Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
do you consider this beyond Nirvana?
nottwo
Explorer
There is no similarity. There are no differences
Nothing arises, nothing subsides.
Nothing is similar, nothing is different.
There is no unity; there is no duality,
Nagarjuna
0
Comments
what is nirvana?
Jeffrey hi "neti neti"
Nivarna does that help
Is that emptiness teachings? Nothing arises, nothing subsides is beyond my scope of understanding. !!
I'm sure we can all agree that nirvana is the cessation of dukkha.
Earthninja try googling Nagarjuna eight negations
No arising
No annihilation
No permanence
Not one
Not many
No coming
No going
Thoughts arise and cease no? I'm confuzled. XD
the heart sutra is not joking around or just to sound impressive or a good vibe
Earthninja ask yourself this question perhaps,,what were you 10 days prior to your conception,,your answer to that is possibly your way to understand Nagarjuna ,not one not two
I think Nirvana is a transcendent state in which there is no suffering, no desire, no sense of self, and is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth.
@nottwo - I think your original post is realization.
I am very new so I may be wrong.
Dear Veterans.... ?
Namaste
Zenni
Moved to 'meditation'. The 'Newbuddhist.com.' sub-forum is for discussion relating directly to the website and its function, @nottwo
It is a statement of where Nagarjuna was at. Or rather where the unconditioned shit met the conditional fan boy.
There is Nothing similar to Nirvana, yet Samsara is Nirvana.
Everything arises and is impermanent and so subsides.
As there is no thing that can be ascribed to Nirvana, it has no qualities and exists in all qualities.
So in this sense, experiences of being and separation are irrelevant, transcended and All.
... and now back to the unanswered ...
Is this describing an experience, or is it intended as a metaphysical statement?
No, not an experience.
It is.
A weak example...
(nothing is similar, nothing is different)
You and I, we're both in human forms.
We are the same. Yet we are different.
i completed the reading of the pdf file containing Dogen's 300 koan collections and i do not understand almost all of them - but its commentaries seem insightful to me, though i do not really understand what they mean.
anyways, you people may be more experienced in all these spiritual stuff, so may be able to get it correctly.
below lines i found in one of the commentaries to a koan:
Going to the words and ideas, we inevitably end up entangled in a forest of brambles. Haven’t you heard old master Nanquan’s saying “The Way is not to be found in knowing or not knowing. Knowing is false consciousness, not knowing is indifference”? This being the case, how are we to proceed?
When illumination and function are simultaneous, knowing becomes a gateway to endless wonders. Just avoid settling down in wonder. When principle and phenomena have merged, not knowing encompasses heaven and earth. There is no place that it does not reach. Just avoid attaching to not knowing.
also the last lines in Hsin Hsin Ming says:
Don’t waste time in arguments and discussion,
attempting to grasp the ungraspable.
One thing and everything
move among and intermingle without distinction.
To live in this Realization
is to not worry about perfection or non-perfection.
To put your trust in the Way is to live without separation,
and in this nonduality you are one with the Way.
Words! Words!
The Way is beyond language,
Words never could, can not now, and never will describe the Way.
i am a stupid, ignorant person, so if you wish, then please feel free to neglect what i posted above by me copy-pasting the content from different pdf files on my laptop. obviously, i do not understand how to function even in this external world, leave about nirvana about which i do not have any idea.
metta to you and all sentient beings.
But these are strong statements which seem to contradict our practical experience:
"Nothing arises, nothing subsides."
"Nothing is similar, nothing is different."
So are cats not different to dogs? And aren't they similar in having four legs?
And aren't cats and dogs born? And don't they die?
Hsin Hsin Ming also says below things:
Changes that seem to occur in the (empty) world,
appear real only because of ignorance.
Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.
But impermanence, perpetual change, is one of the four seals. Are we supposed to stop noticing it now?
The problem is, this is Chan Buddhism, and more similar to Pure Land than to other schools.
....
@SpinyNorman
My weak example leads to cats and dogs.
If we follow through,
Cats and dogs are similar in that they are in animal forms, they have four legs, they're born and they die.
Yet they are different. Cats meow. Dogs bark.
It's the realization of
"nothing arises, nothing subsides"
"nothing is similar, nothing is different"
Because it is.
When we come to realization of.... this,
the "you and I, we're both in human forms..."
the "are cats not different to dogs.."
They become not important anymore.
Nothingness. Emptiness.
