me, it is because of contemplated this very feeling of ‘Me,’ and in this way asking “Who am I?” as Ramana says we should, that I have been able to go beyond definitions.
In contemplating this ‘Original Me,’ I have continued to deepen within it, become it, to the point where satisfaction has come to stay. This ‘Me’ is not like anything else, and yet it is very Real.
This ‘Me’ is not two, and it is not one, and yet it is not empty. “Me” is an ‘Alive Presence,’ which once experienced; cannot be denied.
Run as you may, you cannot outrun 'Intrinsic Me.' Everywhere you go, it is right there with you. Don’t take my word for it. Try to out run the 'Presence of Me,' and see where that gets you. It is impossible.
Is a pure condition any "closer" to the unconditioned than an impure one? No. Is a quiescent condition any more like the the unconditioned than a turbulent one? No. What does this mean for practice? What does this mean for cutting to the heart of the matter?
Richard Herman, listen to my words, try them on for size, and see if they fit:
With regards to pure and impure conditions, it is enough to simply see them as they are. When you do this, you have access to the unconditioned. When you ask questions such as "is this close to unconditioned? Is this condition pure? Is a pure condition better than an impure one?, etc, etc" then you are accessing the conditioned, and not the unconditioned.
The unconditioned is what you see before you. The conditioned is when you condition what you see before you. Do you know what it means to condition something?
It means to interact with it. To try and figure out what it means. To try to change it, to judge it, desire it, reflect on it, entangle with it, preserve it... That is what it means to condition.
Don't condition. Just look and see things for what they are.
Comments
Some of us out here believe, no witness, that there is direct experience outside of the mind, (AKA outside of Mara or Samsara). This something outside is apprehended directly, it is intrinsic, and is not experienced in the same way that mind experiences through the thought process. I believe that we first apprehend this, as the Buddha Urge.
So by definition, “Being” is not an imputation, or as you say "a fabrication." Being is what you find when you have thrown off everything that it is possible to throw off, even what you thought was your self, and stand there naked and alone. This is often on the other side of dispair or when Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and refused to move. {Refusing to move is a metaphor for stepping out of the (ever moving) mind}
You are so naked at this point, that at first you do not even know what you have come upon, (The Dark Night of the Soul), and the mind quickly tells you that it is nothing or empty. But this certainly isn’t true. The thing that puts the lie to what mind is saying about "Being" is that, for the very first time you feel satisfied beyond any further need.
S9
Are you saying that becoming Dr. Manhattan is the ultimate goal in Buddhism? :wtf:
I agree with Fivebells. You use the words "apprehended" and "experienced"; so what Fivebells said is still true:
No, Dr. Manhattan torn down his physical self and replaced it with a bigger and better material self. This is very much like a dream self of an ego.
This journey is completely different. It is more about disrobing from something similar to hypnosis, the habitual mind.
S9
I am kind of curious though, where did you take refuge and what Sangha do you practice in?
This is very ‘Zen’ of you. ; ^ )
If I didn't have my own answer, for what you have just shown me here, would what you have just done here, been of any help to me at all?
Actually, no!
I believe it was you who recently worried about confusing others.
Although Being cannot be said, words are certainly a fine instrument for pointing, as in “Don’t look at my finger.” But, you may notice that the masters are both dedicating their lives to pointing, and writing copiously.
Respectfully,
S9
The questions you raise in the quote are your questions, not mine. The answers you have are also yours. Go do your thing, its not for me say.
The reason I asked about where you took refuge is because your position is curious in either a Theravadin, Mahayana, or Vajrayana context.
When meditating, after a while, you begin to notice just what thoughts are, their nature, how very temporary thoughts are.
But some time later, what else do you notice? There is something; what some call awareness, which is always there in the background. This background awareness is like the sky, and the thoughts are more like the clouds playing across the sky. The sky is unchanging and it is not a thought like the clouds are. The sky is “Being.”
So first there is Being, (previous to the conceptual mind), and only afterwards the multiple clouds/thought come up and go down continually.
The experience of Being is not extraordinary. Perhaps this is why it is so easily overlooked. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that the mind has, and so mind continuously grabs center stage.
But this is the thing about mind. It is full of promises but it cannot deliver. We are constantly running after what mind promises only to be once again disappointed. Mind is insubstantial. Or said differently, becoming never arrives.
Being on the other hand promises no thing, It simply IS, that is the real meaning of Suchness.
But when we stop believing minds promise and simply stop running, we find out that we were home all along, home in Being, and that is enough.
S9
You are not going to find me to be consistent with any one particular school. My journey is far too diverse for this. I cannot claim any ism.
However, I am not therefore scattered. My feet remain directly on the ground, and I do not indulge in flights of fancy, because I look directly and witness every truth I hold as a personal discovery. Isn’t this what Buddha told us to do? Look and see directly for our self?
Thanx for asking,
S9
When I say it is not for me to say, I mean that. I cant speak for you. Your spiritual journey is yours and the authenticity is yours. There is an Advaita Vedanta teacher (now deceased) who's writings are right up your alley. His name is Jean Klein, and he is just beautiful, perhaps you have heard of him. You can find him online.
But if the matter is Buddha Dharma, then there are certain distinct and well established "Right Views". The Eightfold path as you know includes "Right view". There are probably other practitioners on this site who would say I play fast and loose with "Right View", but you probably won't find me going too far astray.
If you want to self-identify as a Buddhist that is your perogative. But if you have never taken refuge, accepted a Dharma name, practiced within the relationship of a Sangha, and presented yourself to a lineage holding teacher. Then there are certain key disciplines you have not undergone, and key relationships you have not experienced.
That in and of itself is neither here nor there, but if your going to proclaim the true Dharma, it seems you aught to at least speak to a teacher.
Subjectivity9 is simply sharing their own understanding, and in reality, that's all any of us are doing. None of us are Enlightenend and none of us are purely speaking True Dharma. You can only experience it, anyway. Even the Buddha's words are interpreted in an infinite number of ways. Subjectivity9's posts even included "It is my understanding..."
I'm not saying things like seeking guidance from those more experienced isn't important, but really, what does a Dharma name have to do with anything? If someone has done those things then they can claim to be speaking "True Dharma"?
He also never said he's never spoken with a teacher. In fact he said before that he did have a teacher.
"Being on the other hand promises no thing, It simply IS, that is the real meaning of Suchness." Really?
I already said I speak from my own practice (and refrain from quoting teachers and sutras), but that doesnt mean Buddha Dharma is a matter of opinion. It is not just a catch-all basket for everything-is-one spirituality. I am also an active member of Sangha who job is, among other things, to conduct public sittings and facilitate newcomers, and have done so for 15 years and have seen it all. It is ok to say "Whoa" when goofy statements are made. Say "whoa" when I make a goofy statement please. I would appreciate it.
Taking Refuge in and entering into practice with Sangha is obviously not a compulsion. But diminishing the importance of it is.... up to you.
