Lucky7Strikes

Are you saying that knowledge arises without a cause, out of nothing? Then it's not dependently originated. Oh, so you do perceive conventions. And you do identify (a unicorn making a noise). You do perceive movement. You just decide to label it false instead of true. Now does saying in the dream, that the unicorn is false, make the unicorn go away?

Xabir, you are genuinely frightening me right now because this reply has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote. I am beginning to question your sanity. But to what you wrote above, clinging doesn't have to be on something you perceive as existent. Clinging is a word that describes an act of repetitiveness. So if someone is continually riding a bicycle, that person is clinging to "riding a bicycle." Riding a bicycle isn't a thing, nor does the person need to consciously construe that he is clinging to riding a bicycle all the time. Addiction works in a similar manner. I mentioned Daniel as an example of someone who says he's gone thorough all the jhana stages. Welllll....then do you know anyone who has gone through those shamtha stages and attained the powers that you know of? Probably not. So you don't know. Let's not write bunch of speculations, ok?

Make up your mind, because in the next sentence you contradict yourself: "Ultimately, there is no defilement, no ignorance." :rolleyes: Cause and effect is not a "thing." It's not cheese or a computer. It's a description of a process. Also this is just stupid. Your reason that cause and effect is illusory is because it is dependently originated, i.e. caused via conditions? So...cause and effect is illusory because its caused? You really don't know what you are talking about anymore do you? Huh? so there is false cause and effect and "real" cause and effect? What do you mean "if" there is ultimately no real cigarette? You need to give some reasons instead of just stating ludicrous statements here and there.

This is a metaphysical position: "Defilement are in terms of the ten fetters. There never is a 'me' even now. There is no me. Defilements arise due to ignorance, ceases due to the cessation of ignorance. Ultimately, there is no defilement, no ignorance, what dependently originates is empty." So is this: "Because everything is empty of any independent existence, or entity, so they are illusory and non-arising." and this: "Conventionally we say, cigarette and fire causes smoke. But if there is ultimately no real cigarette, no real fire, there is also no real smoke. Sentient beings establishing real entities misperceive real cause and effect."

Wow. So you won't even touch knowledge. Knowledge is what spiritual practice is about, not metaphysical assertions. Perhapas you should refocus on the means of practice, and focus on knowledge instead of fighting abstract assertions. Clearly you don't know anything about "powers." Daniel Ingram said he mastered all the shamatha stages but couldn't do jack shit. He had one instance where he had a coincidence of making a teacher pick up a pen because it was in his line of vision or some trivial event like that after he entered a jhana state. Who in the theravada tradition has come out in the past years and said he had psychic powers? Powers, yea right. Psychic powers are trivial and mean nothing. You don't even know how to approach this topic, so let's drop it.

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If you are going to reply with just blatant and unsupported statements I will no longer see this as a discussion but a shouting match. You are not replying to what I write, but writing over with whatever convictions you hold. That's a shouting match. And you are wasting both of our time. You don't have to be omniscient to have insight and experience into these matters. You've just been looking so narrowly into the concept of enlightenment there's not even an idea of how to approach the broader human condition outside of the words anatta, emptiness, maha, dependent origination, blah blah blah. Knowledge of past life is only one aspect of our existence. You, admittedly don't have a clue about omniscience, so how do you know what the Buddha went through in awakening? Why, just because it's written in a text? You have no idea how to even approach omniscience because you don't even know what knowing is. You're right it will take you a very long time. You're going to be running a treadmill for an incredibly long time. That's funny, because all these 13 pages, seems like you have a position to defend and assert. That's also funny, because "you" don't exist after this moment. Then there's the next moment. So what defilements can you burn away? How can you even achieve omniscience? What progress are you going to make? For whom? I think I missed the part where you explained why and how you have come to the conclusion that cause and effect is illusory. Yes it does. If you don't know you are going to get wet because of the rain, you are going get wet. You know you are going to get wet because you have previous experience with the rain. This isn't just spontaneous knowledge that comes up. It a built habit. As for observing causality to deny A and B, you write: Hmm, wait a second, a moment ago you said, So then your line of reasoning is based on false perceptions, by your own words of course.