Namaste
my theoretical understanding from reading different teachers' teachings in pdf files or in internet urls says: there are two levels of reality : ultimate reality and conventional reality - two ways of seeing the same thing.
from ultimate reality perspective, everything in every moment is already complete in itself, lacking nothing - so no samsara and no nirvana.
from conventional reality perspective, since there is an 'I' in me, so there is an external world apart from me, so there is samsara and nirvana. so there are things, which arise and then cease, but since nothing has an independent existence of itself, or everything is empty of their beingness or thingness as an entity, so nothing arises at the first place, so consequently their characterisitics do not arise and do not cease. but in this continuous flow of processes, the moment we start to conceptualize things, everything seems to appear as real.
i think Hsin Hsin Ming in its below lines says this beautifully:
When you try to stop motion to achieve quietude,
the very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you hold on to opposites
you will never know the One Way.
Those who do not understand the Way
will assert or deny the reality of things.
Deny the reality of things, you miss its deeper reality;
Assert the reality of things, you miss the emptiness of all things.
The more you think about it,
the further you are from the truth.
Cease all thinking,
and there is nothing that will not be revealed to you.
the Hsin Hsin Ming can be read from below pdf file:
http://holybooks.lichtenbergpress.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Hsin-Hsin-Ming.pdf
Sorry but I don't see how you get from these observations about cats and dogs to "nothing arises, nothing subsides, nothing is similar, nothing is different". They seem completely unrelated.
Sorry to be a bore, but I don't see how you go from emptiness of essence ( conditionality ) to nothing arising or ceasing. Isn't arising and ceasing an integral aspect of conditionality?
no sir, you are very interesting and the questions you ask really help me to investigate things properly, so thank you for asking.
nothing arises, nothing ceases - let us break down this in two aspects:
no thing arises, no thing ceases - this becomes obvious due to lack of any independent entity in a thing.
nothing arises, nothing ceases - if it take it from a perspective of is something happening or not (nothing arising as opposed to something arising), then conventionally speaking from the process point of view, the conditions arise and they cease (- but i think when we usually talk in english language, then when we say nothing arises, we usually refer to nothing as no thing). One thought came to my mind while i was typing this post, that even if take the condition arising and ceasing, then also if we say that these conditions arise and that they cease, those conditions themselves have arisen due to the arising of their prerequisite conditions - so in a way, those conditions also do not have an independent entity in it - so even though conventionally it is ok to say that those conditions arose , but ultimately those conditions (as having an independent entity in themselves) had not arose at the first place.
this is my thinking about Nagarjuna's analysis in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā or his philosophy of the Middle Way and i can be completely wrong about what Nagarjuna had thought
.
Thanks for the elaboration. I agree it's more meaningful to talk about conditions than things, but isn't the arising and ceasing of conditions the whole basis of conditionality and therefore of emptiness? I can see that conditions are themselves conditioned, but I don't see how that negates the basic principle of arising and ceasing.
If there were no arising and ceasing then wouldn't everything would be frozen in time, permanent and unchanging?
No because if nothing arises and nothing subsides, then there is no nirvana vs samsara either. There can't be because if there was, that would be an arising. If there is no arising, then there is nothing to go beyond to begin with. No before, no beyond, no in between. With "not two, not one" the whole concept of "beyond" makes no sense. If there is neither coming nor going, then there can't be any beyond, since beyond would be "going" and not "not going". I would consider his statements to be neither beyond, nor not beyond, nirvana.
@SpinyNorman - I'm sorry...
@lobster explained it best.
"......Everything arises and is impermanent and so subsides......
......it has no qualities and exists in all qualities.........
.....being and separation are irrelevant, transcended and All."
Namaste
i think i will not be able to answer this question. but still i will say some words, which might be total non-sense or slightly less than total non-sense.
conditions arise and cease - but what is actually happening is there is this moment in front of us, then the next moment - now the thing is we can observe something has changed - so changes occur, this is ok, but if we start to classify it as arising and ceasing, then basically to start this discussion, we will have to point out to something which is arising and then we will say that that thing (or condition) then ceased. now conventionally, we speak and speaking itself is by its nature involving duality - because, when i speak, then at the first place i gets created and then i can talk about the thing or condition arising and ceasing e.g. i can say a plant got arose, because there was seed, earth, water, sun and air, which were as per the requirements of the plant to grow, but later when there was a huge wind, the plant uprooted and ceased - so on conventional level, talking this way makes sense, as the other person to whom i will say these things will understand it.
but on the ultimate level, i cannot speak about it because theoretically 'i' as an independent entity will not be there, to analyze it and speak about it - moreover, on a moment to moment basis, the period of a moment can be very very very small that we would not be able to even know when the moment arose and ceased, so it would not be possible to conceptualize it by our thinking about what happened in that moment, as we may even not be able to know the beginning and ending of the moment, so what happened during it how can we say anything about it - but our brain forms the continuum of our experiences, so we see a continuity in our life, though it may be discretely occurring in billions of billions of nanoseconds, which we may not notice properly.
so i think this leads to the zen question, then what is it that is in front of us and the answer which a zen koan gives to it is that it is just this or suchness.
i think Hsin Hsin Ming in below lines says this beautifully:
All is void, clear, and self-illuminating,
with no need to exert the mind.
