Lucky7Strikes

If it is a valid conventional observation, and one experiences conventions, what makes that experience illusory or invalid? Also please address the point I made earlier about the principe of cause and effect and cause and effect itself. Do you feel pain? This is a yes or no question. Just because something is dependently originated it does not make it an illusion. You need to define what an illusion is to make that statement in the first place. Perhaps your idea about experience is illusory, but conventional reality affects us, hence they are real, not because they have an essence behind them. The sun affects your livelihood, the weather and all these other phenomena that are, no matter how much you say is conventional and empty, observable, and tangible to our daily lives. You may not perceive conventions, but alas, you are governed by them. Unless you are denying the very experience of the sun, what you seem to be addressing is one's perception of the sun. Whether one views it as something impermanent and "empty" (as you put it) vs. something that is existent with a core. But whether you think the former or the latter, it does not make the experience of the sun illusory, nor its properties of heat, distance from earth, effect on life forms etc. They are real events that are occurring. The so called conventionalities are of course not realities, but our perception of realities. You can say (at least from your line of reasoning) our perceptions are not set in stone, but I don't see how you have sufficient grounds to deny reality itself as all an illusion. And I've never brought up the notions of self or no self. See how you are bringing this topic out of nowhere? It's funny you wrote, "you stop thinking of self," because surely I didn't bring the subject up. It must cross your mind often, the "no self."

I have suddenly realized the futility in having a discussion with someone who denies reality. It is like having a discussion with a solipsist. Or a true believer. They are trapped in their own circle of delusion, and justify everything through a paradigm of ultimatums (God is everything, everything is dependently originated, nothing exists, everything is creation of mind, i.e. a simpleton's categorization of everything), and since Xabir's attachment to his beliefs are so strong and so rooted in what defines him, anything I write he will simply override it without giving it a bit of contemplation. When the opponent in a debate does not reply to your points with constructive criticism and questions, but merely repeats his point over and over, almost verbatim, it points to how 1) the "truth" does not belong to him, but is learned, therefore he has no ways of approaching it from different angles, and 2) he is unable to support his own views (which he believes is "the truth") in multitude of ways since they are heavily dependent on experiences and feelings rather than contemplation and insight (hence the reliance on quotations by authority). His exercise in ceaselessly replying here is ironically driven by the need to override my criticisms, not through a constructive investigation, where we can both observe the process of contemplation by which the conclusion is arrived at, but through boorish, "this is how it is," "this is the truth," statements sprouting from an observation or experience he deems the truth, not from an inquiring mindset. If anybody has been reading this thread or Xabir's posts on thetaobums, please consider these bits before really considering what he has been writing about.

You are being very bull headed here without really giving what I write consideration. You can say to yourself with some sort of crazy reasoning that there are elves that live in the sky. But when there isn't, you should reconsider the analysis, because there apparently are no elves. If else, you are just functioning on blind belief. Similarly, you can say something is empty, illusory, ultimately unreal, and what not, but the cause and effect of events still do occur to you. No matter how empty you think a knife wound is, it will make you bleed, it will cause tangible physical change. That makes it real, not whether or not you say it is empty or not. A knife wound to a Buddha is no less real to a Buddha than to a deluded sentient being. Also conventionality means something that is a conceptually agreed, but not objectively true. So names are conventional truths, but not physical laws of cause and effect your body is bound to. It doesn't go away because you analyzed it away. Whether or not I make that observation does not change the fact that when someone hits me, I will feel it. If otherwise, you are either denying reality, or mentally handicapped and cannot link two phenomena together. You have no grounds to deny that there is no sunlight. This is extreme. The sun makes it possible that you are alive, it gives you heat and warmth. It nourishes the earth. The Sun doesn't just disappear because your conventionality of it is gone. You are talking crazy. And indeed, this is the nihilist position.

Then you are saying your morality is based on what you perceive as illusory principles. Thus that makes your morality fake. Also it does not matter if you think conventional truths are real or not. Their reality is measured by their ability to have a consistent and lasting effect on you. And when someone hits you, you will feel it. It will be very real.

....No one says, "here, the hammer is there," while they are being hit by it. They just get hit by it. No matter how much you deny the reality of the hammer, the hammer is going to strike you, and you will bleed. So how does your point make the hammer any less real than to this so called "deluded" person?