Actually it does mean you can't express yourself adequately. Hence you think someone else does it better than you. But the point is, what you quote really isn't all that special, or the wording isn't all that poetic or more detailed. It's just mostly snippets taken out of context to match your own language. And you do it to lend authority to your points, because oooOOH Dogen said it! Candrakirti said it! the Buddha said it! It speaks to your mentality of a follower. The way we communicate reveals very much about our latent characteristics. And your own insecurity regarding the knowledge you say you possess shows how much you feel the need to be verified by figures you deem superior than you are. This is where you are wrong. At any given moment, unbeknownst to the conscious mind, the unconscious mind gathers an incredible amount of information to act and react in that moment. Your body, brain, latent tendencies, all are in synchronized movement. You cannot function without conceiving this entirety of your so called "conventional truths." It's never "just the seen," there is an entire subtext happening within a moment that you are choosing to ignore because you are unable to "see it." The conscious mind is not the only event that is happening in a given moment, just as your "seen" is not the only "seen" happening (unless you are a solipsist, in which I will drop this conversation), since there are other conscious beings also. It is not a magic trick as you often phrase it, because it is indeed happening. Events produce effects that are experienced. Other people exist in a consistent manner. Thus, they are very real in that sense. Then you're only swimming in the shallow waters. Not only that, you think that's as deep as it gets. Uh uh. Now please read this carefully and try to actually understand what I am writing. You are establishing A and B to break the flow of phenomena. You are in fact suggesting that phenomena does not flow, because there are disparate moments of just-A then just-B. And then you go on to deny the A and B altogether on the basis that phenomena is dependently originated, which suggests a link, a flow, from cause to effect in how moments are perceived. What we deem the cause and what we deem the effect is rather arbitrary: the principle of cause and effect notes a continuation observed from a designated (not inherent) moment A then to moment B. So you say A and B are empty and unestablished. Do you see the problem here? You are using the point you already dismissed (that there is continuation, a link) to counter a point you used to make that initial dismissal. This means nothing to me. I can very well interpret David Loy's experience in a whole another manner. I think he is justifying his bliss non binding experience with very goofy line of interpreting reality. Like you, the process does not matter, but only the effect, which is the deconstruction of experience to be in a perpetual let-go. How or why experience can be made so, or the methods you used to get there apparently do not matter to you or David Loy. But it does to me. Inference and conclusion are not properties of concepts. They are also activities of the instinct, of one's awareness. You don't see how inference is in fact, the activity of the non-conceptual that is only often expressed conceptually. You are arguing with the surface, not the root. So your wisdom is merely explained via visions and appearances? Shining right in your face huh? I remember this type of language in numerous other religious texts and speeches of Gurus. Relying on mere appearances can blind you. Not really. I'm not in any serious hole what so ever. In any case what you say may be true, or what vedanta says might be true, or what muslims say may be true, or what christians may be true, or what scientists say may be true. I preserve my own choice to investigate multitudes of possibilities I see that best fits reality. I am open to exploring ideas and practices that may widen my vision. I am filled with questions and uncertainties about what being alive means, of what I am capable of. So I am certainly in no hurry to figure it all out by tomorrow; I don't have an agenda, but I do have a direction. Yet, the reason why you are becoming entrapped in your vision is because you have thrown away potentialities and choice. You have basically cut off any new roads that will further progress. You will simply be what arises and then ceases because each moment will be contextualized very narrowly only to itself. You will have already reached the limit of your spiritual knowledge. You won't advance any further in deepening your knowledge of the human condition. Maybe you will become an "arhant," a dispassionate and blissful dumb fool, but that would only be a glimpse of the potentials of your being, of what you can know and do. You will become incurable by the disease called emptiness, and your enlightenment will be very shallow. The current world is not looking for teachers like you. You won't hold to the questions of the Western mind that go beyond what anatta, your idea of dependent origination or even Actual Freedom has to teach. Ask Thusness how much he truly knows about this world we live in, about the afterlife, about mankind's origins, about the causes of birth and karma, about the possibilities of a human being. He probably doesn't, and accepts a majority of his knowledge of such subjects through his faith in Buddhist teachings. He only knows about the transformation of one's view into a perpetual non-clinging state that ends suffering arising from mental afflictions. This is a great achievement nonetheless, and you can call it a type of enlightenment to non-mental suffering. However this is only a fraction of what I seek. I seek knowledge and wisdom, which is ultimately power over my own existence. That's right. And after a bit more investigation, you will realize the the principle of reasoning is an inseparable aspect of knowing and awakening. That to know is equivalent to the experience of awareness as its luminosity. To be is to know and understand.

