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OK, how about something like this (It needs improving) as a starting point for this thought experiment.
Lets imagine we have never heard of dharma. Imagine we have never heard of anything. We don't know about causation. Or time or anything.
Imagine we just appear from nowhere, with no preconceptions, assumptions, doctrines anything. Just a language and an intelligence that we need to define and discuss ourselves.
We dont assume Anything. We help each other be our own lights.
How does that sound?
Mat
Thanks for replying Mat.
But what are the parameters of discussion?
Is this an intellectual debate?
Is it a purely philisophical debate?
Is personal experience to be left out?
etc etc
What you've said above is still leaving the flood gates open, almost anything can and will happen.
Perhaps it might be best to leave this thread go on it's course and start another thread, tomorrow maybe, and set a clearly defined agender, discussion parameters and objectives on a new thread?? Just a thought, no bad feelings here. The flood gates were left open on this one from the start and now it seems we are pushing against the overwhelming rush of water to get them closed!
Regarding 'nothingness' I imagine it as just another imaginary appearance not to get stuck on.
When the concept of nothingness arises, which it doesn't very much anymore, I simply notice it with a kind of "That's nice" and let it go; just like all the other fantastical BS that bubbles up in mind.
In contemplating with nothingness, as the object of investigation/verification some years ago, I did come to imagine nothingness as a relatively necessary twin of the arising of the mere appearance of something in mind..ie when I imagine something arising, it must be accompanied by nothing as a referent. Of course I also imagined all this as the play of dualism in this mind. Something to move beyond with wisdom.
Now-a-days, I kinda perceive the fantastical phenomena of nothingness as a kind of open spaciousness within which the solidity and locality of fantastical somethingness arises, endures, and fades away within the context of emptiness.
Over time this has become the way I tend to directly perceive stuff happening in and around this sentient being - THROUGH TRAINING!!
I had a friend named David. We shared a 6'x9' cell for about ten years at Oregon State Penitentiary. David was serving an aggravated murder life sentence for a contract killing. Nobody in Oregon had ever been paroled from such a sentence. David and I met in a cognitive programs facilitator training program at the prison, where we trained and worked. At the time David had basically given-up on life, depressed, suicidal, etc, etc etc. He had come to the training at the urging of his friends who were trying to save his life. He was mostly disinterested and even a little hostile toward the program.
David and I were introduced and I was asked to work with David; introducing him to meditation, etc. and Tai Chi. Over time David and I became very close friends (we used to joke that we might qualify as domestic partners in a no-sexual way) we decided to live and train in the Buddhadharma and Taoist energy work together in a committed way.
Over time David came to KNOW that he was not separate from others on a very profound and pervasive level. He began to express that in the way he appeared in the world, in his words, and actions, and the very energetic Taste of his presence.
To shorten this story. David was the first person paroled from any prison in Oregon having been sentenced to life on an aggravated murder conviction. David and the Parole Board shared one key point regarding this miracle.
David KNEW that he was not separate. David KNEW emptiness. It was this point that he conveyed to the board, not in words, although he did state that he could no longer do harm to others because he KNEW he was not separate from them and that their wellbeing was his own, he expressed this on a much more basic level and this impressed the board.
David died last year having accomplished that which had never been done before. He died a free man in all the ways one could imagine. He died no longer in prison or on parole. He died embraced by those who truly loved him as part of a supportive family. He traveled, rode a motorcycle through Mexico, hung his toes in rivers, walked in the surf on the coast. He arose from the dead and died truly alive.
I loved him (had to stop writing cuz' I'm crying too hard) He was my BROTHER. When he died, others could not understand why I didn't express great sadness at the loss. I knew David, I knew his heart and his KNOWING emptiness. For me he lives and always will in the depths of this heart and spirit.
That I had a chance to share time with him outside the prison walls was a blessing and a miracle for us both. I imagine it as the result of KNOWING emptiness - that we are profoundly and pervasively connect to all things, along with how to make this KNOWING part of our very being and prove it in the fabric of our lives.
Dear Sky, Thank You For Asking.
Thank you for the story Brother Bob. It's one of the best teachings on emptiness I've ever heard.
There's a story I like to tell I think it's an emptiness story. The experience affected me profoundly.
Back in the nineties I used to work as a social worker with elderly and medically disabled adults. I was at a retreat where one of the Lamas read a story by Jarvis Masters from his book, Finding Freedom. Jarvis is on death row in San Quentin prison, and he became a devout Buddhist meditator in prison.
I was inspired to write to Jarvis and we engaged numerous letters. It was a close connection I had with him. I was so impressed by his ability to live in apparent limitations yet be free on the inside. At the same time, at work, I met a woman my age who was profoundly disabled from late stage MS. She was completely bedbound, couldn't see very well, was incontinent, and only able to move one of her hands slightly. In short, she had every condition I was afraid to look at and I was quite nervous visiting her for the first time.