I didn't say it is. Buddha Dharma is the ultimate, universal, unchanging truth. When conveyed through words, an individual chooses terms that they feel best express their understanding. And the Buddha's own words, although true, still have to be processed through the filter of an unenlightened mind. Buddha Dharma is the understanding behind the words, not the words themself.
There is also clearly a bit of a language barrier here and he/she is using terms in ways we normally wouldn't.
I'm not saying their understanding is 100% correct, or their way of expressing their understanding in written words is flawless. But whose is? No one, including Subjectivity, is claiming to be Enlightened.
Yes. Really.
I think this is a great topic: http://newbuddhist.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3801
When talking about non-duality we can dance around and point, but not make direct positive assertions. Some things demand "Noble Silence"
I am addressing this post to you, not because this is your particular problem, far from it. But I feel that you will give it a good and thoughtful answer.
I have been traveling on the path accompanied by a spiritual friend for many decades now. We are so close and have shared so much of this journey together that, we can practically read each others minds, finish the other guy sentence for them closeness, and still the choice of words can be a problem at time, esp. if we have recently moved into new territory on this topic.
Very often we will say something about some new insight we have had, and then have to turn around and say it differently, in order to get our meaning across. This is everyone’s constant struggle with language, I believe.
I do think however, that we need to be careful about insisting on certain words, as that is a little like the special hand shakes between gang members. It starts to be more about belonging and convenience than actually seeking. We really, in this area (esp.), need to be bold both in our thoughts and our word choices. After all, if we are doing this right, we are continually breaking new ground.
I think new blood coming into any group is very important, because it throws open the windows and lets in a little fresh air. Without this, I believe our journey could grow comfortably stale.
S9
I am sorry, too. I don’t seem to be able to do/say anything that doesn’t disturb you in some way. I actually mean you no harm.
Believe it or not, I was trying to spare your feelings by addressing my question to fivebells. I didn’t want you to take my question as a personal reprimand, which it was not meant to be.
But, oh, I thought, “I hope fivebells doesn’t think it is a personal reprimand," and so explained, as clearly as I could think how to, that I didn’t mean that it was a personal problem of fivebells.
I am walking on eggshells here. I think I need a big old break, at least until I can find the exact words/actions that would please you. How about it?
Respecrfully,
S9
There is always a problem with words or terminology even between Buddhist schools. But I believe that, if I came on, and said something with the exact right words, I would still have a problem with some persons, because my perspective on those words would be different.
The path isn’t one of length so much as it is one of deepening. And so, these same exact words actually morph as we grow more deeply within our own personal understanding.
So it is with a beginner thinking one thing on reading a passage and an advanced person thinking entirely something different.
One of the things that seems to blind people, quite often, is their thinking that they already know something. You use their words in order not to confuse them, and they think, “Yah, I know that,” and so simply set what you are saying aside as something they have accomplished. But say the very same thing with different words, and even though at first they may be thrown off, at least they look more closely. I don’t know where the middle path lies in this dilemma, do you?
I have refrained from some of my favorite words here, simply because I didn’t want to completely confuse people. It is a real shame, because some of my favorite words are so very clarifying in extremely subtle areas.
I am going to take what you have said quite seriously, and look over my old Buddhist notes in order, by refreshing myself, to begin thinking more in those words again. So thanx, 4 the heads up. You are very kind.
S9
You are quite right in saying that Buddha Dharma is all about the understanding behind the words, and not the words themselves. In the end we will abandon words completely and understand more directly than words. Words being the finger pointing.
To me, being totally 100% wrong is the exact the same thing as questioning. At least it isn’t passive.
Using words, in a way that we normally wouldn’t, may be a little bit like brainstorming. Very often, we set up barriers to new ways of seeing though our preference for certain old ways of say/seeing things. This is laying down deep grooves in our habitual mind. If these grooves are deep enough, the sides of these groove actually become walls that are hard to climb over.
I think this is why Masters Lin Chi would wait until a conversation was over and his student was leaving. He would then loudly scream, “Look…Look.” As the person turned around, complete taken by surprise, his conceptual mind was temporarily in shock/quiet. This was a great opportunity for his student to recognize what was right there, outside of mind.
S9
When a person realises I AM, he will always want to sink back and abide in the background witnessing space. However this is because non-dual insight has not arisen.
The practitioner must eventually realise: All along the transience rolls and knows; no separate watcher is real or needed.
The 'background' consciousness is a direct experience of our inner most essence we called “Self”. It is a most direct, immediate experience of “I”; no thoughts, no concepts, nothing at all, just simply a pure sense of existence. Simply a sense of presence, before birth, this I; after death, this I. There can be no other, just this, I. Perfectly still, thoughtless, unmoved, unchanging I. This ‘I’ is very real pristine, clear and alive. In fact more real than the real, nothing can be more real that this ‘I’. This is not the sort of observer observing something as the experience is non-dual, it is not so much of you knowing it as you BEING it. Just wholly ‘YOU’ as Existence itself. This Existence, Presence-Awareness, is Self-Knowing without an Observer, hence it does not have a subject-object division, it is non-dual. This is not a second hand form of knowledge and once a practitioner experiences that, he is absolutely certain and unmoved -- a very powerful experience as it contrasts so much with our ordinary discursive thoughts.
But what exactly is the ‘background’? Actually it doesn’t exist. It is only an image of a ‘non-dual’ experience that is already gone. The dualistic mind fabricates a ‘background’ due to the poverty of its dualistic and inherent thinking mechanism. It ‘cannot’ understand or function without something to hold on to. That experience of the ‘I’ is a complete, non-dual foreground experience.
When the background subject is understood as an illusion, all transience phenomena reveal themselves as Presence. It is like naturally 'vipassanic' throughout. From the hissing sound of PC, to the vibration of the moving MRT train, to the sensation when the feet touches the ground, all these experiences are crystal clear, no less “I AM” than “I AM”. The Presence is still fully present, nothing is denied.
The problem with the initial I AM experience is that the mind grasps this experience and turns it into the ultimate Knower or Observer, the Eternal Witness. In actuality, everything is equally Awareness. A sound, a sight, everything is equally self-aware without an observer, hence everything is Non-Dual, and no less “I AM” than “I AM”.
That is why the analogy:
The first 'I-ness' stage of experiencing awareness face to face is like a point on a sphere which you called it the center. You marked it.
Then later you realized that when you marked other points on the surface of a sphere, they have the same characteristics. This is the initial experience of non-dual. Once the insight of No-Self is stabilized, you just freely point to any point on the surface of the sphere -- all points are a center, hence there is no 'the' center. 'The' center does not exist: all points are a center.
After then practice move from 'concentrative' to 'effortlessness'. That said, after this initial non-dual insight, 'background' will still surface occasionally for another few years due to latent tendencies.
Having said so much, even the realisation of non-dual is not yet the final realisation. Non-Dual is only Stage 4 of Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment - do read the article. The Non-Dual insight leads to the realisation of 'All is Mind'.
