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The evidence proved to those hard nosed doctors that out of body experiences do happen. But how could they happen? If we agree that the mind can be independent of the body, then we have a plausible explanation. The brain doesn't need to be functioning for a mind to exist. The scientific facts are there, the evidence is there, but a lot of scientists don't like to admit those facts. They prefer to close their eyes because of dogmatism.
Interesting. But, what are the scientific facts? :scratch:
Also, has the Buddha referred to the mind as something independent of the body anywhere? If so I would like to see a reference please
Seems like the basis of saying consciousness exists without having the physical body as the base are the out of body experiences people have had. Considering the fact that people have these types of experiences due to many reasons like drugs, dreaming, lack of oxygen in the blood, brain damage etc it is highly speculative to consider it as a fact.
Pim van Lommel and associates in the Netherlands, in an article in the Lancet (2001), discussing
scientific findings regarding near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest, note that:
Our results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE; although all
patients had been clinically dead, most did not have NDE. Furthermore, seriousness of the crisis
was not related to occurrence or depth of the experience. If purely physiological factors resulting
from cerebral anoxia caused NDE, most of our patients should have had this experience. Patients’
medication was also unrelated to frequency of NDE. Psychological factors are unlikely to be
important as fear was not associated with NDE.
…Sabom [1998] mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain
surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat.
After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep
NDE, including an out-of-body experience, with subsequently verified observations during the
period of the flat EEG…
…nduced experiences are not identical to NDE, and so, besides age, an unknown mechanism
causes NDE by stimulation of neurophysiological and neurohumoral processes at a subcellular
level in the brain in only a few cases during a critical situation such as clinical death. These
processes might also determine whether the experience reaches consciousness and can be recollected.
With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven,
concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How
could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no
longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?7 Also, in cardiac arrest the EEG
usually becomes flat in most cases within about 10 s from onset of syncope.8 Furthermore, blind
people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this
experience.9 NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness
and the mind-brain relation. (van Lommel et al 2001:2043 f)
Parnia and his colleagues (2001) come to this interesting conclusion in their study of near-death
experiences in cardiac arrest survivors:
The data suggests that in this cardiac arrest model, the NDE arises during unconsciousness.
This is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is
deeply comatose, the cerebral structures which underpin subjective experience and memory must
be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or
be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience (as was
the case in 88.8% of patients in this study) or at best a confusional state if some brain function is
retained. Even if the unconscious brain is flooded by neurotransmitters10 this should not produce
clear, lucid remembered experiences, as those cerebral modules which generate conscious experience
and underpin memory are impaired by cerebral anoxia. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss
of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view.
(Parnia, Waller, Yeates & Fenwick 2001:154)
Hey! I got that chain letter once! Except the boy had only a head, and they were asking for donations so they could replace his burlap sack body with a real one!
And yet the boy had virtually no brain.
Oh, wait, so he didn't have "no brain." Ok, well that was a bit misleading. :buck:
The student had an IQ of 126, had gained a first-class honours degree in mathematics, and was socially completely normal.
Even more farfetched than having a mind with no brain.
During the first world war, when there was such carnage in the trenches of Europe. Soldiers had their skulls literally blown apart by bullets and shrapnel. It is said that the doctors found that some of the shattered heads of those corpses were empty. There was no brain. The evidence of those doctors was put aside as being too difficult to understand.
The corpses of men who'd had their skull blown to bits in war lacking a brain was too difficult for the scientific community to understand...? :buck:
And yet here is evidence that shows you don't need much of a brain to have an excellent mind.
Point?
If you volunteer to have a brain transplant with me you take my brain and I take your brain I will still be Ajahn Brahm and you will still be you. Want to try it? If it was possible and it happened, you would still be yourself.
Well as soon as xabir and Ajahn Brahm give this a go and report back to us to confirm these baseless statements, I'll be happy to hear the results. Have fun with this one, guys.
Recently I saw that Dr. Sam Parnia, a researcher from the University of Southampton Medical School, has given a paper, stating that consciousness survives death.[2]
WELL then! That settles it! Why on earth is there so much disagreement still when Dr. Sam Parnia has set the record irrefutably straight?!
He said that he did not know how it happens, or why it happens, but, he says, it does happen.
:dunce::uphand:
His evidence was gathered from people who have had out of the body experiences in his hospital. Dr Parnia, investigated and interviewed many, many patients. The information which they gave him, as a cool headed scientist, said yes, those people were conscious during the time they were dead.
Entertaining this, perhaps part of the problem is that we don't understand precisely what death is, rather than jumping to the conclusion that the mind is independent of the physical body.
They could describe it as if they were looking at their body from a position above the table.
So? I could do the same retelling any of my memories.
The evidence proved to those hard nosed doctors that out of body experiences do happen. But how could they happen? If we agree that the mind can be independent of the body
How do we jump from mind being independent of the brain to being independent of the entire body? From the same article in the Guardian which the "boy with VIRTUALLY no brain" was published:
Similar questions are raised by cases of "transplant memories". In 1988, Claire Sylvia received a heart and double-lung transplant. After the operation, she underwent some apparent personality changes: she began to have unusual (for her) cravings for beer, green peppers and chicken nuggets; she dreamed about beautiful women and experienced homosexual urges. She also dreamed of meetings with a young man called Tim.
Alarmed, Sylvia sought out her donor's family and discovered that her new organs had belonged to an 18-year-old boy, called Tim. Tim had a penchant for the same foods she was craving - he was eating chicken nuggets when he died - and Sylvia felt he was the boy in her dreams.
In the 19th century, German anatomist Leopold Auerbach observed a complex network of nerve cells in the human digestive tract. This nerve bundle, a "second brain" containing more nerve cells than the spinal cord, was recently rediscovered by Michael Gershon at Columbia University. Professor Wolfgang Prinz in Munich has also studied this, and thinks it could govern some of our emotional and physical responses to thoughts and events - hence, perhaps, "gut feelings".
Georgetown University's Dr Candace Pert has suggested that neuropeptides are linked to our sense of self. These chemicals, found in all our major organs and muscles, enable communication between the mind and body. Pert's theory is that they also carry our emotions and our memories. Is consciousness diffused throughout the body with them?
A little bit of brain will do in a pinch. But if there aint none, there aint no thinking going on.
IMO
It looks like mind, (ie thinking) is not other than brain activity, and brain activity is not other than thinking. They are the "inner" dimension and "outer" dimension of one occasion. This occasion is not reducible to either inside or outside, in other words thinking isnt "just" brain, and brain isnt "just" mind. They are two sides of one coin. I think we get skittish around this because we are surrounded by a prevailing materialism that makes this reduction.
One side says I see, hear, and know these things and they exist.
The other say I don't see, hear, and know of these things and they don't exist.
I wonder what the Buddha would say?
"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.
many people are smart but they are not buddhas and awakened ones
buddhas are super-humans, and maybe... super-humans can not tell their whole super-human tales??? but only expound it in slices? or the truth is so simple that it might as well be a pimple........
cool thank you
though i think you are still not perhaps answering the question in the soto zen frame of mind
what they believe is that everyone is already buddha. what meditation does is awaken us to this fact. thus, even if you never meditate, you are already buddha. you just dont realise it
With metta,
In fact, it is a great awakening for you as Soto zen frame of mind is showing you the manner of resting yr practicing intent and be in yr Zen. Soto zen may have been practicing on examining the white lotus sutra before enlightened that everyone is Buddha.
In Zen, many masters hold, that we are all Buddhas, perfect as we are, even if we don't practice.
Its tricky. This has caused all kinds of "nothing to do" problems. Sure we are perfect as we are, no matter how miserable, but so what.
The reality of that misery trumps the ideology of innate perfection doesnt it? We practice and do retreats, we practice like our "hair is on fire" in Zen.
A: In Zen, many masters hold, that we are all Buddhas, perfect as we are, even if we don't practice.
S9: Although I quite agree with these Zen Masters that we are ALL Buddhas, right Here and right Now, it is actually our human (monkey) minds that do not Realize this. Consequently, it is the mind (and not our Buddha Nature) that is suffering.
So as some great masters have also said, “Practice is the imaginary pill to cure the imaginary illness.”
What is this imaginary illness you might well ask, next?
We imagine that we are NOT our Buddha Nature, and that we are in fact this more painful and confused little ego self, or somehow separated from our Original Buddha Nature. The ego self instinctively feels extremely vulnerable and open to drastic changes like sickness, old age, and death…not to mention very isolated and alone.
Q: “A stranger in a strange land.”
This is a form of habitual hypnosis that is also systematically taught to us by everyone from the very first breath, and systematically backed up by the way we live our lives, and so the instrument we merely ride in, and Wrongfully Identify with, (the mind), has come to believe that he is King, albeit of a rapidly crumbling mountain.