Are you not arguing for a position now? One does not need to consistently put their positions forth, but they do defend it, and they do utilize it. You are saying A, B, C are all delusional based on another position. The very fact that you label one experience delusion and another clarity means you have a point of view of what is the correct perspective and what is an incorrect perspective. And are you really that incapable of using language? To have a position is a verbal description of an act that describes itself, to have cheese points to the possession of an object. The former, to give you an example is, "I am writing a sentence" or "I am not writing a sentence." In both instance the meaning of the language conveys the very expression. Moreover, to not have a position means precisely that: it means you do not know what is true and what is false, that you do not take sides. This is clearly not the case with you, since you are arguing for a particular case, of a ignorance vs. clarity. Go trace this part of the conversation back. I was pointing to your inattentiveness to what you yourself write. And I answered this point in the two posts beforehand. Ah ha! Notice it! So we come back to it again, "hey! just look!" It is your only pseudo wisdom. ...and what exactly separates A and B? And how does one transition from A to B without movement, hmm? By now I think you are highly delusional. I don't care about what Dogen wrote. Holy crap, how many times do I have to ask you to just stand for your own opinions instead of piggybacking on dead people? So you do conceive of conventional truth. And conventional truth involves movement. ...so you do perceive movement. Then you probably can't function in daily life. So you establish A and B to deny the movement and connection of phenomena. And you deny A and B with dependent origination, i.e. knowledge of cause and conditions, i.e. the connection to other phenomena. Do you see what you are doing here? You are being very ignorant about your own process. You are basically denying a position C by establishing position D and then you are denying position D by re-establishing C (which was negated by D ). You are being a total fool. I think you need more hints: inference means to make an observation and make a conclusion from those observations. Did you make an observation of these qualities of experience? Like luminosity, directly experienced it? Then did you realize that it is always the nature of all experiences? Good. You made an inference from a series of observations that now applies generally to a greater sample. Too bad. I have bad news for you. You are in a serious hole of self delusion you likely won't dig out of for a very very long time, and I have probably shortened that time by a significant amount through this discussion. ...LISTEN! ARE YOU READING! GOOD. I AM GOING TO WRITE THIS FOR LITERALLY THE FOURTH TIME. INFERENCE, LOGIC, DEDUCTION, ARE ALL PROCESSES THAT DO NOT NECESSITATE MIND CHATTER, ALSO KNOWN AS LANGUAGE. Ok? Your idea of logic and inference seems very narrow and careless. Our mind makes deduction instinctively, such as our instinctive reaction to pain that we had experienced before hand. I'm not going to say anything more on this because I want you to try to actually investigate this aspect by yourself. But by now I'm not sure you are even capable.

