Hi all,
Happy day
here's some fun food:
what does your eye look like? (without using a mirror!)
what does your nose smell like?
what does your tongue taste like? (excluding when you accidentally-or-not bite into it)
what does your body feel like?
what do your ears sound like?
think about it!
or rather, sense!
I figure lots of people will just post funny answers, but I'd really like to get a discussion going on dharma breakdowns of the sense-gates; primarily
the focal point / phenomenon, the
sense-consciousness, and the
supporting sensory faculty.
For example:
form is the focal object of seeing;
eye-sensory-consciousness is what arises (if one may word it this way); and the
eye is the supporting faculty.
to go on,
sound is the focal object of hearing;
hearing-sensory-consciousness arises;
ear is the supporting sense organ that makes it possible.
This is different from the conventional western scientific breakdown of "eye meets photons and magic happens someplace deep in the brain" and "sound waves meet the ear and magic happens someplace" ... the "magic" or the actual qualia of the perception is the arising sensory consciousness, which can be known and is an object of investigation in practice.
At least, this is my understanding so far. All contributions, questions, comments are welcome
Comments
emptiness is nothing more than body.
The body is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly body.
The other four aspects of human existence --
feeling, thought, will, and consciousness --
are likewise nothing more than emptiness,
and emptiness nothing more than they.
All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.
So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.
There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.
The Bodhisattvas rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and so with no delusions,
they feel no fear,
and have Nirvana here and now.
All the Buddhas,
past, present, and future,
rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and live in full enlightenment.
The Perfection of Wisdom is the greatest mantra.
It is the clearest mantra,
the highest mantra,
the mantra that removes all suffering.
This is truth that cannot be doubted.
Say it so:
Gaté,
gaté,
paragaté,
parasamgaté.
Bodhi!
Svaha!
Which means...
Gone,
gone,
gone over,
gone fully over.
Awakened!
So be it!
Also don't forget to ask what does your brain perceive like?
http://buddhism.about.com/od/mahayanasutras/a/heart-sutra.htm
If you examine the sense gates
they have a form
a point or focus.
- examining their independent essence . . .
What do you find?
Nothing.
The independent essence of all experience? Empty?
:clap:
What do your eyes taste?
What do your ears see?
What does your tongue smell?
What does your skin hear?
Can you see yourself, ever? Can you feel yourself?
What do you look like at ground zero, really?
What if what you see in the mirror is only what the mirror reflected but not really what you look like?
Sometimes we see a dog, crossing a
plank over a stream, stopping half way through to gaze at the water below. It wags its
tail, or growls, or keeps on looking at and away from the water, again and again. Why
does it do so? Seeing its own image in the water, it imagines that to be another dog.
So it either wags its tail in a friendly way, or growls angrily, or else it keeps on
stealing glances out of curiosity - love, hate, and delusion.
In this case, the dogs thinks that it is looking because it sees a dog. But what is
really happening? It is just because it is looking that it sees a dog. If the dog had not
looked down, it would not have seen a dog looking up at it from below, that is to say -
its own image.
It is such a view that made the dog imagine that there is another dog in the water. It
imagined that the dog is there, even when it is not looking. It may have thought: "I am
looking because a dog appears there". But the fact is that the dog appears there
because it cares to look.
Is the "dog" in the water real?