Practice is one way to dethrone this pretender and be free.
R: Its tricky. This has caused all kinds of "nothing to do" problems.
S9: There is “nothing to do” in order to be our Original Buddha Nature, granted. But obviously the mind lives only by change and action. albeit dream actions. If there is no change or action (which includes constantly changing thoughts) than for all due purposes our mind is dead…mind is an ongoing process.
Buddha Nature, on the other hand, is not a process at/all, and simply “IS.”
The confusion often comes into play, when we try to homogenize these totally different dimensions into One Big Unity. It can’t be done. They are more incompatible than oil and water. But like oil and water, they can go on separately quite well, (Superimposed) that is as long as we see the lay f the land.
The dream mind is allowed to float upon (do its playful dance upon) the more Essential Living Water (our Buddha Nature) with no real conflict. We come to Realize that we cannot be harmed, no matter what appears or happens.
Once you know what you are not, and that you are not actually this dream entity (although you seem to be fully Aware of it), you can simply allow it to go merrily on its way and do its thing.
It is a bit like how unafraid you are about what will happen to some guy China, who died years ago, or even an actor in an action movie. You aren’t so reactive, or so defensive, or even so afraid. You just simply take your seat, relax, and enjoy the movie. It becomes far more pleasurable, and merely a form of entertaining.
: ^ )
R: …our "hair is on fire."
S9: Gratefully at some point we come to realize that it is only imaginary hair, which is only in our imaginationary dream on fire.
At this point, we begin to reach out to those who are still crying in pain from being burned so badly. First we pass them some burn ointment, just to be kind, because that is where they are in their understanding.
But, next we certainly try to show them there is no hair, and no fire, never was, and hopefully they begin to see this clearly before the tube of ointment runs out. ; ^ )
This looks to be describing a duality of Buddha Nature and Monkey mind. Simultaneously the Monkey Mind suffers while Buddha Nature does not. The Non-suffering of the Buddha Nature is real, while the Suffering of the Monkey Mind is not real.
If this is so, then in the midst of experiencing suffering, the non-suffering of Buddha Nature would be the immediate presence of an un-experienced experience. What does an un-experienced experience look like? What does illusory suffering feel like?
The dualism of there being another hidden un-experienced experience behind our immediate experience does not meet the test of practice. This everpresent experience of non-suffering is an idea.
There is this experience. Not another. Buddha nature is present as a potentiality
[/left]
I would have phrased this differently but if i understand you correctly, I completely disagree.
This is a constant, ever present reality for me.
Anyone else could add their experience??
You may have misunderstood me. There is nothing but everpresent experiencing for me, absolutely. There is not an everpresent unchanging essence within that experiencing, nor is there an unchanging ground.
When there was the process of witnessing, there was the sense of an unchanging witness. This unchanging witness was everpresent. Then the witness collapsed into witnessing. So it is possible to talk about seeing or experiencing, but even that is pushing it because the experiencing is total, so much so that experiencing is consumed in "experiencing".
The point of the post was that there is "experiencing" alone. To speak of another hidden reality is to talk about an unexperienced experience, it is a fiction.
R: This looks to be describing a duality of Buddha Nature and Monkey mind.
S9: At first such an idea of what I am saying does certainly look like dualism, so I can readily see why you might say this. But, try looking at it in this way, if you will. Are there two Richards, one that is awake during the day and one that is asleep at night, or is there actually One Richard, the guy you can both be asleep and also allow dreaming to take place?
Of course I actually see both our conventional wakeful state within the mind, and our conventional sleeping state within the mind as both dreaming, the waking dream and the sleeping dream, but maybe we will get into that later. : ^ )
Let us just say that you are the Buddha Nature that allows ALL dreaming to take place, and that this dream comes up and goes down without leaving an actual scare of any kind upon you.
R: Simultaneously the Monkey Mind suffers while Buddha Nature does not.
S9: Exactly, because our Buddha Nature is more like a canvas, unblemished, and our dreams are more like water colors splashes on top of this pure canvas.
R: The Non-suffering of the Buddha Nature is real, while the Suffering of the Monkey Mind is not real.
S9: Right again, yet at the same time, the dream self is for all due purposes suffering dream agonies. Are dream agonies real in the same way when we wake up and look at them from outside of the dream?
Well not exactly…but at the same time, they certainly SEEMED very real during the dream, and we are not likely to fall back to sleep on purpose in order to continue them, or hope for a reoccurrence of the same dream tomorrow night.
R: If this is so, then in the midst of experiencing suffering, the non-suffering of Buddha Nature would be the immediate presence of an un-experienced experience.
S9: This is certainly not an un-experienced experience or dream…that would be more like deep sleep if it were even possible, and it is not. Dreams are rather like perspective, and can change, perhaps by not eating a whole jar of dill pickles just before laying down. That is why Buddha told us of “Skillful Means.”
But please remember too, Buddha did not say I got really, really skillful…Buddha said “I Woke Up.” This wasn’t because he was not capable of explaining himself perfectly well. He was esteemed for his keen intellect. ; ^ )
R: What does an un-experienced experience look like?
S9: Answered above.
R: What does illusory suffering feel like?
S9: It feels like it is very real, and we SHOULD take it very seriously. After Buddha, suffering is IMO one of our greatest teachers, because it keeps us from becoming complacent and wasting this opportunity to Wake Up. : ^ )
R: Immediate experience.
S9: Our Buddha Nature is the only thing that is actually Constantly Immediate or the Immediate Moment, which is outside of time and space. Great masters have said that all thoughts are actually in the past, because they only slowly develop in the mind. Our mind cannot easily see this directly, but comes to understand this when looking directly at what is not thought, because the mind is a process.
R: This ever-present experience of non-suffering is an idea.
S9: Everything is an idea when looked at by the mind. If it has been converted into words in order to communicate it, unfortunately it has already become a mind object. : ^ (
But this does not prove that we cannot experience something more fundamental or immediate and at the same time have trouble communicating this in words. As in: "Don't look at my finger, but where it is pointing."
Did you think your practice isn’t a thought, or what you reason out from your practice isn’t equally a thought? Direct Experience cannot be said; it can only be experienced directly.
R: There is this experience. Not another. Buddha nature is present as a potentiality.
S9: Potentials only happen within time, and are a process.
Q: "Anything you get, can of necessity be also lost."
It seems to me that if you are not in a position to declare, “what is,” then you certainly cannot with any integrity declare, out of hand, “what isn’t.” You can only say that this is how it seems to me, “so far,” otherwise you are simply borrowing someone else’s wisdom.
Warm Regards,
S9
We are all posting on borrowed wisdom.
The problem is that we pretend to have conclusive answers.
S9 Lets just cut to the root instead of going at all these branches.
This is my practice and not the gospel. I cannot claim to speak for you and respect where you are coming from. But I can speak with absolute clarity from these typing fingers, and this bum in this chair, and it is like this.
The simultaneous experience of a pure unconditioned background experiencer (“I”), and an ever-changing foreground phenomena (bodymind (i) and world), is real and I know it, have dwelled in it. However it has been superseded with further practice.
Further practice revealed these as two poles of one occasion. One pole does not exist without the other. The perception of an unconditioned background that is primary to the conditioned foreground, that is the parent of the conditioned foreground, that is the author of the conditioned foreground....is an error. When this is thoroughly seen, The perception of an unchanging experiencer (subject) experiencing a changing reality(object) resolves intogroundless experiencing. The ends fold into the groundless middle, and then the groundless middle folds into traceless non-dwelling. This is beyond stillness-movement, conditioned-unconditioned, changing-unchanging, real-unreal, dreamer-dream.
This is the Zen I am taught and practice, and that is shared with Sangha.
It is about this tracelessness.
Now you have a different take on things and thats great, but we can agree I'm sure that no matter how we practice, if the virtues grow, we are doing something right.
S9: Perhaps, but not completely. Some of what we say is certainly borrowed because it is said so well by others, yet I do believe that this most often corresponds with what we know at this time. Some of what we say is certainly coming directly from our own personal experience in our own words. I like to look directly at what I am experiencing and describe it to the very best of my ability.
S: The problem is that we pretend to have conclusive answers.
S9: I don’t claim to be above saying things poorly, and of course I am still learning to see what I see more deeply, as are we all. But, I would guess that this is true for you as well.
S9: I believe what we know is in good part only “so/far,” and what we know changes sometimes drastically over time, I have certainly seem this in myself.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that what we knew yesterday was incorrect, so much as I feel that it was simply incomplete. I believe we grow deeper and deeper and deeper still.
R: Further practice revealed these as two poles of one occasion. One pole does not exist without the other. The perception of an unconditioned background that is primary to the conditioned foreground, that is the parent of the conditioned foreground, that is the author of the conditioned foreground...is an error.