After this, not to be too overwhelmed or over-claimed what is more than necessary; rather investigate further. Does this non-dual luminosity exhibits any characteristic of self-nature that is independent, unchanging and permanent? A practitioner can still get stuck for quite sometimes solidifying non-dual presence unknowingly. This is leaving marks of the 'One mirror' or the 'Universal Brahman' as described in the stage 4 of the Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment. Although experience is non-dual, the insight of emptiness is still not there. Though the dualistic bond has loosen sufficiently, the 'inherent' view remains strong.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(Mulapariyaya Sutta: The Root Sequence)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.001.than.html
"He directly knows Unbinding as Unbinding. Directly knowing Unbinding as Unbinding, he does not conceive things about Unbinding, does not conceive things in Unbinding, does not conceive things coming out of Unbinding, does not conceive Unbinding as 'mine,' does not delight in Unbinding. Why is that? Because he has known that delight is the root of suffering & stress, that from coming-into-being there is birth, and that for what has come into being there is aging & death. Therefore, with the total ending, fading away, cessation, letting go, relinquishment of craving, the Tathagata has totally awakened to the unexcelled right self-awakening, I tell you."
That is what the Blessed One said. Displeased, the monks did not delight in the Blessed One's words.
This group of monks didn’t want to hear that. They were quite happy with that level of insight, lovely as it was, and it said the monks did not rejoice in the Buddha’s words. (laughter) And similarly, one runs into this as a teacher, I have to say. This level is so attractive, it has so much of the flavor of something ultimate, that often times people are unbudgeable there.
This school had its beginnings in the thought of Uddalaka, a ninth-century B.C. philosopher who posited a "root": an abstract principle out of which all things emanated and which was immanent in all things. Philosophers who carried on this line of thinking offered a variety of theories, based on logic and meditative experience, about the nature of the ultimate root and about the hierarchy of the emanation. Many of their theories were recorded in the Upanishads and eventually developed into the classical Samkhya system around the time of the Buddha.
Although the present discourse says nothing about the background of the monks listening to it, the Commentary states that before their ordination they were brahmans, and that even after their ordination they continued to interpret the Buddha's teachings in light of their previous training, which may well have been proto-Samkhya. If this is so, then the Buddha's opening lines — "I will teach you the sequence of the root of all phenomena" — would have them prepared to hear his contribution to their line of thinking. And, in fact, the list of topics he covers reads like a Buddhist Samkhya. Paralleling the classical Samkhya, it contains 24 items, begins with the physical world (here, the four physical properties), and leads back through ever more refined & inclusive levels of being & experience, culminating with the ultimate Buddhist concept: Unbinding (nibbana). In the pattern of Samkhya thought, Unbinding would thus be the ultimate "root" or ground of being immanent in all things and out of which they all emanate.
However, instead of following this pattern of thinking, the Buddha attacks it at its very root: the notion of a principle in the abstract, the "in" (immanence) & "out of" (emanation) superimposed on experience. Only an uninstructed, run of the mill person, he says, would read experience in this way. In contrast, a person in training should look for a different kind of "root" — the root of suffering experienced in the present — and find it in the act of delight. Developing dispassion for that delight, the trainee can then comprehend the process of coming-into-being for what it is, drop all participation in it, and thus achieve true Awakening.
If the listeners present at this discourse were indeed interested in fitting Buddhist teachings into a Samkhyan mold, then it's small wonder that they were displeased — one of the few places where we read of a negative reaction to the Buddha's words. They had hoped to hear his contribution to their project, but instead they hear their whole pattern of thinking & theorizing attacked as ignorant & ill-informed. The Commentary tells us, though, they were later able to overcome their displeasure and eventually attain Awakening on listening to the discourse reported in AN 3.123.
Although at present we rarely think in the same terms as the Samkhya philosophers, there has long been — and still is — a common tendency to create a "Buddhist" metaphysics in which the experience of emptiness, the Unconditioned, the Dharma-body, Buddha-nature, rigpa, etc., is said to function as the ground of being from which the "All" — the entirety of our sensory & mental experience — is said to spring and to which we return when we meditate. Some people think that these theories are the inventions of scholars without any direct meditative experience, but actually they have most often originated among meditators, who label (or in the words of the discourse, "perceive") a particular meditative experience as the ultimate goal, identify with it in a subtle way (as when we are told that "we are the knowing"), and then view that level of experience as the ground of being out of which all other experience comes.
Any teaching that follows these lines would be subject to the same criticism that the Buddha directed against the monks who first heard this discourse.
Also see: Rigpa and Aggregates
As my friend Vajrahridaya said:
p.s. Namdrol could clear this up, as he has access to untranslated Tibetan texts and could talk about what Rigpa means. He has said that it is not established as well. Rigpa is only inherent in the sense that all compounded things are inherently empty always. Just like the Buddhas first statement. "Mind and it's phenomena are luminous, uncompounded and free since beginningless time." Or something to that effect in maybe not that order. If someone has the quote?
And Daniel M. Ingram said:
Please let me clarify where I stand, right from the get/go. I do not see the Witness as being something separate from ego-mind. I see the Witness rather as just a highbrid of ego, and yes perhaps this Witness too is the root of all the imaginings that we affectionately call finitude, or what you may call sensation and thought. But this being said, I do not believe that the ‘I Am’ is synonymous with unity.
The reason that Samsara and Nirvana are said to be the same, is because Samsara is simply the I Am wrongly viewed by the mind, or a mistaken perspective, which we readily identify with. Nirvana on the other hand is simply the opposite of Samara, and like you say just the other side of the coin, within duality. This is because once again, The true experience of I Am, quickly becomes an explanation of the mind called Nirvana, and morphs into one more mind object in this way, which ego-mind feels at some point in future time it will possess.
Loose your wrong views and you loose Samsara. Or said slightly differently Samsara isn’t. It was just a mistaken idea.
The I Am is not a substance, or in any way an extension of minds little zoo of animated thoughts. Furthermore the I Am is not actually background. Background to what? To say that the I Am is the One, is already to have fallen into duality. (The duality of definitions.)
To say that non-dual insight has not arisen also gives an erroneous impression that the I Am Presence isn’t always present. Perhaps you do not mean to do this. Words can be very tricky at times. Perhaps this is exactly why we must look directly, as any theory cannot contain the I Am.
Here are a few quotes I like:
“One understands that the external world has nothing to do with
One’s real Self, and if one acts accordingly, then one will return
To one's original nature.” (Fa-yung)
“You should not search through others, lest the Truth recede farther
from you. When alone I proceed through myself, I meet him wherever
I go. He is the same as me, yet I am not he! Only if you
understand this will you identify with Tathata.” (Liang-chieh)
If there is something in particular that you would like me to address, please bring this to my attention and I will do so. But thank you for your lengthy reply, I found it most interesting. You certainly have given this some thought.
I fully understand that in some of my replies here, I may have misunderstood your original intention, words can be used so differently by each of us. We may actually be closer to being on the same page than I first believe. I can however see that you are quite advanced through much of what you have said here.
