What is the unconditioned?
DairyLama
Veteran Veteran
I'd be interested in your thoughts on what these passages are describing:
"There is, monks, an unborn[1] — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.[2]"
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.8.03.than.html
"There is that dimension, monks, where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor staying; neither passing away nor arising: unestablished,[1] unevolving, without support [mental object].[2] This, just this, is the end of stress."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.8.01.than.html
Comments
All things that are mind made (fabricated) are impermanent. Feeling, perceptions, thoughts and consciousness all have the characteristics of arising and passing away which can be directly observed in meditation. When these fabrications/objects stop appearing, what is left?
So are you equating the unconditioned with sunyata? If so, don't understand your reasoning.
The OP passages seem to point to a sphere or dimension "beyond" the conditionality of the aggregates, and by definition the unconditioned is distinct from the conditioned.
Meanwhile sunyata expresses the conditional nature of the aggregates.
Would that definition be a condition on the unconditioned?
The description above is not about anatta but the experience of nibbana. Forget the word emptiness and try to understand what the whole paragraph is trying to express.
It clearly points that the end of dukkha is the cessation of sankharas or conditioned things. That is to experience death before "your" body dies.
Metta
I admit this one always bugged me but it seems like he is defining the objective or absolute truth when there is no relativity. That's a tricky bit when the only way to know this is through the relative.
I'm glad he said it isn't nothing but at the same time it does seem rather "blah" to be honest.
I just know when I try to get my simple little mind wrapped round such statements, it turns to grits-like pap, and I'm left mentally gibbering, with eyes clouded over....
Then I think: Oh well. As long as someone, somewhere understands it, maybe I'll be lucky enough to run into them, and they'll explain it to me one day, in easy-to-digest bytes...
Perhaps @Jayantha could shed some light on it....? (When he checks in, maybe....
)
Our cognition relies on binary opposition. We literally can't conceive of a high without a low or a left without a right. Therefore, the question of something coming from nothing or something always existing is a challenge to us. There is a scientific consensus the universe is expanding, but what is it expanding into? The universe is like an expanding balloon, but what is on the other side of the expanding skin? There is similar thinking around the big bang. There was a singularity of compressed matter, all the matter and space-time in the universe was contained in one spot smaller than the head of a pin, but what was the singularity contained in? To my way of thinking, the answer in both instances is context. I believe the unconditioned is context...
You were the one who introduced emptiness...but anyway.
The first OP passage describes the unconditioned as an "escape" from the conditioned. So what in your view does the conditioned represent here, if not the aggregates?
And what in your view are the "conditioned things" that cease?
I suspect we will find there are different interpretations.
Oh, of that there can be no doubt, going by previous 'records' of diverse interpretations of the same thing.
But again, we come to the 'sits well with me', "Kalama Sutta" factor....
Not one that is at odds with others, but seems transmitted in a way that I would be able to absorb and engage with and that is comparable....
Forgive my lack of kowledge "Buddhist terms" here, and this is what I think:
It sounds like The Buddha is making a comparison between our state now and the state we will be in after we have escape attachments (and so forth). Right now, we are changing, born, age, muturing, dying- born, become, made, fabricated...but if we finally enter the state of Nibanna then everything would be unbecome, unmade, unfabricated.
I am assuming we will soon be able to decern the difference between the two to become unmade, unborn, unfabricated.
The second one, that sounds like, in my experience Zen. The state of an unattached mind. Emptiness?
What is the unconditioned?
A good description of the transcendence of identity.
try to explain with a simple example
whoever seeing (reading) the writing of this post would write a reply means that person attached to the writing of this post and born again, become etc.
if that person could be 'mindful' of 'the writing of this post is impermanent (not I), this brings suffering (this is not mine), there is no self in this (this is not my-self)' then he would not write a reply means unborn, un-become etc.
do not write a reply with 'mindful' and do not write a reply just ignoring the post is two different thing
the importance is on 'mindful' of 'what'?
mindful of 'three seal/ thilakkana' is the KEY
My understanding and experience is practically identical to what @pegembara has said.
It is a bit like an empty washing machine ...
It is empty, the wash wether to come or already been, is free of conditioner or even the coverings, clothing and unwashed.
Even when spinning the space for their being a wash is always present ...
Well, it's clearly nameless, so whatever is used to point to it will not suffice.
Once I was hanging outside a bus contemplating and the bus driver said "why don't you get on?!"
I started with "well..."
and he said "well?! that's a deep subject. Get on the bus!"