S9: I know that you believe this with all of your heart. But please remember that with “further practice,” this too may change. It is my understanding that this is what you would see quite correctly if you were still looking at it with your mind.
I am only cautioning you to stay receptive, as I too of course must do, ALWAYS, in order to open our hearts more completely in order to receive, and receive, and receive, and never to obstruct this receptivity by thinking we already know what needs to be known completely, even if we have heard this from a great teachers lips, or everyone in our sangha agrees with us. We listen and hear only what we are ready to hear.
R: When this is thoroughly seen, The perception of an unchanging experiencer (subject) experiencing a changing reality(object) resolves into groundless experiencing. The ends fold into the groundless middle, and then the groundless middle folds into traceless non-dwelling. This is beyond stillness-movement, conditioned-unconditioned, changing-unchanging, real-unreal, dreamer-dream.
S9: Yes, you have said this very well. Perhaps my metaphor was somewhat lacking. I was only trying to indicate that this “groundless middle” was not a dead thing, a nothing, but quite Aware.
I always liked the Quote: “Samsara rightly seen IS Nirvana.”
This of course doesn’t mean that there are all kinds of dreams dancing around in Nirvana, but rather that basically samsara is quite empty, and nothing like what our mind thinks it is.
R: This is the Zen I am taught and practice, and that is shared with Sangha.
It is about this tracelessness.
S9: Would you speak a little about how you see "tracelessness?"
Is it anything like the quote: “We, our ego self, comes and goes without leaving behind even an echo?”
R: Now you have a different take on things and that’s great, but we can agree I'm sure that no matter how we practice, if the virtues grow, we are doing something right.
S9: I certainly believe that virtue is a by-product of Clarity.
S9: I believe what we know is in good part only “so/far,” and what we know changes sometimes drastically over time, I have certainly seem this in myself.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that what we knew yesterday was incorrect, so much as I feel that it was simply incomplete. I believe we grow deeper and deeper and deeper still.
I am not near as deep as I used to be. and far less spiritual. My favourite story from the Buddha's Enlightenment is when he touched the Earth. The Earth touching Mudra is, for me, the sign of his authenticity like no other.
You and I took different roads. I am not deeper than you and dont see you as deeper than me. We have different ways of doing things
R: Further practice revealed these as two poles of one occasion. One pole does not exist without the other. The perception of an unconditioned background that is primary to the conditioned foreground, that is the parent of the conditioned foreground, that is the author of the conditioned foreground...is an error.
S9: I know that you believe this with all of your heart. But please remember that with “further practice,” this too may change. It is my understanding that this is what you would see quite correctly if you were still looking at it with your mind.
This.... “ I know that you believe this with all of your heart” undermines the conversation. We are discussing our practice, and I assume you are describing your experience, and not your heartfelt beliefs.
I am only cautioning you to stay receptive, as I too of course must do, ALWAYS, in order to open our hearts more completely in order to receive, and receive, and receive, and never to obstruct this receptivity by thinking we already know what needs to be known completely, even if we have heard this from a great teachers lips, or everyone in our sangha agrees with us. We listen and hear only what we are ready to hear.
This also undermines the conversation. It is an aside were you play the wise adviser. The inclusion of yourself in this advise is just a token. I will not bother to have a discussion with you if you believe yourself to be the bearer of Truth. There is no point, really.
Lets talk about tracelessness. but without this other stuff.
I think you may be quite right in this. Certain persons are too diverse in there approach to what they consider practice, or at least how they define it, to actually gain from long conversations in this area.
So I will leave this particular conversation where it is, and go merrily on my way, with absolutely no hard feelings on my part. I have found it very interesting to see your point of view so clearly.
I will Google "tracelessness," but thank you for your generous offer to explain. : ^ )
Thank you for sharing, you are a very generous person.
S9: At first such an idea of what I am saying does certainly look like dualism, so I can readily see why you might say this. But, try looking at it in this way, if you will. Are there two Richards, one that is awake during the day and one that is asleep at night, or is there actually One Richard, the guy you can both be asleep and also allow dreaming to take place?
Of course I actually see both our conventional wakeful state within the mind, and our conventional sleeping state within the mind as both dreaming, the waking dream and the sleeping dream, but maybe we will get into that later. : ^ )
Let us just say that you are the Buddha Nature that allows ALL dreaming to take place, and that this dream comes up and goes down without leaving an actual scare of any kind upon you.
May I ask if this awareness is aware that "it" is dreaming during dream sleep and does it ever sleep/become unconscious in a deep dreamless sleep?
P: May I ask if this awareness is aware that "it" is dreaming during dream sleep and does it ever sleep/become unconscious in a deep dreamless sleep?
S9: This is how I have come to view this through my personal practice of mindfulness.
All three stages of mind: daily waking mind, nightly dreaming mind, and deep sleeping mind, are all within the (small m) mind. When we are awake during the day we rely upon memory to know of our dreaming mind. I have not notice this working in the other way around, in other words, my remembering waking life during dreaming.
It seems more that dreaming mind is simply just affected by what happened during the day, often more emotionally. Like if I had a fight with my boss, it might very well reenact this event, although this time to have altered it in some small way. This time I may know some brilliant thing to say in my defence, instead of just standing there and taking it on the chin. Maybe this creates a balance of some kind emotionally.
When we are in deep sleeping mind, however, it appears like absolutely nothing is happening. But I am thinking that this is because there is no action taking place, and the mind is a little bit like a cat that doesn’t hardly notice a mouse that won't move…the mind (like a cat) is geared towards action, or sees STILLNESS as nothing. (When it is only actually VOID of action, and quite FULL of stillness.)
However, if we were actually totally not aware of deep sleep, when it was taking place, we wouldn’t be conscious that time had passed at/all; in fact we wouldn’t know anything happened except the 2 action states of mind. The two portions of action mind would seamlessly fit together with no noticeable gap at/all, and this isn’t the case. We do notice that we have been gone somewhere without either being told by another, or checking a clock.
Awareness from what I have witnessed is not really indulgent in the mind’s stages, or as the Christian’s so aptly put it, “In the world, but not of the world,” (AKA both immanent and transcendent).
In other words, Awareness is the Living Waters; all the others (thoughts and states of mind) are more like the waves, energy moving in the water.
They do say the deep sleep comes closer to what they call Awareness without an object. But, I am not sure of this personally.
The way that I witness Awareness is that I come from Awareness, (or "I am looking out of Awareness." Lin Chi) and all thoughts are simply allowed. Some say this a little differently. Awareness (Our Original Buddha Nature) is the KING, and all thoughts and/or states of mind are merely the guests.
Awareness is Constantly Present, or never changes in any way, and everything else, (EVERYTHING), comes and goes, or is only temporary (impermanent).
So, we must look for this Constant, this EVER-Present, as it is the only thing that is wholly satisfying. Everything else holds some form of incompleteness, and therefore suffering, and is in need of healing.
I hope that I have answered your question. But if not, please feel free to question me further, or narrow me down to what you really want to know. I will do my very best to understand and answer further. : ^ )
R: S9, we may not agree on the content, but I very much appreciate how you have spoken this last post, and I respect your integrity.
S9: Yes, and I very much enjoy what you say quite often, too, and I also find your integrity very refreshing.
: ^ )
All friends have some HOT buttons that it is best not to talk about. Eternity seems to be one of ours.
: ^ (
But, at the same time, I am certain we will find things we can investigate together, and have plenty of good and nourishing conversations in the future. : ^ )
When I am awake I can choose to be drawn in by my thoughts or remain in the witness mode. During dreams my awareness is not strong enough to know it is only a dream and in deep sleep, no awareness at all.
I know someone close who is "psychic". This person has had dreams that have fairly consistent turned out to be true and also is aware that she is dreaming in her dreams. She also has dreams of people she has never met as well as deceased relatives.
In one of her dreams she spoke to my late father who died many years ago. She then asked me a curious question "What's wrong his eyes?".
I was wondering what she meant until I remembered my mother telling me he had broken glasses in his eyes when he died (I was not there when it happened and had forgotten all about it).
In my view as long as one is not able to break free from this so called dream(s) one cannot escape rebirth literally and metaphorically. They are one and the same. Through our minds we create our world.
The world is mostly empty space and yet we feel a solidity through our senses ie. our senses deceive us and are not the ultimate truth. When we look at the animals eye to eye we feel some connection there, no words are necessary. I am referring to the "primordial" connection and not our thoughts and beliefs which separate us from other beings. After all we share the same DNA structure and are derived from the same building blocks.
P: When I am awake I can choose to be drawn in by my thoughts or remain in the witness mode.