Kind regards,
S9
Where would you say all these living beings that have appeared since beginningless kalpas come from? Let's investigate. Take human beings, for example. Did man exist before woman, or woman before man? If you say man appeared before woman, then without a woman how could there be any men? If you say woman appeared before man, then without a man how could there be any women? This is the "beginningless"--we don't know where it started. Chickens are another example. Would you say the chicken came before the egg, or the egg before the chicken? For beginningless kalpas there were no chickens. Then how did one come into existence? We may say it was born from an egg. Well, if there were no chickens, how could there be eggs? Our investigation cannot provide a clear understanding of this principle; it comes from the beginningless. People also came from the beginningless, from the O.
This O is beginningless and endless; it has neither inside nor outside; it is neither big nor small. In its minutest aspect, the O equals a dust mote. If we expand it, it is equal to the Dharma Realm. To the ends of the empty space, throughout the Dharma Realm, nothing is beyond this O. If the empty space throughout the Dharma Realm is smashed into dust motes, not a single dust mote is apart from this O. Therefore, the O is the source of the myriad births and transformations. It is the principle of true emptiness and wonderful existence without beginning or end. When this O is expanded, it becomes empty space, the Dharma Realm. That is true emptiness. When it is shrunk, it becomes a dust mote. Though a dust mote is tiny, it is wonderful existence. Therefore, beginningless kalpas have no beginning. This O is true emptiness, and it is wonderful existence. All of you, think about this! If you can understand this principle, you understand the true Dharma. If you can't understand this principle, you're still a confused person, having no real wisdom.
"Living beings are forever adding a head on top of a head, or looking for the mule while riding on one. They all run around seeking outside, and don't know that they should reflect upon themselves. This true Dharma is inherent in the self-nature, it abides constantly and originally in the self-nature. One doesn't need to seek outside for it. If you go outside to try to find it, you can spend eighty thousand great kalpas and you still won't be able to find it. However, if you can return the light and look within, it's there instantly. It is said, "The sea of suffering is boundless, but a turn of the head is the other shore." That is to say, when you seek outside, just that is the boundless sea of suffering; when you reflect within and work on your self-nature, just that is the other shore you find upon turning your head."
The great brightness of self-mastery is just this O. When you have perfected your cultivation, the great bright store will manifest, the great awesome spiritual power of self-mastery will appear. This great bright store pervades empty space and the Dharma Realm. Thus the Buddha comes to universally guide all living beings in this world through the Dharma-doors of leaving birth and death, of reflecting upon oneself, and of returning to the source. Your great bright wisdom can shatter ignorance and reveal the inherent Dharma nature. If you don't believe what I say, just go ahead and try it out. When the time is ripe, you won't be able to disbelieve it. You'll believe it even if you don't want to. Because that's the way it is. How can you not believe? This great bright store is originally your own, it's not given to you by other people, nor is it given to you by the Buddhas. It is inherently yours
Zero: The Great Bright Store of Your Own Nature
Lectures by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua
http://www.cttbusa.org/dharmatalks/zero.htm
However at Stage 4, non-duality is seen as more like the unity of Brahman and World. As in the famous statement: Brahman is the World. It is more like the unity of Ultimate Subject and all phenomena or objects. However even at this stage, non-duality is no longer experienced as a 'merging experience' -- experiences of unity can be induced by strong concentration or letting go, but it is not the realisation of non-duality. Once you realised non-duality, the realisation/insight is permanent, you realise reality never was divided in the first place, so there is no need to merge the experiencer and experience, and thus non-duality can never be lost. Thus, realisation and experience are different.
In Stage 5, there is just manifestation, there is no subject and object, and if there is no Subject to begin with there can be no union of subject and object (even if it is seen as 'Brahman is by nature non-dual'). Awareness is not in any way 'ultimate' or exhibiting the characteristic of a metaphysical essence. Any metaphysical essence is not in accords with Buddhism's teaching of shunyata and anatta. True reality is beyond words and concepts, this is experienced even at Thusness Stage 1 (I AM). However it is not the same as the non-duality of subject and object. On this aspect I think David Loy puts it very well:
That saṁsāra is nirvāṇa is a major tenet of Mahāyāna philosophy. "Nothing of saṁsāra is different from nirvāṇa, nothing of nirvāṇa is different from saṁsāra. That which is the limit of nirvāṇa is also the limit of saṁsāra; there is not the slightest difference between the two." [1] And yet there must be some difference between them, for otherwise no distinction would have been made and there would be no need for two words to describe the same state. So Nāgārjuna also distinguishes them: "That which, taken as causal or dependent, is the process of being born and passing on, is, taken noncausally and beyond all dependence, declared to be nirvāṇa." [2] There is only one reality -- this world, right here -- but this world may be experienced in two different ways. Saṁsāra is the "relative" world as usually experienced, in which "I" dualistically perceive "it" as a collection of objects which interact causally in space and time. Nirvāṇa is the world as it is in itself, nondualistic in that it incorporates both subject and object into a whole which, Mādhyamika insists, cannot be characterized (Chandrakīrti: "Nirvāṇa or Reality is that which is absolved of all thought-construction"), but which Yogācāra nevertheless sometimes calls "Mind" or "Buddhanature," and so forth. It should be more like, the notion of an objective world is not in accord with one's nature. The notion of the world having objective existence apart from Mind/Awareness, and the notion of Mind/Awareness as somehow something 'in here' watching things 'out there' is an illusion. Thus, external world is an illusion. All manifestation is only Awareness/Mind. This is non-duality and an important insight, but there is a danger to continue interpreting it according to ultimate subjectivity. Awareness is simply a point of luminous clarity but is empty of any essence. If I AM is an eternal essence or have any subjectivity, that is by definition a metaphysical essence, some sort of unchanging substance of reality.
As for background, it is in your own words:
But some time later, what else do you notice? There is something; what some call awareness, which is always there in the background. This background awareness is like the sky, and the thoughts are more like the clouds playing across the sky. The sky is unchanging and it is not a thought like the clouds are. The sky is “Being.”
So first there is Being, (previous to the conceptual mind), and only afterwards the multiple clouds/thought come up and go down continually.
In other words, Awareness remains unchanging behind all passing phenomena. It is the background reality. However, a further insight will be that Awareness is not other than those passing phenomena. There are three ways to experience non-dual:
1. There is an Awareness reflecting thoughts and manifestation.
2. Thoughts and manifestation are required for the mirror to see itself. (Thusness Stage 4)
3. Thoughts and manifestation have always been the mirror (Thusness Stage 5)
In 3 not even a quantum line can be drawn from whatever arises; whatever that appears to come and goes is the Awareness itself. There is no Awareness other than that. We should use the teachings of Anatta (no-self), DO (dependent origination) and Emptiness to see the 'forms' of awareness.