I think you missed the point. So you quoted the buddha saying "not within the sphere of logic" to give authority to your claims. Again, the quote was unnecessary except your efforts to lean on the name of the Buddha, as a mere voice-hearer. It is pathetic. . Secondly, logic does not necessarily involve signs or names, but it does involve categorization and the seeing phenomena is relations, for instance, cause and effect. Again, why the candrakirti quote? You can't put those thoughts together in your head, or are you leaning on someone else's words because you deem them respectable? I know you said that. So I typed a reply. Why don't you reply to what I wrote instead of writing the same damn thing over. There is no such thing as a non-asserting negation. You negate something on certain grounds. Fire burns the candle and becomes smoke. Find some good example where something truly disappears. Oh wait, do remember the law of conservation of energy. So now you don't even know what you are writing. "Contemplating by investigating your own experience, challenging your views of inside, outside, border, subject and object, agency, inherency of objects are al contemplation. If in this contemplation you are not mindful of one's own location, you are not contemplating enough angles. That's not an "investigation." You already presumed the "flow of self-luminous experiencing without an experiencer" and then you just "confirmed" it. You basically catered your vision to be in line with your presumption and made an unsupported confirmation. It's an experimental error where you are tampering the procedure to fit the hypothesis. Then how do you see dependent origination directly? Dependent origination is seeing causes and conditions. Causes and conditions is movement of phenomena and categorization of relativity. Memory is also seeing of movement seen from relative position of the present and the past. :blink: So how do you identify a car as it passes from moment to the next? Or me as I'm talking to you? Or even this sentence? So when you read this sentence, you won't be able to decipher it at all huh. Since each letter, "S" "O" "W" "H" "E" would all be their own manifestation unlinked to the next letter? Your preposterous statements make you sound like a new age nutjob. And what exactly establishes these units of manifestation as I have mentioned earlier? What makes phenomena A all complete in itself separate from phenomena B? a "milisecond" well that's just a human designation on a period of time. ....Ok...give me an example of realization that comes from series of observations that is not made with inference or induction. I'll give you a hint: you can't. You are very much caught in shallow appearance and have not investigated deeper into them. Go do more insight meditation, instead of being lazy and indoctrinating yourself repeatedly with "in seeing just seen, blah blah" For your puzzle example, of course there is the process of inference! You have through experience of certain figures that make up the puzzle (let's say there's a picture of an elephant, then you have to know that such a thing as a elephant exists), combined with the knowledge of the whole puzzle picture, you are able to identify where each piece fits. The knowledge of how the pieces come together don't just automatically come together from the puzzle itself. It comes from a complex process in your mind. It's also not some see it or don't process. You obviously haven't put together puzzles where you've put the wrong piece in the picture.

Bullshit. That quote above basically, says, "this is hard to understand." So you can't say that in your own words or did you just quote that to lend your claims more authority? It was unnecessary. And if you can't express yourself better than a 2000 year quote passed orally for 400 years, how "awakened" is that? Same with Candrakirti's quote. It says nothing at all that special. You just used it to give your claims authority. And you don't see how your own mind processes all this through observation and logic? Then you don't even understand your mind at all. I'll give you an example from the one you listed above. When investigating the location of oneself, we must first consider the logic behind "locating the one who is doing the locating." It is not merely, "let's look for where I am." That is a simpleton's way of trusting too much in one's sense experience, and can easily result in a faulty conclusion (note the usage of logic here linking observation to conclusion). One must also assess the legitimacy of the process of looking. This is like examining the procedure of "finding one's eyes with vision." If you go head on with this without giving it a thought, you will come to a false conclusion that the eyes are not located anywhere after trying to "see your eyes." You must use logic in this case gathered from observation and knowledge of linguistic definitions: location is something that is relatively defined, and relativity necessiates more than one component. Hence one cannot locate the eyes using the primary agent, namely the eyes, because one cannot establish a relativity with one agent. See the usage of logic in all this linking observations and examining one's actions not in and of themselves but outside of it as well? It is the same as impermanence. One should not just use observation of impermanence to conclude that all things are impermanent (again, see the use of logic when transitioning from sample observation to a general claim). One should ponder the nature of that observation. Impermanence is seen, but what is it that lets us see it? As in, if indeed there was merely impermanence, shouldn't we not be able to observe it at all anyway, since movement is noticed with relative stillness? So you bring in the knowledge of movement and stillness to your basic observations of impermanence. All this linking is done through categorized observations, i.e. reasoning, that connects them into a coherent general claim about something to be applied to new experiences. Don't take these examples literally, but I'm showing you how reason is a very necessary component of the mind and observations it makes. And you still don't see the use of logic here? Your insights are pitiful. You made a series of observations and drew a concluding claim of them. That is the use of logic. Even the fact that you chose to depend on your observation is a choice made through a logical stance. Not true. You are denying something on the grounds of another position, that is, it's falsity. If someone comes and tell you that he has seen a unicorn, and you deny that claim, you are doing so on your previous position of never having seen a unicorn in your life. Or perhaps it's by the reason that the person is untrustworthy, and that untrust triumphs his claims of having seen an unicorn.