S9: I fully agree with this as far as you have gone. I also seem to be Aware of Pure Awareness, which is more of an intrinsic experience untouched by the senses and her experiences, and previous to thought.
P: During dreams my awareness is not strong enough to know it is only a dream.
S9: Many people do not realize how similar to their waking state that dreams actually are. They say things like, “Pinch yourself, and if it hurts you are not dreaming.” That is of course an error. If you dream that you pinch yourself, you will also dream that it hurts. : ^ )
In fact, I have often remembered doing something and only on reflection realized that I dreamed it. These two states are so very similar in many respects.
I believe people think that dreams are totally different than the waking state because for some reason the dreams fade often very quickly and also only become partial memories. So it easy for them to think that somehow our waking state is superior and more concrete than a mere dream.
P: I know someone close who is "psychic". This person has had dreams that have fairly consistent turned out to be true and also is aware that she is dreaming in her dreams. She also has dreams of people she has never met as well as deceased relatives.
S9: Yes, I have had deja vu experiences, and after some small investigation, into my thinking, come to realize that I had dreamed this exact thing maybe 2 months previously.
I have some small psychic abilities of my own. Precognition has saved my bacon more than once.
I also have seen persons already dead for some time. For instance, my father came to visit me one night (I wasn’t dreaming) after he had been dead for about 15 years. He looked in on me than walked down the hall and looked in on my daughter. The next morning before I said a word, my daughter said, “Your father came to visit me last night.” My daughter was also a sensitive. Gifts such as these often runs in families, like having blue eyes, or being good at math.
I too have seen persons I never knew and had people confirm traits I couldn’t possibly have known. Many unexplained and little understood phenomena happen more frequently than people dare to admit, out of fear of being labeled a “nut case.”
I saw an old, Italian guy lying on top of bed spread, and waiting, just before his son died. He had his shoes on, and his feet crossed at the ankles. Later when the dead man’s (Tony's) sister was crying uncontrollably, I just knew that I had to admit seeing this in order to comfort her. So I told her what I had seen and that someone had come to aid Tony’s passing. She said, “Oh my God, that was my dad. My mother was always mad at him for laying on top of the bed spread with his shoes on, and he always crossed his ankles like that.”
P: In my view as long as one is not able to break free from this so called dream(s) one cannot escape rebirth literally and metaphorically. They are one and the same. Through our minds we create our world.
S9: Can we be sure of anything? (As in the “don’t know mind.”) Does the breaking down of the body represent anything outside of change? Like you say maybe one dream simply melts into another dream.
I do however think that the idea of escape should consider that the dream self (as we know it) is a part of the dream, and if we do Realize at some point that we are not this dream(s), who or what we actually are, may not resemble the dream self at all. Also it may simply be more of a change in perspective, and not really an actually change, so much as a NOTICING what was the case (REALITY) all along.
P: The world is mostly empty space and yet we feel a solidity through our senses ie. our senses deceive us and are not the ultimate truth.
S9: Or maybe it is just a mental world. Material and space could simply be a mental projection.
P: When we look at the animals eye to eye we feel some connection there, no words are necessary. I am referring to the "primordial" connection and not our thoughts and beliefs which separate us from other beings. After all we share the same DNA structure and are derived from the same building blocks.
S9: Yes, of course that. But also I have witnessed my own self, what I call the “I Am,” look right back at me, out of the eyes of a tiny grasshopper. That little grasshopper may not know higher math, but there was a 'Certainly' that screamed as loud as my 'Certainty', “I Am.”
I well be very interested to see your slant on this post. : ^ ) That is if you have the time and the inclination.
S9: Yes, of course that. But also I have witnessed my own self, what I call the “I Am,” look right back at me, out of the eyes of a tiny grasshopper. That little grasshopper may not know higher math, but there was a 'Certainly' that screamed as loud as my 'Certainty', “I Am.”
But the Buddha would say that is not self. One has no control over this "self" eg. "Let the grasshopper not die". It is not fit to be considered me, mine or I am.
"Form, monks, is not self. If form were the self, this form would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible [to say] with regard to form, 'Let this form be thus. Let this form not be thus.' But precisely because form is not self, form lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible [to say] with regard to form, 'Let this form be thus. Let this form not be thus.'
RE: S9: Yes, of course that. But also I have witnessed my own self, what I call the “I Am,” look right back at me, out of the eyes of a tiny grasshopper. That little grasshopper may not know higher math, but there was a 'Certainly' that screamed as loud as my 'Certainty', “I Am.”
P: But the Buddha would say that is not self. One has no control over this "self" eg. "Let the grasshopper not die". It is not fit to be considered me, mine or I am.
S9: I am sorry that, I didn’t make myself understood. Please let me try again.
I do not see the little grasshopper nor is S9, the personality ort he form, as the Essential Self. I see both of these body/minds only as a costume put on at the beginning of life (this dream), and taken off at death of the body. The Essential Self is neither in forms nor concepts. In fact, this is why they call it the Ineffable, because you cannot objectify it in any way.
But you Certainly can experience its Presence. Once you know Self it comes with a Certainty obvious to the mind, and this Certainty never leaves you, or cannot be lost.
The little grasshopper was Aware of it, although not in a self-reflective way I am pretty sure…but who actually knows what a grasshopper is thinking, or intuiting? ; ^ )
Self shines through even those who have no idea of its Presence mentally. You can see it in the eyes of a very young child. It is a part of what we often call the innocence.
My picking up on the little grasshopper’s Certainty was more intuitional than reasoned out.
Quote: "Form, monks, is not self. If form were the self, this form would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible [to say] with regard to form, 'Let this form be thus. Let this form not be thus.' But precisely because form is not self, form lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible [to say] with regard to form, 'Let this form be thus. Let this form not be thus.'
S9: Obviously we are not completely in control of the body. The body is such a complex instrument that the human race hasn’t even completely solved the mystery of how it even works yet. New things are being discovered about it daily. When we think of it as a process, and not just a thing, the complexity becomes enormous. Trying to understand it is like a turtle chasing a rabbit. It doesn’t seem that we will ever catch up with what needs to be known to get a real handle upon it.
This only points out to me, that the mind, although a wonderful instrument, can certainly get over its head when trying to understand some things fully. Yet at the same time, we can experience them to there fullest.
Take LOVE for instance. I have been trying to understand this all of my life, and have been blessed to experience it in great quantities…and yet I must admit that it remains in good part a mystery to me.
So it is with the ineffable Self.
When Bodhidharma became completely 100% Enlightened, someone asked him who he was. His answer was, “ I have no idea.”
Notice, he didn’t say there is NO Self. He simply said that he couldn’t capture it as an idea.
When Bodhidharma became completely 100% Enlightened, someone asked him who he was. His answer was, “ I have no idea.”
Notice, he didn’t say there is NO Self. He simply said that he couldn’t capture it as an idea.
How true. When the question "Who am I?" is asked there is only silence before the mind takes over trying to define in terms of past, present and the future. At any one moment self cannot be described.
Self shines through even those who have no idea of its Presence mentally. You can see it in the eyes of a very young child. It is a part of what we often call the innocence.
It also shines through in those who are at peace with their impending deaths. I am reminded of a beautiful story of a girl who was due to be executed in a Nazi concentration camp and how she was so peaceful despite all the horrors surrounding her . [Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl]
P: How true. When the question "Who am I?" is asked there is only silence before the mind takes over trying to define in terms of past, present and the future.
Q: Quite so, mind tries to objectify the Self, and fit it into a mental paradigm of time and space. Yet, I have heard Self described as ”Everywhere center and no where periphery," (without circumference), AKA Omnipresent. When speaking about the Self, (our Original Buddha Nature), it gets very odd, goes right off the rector.
“We are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.” ; ^ )
Self (or our Original Buddha Nature) will not lend itself to lineal thinking. We try words like “silent” and “empty”, and although they are pretty darn good choices for pointing at where one must look, they cannot totally capture the whole of Self in one sound bite.
Is Presence actually empty? Or is Self full to the bursting with It’s very own Presence, or what some have called “Aware of Awareness?”
Is Silent actually the same silence, which is the opposite of noise? Or is this Silence rich and full beyond mental understanding, as in the “Peace beyond understanding?” The Self whispers to us constantly in a subtle manner that mind can easily block, or understand, yet not in words. This Oneness is full of Satisfaction.
We are speaking here of something, which a Zen Master directs us towards by saying, “Who were you before you were born?”
If “no self” was actually synonymous with no Essence,Transcendent Self, or Buddha Nature, than a master could easily say, “You weren’t” then (before birth) and be done with it, saving a good deal of confusion. : ^ )
I prefer to think that the Zen masters aren’t just stringing us along. : ^ (
P: At any one moment self cannot be described.