Lanae turned out to be one of the most radiant beings I've ever met. So in subsequent regular visits we had deep conversations. We exchanged stories about 'what inspires you?" and I found myself telling her about Jarvis and his book Finding Freedom. She said she'd love to read the book but couldn't see well enough to do it. I spent a weekend reading the book into tapes and took it to her.
She was delighted and listened to the tapes three times. Then she shared the tapes with her family and friends. She asked me if I would help her to write to Jarvis. And I ended up being the facilitator for these two extraordinary beings to correspond with each other. Lanae was requesting writing advice. She wanted to complete a children's book to leave to her family as a momento. It was the story of a flying horse with a broken wing who learns how to be free on the ground.
I consider this an emptiness story. Both Jarvis and Lanae found their bars (she the bars on her hospital bed, he the bars in the prison) to be empty of inherent existence and both found freedom. There were no boundaries in three shared hearts. The experience with Lanae and Jarvis so inspired me that I moved to California to do with retreat with my teacher.
This isnt just intellectual banter, This kind of question was extremely important practice for me. It was a dharma gate.
This is the answer in practice..
A. She is smaller than me, therefore she is small. My small dog.
B. She is Empty of inherent measure.
C. She is smaller than me, therefore she is small. My small dog.
A and C are light years apart.
-Here is another very personal practice. If you feel like it. It is a concentration practice, so you have to be a real Jhana brute and supress thought at the outset to enter aborption.
1. Start with a red (or whatever color you choose) board. Cut a piece the size of a playing card. Now hold that piece in front of you so that you are seeing the red card against the other colours of your environment, at once. Allow no thought to arise. and enter concentration.
What happens to the red card and why?
2. next , take the entire red board and place it close in front of you, so it fills the entire field of vision. Once again do not allow thought to arise (ie memory of other colours), now enter concentration.
But what are the parameters of discussion?
Is this an intellectual debate?
Is it a purely philisophical debate?
Is personal experience to be left out?
Hi Nios
I am not sure those distinctions will be helpful at this stage in the experiment, they will instantly pigeon hole:)
When the Buddha first started teaching Dharma was there a need for these distinctions?
So how about, as said, we just start from first principles and hopefully end up fully surrounded by the Dharma we know:)
What you've said above is still leaving the flood gates open, almost anything can and will happen.
I just dont get why people are being so willfully hijacking the thread. But hey ho, we all have our motives:) Mine are to continue with this thought experiment and see where whoever is interested ends up:)
This isnt just intellectual banter, This kind of question was extremely important practice for me. It was a dharma gate.
This is the answer in practice..
A. She is smaller than me, therefore she is small. My small dog.
B. She is Empty of inherent measure.
C. She is smaller than me, therefore she is small. My small dog.
A and C are light years apart.
Can you tell me richard, when we say something is one meter long or one hour long what do we mean?
Lets get some grasp on first terms that we can share please:)
Then we can look to your dog's size issues better prepared?
Can you tell me richard, when we say something is one meter long or one hour long what do we mean?
Lets get some grasp on first terms that we can share please:)
Then we can look to your dog's size issues better prepared?
Mat
If we say the dog is one meter long, that means she measures one meter in standard measure. We both know what a standard measure is. If I say she is one meter long, you can pull out your meter stick and say hmmm, thats a long dog, compared to most miniature weiner dogs, who are maybe half a meter tops. Maybe shes not a mini, maybe shes a standard ? but that can get confusing because the mini's are now the standard, and the "standard" are now giants. My car is five meters long, roughly.
I had a friend named David. We shared a 6'x9' cell for about ten years at Oregon State Penitentiary. David was serving an aggravated murder life sentence for a contract killing. Nobody in Oregon had ever been paroled from such a sentence. David and I met in a cognitive programs facilitator training program at the prison, where we trained and worked. At the time David had basically given-up on life, depressed, suicidal, etc, etc etc. He had come to the training at the urging of his friends who were trying to save his life. He was mostly disinterested and even a little hostile toward the program.
David and I were introduced and I was asked to work with David; introducing him to meditation, etc. and Tai Chi. Over time David and I became very close friends (we used to joke that we might qualify as domestic partners in a no-sexual way) we decided to live and train in the Buddhadharma and Taoist energy work together in a committed way.
Over time David came to KNOW that he was not separate from others on a very profound and pervasive level. He began to express that in the way he appeared in the world, in his words, and actions, and the very energetic Taste of his presence.
To shorten this story. David was the first person paroled from any prison in Oregon having been sentenced to life on an aggravated murder conviction. David and the Parole Board shared one key point regarding this miracle.
David KNEW that he was not separate. David KNEW emptiness. It was this point that he conveyed to the board, not in words, although he did state that he could no longer do harm to others because he KNEW he was not separate from them and that their wellbeing was his own, he expressed this on a much more basic level and this impressed the board.