Presence is ever-present, never lost, but one will always continue to suffer in ignorance until it's nature is realised. Having a billion dollars in the bank is useless if you didn't realise it's in your bank. And there are many degrees of insight -- many people think that enlightenment is just one type of insight or realisation. In actuality most of them are only referring to the initial glimpse or realisation of the I AM.
Therefore one may wish to occupy oneself to the changing of the conditioned to improve one's life and that of others. If possible.
What we are talking about here, I believe, is the non-existence of separation. But just because there is no such thing as separation, or a separate self, does not mean that anything that the brain-mind can come up with is consequently a part of the I Am, or our Original Nature.
So, Samsara, one of the dreamlike stories that ego-mind has come up with is not a part of the I Am, and definitely not equal to it.
Just like there are multiple levels of understanding, there are multiple levels of speaking about what is understood, perspectives. For instance, one moment, I may be speaking from the ego-mind’s perspective and then I might say there is a background behind my thoughts, which would be accurate so far as it goes. This is because in the ego-mind everything requires a background to play across.
Whereas in speaking from the I Am, which is 100% non-dual, speaking about background would be pure foolishness.
When I look at the Original Nature of the I Am, I do this in one of two ways. I look at It with my mind, and immediately start thinking up adjectives like ultimate silence, or satisfaction, or emptiness of all ego-mind, and such. In this way, my mind tries to capture what I am looking at. That is okay, because that is what mind does naturally. This VIEW is very pleasing, and I don’t take it away from my mind, because that is all that she (Psyche) will ever have, and that would be cruel. The mind is just a little animal, doing the best that it can.
Secondly, I look, but it is more like stepping back into it. Mind still play her games before my eyes, but I fully know that mind is no “Me.” If asked what my I Am is, this thing that I have backed into and taken my seat in, I cannot explain ‘Being I Am’ in words. But I do know, only too well, that it is “Me,” the only Real Me, and I am whole, and 100% totally satisfied.
If one thinks that they realize that the I Am is a passing thing, than what they have realized is in imposter, put up before their eyes only temporarily. The I Am never wavers, not for a second.
I see finitude as nothing more than a dream. It has no real personal substance and that includes my physical/mental manifestation.
The closer to waking we become, the more dreamlike it all seems, until like Buddha, we Wake Up.
S9
Have you ever done Jhana meditation? In Jhana meditation you directly strip away all objects of awareness in order to uncover the true subject. This requires absolute perfection of Samadhi. Single pointed, without so much as a fluctuation, sustained indefinitely. When you can do this you can enter Jhana. To cut to the chase even the highest Jhana "Niether Perception nor non-Perception" is not-self. It is the pure subjective pole. But in Buddhadharma this is pointedly not reified as Self. The reason for this is because it is not primary to the objective pole.
In other words the "true self" is a phase in the process that is followed by a "turning about".
This turning about is the dawning of non-dual realization.
This non-duality is described by the Buddha as...
There is Seeing, but no seer therein
There is Hearing, but no hearer therein.
There is Feeling, but no feeler therein
etc.
I look forward to hearing you response to this. This debate can be enjoyable.
The I Am is beyond both the material manifestation, and our sensing of the material, and I Am is also beyond any possible thought process. Sitting in I Am, no rather Being I Am, you witness material sensing and thought as not being there with you. Not because you look at these and think, “No they are not me,” but rather when the I Am looks only at I Am constantly, they are simply never present in I Am, ever. The I Am is devoid of these.
I don’t know how you can call what I am experiencing an incomplete process, when it is certainly complete unto itself, and never once claimed to be a process. Mind is the king in the land of process. I Am is not tainted by mind or process.
The I Am does not require skillful means; this would be effort no matter how skillful. The I Am is what it is, completely void of any effort, whatsoever.
I have done many meditations (Dhyana), and I have also used my mind as my main path, (Jnana).
The I Am does not turn about. It doesn’t need to. It is everywhere present, omnipresent. Every perception only borrows the light of Awareness, which is I Am. All perceptions are temporary dreaming only.
S9
When you realise that everything is consciousness, including manifestations, thoughts, sensations, there is no 'Beyond'. And as someone pointed out, "Since it is this true ground of reality and there is nothing further beyond this, it could be said to be 'ultimate'. But since it is always present in all things (and always has been), it would mean that everything is ultimate. Since there is nothing for which the ultimate can stand in contradistinction against, what is the point of labeling it such?"
In the traditional Theravada texts, they don't talk about Awareness or Consciousness with a capital 'A' or 'C', because they do not see it as a metaphysical essence, however, it is already implicit in everything. Awareness is not seen as more ultimate than a passing thought and a passing sound. Everything is the so called 'ultimate reality' but nevertheless is without essence.
As my friend Thusness would say in Buddha Nature is NOT "I Am":
Because the karmic propensity of perceiving subject/object duality is so strong, pristine awareness is quickly attributed to 'I', Atman, the ultimate Subject, Witness, background, eternal, formless, odorless, colorless, thoughtless and void of any attributes, and we unknowingly objectified these attributes into an ‘entity’ and make it an eternal background or an emptiness void. When this is done, it prevents us from experiencing the color, texture, fabric and manifesting nature of awareness. Suddenly thoughts are being grouped into another category and disowned. In actual case, thoughts think and sound hears. The observer has always been the observed. No watcher needed, the process itself knows and rolls as Venerable Buddhaghosa writes in the Visuddhi Magga.
In naked awareness, there is no splitting of attributes and objectification of these attributes into different groups of the same experience. So thoughts and sense perceptions are not disowned and the nature of impermanence is taken in wholeheartedly in the experience of no-self. ‘Impermanence’ is never what it seems to be, never what that is understood in conceptual thoughts. ‘Impermanence’ is not what the mind has conceptualized it to be. In non-dual experience, the true face of impermanence nature is experienced as happening without movement, change without going anywhere. This is the “what is” of impermanence. It is just so.
....
Although there is non-duality in Advaita Vedanta, and no-self in Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta rest in an “Ultimate Background” (making it dualistic), whereas Buddhism eliminates the background completely and rest in the emptiness nature of phenomena; arising and ceasing is where pristine awareness is. In Buddhism, there is no eternality, only timeless continuity (timeless as in vividness in present moment but change and continue like a wave pattern). There is no changing thing, only change.
Thoughts, feelings and perceptions come and go; they are not ‘me’; they are transient in nature. Isn’t it clear that if I am aware of these passing thoughts, feelings and perceptions, then it proves some entity is immutable and unchanging? This is a logical conclusion rather than experiential truth. The formless reality seems real and unchanging because of propensities (conditioning) and the power to recall a previous experience. (See The Spell of Karmic Propensities)
There is also another experience, this experience does not discard or disown the transients -- forms, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. It is the experience that thought thinks and sound hears. Thought knows not because there is a separate knower but because it is that which is known. It knows because it's it. It gives rise to the insight that isness never exists in an undifferentiated state but as transient manifestation; each moment of manifestation is an entirely new reality, complete in its own.