Anyway, you'll have to have a regular meditation practice if you really want to know what unconditioned means. We could call it many things, there are many beautiful phrases to elucidate what it means, but any words are useless until you have the experience and you can go "aha! that's what she was talking about!"
Here goes some wandering:
We take the material world for granted. Lots of people believe that we're just visiting this material world. This is only half-true. How can we prove that the world we are experiencing and the person perceiving it do not arise simultaneously?
So there, already, we see that without a perceiving being or whatever, it is senseless to talk about the material world. With me so far?
Then let's take it a step further, what is common to every phenomenon? What is common to everything that could possibly be an object of knowledge or object of knowing?
If we could find something that was common to every possible thing that arose, we would have found some sort of essence to phenomena. What's common to every sound you hear, every taste you taste, every smell you smell, every bodily/tactile sensation you have? What is common to all the senses?
We're really dense, we're swimming in a pool looking for the ladder. Only when we notice that we are the pool, and that the ladder is never apart from us, can we start to understand the possibility of freedom.
To quote your beautiful quote:
"There is, monks, an unborn[1] — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.[2]"
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.8.03.than.html
What does it mean for something to be UNborn? Does it mean for something to become born and then die? No, it is going backwards. You can enter a room and you can willfully leave a room, but how does one "un-enter" a room?
Whet your mind-stone with compassion -- only with a sense of self that embraces beyond the individual can we even come close to understanding the nature that pervades all phenomena.
Seeing the fabricated which is all possible experience is insight.
This insight leads to dispassion, which leads to unbinding.
Since we don't see the fabricated as the fabricated, we are bounded by conditions.
By seeing conditions directly, we gain the knowledge of deconstruction.
The unconditioned is precisely the end of fabrication.
Not a state, not an experience, not an absence, not a nothingness. It has no referent because it is the extinguishing of any possible referents.
I've heard this described as "nothing" from which everything arises. That nothing is the unconditioned and eternal.
Everything is the nothing and also not it.
Reminds me of the quantum field, atoms popping into and out of existence.
The aggregates are sankharas and conditioned. No argument here. It is not so much an "escape" as a realisation that the unconditioned has always being there. The visual image would be a still pool. The arising of the sankharas or conditioned phenomena are like ripples that arises and passes. When all the ripples are gone what is left?
See above.
I came across another sutta:
https://suttacentral.net/en/an3.47
The fabrication of what exactly?
So the unconditioned is the absolute, or "ground" of being"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ground_of_Being&redirect=no
It seems to mean eternal and not subject to change.
So do you mean the unconditioned is impersonal, or universal?
The only thing I can fathom being eternal and not subject to change is change itself.
The suttas in the o/p do not seem to be describing the same concept exactly.
@SpinyNorman
So do you mean the unconditioned is impersonal, or universal?
How would you describe to one living in a dream, what an awakening from that dream...is?
What descriptions of the existence of one awakened, would any make sense to a dreamer?
When are mental ruminations the actual limitations to such awakenings.
My thinking says: conditioned can refer to our interpretation of the information coming through our 5 senses and the sixth sense mind, where all the extra-things are getting added over sensory information and proliferated to support the I-ness or me-ness inside us.
unconditioned can refer to each moment - arising and passing away - without any thing extra-added over them through mind, as at that stage, the I-ness would have been destructed completely, so nothing would instigate the arising of the proliferation to manipulate phenomena as occurring something in relation to self.
The real being is empty, unborn, unconditioned. Without identity, without limits of time, space and beyond questions of 'what is this non-thing like as a thing'
Here are some great questions that also do not apply:
... and now a message from my sponsor ...
“in the universal womb that is boundless space
all forms of matter and energy occur
as flux of the four elements,
but all are empty forms, absent in reality:
all phenomena, arising in pure mind, are like that.
just as dream is a part of sleep,
unreal in its arising,
so all and everything is pure mind,
never separated from it,
and without substance or attribute.
experience is neither mind nor anything but mind;
it is a vivid display of emptiness, like magical illusion,
in the very moment inconceivable and unutterable.
all experience arising in the mind,
at its inception, know it as emptiness!”
― Dzogchen Comedian, Longchenpa
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/135842.Longchenpa
The unconditioned isn't the same as emptiness. It's the conditioned which is marked by emptiness, aka conditionality.
By definition the unconditioned is not subject to conditionality, and therefore not marked by emptiness.
The first OP post seems to distinguish between change and the changeless.
Yeah that's my understanding, it's a hard topic. Good job
Any connection here with Buddha Nature I wonder?