Here thinking, feeling, knowledge, and imagination
are of no value.
In this world of “as it really is”
there is neither self nor other.
To swiftly accord with that,
only express nonduality.
In this nonduality nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.
The enlightened of all times and places
have personally realized this truth.
The Truth is beyond time and space,
one instant is eternity.
Not here, not there but
everywhere always right before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small,
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries can be discerned.
So too with “existence” and “non-existence.”
@bookworm -- "I'm sure" ??? Speaking for others is a risky business at best: It may feel comforting and wise, but ...?
Nibbana is not the cessation of Dukkha.
It is the transcendence of Dukkha.
Dukkha doesn't end, when Nibbana 'begins'.
Clinging and grasping at it, does.
AFAIAA.
I love Nagarjuna. Trying to figure out his teachings is like trying to solve a puzzle or riddle.
I'm going to break it down line by line using my own understanding but I'm not going to claim this is exactly what he meant.
"There is no similarity. There are no differences"
To be similar or different is to be separate but it's all the same process.
"Nothing arises, nothing subsides."
To arise or subside is to come or to go but it's all right here and has always been. If the conditions are right there is manifestation and if not there is hidden potential.
Form is manifestation and emptiness is potential.
"Nothing is similar, nothing is different."
Hmm... Seems the same as the first line.
"There is no unity; there is no duality."
That which cannot be separated cannot unify for to unify there must have been separation. Duality is a labelling tool we use with the illusion of separation and it helps with exploration and information sharing.
Nouns are dream tools.
Not two because it's all the same process and not one because change is the only constant. Even a label as harmless as "one" implies a limit/border.
I asked my Zen teacher once about the role of dualism in Dharma. "It's not dualism," he said. So, I replied, is it monism? "It's not monism," he said. So what is it, I asked. His face screwed up as if he were searching in vain for words. Finally he said, "It's kind of like a pointless point."
perhaps its simpler than most realize,,in non dualistic concepts there is no observer no witness,,so Nothing is similar, nothing is different,Nothing arises, nothing subsides, becomes obvious when one realizes there is nothing separate to view similarity or differentiation etc
what were these concepts prior to language
To say duality is pointless is missing the point I think.
To negate duality is to use duality.
We have evolved to the point where we can use duality to explore the world of which we are a part.
To awaken is not to live in denial of what is.
I'm pretty sure that waves were breaking on beaches before we developed the language to describe it. Or is that not what you mean?
Sorry I'm still not getting Nargajuna, I never have. But that's OK!
@SpinyNorman I'm currently reading Verses from the Center by Stephen Batchelor. I'm finding it difficult to get my head around Nagarjuna as well!
I think of it like this. Since all arisings are originally just emptiness to begin with, there is ultimately no arising and no ceasing of anything because emptiness itself can't arise and cease, if it could, it wouldn't be emptiness to begin with. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's how I think of it!
Nagarjuna is describing an experience that is not had. If he had it would be something. Poor darling - he is doing his best and is quite eloquent.
Row for that far shore and you will be gibbering in no time ...
This much makes sense.
Not so much this part though.
For me not self is more practical than ideas of emptiness. Some will say they are same, the difference for me lies in the idea of not self and no self.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.mend.html
I find impermanence satisfactory.
I don't own anything and my subjective self will not last.
Knowing I don't possess anything I am free to cherish everything.
Knowing things are impermanent is all the better to take care of the now.
Impermanence is not a bad thing.
It's all a matter of perspective.
You can still 'suffer' when you are enlightened.
You just don't pay it any attention, make a big thing of it, or permit it to hinder your practice.
It's the 'twin arrow' thing, you know....
And yes, an Enlightened being, still 'practices'.
@ourself grasping to an impermanent thing is said to be unsatisfactory.
Appreciating the beauty of a rose a I walk by is not like grasping.
Is appreciating the beauty of impermanence suffering?
Umm that's just you realizing everything just is... And seeing the whole paradox of the world and being greater than that. Nirvana, idk xD
Impermanence in itself doesn't cause suffering. If we crave things to be permanent, that can cause suffering.