S9: Yet at the same time, until Essence is (re) discovered, you will never be totally happy. There is a yearning within us, a hunger to heal and be made whole, that requires certain discoveries. This can never happen without finding completion in full knowledge of this very Self. Right now within our ignorance of this, and imprisoned in what seems like separation, we have a “monkey on our back,” and it manifests as suffering.
P: It also shines through in those who are at peace with their impending deaths.
S9: Indeed it does. Death is when we MUST give back everything that was ever given, at some point this process also throws off the veils that prevent us from seeing our very own Essence. Very often, in just being present to another’s death, you too can taste the peace.
P: I am reminded of a beautiful story of a girl who was due to be executed in a Nazi concentration camp and how she was so peaceful despite all the horrors surrounding her. [Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl]
S9: (An Aside) That is a great book, one of the best I ever read. I would suggest to anyone who hasn’t yet read it, it is a MUST read.
In such circumstance, when the masks are peeled away, we can see human nature in the raw…all of human greatness and its more monster side. This is a book that will stay with you for your whole life…rich in wisdom. : ^ ) It’s a classic.
Oh ya, what were we talking about? ; ^ )
Very often when we are pushed beyond what we thought we could not stand, or endure, all of the obstructions simply fall away, and what is really important becomes obvious. In those hard times, these great teaching moments, we actually become very receptive, and able to grow in unimaginable ways.
I suspect in some ways the discussion here is asking the wrong question. The question should possibly be rephrased as "Why is the concept of Buddha Nature, or primordial purity, beneficial to Buddhists on the path?" not “Is Buddha Nature correct?”
The answer to this lies in the description of defilements as transient, stains, clouds blocking the sun, filth covering a treasure trove. The answer lies in self forgiveness. Dukkha exerts its influence by exhibiting self-hatred and uncompromising cynicism. This "disquiet", (as it is described by Lobsang Lhalungpa in the introduction to Mahamuda-the moonlight) is what prevents meditative progress. We involuntarily cling to our corruption, our lack of purity, hence cannot accept our true nature.
For many people the concept of Buddha Nature and primordial purity enables them to start overcoming their inbuilt self hatred (anxiety, fear, guilt, shame) that limits progress. This belief also helps those advanced on the path experience the spaciousness of the mind leading to understanding of emptiness which is one aspect of Buddha Nature. The other being luminosity. Luminosity is basically just saying that mind’s emptiness is not nothing- all that is experienced is subjective with no exceptions.
It is the self forgiveness that helps the thought/emotion/action/volition chasing game to lose momentum through natural resting and insight. The thoughts will dissipate in their own time. In fact natural resting is the one of the main authentic ways to experience Buddha Nature, as any fabrication involved causes a distortion that creates further doubt and assumptions (eg if you forced your mind quiet how could you claim that that is a natural outcome?).
Addressing doubts and assumptions about our thoughts and their nature are at the heart of all Buddhist schools, as there is no enlightenment until thoughts have found their natural place.
But what is the “real answer” you may ask. The answer to that is there is no real answer only skilful means and unskilful means and the difference lies not in the means themselves but in the eye of the beholder. That is another huge delusion, people want to know what’s the “right” answer, there is only a “right” answer for them.
Buddha Nature works for you, fantastic- work with it, Buddha Nature doesn’t work for you, great- chose a different path.
Sorry about the briefness of the reply, meditation time calls, and although it is fun to share these things, meditation must have priority.
Cheers,
WK
==========================================
May this age be the age of meditation,
May meditation be beneficial in this age like no other time,
May all sentient beings realise Buddhahood.
And may any merit accumulated be dedicated to this fruition.
Comments
Interesting. But, what are the scientific facts? :scratch:
Also, has the Buddha referred to the mind as something independent of the body anywhere? If so I would like to see a reference please
scientific findings regarding near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest, note that:
Our results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE; although all
patients had been clinically dead, most did not have NDE. Furthermore, seriousness of the crisis
was not related to occurrence or depth of the experience. If purely physiological factors resulting
from cerebral anoxia caused NDE, most of our patients should have had this experience. Patients’
medication was also unrelated to frequency of NDE. Psychological factors are unlikely to be
important as fear was not associated with NDE.
…Sabom [1998] mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain
surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat.
After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep
NDE, including an out-of-body experience, with subsequently verified observations during the
period of the flat EEG…
…nduced experiences are not identical to NDE, and so, besides age, an unknown mechanism
causes NDE by stimulation of neurophysiological and neurohumoral processes at a subcellular
level in the brain in only a few cases during a critical situation such as clinical death. These
processes might also determine whether the experience reaches consciousness and can be recollected.
With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven,
concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How
could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no
longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?7 Also, in cardiac arrest the EEG
usually becomes flat in most cases within about 10 s from onset of syncope.8 Furthermore, blind
people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this
experience.9 NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness
and the mind-brain relation. (van Lommel et al 2001:2043 f)
Parnia and his colleagues (2001) come to this interesting conclusion in their study of near-death
experiences in cardiac arrest survivors:
The data suggests that in this cardiac arrest model, the NDE arises during unconsciousness.
This is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is
deeply comatose, the cerebral structures which underpin subjective experience and memory must
be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or
be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience (as was
the case in 88.8% of patients in this study) or at best a confusional state if some brain function is
retained. Even if the unconscious brain is flooded by neurotransmitters10 this should not produce
clear, lucid remembered experiences, as those cerebral modules which generate conscious experience
and underpin memory are impaired by cerebral anoxia. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss
of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view.
(Parnia, Waller, Yeates & Fenwick 2001:154)
Thank you for this indepth accounting of the NDE.
I'm off to read what you suggested as further readings. : ^ )
Friendly Regards,
S9
Hey! I got that chain letter once! Except the boy had only a head, and they were asking for donations so they could replace his burlap sack body with a real one!
Oh, wait, so he didn't have "no brain." Ok, well that was a bit misleading. :buck:
Even more farfetched than having a mind with no brain.
The corpses of men who'd had their skull blown to bits in war lacking a brain was too difficult for the scientific community to understand...? :buck:
Point?
Well as soon as xabir and Ajahn Brahm give this a go and report back to us to confirm these baseless statements, I'll be happy to hear the results. Have fun with this one, guys.
WELL then! That settles it! Why on earth is there so much disagreement still when Dr. Sam Parnia has set the record irrefutably straight?!
:dunce::uphand:
Entertaining this, perhaps part of the problem is that we don't understand precisely what death is, rather than jumping to the conclusion that the mind is independent of the physical body.
So? I could do the same retelling any of my memories.
How do we jump from mind being independent of the brain to being independent of the entire body? From the same article in the Guardian which the "boy with VIRTUALLY no brain" was published:
Funny, funny article.
IMO
It looks like mind, (ie thinking) is not other than brain activity, and brain activity is not other than thinking. They are the "inner" dimension and "outer" dimension of one occasion. This occasion is not reducible to either inside or outside, in other words thinking isnt "just" brain, and brain isnt "just" mind. They are two sides of one coin. I think we get skittish around this because we are surrounded by a prevailing materialism that makes this reduction.
The other say I don't see, hear, and know of these things and they don't exist.
I wonder what the Buddha would say?
"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.015.than.html
He was a man (a human being)
He become a Bodhisatva = become a good man
He become a Buddha = perfect human being
Perfect human being is not a man/god/brahma/mara
Not sure what this is even supposed to mean, but... what's your point? What of what Deshy said was your post supposed to be countering?
buddhas are super-humans, and maybe... super-humans can not tell their whole super-human tales???
?
not a man/god/brahama/mara/preta
but
BUDDHA
BUD DHA
DHA stands for Dhamma Heart Arahant
or
Dimple
Pietro?
Peter?
Pedrus?
or
PEDURU:)
So?
no worries
it is paul
In fact, it is a great awakening for you as Soto zen frame of mind is showing you the manner of resting yr practicing intent and be in yr Zen. Soto zen may have been practicing on examining the white lotus sutra before enlightened that everyone is Buddha.
Soto Zen <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.soto-zen.org/scripts/body.js"></script>
Its tricky. This has caused all kinds of "nothing to do" problems. Sure we are perfect as we are, no matter how miserable, but so what.
The reality of that misery trumps the ideology of innate perfection doesnt it? We practice and do retreats, we practice like our "hair is on fire" in Zen.
A: In Zen, many masters hold, that we are all Buddhas, perfect as we are, even if we don't practice.
S9: Although I quite agree with these Zen Masters that we are ALL Buddhas, right Here and right Now, it is actually our human (monkey) minds that do not Realize this. Consequently, it is the mind (and not our Buddha Nature) that is suffering.
So as some great masters have also said, “Practice is the imaginary pill to cure the imaginary illness.”
What is this imaginary illness you might well ask, next?