IMO Namdrol is being very impractical and does not have insight into how the idea of something's essence arises. The conventional level is very real. It's effects, like saltiness, the sodium that enters the body, are all inevitable relationship we have with the object called salt. Objectively, salt may b different altogether, but it does not make the saltiness something illusory. It is real in that if you take salt and taste it a thousand times, the saltiness will be consistent, as with its effects on the body. So we say there is saltiness in salt.

I think you are missing the point here. The idea of a dream or the idea of something illusory or unreal does not come about because something lacks imputed concepts. If a man is stabbed by an unknown object that he does not have a conventional term for, he does not think "ah, this is unreal, because I have no term to impute on it." It is real because it has a profound change on his body and can ultimately cause death. On the other hand, if you are stabbed by a known knife in a dream, you realize that it is a dream and unreal because you wake up from the dream unharmed by the wound. It's effects are not profound but ephemeral. The same idea is applied to cause and effect. A cause is real if it's effects are observed routinely. It is illusory if the effects are inconsistent. Just because something does or does not have a conventional label to it, it doesn't change its reality.

Make your point clear. Are you saying wetness and water are two different things dependently originating one another? Or are you saying wetness and water are inseparable, as in there is "no principle apart from phenomena?"

No...we are not speaking about a specific cause, but the principle of cause and effect which you said was empty and dependently originated. Do you understand the difference? The principle of cause and effect describes the relationship between observed phenomena, not the phenomena themselves. What is a principle, namely, "the way things work" dependently originated on exactly?

Don't post stuff you don't have understandings of pretending somehow they help your points.

If you hit the Buddha with a hammer, and he has a body made of flesh and bones, he will bleed and feel the pain. They are not mere appearances, because appearances suggest only superficial events that do not have a lasting transformative effect on your life. Of course, this is measured in degrees, but say watching a light hearted movie is what you can call an appearance. Someone stabbing you with a knife is not an appearance. Therefore, there is hitting, bleeding, and hammer. That the effects can be observed and have a lasting consequence is the measure of their reality, not your concepts of whether it is empty or not. Concepts do not create this world but are built upon them. It is inconsequential how much you deny A or B, or their essence. The fact that they have an effect on you is what gives them their reality, not their essence and what not.

From the way you've been explaining things, I don't think you understand any of that.

You are really out of touch aren't you? The measure of reality is not whether something is independent or is able to be found. We don't measure reality with those standards, only you seem to do that. Again, let's say you feed a man a hamburger. You can say that hamburger is illusory or empty or whatever, but the fact is it will go down his existing throat, fill his existing belly, and give him existing energy to function through a whole lot of cellular process in his body. So it doesn't matter if you say the cigarette is some conventional label. The cigarette is real in that it affects your lungs, gives you a dose of nicotine for the brain, tar goes in. It's real not because it has no substance or what not. It's real because it affects your experience of reality in a consistent manner. You aren't going to wake up tomorrow with a new lung. Another thing. Your example of consciousness of eye is just stupid. Your eye and the objects don't generate eye consciousness. Then you'd be saying that taking someone's eye out, and his seeing consciousness is suddenly split into two. Or a dead man can see since there is his eye still intact and the visible objects.

This is not a reply. You didn't reply to anything I wrote above. Also there are no explanations, but mere statements like the spaghetti monster example I illustrated above. No one is talking about entities or independent essences here except for you, and your obsession with them. I don't care if something has an essence or not, it's not important. What's important is that activities have an effect on your experience and so do objects no matter how much you say they are illusory, empty, or without essence. Someone hits you in the head with a hammer. You bleed. So that hammer can be found, and it's very real. There is a problem with quoting scriptures believing them to be authority, since you have no idea about their truths besides your blind faith in them. It is a problem, because the scriptures are not reliable, since they have been an oral tradition for 400 years. Do you know how much can be twisted and maligned in oral traditions? Even written traditions become soiled. Also, why shouldn't other scriptures be less true then? Why just because you are Buddhist, Buddhist scriptures are all true even regarding subjects you have no experience of? You are no different than an evangelical christian believing strictly in the bible for things he just takes merely on faith.

Cause dependently originates on..what? You said cause dependently originates on cause, which makes no sense, since cause is not a "thing," but a principle, a description.