What is the difference between "contemplative contemplation" ( whatever that is) and use of logic and intellect. Give me an example. Hint: if you are contemplating without using logic, your depending on vision and appearance. So someone on acid can also be said to be contemplating. Again, stop using these flashy words, "wisdom" "insight discennment" believing that they are credible as definition onto themselves. They are not. They are quite meaningless the way you are using them. Also if you are rejecting falsities you are doing that on the basis of another position. You are using logical procession here without realizing that you are. ....Ok, I'm going to say this for the next one millionth time. I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT THE BUDDHA OR WHAT CANDRAKIRTI TAUGHT. (the only reason I brought up the Kalama sutta was because you said the Buddha didn't teach reasoning or analysis) OK? YOU"RE THE ONE WALKING AROUND HERE TELLING EVERYONE YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED AND EVERYONE ELSE IS DELUDED. SO STAND FOR YOUR OWN AWAKENING INSTEAD OF RESORTING TO THE BUDDHA'S AUTHORITY. If your support at the end of the day is going to be, "it is so because the Buddha said so." Then fine. Then your realization is dependent on your faith in the Buddha.

.... So this guy is basically saying: "the Buddha taught not to be dogmatic and appeal to scientific knowledge and reason unless it's what he taught. And those relying on their own capacity to reason are just not ready for what I teach, so I'm just teaching them to be self-reliant." Somehow this sounds like a twisted interpretation of a quote that is very clear onto itself. It makes Buddha sound like a manipulative salesman. And also, none of these "immediately verifiable" Buddhist ethical positions are self evident. This guy seems to think so because, ah of course, he is a Buddhist and think everything that's Buddhist is already true. Your arguing against dogma with another dogma. It sounds ridiculous.

Did you read the quote? The first sentence says precisely to not trust in the teacher/person. It seems like you don't really understand the place of the intellect in practice. It's not everything, but is a very important aspect of one's being. Again, it isn't just the language that forms the intellect, language is only one expression of it. Our ability to reflect on our own being, to know what it is, to understand what it is, is what our intellect is. Understanding and awareness can be said, imo, to be inseparable: to be alive is to know. You rely too heavily on scripture, which is incidentally, what the Buddha says one shouldn't do in that quote. The scriptures were all written at least 400 years after the Buddha died. Do you know how long that is for teachings to be passed on? Even via chanting and memory? Especially when the sangha was divided into numerous sects? (Think back 400 years from now for perspective on how long this is). Even right after the Buddha died, the order of the sangha shifted immediately. So it's not sensible to rely on the scriptures word by word, but to take the main ideas from them and integrate them into your own path, see if it makes sense and if it's practical. Whether or not Bahiya is praised or not is of little importance. The quote of the Kalama Sutta is not significant because the Buddha said it, but because it's a very sensible position to approaching spirituality among a vast sea of people who claim to know the truth, to be masters. You were born to Buddhism so this idea may not resonate with you as much, but seekers, particularly from the West, have searched for their own path, and the only reliance one has is one's own reason and sensibilities. Bahiya's enlightenment is unsatisfactory because he just followed directions like a dog; he may have glimpsed the nature of reality, but that is the limit of his progress because his enlightenment is not his own. And don't toss in words like "true nature of reality" or "liberation" lightly and believe that the words justify themselves. "True compassion" or "awakening" are all flashy little terms you pick out from Buddhist lingo, but the terms do not give themselves credence. For example you say, "well it doesn't matter because people wake up." Well, that they became awakened is from your own perspective. It's very similar to the usage of the word "God" in Abrahamic religions: "God is our Creator and it's just important that I have now developed an unbending faith in Him. That is the point, I have awakened to his grace." If you study the language of other religions, you realize that the terms like "nature of reality," "liberation," "awakening" are all pretty much meaningless if used only in their own context. As for your tidbit on compassion, you compassion ironically seems to be dry and an analytically justified one. I don't feel any true "passion" in it at all. Compassion is very much a natural element of being alive. We don't feel empathy because we decided to or because we tell ourselves that it's a duty, but because it's a necessary element that underlies all forms of communication, that we are capable of understanding how someone else feels. IMO, you have a vast amount to learn about compassion because in your own words, you have very little experience with suffering of your own self and others. You don't just take a man and shove "anatta anatta" down his throat. That is not compassion, but a self serving mission.