David died last year having accomplished that which had never been done before. He died a free man in all the ways one could imagine. He died no longer in prison or on parole. He died embraced by those who truly loved him as part of a supportive family. He traveled, rode a motorcycle through Mexico, hung his toes in rivers, walked in the surf on the coast. He arose from the dead and died truly alive.
I loved him (had to stop writing cuz' I'm crying too hard) He was my BROTHER. When he died, others could not understand why I didn't express great sadness at the loss. I knew David, I knew his heart and his KNOWING emptiness. For me he lives and always will in the depths of this heart and spirit.
That I had a chance to share time with him outside the prison walls was a blessing and a miracle for us both. I imagine it as the result of KNOWING emptiness - that we are profoundly and pervasively connect to all things, along with how to make this KNOWING part of our very being and prove it in the fabric of our lives.
Dear Sky, Thank You For Asking.
Brother Bob, thankyou for sharing this. We do not easily share our pain like this.
If we say the dog is one meter long, that means she measures one meter in standard measure.
My question wasn't really about the definition of meter but what it is to say something has a length.
I think we mean its relative to some other things.
If something is 1 meter long it has half the length of something 2 meters long.
if something is 1 alien cubit long it has half the length of something 2 alien cubits long.
Do you agree with that?
I dont see the difference with small either. If your dog is small it is relative to something else. in this case the size of other dogs.
So "small" in this sense is a shorthand?
Your dog is immense relative to a mosquito but thats not what we normally compare dogs to when it comes to size:)
Some of our terms are relative.
Some are not, for example, impermanence isn't relative. Nor is emptiness, I assume? Nor is symmetery.. nor connectivity. these are absolute terms it seems, in the sense as they are either properties of the thing or not:)
Your dog is impermanent and connected and asymmetrical... i cant really say for sure if she is small, and nor can you:)
Some are not, for example, impermanence isn't relative. Nor is emptiness, I assume? Nor is symmetery.. nor connectivity. these are absolute terms it seems, in the sense as they are either properties of the thing or not:)
I'm not trying to convince you here , I respect you have a different take on things. I just want to share what I have been taught and how I have been trained. This was understood first with reason and then confirmed in experience.....
The concept of impermanence is dependent on the concept of permanence. These two concepts co-arise as surely as the concepts of right and left. lets talk about this carefully.
But first, on emptiness.
The concept of Emptiness of inherent existence is dependent on the the concept of inherent existence.
Here I'll just use the simple dimension of size. Emptiness is an antidote, by which the assumption of inherent size is negated. Once it has been negated and one is free from the illusion of inherent size, one does not cling to emptiness of inherent size either. Things are affirmed in their emptiness and relative measure equally. One lives between the two truths.
Dapples absence of inherent length affirms her relative length, and her relaitive length affirms her emptiness of inherent length. ( Form is not other than Emptiness , Emptiness is not other than Form) It is because Dapple is empty of inherent size that she can be this big compared to me, and that big compared to a horse. It is because she is this and that big that she is empty of inherent size.
Now I am using "Measure" here, but Emptiness refers to all manner of qualification, and measure. In short "Emptiness of inherent "existence".
Once again this is not to convince you of anything , it is just to give a clear picture of my practice.
When the Buddha first started teaching Dharma was there a need for these distinctions?
Who knows
So how about, as said, we just start from first principles and hopefully end up fully surrounded by the Dharma we know:)
People have tried already, but it was branded as "off-topic" or not the discussion you wanted. I thought it might help if what you wanted was clearly defined, that's all. i meant nothing bad from it.
I just dont get why people are being so willfully hijacking the thread. But hey ho, we all have our motives:) Mine are to continue with this thought experiment and see where whoever is interested ends up:)
Please don't assume that we all have bad intentions Mat. That kind of negative attitude is what made me not want to talk with you in the first place. Looks like we still can't get past that. Shame. I shall take my leave.
That kind of negative attitude is what made me not want to talk with you in the first place.
Sorry, I guess spending months here being variously insulted, accused of dishonesty, trolling and bad intention takes its toll:) A fine example of how the negative feeds back on itself to make more negativity.
I'm not trying to convince you here , I respect you have a different take on things.
No No, I still think you don't see the point of this thought experiment:) Its not about convincing each other of anything:) Its about starting with nothing and slowly building up with what we understand in the same way.
My navel gazing about architechtonics or your meditative experience isn't relevant at this very low level stage. Sure, it may all be relevant later, may be crucial, but I ask can you please start at the beginning with me?
Maybe we cant get anywhere from the begging without recourse to experience but we can know that without trying.
I just want to share what I have been taught and how I have been trained.
I appreciate that but that is virgin buddhism, that's your training teaching and experience:) Again, please can we start at the nothing?
My thoughts on your points:
The concept of impermanence is dependent on the concept of permanence. These two concepts co-arise as surely as the concepts of right and left. lets talk about this carefully.
I agree, you cant have one without the other. One is the absence of the other (This isn't quite the same with left and right, I guess)
The concept of Emptiness of inherent existence is dependent on the the concept of inherent existence.