Seems like everyone is a brain hater these days. . All these direct experience enlightenment models do not integrate the wisdom of the brain, language, and thought. They shift to sensory experiences, and because it is such a big shift in how modern humans experience reality, it's suddenly deemed "enlightenment." To me this is no different than regressing into an animal's experience. Not evolving, but devolving, not responding, but reacting. The enlightenment models today rarely have an element of growth to them. They are mostly just "hey, realize this, and you are done!" Yet, imo, these realizations are mere small steps in a greater progress one decides to seriously participate in, and what is possible is beyond what is currently imaginable by the lesser developed awareness; it is like a dog trying to imagine an entire book. (I speak partially from experience of super awareness and bodily states, things like Drew talks about here). I believe how much significance you give to these milestones limits your potential for growth, or stagnates it. So the thinking mind, the reflective and analytic mind we have made enemies of are actually important as tools of measurement against definitive sensory experiences that one may mistake for being some ultimate stage. Taoists and Buddhists use the term "cultivate" when they talk about spiritual practice. These shifts in our awareness can reveal a side of us that can indeed be cultivated, the life force, god, love, being, awareness, or whatever you choose to call your existence. But imo, too many people mistake this discovery to be the finality, when really, it is only beginning. It's like you've been watering the plant all wrong because you couldn't even see the plant in the first place. Now that it's been found, it needs to be nurtured wisely, and in this process the ego and the analytic mind needs to be utilized and turned into what we often call wisdom instead of being thrown out entirely.

It was obviously a hurried and unthoughtful reply. You missed out on a few other points I addressed, namely your faulty line of reasoning for the dependence of cause and effect on cause and effect, the perception of conventions (not concepts) vs. spontaneous action, the example of the experience of the chair by three different perceptions, the extreme conclusion one draws that experience does not exist from the principle of dependent origination (a lucid dream can be said to exist if its affects are tangible and lasting). As for your point on addiction, you just simply restated what you wrote before without replying to my points. But more irritatingly, these are mere statements. I can write a load of statements without explanations and just say they are true. If you are not going to support your statements it is no longer a discussion, but both sides merely making statements. If I write: there's a flying spaghetti monster who is the creator of this world And you write: that's false, because a, b, and c And I write back: no that's not true, because there's a flying spaghetti monster who is the creator of this world That's not a discussion worth having. As for the powers, you mentioned the shamatha stages as methods of attaining powers, but it turns out you were just talking out of your ass. You don't know anything about them.

Please don't reply for replying sakes. Go take your time, come back, and write an actual reply.

You said it arises spontaneously. Spontaneity describes something that arises without an apparent external or internal cause, but is self-generated. Unless you meant, "it's not spontaneous, but experienced as if spontaneous." Are you saying you don't conceive any conventions at all, like the keyboard, the computer, or your own face, or a chair? Then how do you function at all? Spontaneously? Then you are again saying the action or the knowledge of the action is not dependently originated but self-originated. Whoooaaa there. Here we have another issue. So if a sentient being sees a chair, his response (not necessarily verbal), is that "hey that's a chair, it's something to sit on, it's brown, etc." And when an awakened person sees the chair, he switches between, "hey that's a chair" vs. "....." And the Buddha doesn't see a chair at all? Are you saying the chair doesn't exist? Then can the Buddha still sit in it?

Well, then you don't know much about addiction. Craving of objects is called obsession. Addiction is descriptive of behavior. Clinging does not require any dual view of an object or an existent. If you are riding a bike for a lengthy period of time because that act is giving you certain pleasures (note, you are not craving after the pleasure, but pleasure is a side effect of riding the bike) binds you to that act, it becomes habitual. Habit and clinging are very similar in how they operate, generating a feeling of safety consistently doing one thing, even if it is not pleasurable, is addiction. Addiction is basically being entrapped in one mode of behavior and not wanting or not even seeing an alternative. After a while you forget that you are even addicted; it become s a lifestyle. Again, it's descriptive of action, a mode of being, not necessarily targeting an object. You are the one who brought it up. And now you reveal, unsurprisingly, that you were speaking on "doctrine." Please don't do that, pretend you have knowledge of something when all you have to show for is doctrine.

Are you saying dependently originated things don't exist? On what grounds? A thing can be dependently originated and said to exist, since well, you still experience them don't you? And they have an effect on your experience of life...so...by the definition of something "existing," that it is experienced and have a tangible effect, it does in fact, exist. What the...huh? ... What kind of reasoning is this: 1) cause and effect is based on.... 2) cause and effect 3) there is no cause and effect 4) therefore cause and effect is illusory .... No..I'm sorry, what is "cause and effect" dependent on again? Also, cause and effect is not there is "cause" and there is "effect." It's describing a process. What is the process of cause and effect dependent on? Things don't have to be independent to be real. That's not a requirement for existence: be independent or have a core. Nor is it a requirement for it to be found. A cigarette can be found.

It'll end soon. .