Nirvana = samsara = emptiness? Buddha-nature = permanent?

Invincible_summer

So I'm having a hard time understanding the concept that "there is no distinction whatsoever between samsara and nirvana."

Is it because nirvana can only be understood by "wiping the dust" off of samsara? Or that because nirvana is the passing away of suffering,it is therefore empty? Or is it bc they are interdependent and thus empty?

The text I am referring to is Nagarajuna's
Mulamadhyamakakarikah, section on nirvana.

Also, the concept of Buddha nature,according to Queen Srimala's text on Tathagatagarbha, is permanent? It states that buddha-nature "does not cease nor arise. " but then is it not empty? Is everything *but* buddha nature empty?
It goes on to say that we need buddha nature to long for nirvana... So it is permanent but not self-being? How is that possible?

Thanks in advance... These concepts are hard to grasp

Viriya

Grasping concepts or not grasping concepts will not help you understand the true nature of the above, they are only understood by direct experience! Although i sympathize with you because the desire to conceptually understand these things is natural for us humans. However it does not help your practice trying to figure them out....it will not help you get closer to them, purify and rid yourself of the impurities of your mind with mindfulness, concentration and wisdom and you will progressively come closer to experiencing the ultimate truth for yourself....really their is nothing more to say.

RichardH

Jumping into Nagarjuna is putting the cart before the horse if you are not established in practice, preferably with a teacher.

Concepts are devices, means, in Buddhism. There are different means developed in different traditions. Some are really simple, some are detailed, but they serve same the end of non-grasping. It is a good idea to ground yourself in the Four Noble Truths, and learn to sit with discipline. Then you will have an experiential base to work from. Without that these concepts can become a conceptual mire.

Jeffrey

My teacher teaches that buddha nature is clarity openness and sensitivity.... The openness part means that our nature is space....Which is our experience of emptiness rather than an intellectual explanation...

space is very mysterious... For right now you may be thinking of a lot of things. An astronaught or something. We sense space in moving... A dimension of space but it is also mental too. For example when we accept our feelings we are noticing that there is space for those feelings and that as a result can ease up some of our fears.

The idea of space can also be very scary, but remember that there is a heart to this space... (so to speak not literal ??? dunno)

Anyhow in the mahayana compassion is always together with the wisdom of emptiness. At my level I experience this in relaxing with my own thoughts emotions, body. And others. I feel that I can relate to people more skillfully when I am confident and comfortable.

That comes from feeling your feet under you and seeing your surroundings. Seeing in the present moment what is here. But it takes tremendous courage. And I think we must have something very powerful right from the very beginning. Which brings me back to the buddha nature....

Hope this makes sense... It was helpful to me to think about this and I thank you

TheJourney

the expression often used to describe samsara and nirvana is that they are 2 sides of the same coin. They appear to be two different things, but actually are both expressions of the same ultimate truth.

And don't think of buddha-nature as permanent. Always understand that words don't do the idea justice. A better way of looking at buddha-nature is unborn. It transcends time, so "permanent" doesn't even apply to it.

Invincible_summer

Viriya wrote: »

Grasping concepts or not grasping concepts will not help you understand the true nature of the above, they are only understood by direct experience! Although i sympathize with you because the desire to conceptually understand these things is natural for us humans. However it does not help your practice trying to figure them out....it will not help you get closer to them, purify and rid yourself of the impurities of your mind with mindfulness, concentration and wisdom and you will progressively come closer to experiencing the ultimate truth for yourself....really their is nothing more to say.

Richard H wrote: »

Jumping into Nagarjuna is putting the cart before the horse if you are not established in practice, preferably with a teacher.

Concepts are devices, means, in Buddhism. There are different means developed in different traditions. Some are really simple, some are detailed, but they serve same the end of non-grasping. It is a good idea to ground yourself in the Four Noble Truths, and learn to sit with discipline. Then you will have an experiential base to work from. Without that these concepts can become a conceptual mire.

I appreciate the sentiment and I understand where you're coming from, but the concepts are something I have to write a paper on for a course I'm taking on Buddhism. Thus, I have to make sense of it to a certain extent.

NamelessRiver

So I'm having a hard time understanding the concept that "there is no distinction whatsoever between samsara and nirvana."

As far as I know, he means that the difference between samsara and nirvana lies in your own mind. He establishes what he assumes to be the correct view in his texts but its too much to discuss here.

Also, the concept of Buddha nature

Buddha nature is equivalent to the fact that the mind is intrinsically empty (not in the sense that it doesn't exist from its own side, but in the sense that it is not discriminatory in its essence). This potential for nirvana, however, is an attribute of alaya, or storehouse consciousness, and therefore is not static because it is composed of seeds of sense impressions and actions.