I don't know what existence means yet:) What does it mean to say something exists?
The same with inherent properties, what does it mean to say a property is inhernet to a thing? It seems the very notion of inhernece is intimately connected with emptiness?
Now I am using "Measure" here, but Emptiness refers to all manner of qualification, and measure. In short "Emptiness of inherent "existence".
How would this apply to the case of the infinite line? When we talk about your dog we automatically smuggle in concepts that don't belong at the very bottom. So its the same questions as we ask about your dog, but lets use the infinite line as the starting point?
Is an infinite line empty?
How about the space between two points, a segent, on an infinite line, is that empty?
It seems that for something to be not empty there needs to be something inside it that is different from what is outside of it. But in the case of the segment of a line this doesn't seem the case?
Mat
Once again this is not to convince you of anything , it is just to give a clear picture of my practice.[/QUOTE]
Oh sorry Mat. I havent kept with the spirit of the the thread. Hence forth I will be a Virgin. born from nothing. My response to your post, and further input to this thread will start from nothing, not thought born of endless thought, not agenda born of endless agenda.
In his first post on this thread Mat wrote 'Only interested in discussing Dharma from a Virgin Buddhist perspective, ie, as if we were in the time when there was only Buddha, Dharma and Sanga.'
I imagine we may model sharing the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha from our hearts, from the ground of our experience and the fabric of our lives. This is the truth of the training. It's what breathes life into the Buddhadharma.
We can model this way of being and communicating as committed practitioners, upholding the path. We will need to remain true and strong in this because, as you know, there are those here who don't know what our training is really about. So, they'll engage in all kinds of expressions of discomfort and resistance.
We may simply choose to stay the course and mindfully continue to simply model the training, to the best of our ability, for the benefit of all, as I will personally do.
Will you please simply share the story of how the principles and practices relate to you from your heart and from the very fabric of your life?
Thank you for indulging... I hope it will be fruitful to us:)
So here we are in nothing. All we have are words and ideas and some loose framework of language that we now need to see.
Let's start the ball rolling by asking what truths can we say of nothing?
I think we can say simply that its not something:) And that's about it! We can't say it has structure or sequence or quantity. Nothing is not somehing, and that's about as low as I can go.
What do you think, do we agree on this first principle?
In his first post on this thread Mat wrote 'Only interested in discussing Dharma from a Virgin Buddhist perspective, ie, as if we were in the time when there was only Buddha, Dharma and Sanga.'
I imagine we may model sharing the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha from our hearts, from the ground of our experience and the fabric of our lives. This is the truth of the training. It's what breathes life into the Buddhadharma.
We can model this way of being and communicating as committed practitioners, upholding the path. We will need to remain true and strong in this because, as you know, there are those here who don't know what our training is really about. So, they'll engage in all kinds of expressions of discomfort and resistance.
We may simply choose to stay the course and mindfully continue to simply model the training, to the best of our ability, for the benefit of all, as I will personally do.
Will you please simply share the story of how the principles and practices relate to you from your heart and from the very fabric of your life?
I came to the Dharma at about the age of twenty, in a state of confusion, grief, and hopelessness. My family had been transient, My father was a refugee to Canada , fleeing from his involement with organized crime in England. He died as a street person in Toronto when I was 15. My mother went away to her own life, and I was alone on the street at sixteen. It is mostly fuzzy, there were copious amounts of drugs, desperate poverty, and paralyzing fear. The fear would leave me unable to get up from where I slept, which was a rooming house. One day I found a book on theosophy, by Annie Besant. in it where the lines. " seperation is the greatest horror imaginable, to be shut out alone and seperate from the universe. The opposite of this is Unity, Unity with the cosmos is Love, and perfect joy"
From there there was a winding journy Through Theosophy, to Vedanta,....then Buddha Dharma. I have found that Unity. and that Joy, and although I still have fears that come and go, they are not existential. Existential fear is gone. This has allowed me to be present for my wife through cancer recently, and my son through his challenges. It has allowed me to creatively bloom. It has allowed me to build a life.
Sitting here I imagine the appearance of something conventionally labelled a laptop computer. With dualistic discursive thinking, I imagine, the laptop's imagined appearance arising in direct connection with another imagined something conventionally labelled nothing, as a necessary referent.
I disagree that there is any such thing as nothing. If there is no awareness and experience then you could not say whether it was a thing or not. When we say there is a thing it is implicit that there is also an 'awareness'.
If there were no awareness then the question of 'nothing or something' does not apply.
Have you ever confirmed that there was anything other than experience? If you confirmed it (you think) then wouldn't that too be an experience.
Nothing is of course used in language. Example: what do you want to eat? Nothing. That means that you do not want to eat. It does not mean that you eat something which is known as nothing. In this sense nothing is used to answer to questions 'what'. When we are asked the question 'what' and we say 'nothing', what we really mean to say is that it is not a matter of wanting nothing to eat. It is a matter that we are saying 'no' to the question 'do you want to eat'.