The mind likes to categorize and is quick to identify. When we think that awareness is permanent, we fail to 'see' the impermanence aspect of it. When we see it as formless, we missed the vividness of the fabric and texture of awareness as forms. When we are attached to ocean, we seek a waveless ocean, not knowing that both ocean and wave are one and the same. Manifestations are not dust on the mirror, the dust is the mirror. All along there is no dust, it becomes dust when we identify with a particular speck and the rest becomes dust.
Unmanifested is the manifestation,
The no-thing of everything,
Completely still yet ever flowing,
This is the spontaneous arising nature of the source.
Simply Self-So.
Use self-so to overcome conceptualization.
Dwell completely into the incredible realness of the phenomenal world.
It is easy to misunderstand any phase of insight as final and complete, as Adyashanti puts it, "Emptiness is not the totality of what you are. Emptiness is a profound aspect of what you are, it's a profound taste of your true nature, it's not the totality of what you are any than getting up in the morning and feeling good is the totality of what you are, or feeling bad is a totality of what you are... ...Whenever you touch upon a deep truth, suchness of reality, your true nature, each aspect feels like it's total and complete and all-inclusive at that moment. So that's why teachers have a very hard time getting through to people when they have an initial experience of anything because if it's an initial experience of reality it feels totally complete and there is a certain innate confidence that arises within you. Not an egoic confidence but a confidence that comes from reality." (Note: 'Emptiness' used by Adyashanti here is referring to the initial experience of I AMness, it is not referring to the insight of dependent origination that Thusness is talking about at Stage 6)
It's definitely not made up by anything. However, be careful not to reify this 'unborn' into some substance apart from phenomena.
In reality, every phenomena is naturally luminous and empty -- nothing is ever born or has an origin, they interdependently originate. Example, sound is awareness. The person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears...are conditions. When causes and conditions is, manifestation is, when manifestation is, Awareness is. Even if you don't want to smell garbage, it is naturally perceived through/as Awareness whether you want it or not if you walk pass a garbage truck. And it is naturally perceived through/as Unborn Awareness even if you are paying attention to something else, or thinking about something else. And even if you are paying attention to your breathe, the sound of bird chirping is spontaneously perceived. This is what Bankei means by everything is naturally resolved in the Unborn. The awareness of/as smell is not fabricated, it is not created by anything, and is definitely not the result of your intentions or attention or your thoughts, it is naturally and spontaneously manifesting due to dependent origination, it is not something born/created by something else, and it has no inherent existence of its own but naturally presents itself choicelessly, relative to all other conditions. The sound itself is not fabricated, the notion of yourself as a hearer of sound is what is fabricated.
Also, at no moment is something created nor will anything experience gradual dissolution. We think that things are somehow created in time by something, exists for a while, and then subside back in our awareness, thus creating a duality/dichotomy between 'thing arising out of and subsiding back into awareness'/transient phenomena, and some unchanging awareness behind those phenomena (as explained well by Greg Goode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g1zwdTRxrU ). In actuality, Awareness is just This Sound, a spontaneous manifestation which has no origin and does not go anywhere. It has no movement. It is unborn. But it is not other than the impermanence (which has no movement). Everything is a spontaneous manifestation, disjoint and complete of itself, so firewood does not turn into ash and birth does not turn into death. Firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash. (Dogen) Hence the manifestation of birth and death is itself no-birth and no-death. Everything is by nature luminous and empty, unborn, unmade, unfabricated. We live deluded when we fabricate our notions of them as otherwise. Anyway Emptiness and Dependent Origination is one of the most subtle points to grasp in Buddhism, it is easily misunderstood.
Archaya Mahayogi Shridhar Rana Rinpoche says:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Acharya%20Mahayogi%20Shridhar%20Rana%20Rinpoche
Another word that has confounded many Hindu Svamis is ‘unborn’ (Skt. ajat), ‘unproduced’ (Skt. anutpada). In the context of the Hindu Vedanta, it means that there is this Ultimate Reality called the Brahma which is unborn i.e. never produced by anything or at any time, which means it always was. A thing or ‘super thing’ even a ‘non-thing’ that always existed and was never ever produced at any period in time which is separate from this born, illusory Samsara. In the Buddhist context, it is the true nature of Samsara itself which although relatively appears to be ‘born’, ultimately is never born. Advayavajra in his Tatvaratnavali says, “The world is unborn says the Buddha”. As Buddha Ekaputra Tantra (Tib. sangye tse tsig tantra) says, the base of DzogChen is the Samsara itself stirred from its depth. Since the Samsara stirred from its depth is interdependently originated, i.e. not really originated i.e. unborn and since Samsara is only relatively an interdependently originated thing but ultimately neither a thing nor a non-thing (bhava or abhava) that truly exists, the use of the word ‘unborn’ for Brahma (which is definitely not Samsara) and for Samsara itself in Buddhism are diametrically opposed. The true meaning of unborn (anutpada) is dependently originated (pratityasamutpanna), which is as already mentioned, the meaning of a nisvabhava (non-real existence) or Shunyata (emptiness). None of these can be a synonym for Brahma or anything that has kind of ultimate real existence, even if it is called Tathagatagarbha. There is no acceptance of an Ultimate Existence in any Buddhist Sutra. It is interesting that an exact word for Ultimate Existence (Skt. paramartha satta) in Tibetan Buddhism is very rarely used. It shows how non-Buddhist the whole concept is. One has to differentiate between existence (Skt. satta) and truth (Skt. satya) although they are so close and come from the same root in Sanskrit. Even in the Ratnagotra there is one single sentence (Skt. Yad yatra tat tena shunyam iti samanupasyati yat punartravasistam bhavati tad sad ihasthiti yathabhutam prajanati): “whatever is not found, know that to be empty by that itself, if something remains, know that to exist as it is).” This statement is straight out of the Vaibhasika Sutras of the Theravada (Sunnatavagga) and Sautrantika Abhidharma Samuccaya. It seems to imply an affirming negative. First of all, this statement contradicts the rest of the Ratnagotravibhaga if it is taken as the ultimate meaning in the Sutra (as the Shentongpas have done). Secondly, since it is a statement of the Vaibhasika school (stating that an ultimate unit of the consciousness and matter remains), it cannot be superior to the Rangtong Madhyamika. Thirdly, its interpretation as what remains is the ultimately existing Tathagatagarbha contradicts not only the interpretation that is found in other Buddhist sutras as “itar etar shunyata” (emptiness of what is different from it) but also the Shentong interpretation of Tathagatagarbha contradicts all the other definitions of the Tathagatagarbha found in the Ratnagotravibhaga itself.