You display no sense of empathy in the way you communicate with others from what I've seen in the past years. It is didactic, it's a "shove it down your throat" way, and polarizing people into the "us awakened Buddhists" against "those deluded beings." It has not been a display of compassion. ....and I am suggesting to you that maybe you shouldn't trust your vision of that figure so much. I am unsatisfied by the pretentious contemplative insight you suggest in your posts. As if what you write is logically sound, or have coherent sense in the ideas behind them. Because clearly from this discussion you rely heavily on visions and observations, but most of all, in your faith in Buddhism and its teachings, which you wrongly label as true investigative insight. True investigation begins from minimal assumptions, it doesn't begin with "let's confirm that what the Buddha taught is true." Nothing is purely intellectual exercise when it involves deep and genuine questioning, and questioning involves categorical awareness, i.e. thinking but not necessarily language. It is necessary because our senses are often untrustworthy. You should know this better than anyone. The Buddha did teach analysis. He said it even before he gave his own lecture, telling people to consider what he says, to think and contemplate them, to see if it make sense before accepting their meaning. Bahiya clearly did not do that did he? And so imo his enlightenment is unsatisfactory. "Rely not on the teacher/person, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." -Kalama Sutta But even the post you make here is out of touch with this very discussion. I am not interested (man, how many times have I written this comment) in what the Buddha taught. It is irrelevant to me when I am having a discussion with what you claim to have realized. It is only relevant if your only evidence is your faith in the Buddha, in which case, I will dismiss your claims as faith oriented and not self owned. I don't doubt that you have attained a degree of spiritual clarity. The way you are experiencing reality is obviously different than most people. But I believe you have become enamored with that experience and have ceased to look deeper into it. But more alarmingly, I have begun to doubt your motivations for all this is tied to something much more intricate than a mere "I want to become enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings" or even "I want to cease all suffering."

Maybe Wowee isn't a clone of Gerard, but share a certain opinion about you that others do as well. Maybe Seth or I aren't as deluded as you might think. Gerard and Seth (don't know about Wowee much as a taobum) are sincere and dedicated practitioners. Their word and insight do count for something. And I maybe be a young and still very inexperienced spiritual practitioner, but I do have some sense and the ability to question. Just look over what you wrote above. "So you either accept by faith that I am awakened and benefit from my advice and writings, or you don't, and I don't care. But you will never stop me - nothing will - from sharing the truth with the world " What are you? The savior of the world? This is an alarming sign. I don't know how it is in Singapore, but here in the U.S. I've ran into plenty of people who give off the exact vibe you do now. Haha! "You will never stop me!" What does that entail? That you are out here to do something. There is a motive in your interactions that is beyond just mere sharing. It's a very self serving attitude and behind it all, an inverted ego trip if you will, nothing like Thusness' other screen name says: "passerby." I like how you compare yourself to the Buddha and now you believe you are some messenger of the Buddha. Your tone here is ambitious, not empathetic, and filled with a sense of a self defining purpose, even grandeur. I feel no true empathy from what you write, there's no hint of humane compassion in any of it. You seem so disconnected from those who you are apparently trying to guide through their "suffering", no wonder you sound like a robot. It's truly a disappointment that after all these years, underneath all the intelligent writing and so called insights, you reveal yourself as a very blinded person, ironically, about your own self. And I find all of this very very troubling and sad. You are not doing any helpful jobs in clarifying anything but spewing your truths as the universal truth. Your ideas are a mess of contradictions and uninvestigated claims. Didn't you read over your own posts above? I asked you how and what led to your realization and your reply was "I had a realization because I realized." The entire process of your investigations and contemplations are just hidden indoctrinations. It is not uncommon for people to believe that their own realizations are rare and one of a kind. I have read several new age and modern spiritual "masters" all claim something similar: "my teachings are no where to be found, they are the only true teachings, blah blah, you won't find it anywhere." If you wish continue to reply to my criticisms about your ideas go ahead. I am pretty certain all you have at the end of the day is a repetitive ideology you seem to believe is a cure for all questions, again, ironically, very much like the word "God." But I also understand that this is very personal for you, you have a lot to lose in this discussion if there is even a hint of doubt that sparks in your mind. I don't think it will come to that point, because it seems like you've crossed a point of faith that is incredibly difficult to return from, and done, would very much undo your entire identity.