Another different example: what are you thinking of? Nothing. In this case the meaning is often that the person doesn't want to divulge (possibly) or possibly they mean 'nothing notable' rather than nothing. Or possibly they mean that their thoughts are indistinct and they do not know of anything that they are thinking of.
"In The Art of Living, (2001) the 14th Dalai Lama says, "As your insight into the ultimate nature of reality is deepened and enhanced, you will develop a perception of reality from which you will perceive phenomena and events as sort of illusory, illusion-like, and this mode of perceiving reality will permeate all your interactions with reality. [...]
Sitting here I hear a kind of sound, I'll label as swoosh, swoosh, swoosh and write to this post - In an attempt to have you imagine what I'm perceiving - as I imagine, what with discursive thinking, again, I imagine and label and write in an attempt to communicate with you - are cars passing by on the street. As the sound arises the relative state of, again, blah blah blah ... (see above) what I imagine and label as quiet fades and as sound fades, ...... (see above).
the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered are the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts. It was written in was a north-western Prakrit spoken in Gabdhara, known as the Gāndhārī. It is thus descended from either Vedic Sanskrit or a closely related prior language.
You could define that something is not nothing. But it is not what you know from experience. Nobody has ever experienced 'nothing'. It is just a turn of language to express various things.
Its only conventional that something is not nothing. Really I don't think anyone knows what they mean by 'nothing' other than a turn of speach.
Another example is that we know from experience that 1 is not 2. Because we know the experiences that those declinations point to. But we don't know what the experience of 'nothing' is. Because if it were an experience then it would be something. We also do not know what an experience is! Since everything is an experience it doesn't particularly mean anything. It just is. 'not an experience' is as meaningless as nothing. And as meaningless as 'an experience'.. Our experience appears to us and we can conceptualize it and discuss it. We knock on the ground and it feels solid. But at the same time theres no way to point conceptually back to the experience itself to know what it is.
And that my friend is emptiness (in union with appearance)
I wonder why the chattering monkeys insist on trying to ruin this thread. I can see no motives other than the unwholesome? Please don't, just ignore the thread so this can stay on topic. Pretty please?
Preparing a Dharma Talk about 'Living the Bodhisattva Path' at the request of a local Sangha.
I'm imagining how to use the example of our wise and beautiful friend/teacher Lama Zopa as a guide.
I think it goes to show that one can expound on the topic of emptiness philosophically by reducing a cow to its constituent parts and reconstituting it and still find no real sense of 'cowness' present.
So, even our wise Lama Zopa, well equipped to argue Buddhist topics far longer than any of us still sits in awareness and communicates the higher training by his example.
It was just before the end of a long retreat, I had finally settled down, when Aha!! the bottom has dropped out of the bucket!!! "I'm Enlightened". A little while later the teacher called everyone around for a Dharma Talk. As he sat there he looked a me. I thought "He can see my glow. He can see how profound my awakening is. We have a special link. He probably thinks he has found his Dharma Heir." Then while he was still looking at me he asked us 'What is the nature of Avalokiteshvara ?" I smiled because I knew the answer, and began to speak. But, before a single word could come out He drilled into me with his eyes and screamed YOU!!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!. then turned away.
It was just before the end of a long retreat, I had finally settled down, when Aha!! the bottom has dropped out of the bucket!!! "I'm Enlightened". A little while later the teacher called everyone around for a Dharma Talk. As he sat there he looked a me. I thought "He can see my glow. He can see how profound my awakening is. We have a special link. He probably thinks he has found his Dharma Heir." Then while he was still looking at me he asked us 'What is the nature of Avalokiteshvara ?" I smiled because I knew the answer, and began to speak. But, before a single word could come out He drilled into me with his eyes and screamed YOU!!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!. then turned away.
At this stage we are not at the point of perception though:) There are no observers, no experincers, no thinkers, no thoughts:)
I think once we have nothing and we add something to it, at that moment we create impermanence in the thought experiment.
And once we add two things it seems we instantly have connectivity.
Do you agree that in a universe of just two things there will be impermanence and connectivity?
Ok for sake of the thought experiment we start with nothing,(ofcourse this "nothing" is a positive image of a negative in my imagination, but I'll play along:D) Then there is two. That makes sense, because it aint 0 -1 its 0 -2, 0 being "1". The 2 have differentiated from 0 (1).
These 2 are a temporary fluctuation of existence from the non-existence of 0 (1), so yes, definitely temporary. "Connected" ? Rather than connected I would say they are manifestations of the original 0 (1). But considering they have differentiated they would appear distinct and therefore connected.
I don't have a feud with Mat either. Mat--I'm not feuding with you.
Then please and kindly on this one singular thread in cyberspace that i started for a Buddhist Philosophy thought experiment can you stay on topic and at stage!:)
Comments
Thanks for replying Mat.