We imagine that we are NOT our Buddha Nature, and that we are in fact this more painful and confused little ego self, or somehow separated from our Original Buddha Nature. The ego self instinctively feels extremely vulnerable and open to drastic changes like sickness, old age, and death…not to mention very isolated and alone.
Q: “A stranger in a strange land.”
This is a form of habitual hypnosis that is also systematically taught to us by everyone from the very first breath, and systematically backed up by the way we live our lives, and so the instrument we merely ride in, and Wrongfully Identify with, (the mind), has come to believe that he is King, albeit of a rapidly crumbling mountain.
Practice is one way to dethrone this pretender and be free.
Friendly Regards,
S9
R: Its tricky. This has caused all kinds of "nothing to do" problems.
S9: There is “nothing to do” in order to be our Original Buddha Nature, granted. But obviously the mind lives only by change and action. albeit dream actions. If there is no change or action (which includes constantly changing thoughts) than for all due purposes our mind is dead…mind is an ongoing process.
Buddha Nature, on the other hand, is not a process at/all, and simply “IS.”
The confusion often comes into play, when we try to homogenize these totally different dimensions into One Big Unity. It can’t be done. They are more incompatible than oil and water. But like oil and water, they can go on separately quite well, (Superimposed) that is as long as we see the lay f the land.
The dream mind is allowed to float upon (do its playful dance upon) the more Essential Living Water (our Buddha Nature) with no real conflict. We come to Realize that we cannot be harmed, no matter what appears or happens.
Once you know what you are not, and that you are not actually this dream entity (although you seem to be fully Aware of it), you can simply allow it to go merrily on its way and do its thing.
It is a bit like how unafraid you are about what will happen to some guy China, who died years ago, or even an actor in an action movie. You aren’t so reactive, or so defensive, or even so afraid. You just simply take your seat, relax, and enjoy the movie. It becomes far more pleasurable, and merely a form of entertaining.
: ^ )
R: …our "hair is on fire."
S9: Gratefully at some point we come to realize that it is only imaginary hair, which is only in our imaginationary dream on fire.
At this point, we begin to reach out to those who are still crying in pain from being burned so badly. First we pass them some burn ointment, just to be kind, because that is where they are in their understanding.
But, next we certainly try to show them there is no hair, and no fire, never was, and hopefully they begin to see this clearly before the tube of ointment runs out. ; ^ )
Respectfully,
S9
I would have phrased this differently but if i understand you correctly, I completely disagree.
This is a constant, ever present reality for me.
Anyone else could add their experience??
When there was the process of witnessing, there was the sense of an unchanging witness. This unchanging witness was everpresent. Then the witness collapsed into witnessing. So it is possible to talk about seeing or experiencing, but even that is pushing it because the experiencing is total, so much so that experiencing is consumed in "experiencing".
The point of the post was that there is "experiencing" alone. To speak of another hidden reality is to talk about an unexperienced experience, it is a fiction.
R: This looks to be describing a duality of Buddha Nature and Monkey mind.
S9: At first such an idea of what I am saying does certainly look like dualism, so I can readily see why you might say this. But, try looking at it in this way, if you will. Are there two Richards, one that is awake during the day and one that is asleep at night, or is there actually One Richard, the guy you can both be asleep and also allow dreaming to take place?
Of course I actually see both our conventional wakeful state within the mind, and our conventional sleeping state within the mind as both dreaming, the waking dream and the sleeping dream, but maybe we will get into that later. : ^ )
Let us just say that you are the Buddha Nature that allows ALL dreaming to take place, and that this dream comes up and goes down without leaving an actual scare of any kind upon you.
R: Simultaneously the Monkey Mind suffers while Buddha Nature does not.
S9: Exactly, because our Buddha Nature is more like a canvas, unblemished, and our dreams are more like water colors splashes on top of this pure canvas.
R: The Non-suffering of the Buddha Nature is real, while the Suffering of the Monkey Mind is not real.
S9: Right again, yet at the same time, the dream self is for all due purposes suffering dream agonies. Are dream agonies real in the same way when we wake up and look at them from outside of the dream?
Well not exactly…but at the same time, they certainly SEEMED very real during the dream, and we are not likely to fall back to sleep on purpose in order to continue them, or hope for a reoccurrence of the same dream tomorrow night.
R: If this is so, then in the midst of experiencing suffering, the non-suffering of Buddha Nature would be the immediate presence of an un-experienced experience.
S9: This is certainly not an un-experienced experience or dream…that would be more like deep sleep if it were even possible, and it is not. Dreams are rather like perspective, and can change, perhaps by not eating a whole jar of dill pickles just before laying down. That is why Buddha told us of “Skillful Means.”
But please remember too, Buddha did not say I got really, really skillful…Buddha said “I Woke Up.” This wasn’t because he was not capable of explaining himself perfectly well. He was esteemed for his keen intellect. ; ^ )
R: What does an un-experienced experience look like?
S9: Answered above.
R: What does illusory suffering feel like?
S9: It feels like it is very real, and we SHOULD take it very seriously. After Buddha, suffering is IMO one of our greatest teachers, because it keeps us from becoming complacent and wasting this opportunity to Wake Up. : ^ )
R: Immediate experience.
S9: Our Buddha Nature is the only thing that is actually Constantly Immediate or the Immediate Moment, which is outside of time and space. Great masters have said that all thoughts are actually in the past, because they only slowly develop in the mind. Our mind cannot easily see this directly, but comes to understand this when looking directly at what is not thought, because the mind is a process.
R: This ever-present experience of non-suffering is an idea.
S9: Everything is an idea when looked at by the mind. If it has been converted into words in order to communicate it, unfortunately it has already become a mind object. : ^ (
But this does not prove that we cannot experience something more fundamental or immediate and at the same time have trouble communicating this in words. As in: "Don't look at my finger, but where it is pointing."
Did you think your practice isn’t a thought, or what you reason out from your practice isn’t equally a thought? Direct Experience cannot be said; it can only be experienced directly.
R: There is this experience. Not another. Buddha nature is present as a potentiality.
S9: Potentials only happen within time, and are a process.
Q: "Anything you get, can of necessity be also lost."
What we are looking for is what we already ARE.
Friendly Regards,
S9
The problem is that we pretend to have conclusive answers.
This is my practice and not the gospel. I cannot claim to speak for you and respect where you are coming from. But I can speak with absolute clarity from these typing fingers, and this bum in this chair, and it is like this.
It is about this tracelessness.
S: We are all posting on borrowed wisdom.
S9: Perhaps, but not completely. Some of what we say is certainly borrowed because it is said so well by others, yet I do believe that this most often corresponds with what we know at this time. Some of what we say is certainly coming directly from our own personal experience in our own words. I like to look directly at what I am experiencing and describe it to the very best of my ability.
S: The problem is that we pretend to have conclusive answers.
S9: I don’t claim to be above saying things poorly, and of course I am still learning to see what I see more deeply, as are we all. But, I would guess that this is true for you as well.
I never doubted your integrity.
Thank you for sharing,
S9
S9: I believe what we know is in good part only “so/far,” and what we know changes sometimes drastically over time, I have certainly seem this in myself.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that what we knew yesterday was incorrect, so much as I feel that it was simply incomplete. I believe we grow deeper and deeper and deeper still.
R: Further practice revealed these as two poles of one occasion. One pole does not exist without the other. The perception of an unconditioned background that is primary to the conditioned foreground, that is the parent of the conditioned foreground, that is the author of the conditioned foreground...is an error.
S9: I know that you believe this with all of your heart. But please remember that with “further practice,” this too may change. It is my understanding that this is what you would see quite correctly if you were still looking at it with your mind.
I am only cautioning you to stay receptive, as I too of course must do, ALWAYS, in order to open our hearts more completely in order to receive, and receive, and receive, and never to obstruct this receptivity by thinking we already know what needs to be known completely, even if we have heard this from a great teachers lips, or everyone in our sangha agrees with us. We listen and hear only what we are ready to hear.
R: When this is thoroughly seen, The perception of an unchanging experiencer (subject) experiencing a changing reality(object) resolves into groundless experiencing. The ends fold into the groundless middle, and then the groundless middle folds into traceless non-dwelling. This is beyond stillness-movement, conditioned-unconditioned, changing-unchanging, real-unreal, dreamer-dream.
S9: Yes, you have said this very well. Perhaps my metaphor was somewhat lacking. I was only trying to indicate that this “groundless middle” was not a dead thing, a nothing, but quite Aware.
I always liked the Quote: “Samsara rightly seen IS Nirvana.”
This of course doesn’t mean that there are all kinds of dreams dancing around in Nirvana, but rather that basically samsara is quite empty, and nothing like what our mind thinks it is.