Dazzle

Hi Invincible Summer,

This article by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamptso may help you to understand a little about the Tibetan Buddhist concept of 'Buddha Nature' and the Madhyamaka school.

http://www.kagyu.org/kagyulineage/buddhism/cul/cul04.php



Kind wishes,

Dazzle


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Jeffrey

Here is something my lama said that could be related. They are her public teachings, I am a little nervous in sharing them, if only in general worry.

A student asks:

"Aren't the two truths inseparable in the same way that form and emptiness are inseparable as in the Heart Sutra? Couldn't that be understood as saying the same thing as saying samsara and nirvana are inseparable?"

Shenpen replies:

In Mahamudra (meditative transmission that emphasizes perceiving the mind directly) texts and in the songs of the siddhas (accomplished practitioners) there is a tendency to talk about the two truths as if they referred to appearance and emptiness. There seems to be some kind of play of words going on.
On the one hand, in both Sutra and Tantra sources, the two truths sometimes refer to the truth that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent (not truly existent) and the truth that the non-conditioned is true reality, the bliss of nirvana beyond birth and death (which we would identify as being Buddha Nature or Openness Clarity and Sensitivity, etc.).
So, of the two truths, one is reality and one is a truth about what seemed real but wasn't.
On the other hand, Mahamudra and Siddha sources also talk about the base as being the two truths. This is to say there is some basic reality that we have to recognise and make the base of the path.
That basic reality is the same from beginning to end, but to start with we merely glimpse that reality through the clouds of confusion. By following the path or as the path unfolds, that reality emerges ever more clearly. The fruition is its complete emergence free of all confusion, which is complete Awakening or Enlightenment, fully functioning for the benefit of all beings.
So what is meant by calling that base the two truths? It might be explained as above - one is the truth about confused reality and the other is the truth about ultimate reality. The basis of the practice is to realise these two things.
We have to realise that what we grasp as real is actually not real and that what is truly real lies beyond grasping or the grasping mind.
I think it has become more customary to explain it as appearance and emptiness though.
Is this the same as saying that the two truths are inseparable? In a funny kind of way you could say the first sense of the two truths were inseparable, couldn't you? It's like saying the truth of switching on a light is inseparable from the truth of removing the dark. It is true but not really very interesting or important to say.
If you took the second sense of the two truths being appearance and emptiness you could say they were inseparable. That would be like in the Heart Sutra where it talks about form, etc. and emptiness.
You have to remember though that to say appearance is one truth and emptiness is another truth is not a standard Buddhist formulation. Certain Buddhist teachers within the Madhyamaka (Sanskrit: 'Middle Way') tradition (namely Madhyamaka Svatantrikas) talk like this, but there are tremendous problems with it.
Whereas I am happy to talk about appearance and emptiness inseparable, I do not use the phrase the two truths inseparable, because it sounds too much as if you are just saying that opposite concepts imply each other. A concept of light creates a concept of dark. I don't find this very interesting really.
But if you try to experience light and dark directly, they are clearly distinct phenomena and it is quite mysterious what either of them is in itself. I find this endlessly interesting.
When you look directly at the experience itself, it is some kind of experience or appearance that when analysed cannot be taken as an object of awareness. This is what is called appearance-emptiness.
It is appearing, but when you try to understand what it is in itself, it somehow isn't there, it's empty! But yet it is there, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. But even as we look at it, it's still empty and that emptiness is manifesting as an appearance - which is astonishing.
This is what the Heart Sutra is talking about when it says form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness are empty, and yet that emptiness is form etc. - so whatever form etc. are they are no other than emptiness and whatever emptiness is, it is no other than form etc - which is pretty amazing if you ask me!
Well, I have to admit that it seems to have become the custom in Mahamudra and Tantric texts generally, to call appearance-emptiness the two truths inseparable. What this is saying is that everything is primordially pure and unconfused.
What you experience through your senses is ultimately nothing other than this appearance and emptiness inseparable. Here inseparable means experientially inseparable.
Of course you can use concepts to distinguish appearance from emptiness, but experientially they are just what reality is - mysterious and beyond conceptual grasping and all the rest of it.
I would say that this is not the same as saying samsara and nirvana are inseparable, because you can separate samsara and nirvana both conceptually and experientially. If you really experience samsara directly it is nirvana.
There is no samsara and there never was. To say they were inseparable would be like saying, in the example above, that not seeing appearance as empty (samsara) was inseparable from seeing appearance-emptiness directly (nirvana). It's just not saying anything really, is it?
Nonetheless, this kind of thing gets said a lot and it is polluting the clarity of the Buddha's teaching. Students often cry out 'Oh, I am confused. I don't understand'. But when I listen carefully I realise they are not confused at all. They understand perfectly what is being said and what is being said is confused!