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So in the Buddhist paradigm, it is not only not necessary to have an eternal ground for liberation, but in fact the belief in such a ground itself is part of the dynamics of ignorance. We move here to another to major difference within the two paradigms. In Hinduism liberation occurs when this illusory Samsara is completely relinquished and it vanishes; what remains is the eternal Brahma, which is the same as liberation. Since the thesis is that Samsara is merely an illusion, when it vanishes through knowledge, if there were no eternal Brahma remaining, it would be a disaster. So in the Hindu paradigm (or according to Buddhism all paradigms based on ignorance), an eternal unchanging, independent, really existing substratum (Skt. mahavastu) is a necessity for liberation, else one would fall into nihilism. But since the Buddhist paradigm is totally different, the question posed by Hindu scholars: “How can there be liberation if a Brahma does not remain after the illusory Samsara vanishes in Gyana?” is a non question with no relevance in the Buddhist paradigm and its Enlightenment or Nirvana.
First of all, to the Buddha and Nagarjuna, Samsara is not an illusion but like an illusion. There is a quantum leap in the meaning of these two statements. Secondly, because it is only ‘like an illusion’ i.e. interdependently arisen like all illusions, it does not and cannot vanish, so Nirvana is not when Samsara vanishes like mist and the Brahma arises like the sun out of the mist but rather when seeing that the true nature of Samsara is itself Nirvana. So whereas Brahma and Samsara are two different entities, one real and the other unreal, one existing and the other non-existing, Samsara and Nirvana in Buddhism are one and not two. Nirvana is the nature of Samsara or in Nagarjuna’s words shunyata is the nature of Samsara. It is the realization of the nature of Samsara as empty which cuts at the very root of ignorance and results in knowledge not of another thing beyond Samsara but of the way Samsara itself actually exists (Skt. vastusthiti), knowledge of Tathata (as it-is-ness) the Yathabhuta (as it really is) of Samsara itself. It is this knowledge that liberates from wrong conceptual experience of Samsara to the unconditioned experience of Samsara itself. That is what is meant by the indivisibility of Samsara and Nirvana (Skt. Samsara nirvana abhinnata, Tib: Khor de yer me). The mind being Samsara in the context of DzogChen, Mahamudra and Anuttara Tantra. Samsara would be substituted by dualistic mind. The Hindu paradigm is world denying, affirming the Brahma. The Buddhist paradigm does not deny the world; it only rectifies our wrong vision (Skt. mithya drsti) of the world. It does not give a dream beyond or separate transcendence from Samsara. Because such a dream is part of the dynamics of ignorance, to present such a dream would be only to perpetuate ignorance.
Samsara is like virtual reality, except that Samsara is far more advanced than anything we have yet developed with our present technology, as it includes sensation.
For instance, if you got on your computer (way too often), and consequently fell into a virtual reality, thereby completely forgetting who you originally were, than that would be very similar to the state, which the Buddha called, not being Awake or Samsara.
I think we have to realize that the Buddha saw through some state, and “Woke up.” So, there must have been an erroneous state previous to his Awakening, which he compared to being asleep. This would be a dreamlike state, if you will.
Now, he didn’t say, after 'Awakeing, “Huh, now I see that dreaming and being ‘Awake’ are the very same thing with absolutely no differences.” Or, he didn’t say, “I sure wasted all of my time in trying to find this new Awakened state.” Also, he didn't say, "Don't waste your time looking into this present state, or finding a way out of ignorance, because everything is okay just the way that it is."
The whole concept of co-dependent arising shows the difference between being asleep (or in the ego-mind), and being ‘Awake.’ Co-dependent arising is like a house of cards, with everything leaning on everything else. Pull out a few cards, and the whole thing begins to fall down.
Being ‘Awake’ on the other hand, speaks about having no dependence, whatsoever. It further speaks of being intrinsically 'Complete' and 'Whole,' and in no need of any other.
So, what exactly happens after one is ‘Awake?’ Obviously Samsara does not just disappear. This is because Samsara continues on as the dream that it always was, or exists as an illusion. We, however, once we are ‘Awake,’ sit beside the river (of life) and simply allow it to continue flowing unimpeded, until the energy that brought it up in the first place, dissipates. This is commonly know as ‘Wu Wei,’ or none interference.
S9
The illusion-like manifestation and the luminosity is not two. All phenomena continue to be dependently originated and empty -- but is perceived as it is. This is not about transcending or realising some eternal substance beyond dependently originated phenomena, it is simply seeing everything as it is.
There is an Advaita teacher 'David Carse' who puts it this way:
After the jungle, there is an intensely odd and very beau-tiful quality to the experience of life. In one sense I can only describe everything, all experience, as having a certain emptiness. This is the sense in which everything used to matter, to be vital and important, and is now seen as unreal, empty, not important, an illusion. Once it is seen that the beyond-brilliance of Sat Chit Ananda is all that is, the dream continues as a kind of shadow. Yet, at the same moment that all of what appears in the dream is experi-enced as empty, it is also seen as more deeply beautiful and perfect than ever imagined, precisely because it is not other than Sat Chit Ananda, than all that is. Everything that does not matter, that is empty illusion, is at the same time itself the beyond-brilliance, the perfect beauty. Somehow there is a balance; these two apparently opposite aspects do not cancel each other out but complement each other. This makes no 'sense,' yet it is how it is.
There is one tradition within Advaita which says that maya, the manifestation of the physical universe, is over-laid or superimposed on Sat Chit Ananda. I'm no scholar of these things, and can only attempt to describe what is seen here; and the Understanding here is that there is no question of one thing superimposed on another. Maya, the manifestation, the physical universe, is precisely Sat Chit Ananda, is not other than it, does not exist on its own as something separate to be overlaid on top of something else. This is the whole point! There is no maya! The only reason it appears to have its own reality and is commonly taken to be real in itself is because of a misperceiving, a mistaken perception which sees the appearance and not What Is. This is the meaning of Huang Po's comment that "no distinction should be made between the Absolute and the sentient world." No distinction! There is only One. There is not ever in any sense two. All perception of distinction and separation, all perception of duality, and all perception of what is known as physical reality, is mind-created illu-sion. When a teacher points at the physical world and says, "All this is maya," what is being said is that what you are seeing is illusion; what all this is is All That Is, pure Being Consciousness Bliss Outpouring; it is your perception of it as a physical world that is maya, illusion.
I fully agree with you that the observer is the observed. I am thinking that we both feel there is only the “One.”
Where we are differing, I believe, is in the details about what is observed. Is there one thing observed or is part of this one thing observed actually wrongfully observed, not making an actual two, or a second thing, but certainly a split between what is truth and error? So that in the end, 'One Is' (AKA Truth), and the other simply is not, or a misunderstanding of what is.
Next we have the problem of defining the observer. Is there an erroneous observer who acts as a counterpart to an erroneous observation? Maybe I should put what I was originally saying a little differently. If I am transcendent, it isn’t transcendent to another place, like heaven, or something. It is more like being transcendent of an error, or rather dropping a mistake. Or said slightly differently, I would be “Awake” from a dream world, which we call finitude, a dream state. I would in that case have stopped wrongfully identifying myself as being this temporary ego-self.
Yes, when Awake, and when we therefore see this world correctly, what exactly do we see, in your own words, please?