But what are the parameters of discussion?
Is this an intellectual debate?
Is it a purely philisophical debate?
Is personal experience to be left out?
etc etc
What you've said above is still leaving the flood gates open, almost anything can and will happen.
Perhaps it might be best to leave this thread go on it's course and start another thread, tomorrow maybe, and set a clearly defined agender, discussion parameters and objectives on a new thread?? Just a thought, no bad feelings here.
Nios.
When the concept of nothingness arises, which it doesn't very much anymore, I simply notice it with a kind of "That's nice" and let it go; just like all the other fantastical BS that bubbles up in mind.
In contemplating with nothingness, as the object of investigation/verification some years ago, I did come to imagine nothingness as a relatively necessary twin of the arising of the mere appearance of something in mind..ie when I imagine something arising, it must be accompanied by nothing as a referent. Of course I also imagined all this as the play of dualism in this mind. Something to move beyond with wisdom.
Now-a-days, I kinda perceive the fantastical phenomena of nothingness as a kind of open spaciousness within which the solidity and locality of fantastical somethingness arises, endures, and fades away within the context of emptiness.
Over time this has become the way I tend to directly perceive stuff happening in and around this sentient being - THROUGH TRAINING!!
Back in the nineties I used to work as a social worker with elderly and medically disabled adults. I was at a retreat where one of the Lamas read a story by Jarvis Masters from his book, Finding Freedom. Jarvis is on death row in San Quentin prison, and he became a devout Buddhist meditator in prison.
I was inspired to write to Jarvis and we engaged numerous letters. It was a close connection I had with him. I was so impressed by his ability to live in apparent limitations yet be free on the inside. At the same time, at work, I met a woman my age who was profoundly disabled from late stage MS. She was completely bedbound, couldn't see very well, was incontinent, and only able to move one of her hands slightly. In short, she had every condition I was afraid to look at and I was quite nervous visiting her for the first time.
Lanae turned out to be one of the most radiant beings I've ever met. So in subsequent regular visits we had deep conversations. We exchanged stories about 'what inspires you?" and I found myself telling her about Jarvis and his book Finding Freedom. She said she'd love to read the book but couldn't see well enough to do it. I spent a weekend reading the book into tapes and took it to her.
She was delighted and listened to the tapes three times. Then she shared the tapes with her family and friends. She asked me if I would help her to write to Jarvis. And I ended up being the facilitator for these two extraordinary beings to correspond with each other. Lanae was requesting writing advice. She wanted to complete a children's book to leave to her family as a momento. It was the story of a flying horse with a broken wing who learns how to be free on the ground.
I consider this an emptiness story. Both Jarvis and Lanae found their bars (she the bars on her hospital bed, he the bars in the prison) to be empty of inherent existence and both found freedom. There were no boundaries in three shared hearts. The experience with Lanae and Jarvis so inspired me that I moved to California to do with retreat with my teacher.
sky
This is the answer in practice..
A. She is smaller than me, therefore she is small. My small dog.
B. She is Empty of inherent measure.
C. She is smaller than me, therefore she is small. My small dog.
A and C are light years apart.
-Here is another very personal practice. If you feel like it. It is a concentration practice, so you have to be a real Jhana brute and supress thought at the outset to enter aborption.
1. Start with a red (or whatever color you choose) board. Cut a piece the size of a playing card. Now hold that piece in front of you so that you are seeing the red card against the other colours of your environment, at once. Allow no thought to arise. and enter concentration.
What happens to the red card and why?
2. next , take the entire red board and place it close in front of you, so it fills the entire field of vision. Once again do not allow thought to arise (ie memory of other colours), now enter concentration.
What happens to the red card and why?
Nios.
Hi Nios
I am not sure those distinctions will be helpful at this stage in the experiment, they will instantly pigeon hole:)
When the Buddha first started teaching Dharma was there a need for these distinctions?
So how about, as said, we just start from first principles and hopefully end up fully surrounded by the Dharma we know:)
I just dont get why people are being so willfully hijacking the thread. But hey ho, we all have our motives:) Mine are to continue with this thought experiment and see where whoever is interested ends up:)
Mat
Can you tell me richard, when we say something is one meter long or one hour long what do we mean?
Lets get some grasp on first terms that we can share please:)
Then we can look to your dog's size issues better prepared?
Mat
My question wasn't really about the definition of meter but what it is to say something has a length.
I think we mean its relative to some other things.
If something is 1 meter long it has half the length of something 2 meters long.
if something is 1 alien cubit long it has half the length of something 2 alien cubits long.
Do you agree with that?
I dont see the difference with small either. If your dog is small it is relative to something else. in this case the size of other dogs.
So "small" in this sense is a shorthand?
Your dog is immense relative to a mosquito but thats not what we normally compare dogs to when it comes to size:)
Some of our terms are relative.