R: This is the Zen I am taught and practice, and that is shared with Sangha.
It is about this tracelessness.
S9: Would you speak a little about how you see "tracelessness?"
Is it anything like the quote: “We, our ego self, comes and goes without leaving behind even an echo?”
R: Now you have a different take on things and that’s great, but we can agree I'm sure that no matter how we practice, if the virtues grow, we are doing something right.
S9: I certainly believe that virtue is a by-product of Clarity.
Warm Regards,
S9
I am not near as deep as I used to be. and far less spiritual. My favourite story from the Buddha's Enlightenment is when he touched the Earth. The Earth touching Mudra is, for me, the sign of his authenticity like no other.
You and I took different roads. I am not deeper than you and dont see you as deeper than me. We have different ways of doing things
This.... “ I know that you believe this with all of your heart” undermines the conversation. We are discussing our practice, and I assume you are describing your experience, and not your heartfelt beliefs.
This also undermines the conversation. It is an aside were you play the wise adviser. The inclusion of yourself in this advise is just a token. I will not bother to have a discussion with you if you believe yourself to be the bearer of Truth. There is no point, really.
Lets talk about tracelessness. but without this other stuff.
I think you may be quite right in this. Certain persons are too diverse in there approach to what they consider practice, or at least how they define it, to actually gain from long conversations in this area.
So I will leave this particular conversation where it is, and go merrily on my way, with absolutely no hard feelings on my part. I have found it very interesting to see your point of view so clearly.
I will Google "tracelessness," but thank you for your generous offer to explain. : ^ )
Thank you for sharing, you are a very generous person.
Warm Regards,
S9
May I ask if this awareness is aware that "it" is dreaming during dream sleep and does it ever sleep/become unconscious in a deep dreamless sleep?
P: May I ask if this awareness is aware that "it" is dreaming during dream sleep and does it ever sleep/become unconscious in a deep dreamless sleep?
S9: This is how I have come to view this through my personal practice of mindfulness.
All three stages of mind: daily waking mind, nightly dreaming mind, and deep sleeping mind, are all within the (small m) mind. When we are awake during the day we rely upon memory to know of our dreaming mind. I have not notice this working in the other way around, in other words, my remembering waking life during dreaming.
It seems more that dreaming mind is simply just affected by what happened during the day, often more emotionally. Like if I had a fight with my boss, it might very well reenact this event, although this time to have altered it in some small way. This time I may know some brilliant thing to say in my defence, instead of just standing there and taking it on the chin. Maybe this creates a balance of some kind emotionally.
When we are in deep sleeping mind, however, it appears like absolutely nothing is happening. But I am thinking that this is because there is no action taking place, and the mind is a little bit like a cat that doesn’t hardly notice a mouse that won't move…the mind (like a cat) is geared towards action, or sees STILLNESS as nothing. (When it is only actually VOID of action, and quite FULL of stillness.)
However, if we were actually totally not aware of deep sleep, when it was taking place, we wouldn’t be conscious that time had passed at/all; in fact we wouldn’t know anything happened except the 2 action states of mind. The two portions of action mind would seamlessly fit together with no noticeable gap at/all, and this isn’t the case. We do notice that we have been gone somewhere without either being told by another, or checking a clock.
Awareness from what I have witnessed is not really indulgent in the mind’s stages, or as the Christian’s so aptly put it, “In the world, but not of the world,” (AKA both immanent and transcendent).
In other words, Awareness is the Living Waters; all the others (thoughts and states of mind) are more like the waves, energy moving in the water.
They do say the deep sleep comes closer to what they call Awareness without an object. But, I am not sure of this personally.
The way that I witness Awareness is that I come from Awareness, (or "I am looking out of Awareness." Lin Chi) and all thoughts are simply allowed. Some say this a little differently. Awareness (Our Original Buddha Nature) is the KING, and all thoughts and/or states of mind are merely the guests.
Awareness is Constantly Present, or never changes in any way, and everything else, (EVERYTHING), comes and goes, or is only temporary (impermanent).
So, we must look for this Constant, this EVER-Present, as it is the only thing that is wholly satisfying. Everything else holds some form of incompleteness, and therefore suffering, and is in need of healing.
I hope that I have answered your question. But if not, please feel free to question me further, or narrow me down to what you really want to know. I will do my very best to understand and answer further. : ^ )
Warm Regards,
S9
R: S9, we may not agree on the content, but I very much appreciate how you have spoken this last post, and I respect your integrity.
S9: Yes, and I very much enjoy what you say quite often, too, and I also find your integrity very refreshing.
: ^ )
All friends have some HOT buttons that it is best not to talk about. Eternity seems to be one of ours.
: ^ (
But, at the same time, I am certain we will find things we can investigate together, and have plenty of good and nourishing conversations in the future. : ^ )
Be well, my E-friend,
S9
You are quite welcome. I meant to ask your views in this area. That is if you want to speak of these. : ^ )
I got too full up with my ideas, and forgot to ask. I am interested though, honest.
But please don't feel like you are on the spot. : ^ )
Warm Regards,
S9
When I am awake I can choose to be drawn in by my thoughts or remain in the witness mode. During dreams my awareness is not strong enough to know it is only a dream and in deep sleep, no awareness at all.
I know someone close who is "psychic". This person has had dreams that have fairly consistent turned out to be true and also is aware that she is dreaming in her dreams. She also has dreams of people she has never met as well as deceased relatives.
In one of her dreams she spoke to my late father who died many years ago. She then asked me a curious question "What's wrong his eyes?".
I was wondering what she meant until I remembered my mother telling me he had broken glasses in his eyes when he died (I was not there when it happened and had forgotten all about it).
In my view as long as one is not able to break free from this so called dream(s) one cannot escape rebirth literally and metaphorically. They are one and the same. Through our minds we create our world.
The world is mostly empty space and yet we feel a solidity through our senses ie. our senses deceive us and are not the ultimate truth. When we look at the animals eye to eye we feel some connection there, no words are necessary. I am referring to the "primordial" connection and not our thoughts and beliefs which separate us from other beings. After all we share the same DNA structure and are derived from the same building blocks.
P: When I am awake I can choose to be drawn in by my thoughts or remain in the witness mode.
S9: I fully agree with this as far as you have gone. I also seem to be Aware of Pure Awareness, which is more of an intrinsic experience untouched by the senses and her experiences, and previous to thought.
P: During dreams my awareness is not strong enough to know it is only a dream.
S9: Many people do not realize how similar to their waking state that dreams actually are. They say things like, “Pinch yourself, and if it hurts you are not dreaming.” That is of course an error. If you dream that you pinch yourself, you will also dream that it hurts. : ^ )
In fact, I have often remembered doing something and only on reflection realized that I dreamed it. These two states are so very similar in many respects.
I believe people think that dreams are totally different than the waking state because for some reason the dreams fade often very quickly and also only become partial memories. So it easy for them to think that somehow our waking state is superior and more concrete than a mere dream.
P: I know someone close who is "psychic". This person has had dreams that have fairly consistent turned out to be true and also is aware that she is dreaming in her dreams. She also has dreams of people she has never met as well as deceased relatives.
S9: Yes, I have had deja vu experiences, and after some small investigation, into my thinking, come to realize that I had dreamed this exact thing maybe 2 months previously.
I have some small psychic abilities of my own. Precognition has saved my bacon more than once.
I also have seen persons already dead for some time. For instance, my father came to visit me one night (I wasn’t dreaming) after he had been dead for about 15 years. He looked in on me than walked down the hall and looked in on my daughter. The next morning before I said a word, my daughter said, “Your father came to visit me last night.” My daughter was also a sensitive. Gifts such as these often runs in families, like having blue eyes, or being good at math.
I too have seen persons I never knew and had people confirm traits I couldn’t possibly have known. Many unexplained and little understood phenomena happen more frequently than people dare to admit, out of fear of being labeled a “nut case.”
I saw an old, Italian guy lying on top of bed spread, and waiting, just before his son died. He had his shoes on, and his feet crossed at the ankles. Later when the dead man’s (Tony's) sister was crying uncontrollably, I just knew that I had to admit seeing this in order to comfort her. So I told her what I had seen and that someone had come to aid Tony’s passing. She said, “Oh my God, that was my dad. My mother was always mad at him for laying on top of the bed spread with his shoes on, and he always crossed his ankles like that.”
P: In my view as long as one is not able to break free from this so called dream(s) one cannot escape rebirth literally and metaphorically. They are one and the same. Through our minds we create our world.
S9: Can we be sure of anything? (As in the “don’t know mind.”) Does the breaking down of the body represent anything outside of change? Like you say maybe one dream simply melts into another dream.