I don’t believe that either of us is going anywhere else, ever. I am not imagining something other then right here and right now. But I do believe that we may be seeing here and now a bit differently. Am I right?
Let me ask you this, if I may? When you speak of these things, do you look directly at your own personal experience, in this very second, or do you rather depend heavily upon both what you have read and what you have heard from others?
Warm regards,
S9
Yes, letting go, seeing through, and allowing everything to melt away, all of these and more. The vanity of our ego self is vanquished from the throne.
Slowly, slowly, we disrobe from this illusion of the temporary, and finally stand naked of all definition.
Strangely enough, this turns out to be both full and satisfying.
Meanwhile, the dream continues its dance, unhampered and strangely with far less suffering, because it is not taken quite so seriously as before. When we know it is a dream, we get off its back.
S9
A related matter is the no-dog. The experience of "Self" described by the advaitists can be seen as both a means and an end. It's an end in that it is a refuge, a trans-personal perspective that is prior to the arising of a separate self, and therefore upstream from suffering. The no-dog knows no suffering. But in the no-dog, there is still a tenuous thread of delusion; the small personal self has been superseded by the universal and impersonal Self. So the no-dog is also a means; by dwelling as the no-dog "Self," you are just one tiny step away from the simplest thing, aka primordial awareness, which has no reference point, either personal or transpersonal. There is no self, big, small or otherwise, from this simplest of all perspectives. It knows Itself. There is no localized sense of knowing standing apart from what is known.There's just the entire phenomenological world, which is self-aware.
I'm sorry if this seems convoluted. It's not nearly so confusing in real life. But you can see why so many have failed so miserably to speak clearly about it; it's just really hard to talk about.
Agree. Except that it's not there is an existing 'temporary ego-self' and you're no longer identifying yourself with that 'temporary ego-self' -- rather, it's realised that, there never was a separate self to begin with. For example, in seeing there always is only just scenery, in hearing just sounds, a seer or a hearer never was real to begin with. And so when you realised there is no such 'self', whether as an egoic personalised identification, nor a transpersonal Self or witnessing principle, and that all phenomena are self-aware as they are without a separate observer, you naturally stop identifying.
To clarify, I quote from something I wrote quite some time ago:
First I do not see Anatta as merely a freeing from personality sort of experience as you mentioned; I see it as that a self/agent, a doer, a thinker, a watcher, etc, cannot be found apart from the moment to moment flow of manifestation or as its commonly expressed as ‘the observer is the observed’; there is no self apart from arising and passing. A very important point here is that Anatta/No-Self is a Dharma Seal, it is the nature of Reality all the time -- and not merely as a state free from personality, ego or the ‘small self’ or a stage to attain. This means that it does not depend on the level of achievement of a practitioner to experience anatta but Reality has always been Anatta and what is important here is the intuitive insight into it as the nature, characteristic, of phenomenon (dharma seal).
To put further emphasis on the importance of this point, I would like to borrow from the Bahiya Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.irel.html) that ‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ as an illustration. When a person says that I have gone beyond the experiences from ‘I hear sound’ to a stage of ‘becoming sound’, he is mistaken. When it is taken to be a stage, it is illusory. For in actual case, there is and always is only sound when hearing; never was there a hearer to begin with. Nothing attained for it is always so. This is the seal of no-self. Therefore to a non dualist, the practice is in understanding the illusionary views of the sense of self and the split. Before the awakening of prajna wisdom, there will always be an unknowing attempt to maintain a purest state of 'presence'. This purest presence is the 'how' of a dualistic mind -- its dualistic attempt to provide a solution due to its lack of clarity of the spontaneous nature of the unconditioned. It is critical to note here that both the doubts/confusions/searches and the solutions that are created for these doubts/confusions/searches actually derive from the same cause -- our karmic propensities of ever seeing things dualistically You see everything as everyone else sees. Except it is no longer 'you see'. The scenery sees. The sound hears. You don't observe the bamboo, you enter into the mode of bamboo-being, there is no you. Everything manifests in its clear suchness and there is no sense of any separate or transcendent self apart. Everything is vivid, self-luminous, yet ungraspable and empty. And it is realised that, this has always been the case. It is always so. It is not that some day the self dissolves -- it is realised that there never was such a self to begin with, so in seeing only just the seen, in hearing just the heard, never was there a seer or hearer. I'm not enlightened. I have non dual experiences so I know what 'non dual' means experientially, but as explained, temporary glimpses or experiences are not the insight which is permanent. I speak with my friend Thusness (who perceives this in real time in every second) often and that's who I often quote from
I think if you look a bit closer, you will begin to notice that finitude, and your own ego-finitude is automatically self-correcting.
Thinking that you are in charge will only confuses you; or rather makes you move into the ego-self, and wrongfully identify with it.
S9
I think that “the sense of observation” is a fine way to put it; as you are certainly aware of this observing that seems to be going on. Yet, at the same time, you cannot quite seem to put your finger on what, or who, is looking,
As Lin Chi has said, “Who is this fellow going in and out of my eyes? “
However, I do agree with Krishnamurti in this way, that when speaking about I Am, the observed being the I Am is also the observer, but of one piece.
Yet, we must not take this as dualistic, just because language has a propensity to lean us in this direction. I believe that Krishnamurti was speaking of a more 'Intrinsic Knowing,' which isn’t actually broken up into pieces like observer and observed. You might rather say that, the I Am knows its self to be the I Am, and all that that entails, simply by being its self.
I believe that you are far too dismissive of this intrinsic feeling, of the I Am; or said more intimately, dismissive of your 'Original Me,' simply because the mind cannot flesh it out with description.
I also have to wonder if, in throwing away your ego, you haven’t also thrown away the baby with the bath water?
For me, it is because of contemplated this very feeling of ‘Me,’ and in this way asking “Who am I?” as Ramana says we should, that I have been able to go beyond definitions.
In contemplating this ‘Original Me,’ I have continued to deepen within it, become it, to the point where satisfaction has come to stay. This ‘Me’ is not like anything else, and yet it is very Real.
This ‘Me’ is not two, and it is not one, and yet it is not empty. “Me” is an ‘Alive Presence,’ which once experienced; cannot be denied.
Run as you may, you cannot outrun 'Intrinsic Me.' Everywhere you go, it is right there with you. Don’t take my word for it. Try to out run the 'Presence of Me,' and see where that gets you. It is impossible.
S9
Richard Herman, listen to my words, try them on for size, and see if they fit:
With regards to pure and impure conditions, it is enough to simply see them as they are. When you do this, you have access to the unconditioned. When you ask questions such as "is this close to unconditioned? Is this condition pure? Is a pure condition better than an impure one?, etc, etc" then you are accessing the conditioned, and not the unconditioned.
The unconditioned is what you see before you. The conditioned is when you condition what you see before you. Do you know what it means to condition something?
It means to interact with it. To try and figure out what it means. To try to change it, to judge it, desire it, reflect on it, entangle with it, preserve it... That is what it means to condition.
Don't condition. Just look and see things for what they are.