Some are not, for example, impermanence isn't relative. Nor is emptiness, I assume? Nor is symmetery.. nor connectivity. these are absolute terms it seems, in the sense as they are either properties of the thing or not:)
Your dog is impermanent and connected and asymmetrical... i cant really say for sure if she is small, and nor can you:)
Mat
I'm not trying to convince you here , I respect you have a different take on things. I just want to share what I have been taught and how I have been trained. This was understood first with reason and then confirmed in experience.....
The concept of impermanence is dependent on the concept of permanence. These two concepts co-arise as surely as the concepts of right and left. lets talk about this carefully.
But first, on emptiness.
The concept of Emptiness of inherent existence is dependent on the the concept of inherent existence.
Here I'll just use the simple dimension of size. Emptiness is an antidote, by which the assumption of inherent size is negated. Once it has been negated and one is free from the illusion of inherent size, one does not cling to emptiness of inherent size either. Things are affirmed in their emptiness and relative measure equally. One lives between the two truths.
Dapples absence of inherent length affirms her relative length, and her relaitive length affirms her emptiness of inherent length. ( Form is not other than Emptiness , Emptiness is not other than Form) It is because Dapple is empty of inherent size that she can be this big compared to me, and that big compared to a horse. It is because she is this and that big that she is empty of inherent size.
Now I am using "Measure" here, but Emptiness refers to all manner of qualification, and measure. In short "Emptiness of inherent "existence".
Once again this is not to convince you of anything , it is just to give a clear picture of my practice.
No pain for me. It was a story about the miracle of emptiness.
Who knows
People have tried already, but it was branded as "off-topic" or not the discussion you wanted. I thought it might help if what you wanted was clearly defined, that's all. i meant nothing bad from it.
Please don't assume that we all have bad intentions Mat.
Back to topic.
Sorry, I guess spending months here being variously insulted, accused of dishonesty, trolling and bad intention takes its toll:) A fine example of how the negative feeds back on itself to make more negativity.
No No, I still think you don't see the point of this thought experiment:) Its not about convincing each other of anything:) Its about starting with nothing and slowly building up with what we understand in the same way.
My navel gazing about architechtonics or your meditative experience isn't relevant at this very low level stage. Sure, it may all be relevant later, may be crucial, but I ask can you please start at the beginning with me?
Maybe we cant get anywhere from the begging without recourse to experience but we can know that without trying.
I appreciate that but that is virgin buddhism, that's your training teaching and experience:) Again, please can we start at the nothing?
My thoughts on your points:
I agree, you cant have one without the other. One is the absence of the other (This isn't quite the same with left and right, I guess)
I don't know what existence means yet:) What does it mean to say something exists?
The same with inherent properties, what does it mean to say a property is inhernet to a thing? It seems the very notion of inhernece is intimately connected with emptiness?
How would this apply to the case of the infinite line? When we talk about your dog we automatically smuggle in concepts that don't belong at the very bottom. So its the same questions as we ask about your dog, but lets use the infinite line as the starting point?
Is an infinite line empty?
How about the space between two points, a segent, on an infinite line, is that empty?
It seems that for something to be not empty there needs to be something inside it that is different from what is outside of it. But in the case of the segment of a line this doesn't seem the case?
Mat
Once again this is not to convince you of anything , it is just to give a clear picture of my practice.[/QUOTE]
If not experience then what then are you starting with? Axioms?
Starting from nothing, with no agenda, ex nihilo,
Here it goes ............
In his first post on this thread Mat wrote 'Only interested in discussing Dharma from a Virgin Buddhist perspective, ie, as if we were in the time when there was only Buddha, Dharma and Sanga.'
I imagine we may model sharing the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha from our hearts, from the ground of our experience and the fabric of our lives. This is the truth of the training. It's what breathes life into the Buddhadharma.
We can model this way of being and communicating as committed practitioners, upholding the path. We will need to remain true and strong in this because, as you know, there are those here who don't know what our training is really about. So, they'll engage in all kinds of expressions of discomfort and resistance.
We may simply choose to stay the course and mindfully continue to simply model the training, to the best of our ability, for the benefit of all, as I will personally do.
Will you please simply share the story of how the principles and practices relate to you from your heart and from the very fabric of your life?
Thank you for indulging... I hope it will be fruitful to us:)
So here we are in nothing. All we have are words and ideas and some loose framework of language that we now need to see.
Let's start the ball rolling by asking what truths can we say of nothing?
I think we can say simply that its not something:) And that's about it! We can't say it has structure or sequence or quantity. Nothing is not somehing, and that's about as low as I can go.
What do you think, do we agree on this first principle?
1: Nothing is not something.