I do however think that the idea of escape should consider that the dream self (as we know it) is a part of the dream, and if we do Realize at some point that we are not this dream(s), who or what we actually are, may not resemble the dream self at all. Also it may simply be more of a change in perspective, and not really an actually change, so much as a NOTICING what was the case (REALITY) all along.
P: The world is mostly empty space and yet we feel a solidity through our senses ie. our senses deceive us and are not the ultimate truth.
S9: Or maybe it is just a mental world. Material and space could simply be a mental projection.
P: When we look at the animals eye to eye we feel some connection there, no words are necessary. I am referring to the "primordial" connection and not our thoughts and beliefs which separate us from other beings. After all we share the same DNA structure and are derived from the same building blocks.
S9: Yes, of course that. But also I have witnessed my own self, what I call the “I Am,” look right back at me, out of the eyes of a tiny grasshopper. That little grasshopper may not know higher math, but there was a 'Certainly' that screamed as loud as my 'Certainty', “I Am.”
I well be very interested to see your slant on this post. : ^ ) That is if you have the time and the inclination.
Friendly Regards,
S9
But the Buddha would say that is not self. One has no control over this "self" eg. "Let the grasshopper not die". It is not fit to be considered me, mine or I am.
RE: S9: Yes, of course that. But also I have witnessed my own self, what I call the “I Am,” look right back at me, out of the eyes of a tiny grasshopper. That little grasshopper may not know higher math, but there was a 'Certainly' that screamed as loud as my 'Certainty', “I Am.”
P: But the Buddha would say that is not self. One has no control over this "self" eg. "Let the grasshopper not die". It is not fit to be considered me, mine or I am.
S9: I am sorry that, I didn’t make myself understood. Please let me try again.
I do not see the little grasshopper nor is S9, the personality ort he form, as the Essential Self. I see both of these body/minds only as a costume put on at the beginning of life (this dream), and taken off at death of the body. The Essential Self is neither in forms nor concepts. In fact, this is why they call it the Ineffable, because you cannot objectify it in any way.
But you Certainly can experience its Presence. Once you know Self it comes with a Certainty obvious to the mind, and this Certainty never leaves you, or cannot be lost.
The little grasshopper was Aware of it, although not in a self-reflective way I am pretty sure…but who actually knows what a grasshopper is thinking, or intuiting? ; ^ )
Self shines through even those who have no idea of its Presence mentally. You can see it in the eyes of a very young child. It is a part of what we often call the innocence.
My picking up on the little grasshopper’s Certainty was more intuitional than reasoned out.
Quote: "Form, monks, is not self. If form were the self, this form would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible [to say] with regard to form, 'Let this form be thus. Let this form not be thus.' But precisely because form is not self, form lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible [to say] with regard to form, 'Let this form be thus. Let this form not be thus.'
S9: Obviously we are not completely in control of the body. The body is such a complex instrument that the human race hasn’t even completely solved the mystery of how it even works yet. New things are being discovered about it daily. When we think of it as a process, and not just a thing, the complexity becomes enormous. Trying to understand it is like a turtle chasing a rabbit. It doesn’t seem that we will ever catch up with what needs to be known to get a real handle upon it.
This only points out to me, that the mind, although a wonderful instrument, can certainly get over its head when trying to understand some things fully. Yet at the same time, we can experience them to there fullest.
Take LOVE for instance. I have been trying to understand this all of my life, and have been blessed to experience it in great quantities…and yet I must admit that it remains in good part a mystery to me.
So it is with the ineffable Self.
When Bodhidharma became completely 100% Enlightened, someone asked him who he was. His answer was, “ I have no idea.”
Notice, he didn’t say there is NO Self. He simply said that he couldn’t capture it as an idea.
Warm Regards,
S9
How true. When the question "Who am I?" is asked there is only silence before the mind takes over trying to define in terms of past, present and the future. At any one moment self cannot be described.
It also shines through in those who are at peace with their impending deaths. I am reminded of a beautiful story of a girl who was due to be executed in a Nazi concentration camp and how she was so peaceful despite all the horrors surrounding her . [Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl]
P: How true. When the question "Who am I?" is asked there is only silence before the mind takes over trying to define in terms of past, present and the future.
Q: Quite so, mind tries to objectify the Self, and fit it into a mental paradigm of time and space. Yet, I have heard Self described as ”Everywhere center and no where periphery," (without circumference), AKA Omnipresent. When speaking about the Self, (our Original Buddha Nature), it gets very odd, goes right off the rector.
“We are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.” ; ^ )
Self (or our Original Buddha Nature) will not lend itself to lineal thinking. We try words like “silent” and “empty”, and although they are pretty darn good choices for pointing at where one must look, they cannot totally capture the whole of Self in one sound bite.
Is Presence actually empty? Or is Self full to the bursting with It’s very own Presence, or what some have called “Aware of Awareness?”
Is Silent actually the same silence, which is the opposite of noise? Or is this Silence rich and full beyond mental understanding, as in the “Peace beyond understanding?” The Self whispers to us constantly in a subtle manner that mind can easily block, or understand, yet not in words. This Oneness is full of Satisfaction.
We are speaking here of something, which a Zen Master directs us towards by saying, “Who were you before you were born?”
If “no self” was actually synonymous with no Essence,Transcendent Self, or Buddha Nature, than a master could easily say, “You weren’t” then (before birth) and be done with it, saving a good deal of confusion. : ^ )
I prefer to think that the Zen masters aren’t just stringing us along. : ^ (
P: At any one moment self cannot be described.
S9: Yet at the same time, until Essence is (re) discovered, you will never be totally happy. There is a yearning within us, a hunger to heal and be made whole, that requires certain discoveries. This can never happen without finding completion in full knowledge of this very Self. Right now within our ignorance of this, and imprisoned in what seems like separation, we have a “monkey on our back,” and it manifests as suffering.
P: It also shines through in those who are at peace with their impending deaths.
S9: Indeed it does. Death is when we MUST give back everything that was ever given, at some point this process also throws off the veils that prevent us from seeing our very own Essence. Very often, in just being present to another’s death, you too can taste the peace.
P: I am reminded of a beautiful story of a girl who was due to be executed in a Nazi concentration camp and how she was so peaceful despite all the horrors surrounding her. [Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl]
S9: (An Aside) That is a great book, one of the best I ever read. I would suggest to anyone who hasn’t yet read it, it is a MUST read.
In such circumstance, when the masks are peeled away, we can see human nature in the raw…all of human greatness and its more monster side. This is a book that will stay with you for your whole life…rich in wisdom. : ^ ) It’s a classic.
Oh ya, what were we talking about? ; ^ )
Very often when we are pushed beyond what we thought we could not stand, or endure, all of the obstructions simply fall away, and what is really important becomes obvious. In those hard times, these great teaching moments, we actually become very receptive, and able to grow in unimaginable ways.
Warm Regards,
S9
The answer to this lies in the description of defilements as transient, stains, clouds blocking the sun, filth covering a treasure trove. The answer lies in self forgiveness. Dukkha exerts its influence by exhibiting self-hatred and uncompromising cynicism. This "disquiet", (as it is described by Lobsang Lhalungpa in the introduction to Mahamuda-the moonlight) is what prevents meditative progress. We involuntarily cling to our corruption, our lack of purity, hence cannot accept our true nature.
For many people the concept of Buddha Nature and primordial purity enables them to start overcoming their inbuilt self hatred (anxiety, fear, guilt, shame) that limits progress. This belief also helps those advanced on the path experience the spaciousness of the mind leading to understanding of emptiness which is one aspect of Buddha Nature. The other being luminosity. Luminosity is basically just saying that mind’s emptiness is not nothing- all that is experienced is subjective with no exceptions.
It is the self forgiveness that helps the thought/emotion/action/volition chasing game to lose momentum through natural resting and insight. The thoughts will dissipate in their own time. In fact natural resting is the one of the main authentic ways to experience Buddha Nature, as any fabrication involved causes a distortion that creates further doubt and assumptions (eg if you forced your mind quiet how could you claim that that is a natural outcome?).
Addressing doubts and assumptions about our thoughts and their nature are at the heart of all Buddhist schools, as there is no enlightenment until thoughts have found their natural place.
But what is the “real answer” you may ask. The answer to that is there is no real answer only skilful means and unskilful means and the difference lies not in the means themselves but in the eye of the beholder. That is another huge delusion, people want to know what’s the “right” answer, there is only a “right” answer for them.
Buddha Nature works for you, fantastic- work with it, Buddha Nature doesn’t work for you, great- chose a different path.
Sorry about the briefness of the reply, meditation time calls, and although it is fun to share these things, meditation must have priority.
Cheers,
WK
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May this age be the age of meditation,
May meditation be beneficial in this age like no other time,
May all sentient beings realise Buddhahood.
And may any merit accumulated be dedicated to this fruition.