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brilliant
I'm reading something by ajahn chah and there's a part where he said something which I don't think is original to him or any group, but is a teaching of the buddha. I assume. Nonetheless, it's so brilliant. So simple, so obvious, yet brilliant. Just reading this inspires me to double my efforts, as the truth of it is so obvious.
"ignorance gives rise to volitional activities, volitional activities give rise to consciousness, consciousness gives rise to mind and matter, mind and matter give rise to the six sense bases, the sense bases give rise to sense contact, contact gives rise to feeling, feeling gives rise to wanting, wanting gives rise to clinging, clinging gives rise to becoming, becoming gives rise to birth, birth gives rise to old age, sickness, death, and all forms of sorrow."
"ignorance gives rise to volitional activities, volitional activities give rise to consciousness, consciousness gives rise to mind and matter, mind and matter give rise to the six sense bases, the sense bases give rise to sense contact, contact gives rise to feeling, feeling gives rise to wanting, wanting gives rise to clinging, clinging gives rise to becoming, becoming gives rise to birth, birth gives rise to old age, sickness, death, and all forms of sorrow."
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Good stuff indeed.
But that's it. I don't think I can see the complete cutting off of ego at its root from where I am.
Cutting off the ego at it's root wouldn't be liberation, but profound psychosis
No, if you were to really separate yourself completely from your ego people wouldn't think you were crazy, you would be crazy. It's a common misunderstanding within Buddhist circles that the ego is a fiction needing to be killed. It's our fictitious experience of our ego that needs to be experienced as the delusion it is. The ego itself is a fully necessary concept for us to maintain to avoid a complete break with reality.
In the world of Jungian psychology there is the Self and there is the Ego. The Self is roughly synonymous with the Buddhist concept of original mind, Buddha nature, etc. The Ego is roughly synonymous with the Buddhist concept of ego (the 'I' or 'me'). The Self encompasses the Ego, the Ego is just one small part of the whole that is the Self. The mistake is when we perceive the Ego as the Self.
Either way a person must maintain the concept of there being a self or they go insane and lose contact with reality. In Buddhism we understand the ego to be a delusion and by seeing it for what it is we open to our Buddha nature. In Jungian psychology we understand the ego being perceived as the Self is an error. The Ego is one small component of the Self, not Self itself.
Different terminology, very similar concepts.
By that I mean that i have 18 years' worth of mind conditioning to deal with. I still can see by observing my speech and actions that my subconscious mental processes must contain these ego-related delusions. These delusions I wish to obliterate, vanquish into oblivion, etc.
Only 18??? Lucky you, I have 40 years of it to deal with
I agree. The delusions, the false perceptions, are to be recognized for what they are. The ego or sense of being an entity distinct from other entities is reality, not fiction. We are profoundly interconnected with everything else, but we are not 'one with the universe'. Believing we are one with the universe is a delusion just as is the belief we are completely independent of it. The difference is that believing we are independent of the universe is common and considered perfectly acceptable in society. Believing we are one with the universe gets us involuntarily committed to a padded cell.
This has got to be true since Buddhism holds that everything is constantly in flux. At least that's how I understand it.
I agree. There is no permanent self.
There is, however, self. If you aren't a self, what are you? Are you one with the universe? Are you completely independent from the universe? Are you a distinct part of the universe interconnected and dependent on the whole of it for continued existence?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/not_for_sure.html
Who knows
In the sense of there existing something fixed, permanent and unchanging that is 'I', yes I agree there is no such I.
Yet, there remains a self. If there is no self experiencing thoughts, feelings, sense impressions, then what is experiencing these things? If there are only thoughts, but no thinker then why do all beings not have the same thoughts?
"Not Self" is not the same as "No Self".
Our ego, or our sense of self is not "us" it is a part of us.It's when we perceive our sense of self rigidly, in a fixed way that we mistake the ego for the self. We mistake the part for the whole. In rallying around our ego thinking it's who we are and needing to protect it from harm we close ourself off from genuinely experiencing who we are and the rest of experience.
Again, Not Self is not the same as No Self. Our ego is not the Self, but this doesn't mean there is no self. We are not one with each other or the universe nor are we completely separate from it or each other. To believe the first delusion is to be, literally, insane. To believe the second delusion is to mistake the part for the whole and experience an existence tightly closed off from reality, living in fear of it and suffering as a result.
My intent was to steer one away from thinking there is no self as that isn't what the Buddha taught and it is certainly not what modern psychology teaches. It's common to see the teachings on not self confused with no self.
We know where a deep belief that there is no self leads. To a mental institution. The Buddha did not teach this view.
I think that self(as in a self that is distinct from others) is part of samsara, or one of the main illusions of samsara. Nirvana is the realization of the buddha nature within, in which these separations do not exist, there is simply buddha/nirvana.
The Buddha taught neither existence nor non-existence. And he warned not to get caught with these conjecturings.
And there is only mind. Whatever there is outside of mind is not in mind. So, to us, the things outside of mind don't exist! It is only the things in mind that exist for us, even if something actually "exists" outside of the mind. At least that's as best as I can explain the concept I had in my head...
buddha nature/dharma is real
For now I will stop conjecturing and do some zazen like Buddha said.
When you say that everything in the universe including yourself (and myself) is created of the stuff of the big bang you are 100% correct according to modern scientific understanding. The matter we are made of is the same stuff as the planets and stars are made of (sorta).
What makes us distinct is the same thing that makes the moon distinct from the sun. The moon is not 'one with the sun'. The sun is distinct from the moon, but yet they are ultimately made of the same 'big bang stuff'.
All that exists is interdependent. Many teachers give us examples of this. One teacher says consider the shirt you are wearing. If it is made of cotton someone had to harvest seeds, plant them, raise the plants, harvest the plants and then someone had to fashion the material of these plants into threads and then someone had to assemble those threads into a shirt and then someone had to package those shirts and someone had to transport them to be near you and so on and so forth. This is just one rather simple example of how interconnected and interdependent we are.
The self or ego (using Buddhist terms now) as we tend to perceive it is a complete illusion. It is the source of our suffering. It is the source of our suffering not because it's unreal or doesn't exist, but because we perceive it to be something it isn't.
We may meet another human being and 'fall in love'. We are taken over with emotions and chemicals flooding the brain. This results in our delusional thinking that this person can be the source of our happiness. This person will complete us. This person will fulfill our needs. Of course this is a completely wrong view, but this wrong view does not mean that this person is unreal or does not exist. It means only that this person is real and does exist, but they are not what we thought they were.
There is a self and the fact that there is a self is (forgive the necessary pun) self evident. Now, to get more orthodox, the Buddha was asked directly whether or not there was a self and according to tradition he refused to answer the question, viewing it as not relevant.
Some traditions teach 'Not self' and they point out the fact that pretty much everything we might cling to as self isn't self. Other traditions teach 'no self' which goes beyond the Buddha's teaching. I would say this teaching is dangerous and leads only to psychosis, but that isn't true. An otherwise healthy person simply is incapable of ever fully accepting that there is no such thing as self therefore they are safe from insanity. Such a person may have a really bad weekend where they experience the phenomena of losing it and going insane, but come Monday morning their psyche snaps back to reality.
Not quite that simple.
Upon investigation one will come to some realization that the mind is not 'part of the universe' in the ordinary understandings. While matter may well be the stuff of the universe our mind is something different. What you are mixing are what are known as the coarser level of material energy and the more subtle but more powerful and controlling energies. The coarser levels do not generate hatred which is far more powerful and devastating that any Big Bang.
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