Thanks
Mat
I came to the Dharma at about the age of twenty, in a state of confusion, grief, and hopelessness. My family had been transient, My father was a refugee to Canada , fleeing from his involement with organized crime in England. He died as a street person in Toronto when I was 15. My mother went away to her own life, and I was alone on the street at sixteen. It is mostly fuzzy, there were copious amounts of drugs, desperate poverty, and paralyzing fear. The fear would leave me unable to get up from where I slept, which was a rooming house. One day I found a book on theosophy, by Annie Besant. in it where the lines. " seperation is the greatest horror imaginable, to be shut out alone and seperate from the universe. The opposite of this is Unity, Unity with the cosmos is Love, and perfect joy"
From there there was a winding journy Through Theosophy, to Vedanta,....then Buddha Dharma. I have found that Unity. and that Joy, and although I still have fears that come and go, they are not existential. Existential fear is gone. This has allowed me to be present for my wife through cancer recently, and my son through his challenges. It has allowed me to creatively bloom. It has allowed me to build a life.
If there were no awareness then the question of 'nothing or something' does not apply.
Have you ever confirmed that there was anything other than experience? If you confirmed it (you think) then wouldn't that too be an experience.
Nothing is of course used in language. Example: what do you want to eat? Nothing. That means that you do not want to eat. It does not mean that you eat something which is known as nothing. In this sense nothing is used to answer to questions 'what'. When we are asked the question 'what' and we say 'nothing', what we really mean to say is that it is not a matter of wanting nothing to eat. It is a matter that we are saying 'no' to the question 'do you want to eat'.
Another different example: what are you thinking of? Nothing. In this case the meaning is often that the person doesn't want to divulge (possibly) or possibly they mean 'nothing notable' rather than nothing. Or possibly they mean that their thoughts are indistinct and they do not know of anything that they are thinking of.
"In The Art of Living, (2001) the 14th Dalai Lama says, "As your insight into the ultimate nature of reality is deepened and enhanced, you will develop a perception of reality from which you will perceive phenomena and events as sort of illusory, illusion-like, and this mode of perceiving reality will permeate all your interactions with reality. [...]
I imagine that I'm talking to friends as I write these words. I have an itch on my bottom, and my feet are cold.
Sounds come in from near and far. Bodily sensations come and go. Thoughts arise, and dissolve.
Good morning one and all.:om:
'What the heck's that got to do with the topic?'
Again, with all the stuff already mentioned, I imagine Sky responding,
'Nothing.'
Hey,way to go Sky! :rockon:
Brother Bob just consider my post one of many non-sequiturs.
Sitting here I feel, I see, I hear, I taste, I smell (need a shower?), I think.
Ah!
Happy, Happy, Happy
Thanks, Sky! :om:
Its only conventional that something is not nothing. Really I don't think anyone knows what they mean by 'nothing' other than a turn of speach.
Another example is that we know from experience that 1 is not 2. Because we know the experiences that those declinations point to. But we don't know what the experience of 'nothing' is. Because if it were an experience then it would be something. We also do not know what an experience is! Since everything is an experience it doesn't particularly mean anything. It just is. 'not an experience' is as meaningless as nothing. And as meaningless as 'an experience'.. Our experience appears to us and we can conceptualize it and discuss it. We knock on the ground and it feels solid. But at the same time theres no way to point conceptually back to the experience itself to know what it is.
And that my friend is emptiness
Preparing a Dharma Talk about 'Living the Bodhisattva Path' at the request of a local Sangha.
I'm imagining how to use the example of our wise and beautiful friend/teacher Lama Zopa as a guide.
At this stage we are not at the point of perception though:) There are no observers, no experincers, no thinkers, no thoughts:)
I think once we have nothing and we add something to it, at that moment we create impermanence in the thought experiment.
And once we add two things it seems we instantly have connectivity.
Do you agree that in a universe of just two things there will be impermanence and connectivity?
I think Mat and Richard have a feud going on. It's not about you. :^P
So, even our wise Lama Zopa, well equipped to argue Buddhist topics far longer than any of us still sits in awareness and communicates the higher training by his example.
No not Richard at all! He is not being destructive and he is willing to do the experiment as I invited:)
It was just before the end of a long retreat, I had finally settled down, when Aha!! the bottom has dropped out of the bucket!!! "I'm Enlightened". A little while later the teacher called everyone around for a Dharma Talk. As he sat there he looked a me. I thought "He can see my glow. He can see how profound my awakening is. We have a special link. He probably thinks he has found his Dharma Heir." Then while he was still looking at me he asked us 'What is the nature of Avalokiteshvara ?" I smiled because I knew the answer, and began to speak. But, before a single word could come out He drilled into me with his eyes and screamed YOU!!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!. then turned away.
These 2 are a temporary fluctuation of existence from the non-existence of 0 (1), so yes, definitely temporary. "Connected" ? Rather than connected I would say they are manifestations of the original 0 (1). But considering they have differentiated they would appear distinct and therefore connected.
No No No No! I am the complete opposite of a know it all, I am a doubt it all
Then please and kindly on this one singular thread in cyberspace that i started for a Buddhist Philosophy thought experiment can you stay on topic and at stage!:)
I implore you!
Peace and meta
mat