Anybody else want to tackle this one? My brain hurts.
You have a brain- ?!
Luxury!!
LOL
“Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.”
― Longchenpa
iz plan!
... and now back to the serious ...
I think it's time for a little light relief...
Something of interest perhaps:
https://suttacentral.net/en/kv6.6
I don't see it that way. The 2nd may try to make that distinction but it's hard to tell.
To distinguish between change and the changeless implies absolute separation. 2 world's that have no influence on one another and that cannot exist together.
To me, the first is describing the absolute of the 2 Truths as @pegembara illustrated but the second I'm not sure of because of the word dimension. Does he mean a dimension like height and width or dimension like a plane or sphere?
If it's like height and width then it exists within this world but is a matter of perspective whether or not it can be perceived. If it is like a plane or a sphere then by the way it is described, it cannot be reached.
It almost seems as if the second was designed to make the logical mind wobble. Like a koan.
I think it's correct to say that the conditioned and unconditioned co-exist but that they are separate and distinct. I recall suttas which talk about a "turning towards" the unconditioned, and away from the conditioned.
I still don't the relevance of the 2 truths or emptiness here, it feels like a red herring. As I observed earlier it's the conditioned which is marked by emptiness ( ie conditionality ), and not the unconditioned.
In other words the 2 truths formula applies to the conditioned, and not to the unconditioned.
Good luck doing that while alive. The best we can do is deal with the conditioned while keeping one foot planted in the unconditioned.
I don't think I mentioned emptiness and was referring to the post about the water and waves.
The absolute truth is non-conditional while the relative is the conditioned.
It makes sense that these are different ways of looking at the same teaching and the 2 Truths do expound this teaching from my point of view.
In Buddhism the 2 truths doctrine is about emptiness, so I still don't get what you're saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine
Seriously?
You do not see the connection between the absolute/relative and the unconditioned/conditioned?
In that case I guess we must agree to disagree because it is a matter of perspective.
Emptiness can mean the lack of abiding and it can mean the void or ground of being (potential).
Same thing really but looking at it one way helps some and looking at it in a different way helps others.
I try to steer clear of the word these days is all.
I can't see anywhere that sunyata ( emptiness ) is equated to the unconditioned. If I've missed it, could you point it out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śūnyatā
What exactly do you mean by "absolute" and "relative"?
The relative distinguishes between points of reference and the absolute doesn't distinguish at all.
The absolute or objective truth is no beginning and no ending while the relative arises and falls.
The absolute is the water and the relative, the waves where the water represents the unconditioned.
The conditioned is caused while the unconditioned has no cause.
The conditioned can grow to distinguish between self and others and the unconditioned has no frame of reference to distinguish at all and does not grow nor does it diminish.
I equate the void to the unconditioned.
@David do you feel that your understanding of the void has deepened or changed?
Would for example 'the unconditioned is conditioned and the conditioned is unconditioned' have any meaning or use?
Or in other words samsara is nirvana and vice versa ... ?
[Lobster goes for a think-break]
I'm not sure. I feel it is home but home is where you hang a hat. You can take me out of the void but you can't take the void out of me.
I don't know how the unconditioned could also be the conditioned but I feel that when certain conditions intersect they allow a process to manifest and when they don't it stays hidden.
It probably depends on who needs what. I feel the only way to reach nirvana is in the midst of samsara and that samsara came about because we couldn't see nirvana.
I rack it up to growing pains myself.
Is fabrication likened to dellusions and unfabricated the opposite? Goint by the general defm of fabricated, it seemed like a relation and easier way to explain the concept.
well the buddha would call it the all. six sense spheres, six sense objects, six sense consciousness.
well it depends on where we look at it from. wisdom is seeing fabrication. ignorance is not seeing fabrication.
since we don't see how reality is a fabrication we are bounded by the solidity and "reallyness" of reality. we see the world as a given. A solid thing with solid people running around doing solid things. That whole vision is ignorance.
Now to clearly see that is the knowledge of dependent origination. and that seeing is wisdom. and that leads to less fabricating, and eventually no fabrication at all.
so delusion is more like an overall blank assumption of how things are or given.
a friend of mine just posted this on my fb group page:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.193.than.html
and i just find it to be fantastic.
to see the unconditioned is to see the conditioned.
to see how eye and form are conditions for eye consciousness.
is to directly see that there is no eye, no form and no eye consciousness.
just a substanceless, mirage-like appearance that in itself is unborn.