Xabir, please stop. You're going to ruin people's lives. I say this in the most genuine way possible. And the potential effect you can have on other practitioners is the primary reason I am debating you on this thread. You are not qualified in worldly manners enough to be guiding or teaching anyone out of suffering. Your ideology is not a responsible way to live one's life and taught on a bigger scale can easily be corrupted due to its heavy reliance on experience over reason. So far it's a very incomplete teaching, hence I advise that you leave the book aside for a period of time. And moreover, there is a frightening tendency in your manners of communication to sell your teachings (not for money, but a different type of satisfaction, similar to the one behind your blog), to spread them among internet boards and spiritual practitioners. There is a proselytizing manner underneath it all. It's a frightening attitude that "my way is the best" mentality. Someone linked me to a post you made on your forum where you bragged that Thusness' way was one of a kind among all pracitioners, to which Thusness scolded you. You should ask Thusness' opinion on all this since his word is the only one you seem to have an ear for.

Daniel was high on his own horse writing that book (just like you are now), claiming he was an arhant blah blah, that cycle mode was best and everyone who claims otherwise is just fooling themselves and dismissing other sects as inadequate unnecessary yada yada until he ran into AF people and started having PCE's to realize cycle mode was subpar. Your book is bunch of nonsense and those people who think it's wisdom are probably just bunch of other Buddhists who orgasm at words like anatta and dependent origination. Anyone with some sense and less fetish with Buddhist doctrine can see through it. Oh god, this whole post just reeks, it's pathetic! Come on Xabir! What type of stupid response is this! Why do you need some comparison to Daniel or Kenneth or some praise by this guy or that? You need some soto zen master letter of recommendation for your own enlightenment? You sound like some 12 year old on a playground battling for supremacy like Gerard said! Your book as a benefit? That's why you aren't going to destroy it! Hahahahahahah!!!! That's such bullshit. Benefit? It's gonna mess up a lot of practitioners and set them very very behind with its pseudo wisdom. You should do yourself a huge favor and go do some basic insight meditation. Seems like your direct path just drove you blind off a cliff.

Then you don't understand habit and how frameworks are formulated. You do in fact conceive that you live in the United States when awake. It is a conditional belief and a framework that shapes your daily activities, just as your non-belief in santa claus or rabbits with horns does, albeit very minimally (for instance, if you encountered a santa at a mall, you will think he is fake). Also, if you do not conceive something at all, you will not be able to use the idea while communicating, since you wouldn't know it. Hence, the usage of "but" there is unjustified. So someone who was alive before the car was invented must not have this spontaneous wisdom, eh? You are relying too heavily on your ability to experience spontaneously without reflecting on that experience. You've transitioned the way you experience reality but also discarded a valuable asset from the previous way of conception, which was mainly dual and analytic in nature. You have moved into the heart but have forgotten the mind, and currently, as evident from this discussion, lost as to how to integrate the two. It may appear to you that you are not conceiving the keyboard, the letters, its location relative to the body, but infact these are all conditioned and learned responses from your previous interactions with the keyboard. For instance if a totally new tool appeared to you, or you had a new sense of spatial existence, you must again reflect on the tool's usage and sense of location to choose in what manner you will act. And this will nonetheless be affected by your previous experiences as well. As for your obsession with discarding the "truly existent," as I have suggested before, that is only a matter of degrees of how much reality you give to an experience. If you indeed did not believe in any existing keyboard and letters, there would be no action possible, since you would, well, not know that it is in front of you. If you said, "it only conventionally exists," then the relationship between you and the keyboard would alter to a degree just as it also would if you said "it truly exists." But in both cases, the existence of the keyboard and its location is established, no matter how thinly it is done. Why? Because you used it, you assumed it existed. Really? How do you just listen to music without conditioning?

No, not establishing something would be, "I don't know." The agnostic position. You establish a position and defend it against another as truth vs. ignorance. So you have been arguing for that vision. You "see" the causal process or are you part of the causal process? If former, it is no longer suchness of only the seen. If latter the causal process cannot be seen in its entirety for you are only a part of that chain. The part cannot see the whole when the whole is a progression, that is like your finger grasping the whole hand. You are again merely speaking about linguistic conceptualization but not habitual conceptualization, in your words, latent tendencies. In the first paragraph there, why, "nonetheless"? That is a cop out word. How can a manifestation be experienced as a causal activity without inferring where it came from, where it leads, i.e. context. Context is inferred, it is not direct. Moreover, why are you not establishing causality as existing? Now causality is empty? What is causality dependent on for you to say it is empty? Causality is a principle, not an object. How is it empty? In the second paragraph, you are speaking again with a word ("nonetheless") that show you have no insight into your own progress on the path. How is it that without conceptual inferring you can instinctively see and know the causalities of experience without effort? That says something about your very nature and what it means to know doesn't it? If you don't understand this question, the second paragraph is a lie or a parroting or worse, an indoctrinated idea. These are directions, not investigations. Then you are a physicalist? If not, explain why you are not a materialist. I ask this question because here you seem to believe that the moment of manifestation depends on non-conscious causes and conscious causes based on material causes, like the brain, the computer, the screen, etc. This paragraph is such a mess I'm going to break it down sentence by sentence. "Relatively"? Relative to what? What is a unit of phenomena relative to when you are claiming that certain phenomena unit A interacts with another certain phenomena unit B to produce another phenomena C? "There are only composites"? How can there be only composites without units? If a composite has no units, then that itself is the minimal unit, you have a new elemental unit now. There cannot be "just composites." On to the third sentence: "B and C manifesting in and as JustA et distinct from A" makes no sense. If B and C manifest nondually in and as Just A, it is undistinguishable from Just A. If they are the causes and appear simultaneously with A, then they are also the effect, in which case one can no longer say B and C are causes that produce A. The Maha examples of the black hole makes no sense. Does the black hole reveal the whole universe? No. It just weighs one universe. This is like saying a 25 pound gorilla reveals a 25 pound piece of rock. I was there in person when thich nhat hanh explained seeing the universe in a tea cup. Someone asked him if he directly seeing all the causes and he said no. He said he sees the principle of it, which is very different and is not a direct experience, but a framed experience. The tea cup is experienced in a different frame of interconnectedness. So again, not just suchness of the seen. Mumble jumble. If you are going to discard us using the idea of similarities and differences we might as stop communicating, since knowing the difference is what makes communication or formulation of ideas possible at all. With the latter sentence, if two entities are not different, that means they are a continuation, linked. It precisely means they are not disjointed. First of all, you brought out the categorization of units as a support to explain dependent origination and the disjointedness of reality. If you are merely going to use dependent origination as a way to disprove that explanation, we have a situation where you are negating your own proof with the very conclusion that proof is supposed to support. Make sense? Simply you are just shoving everything into a hokey pokey "dependent origination" box. Secondly, if you are pointing out to the disjoint aspect, then you are not utilizing A and B relatively as pointers but establishing A and B as evidence for how you've come to the conclusion that reality is in fact disjointed. You seem to have missed my question. "Seeing in this moment that what manifest is agentless and causally manifested, as if everything is coming together for this one complete moment." Now my question was, So how do you directly experience the cause and the effect simultaneously whilst in moment A of manifestion to know the difference? Whilst hearing the sound of the bell, how do you also know [that its] causalities include "the person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, etc."? If the seeing is spontaneous, nondual, direct and disjoint, how do you directly realize that there was a previous moment of a series of causations that bring this very moment to its manifestation? Or are you merely talking about a "sense" experience or a way of framing an experience so that it is seen as impersonal and founded by myriad of causes and conditions? A moment itself does not reveal its causes and conditions as we have explained through the alien encountering a car example. The car does not simply say to the alien, "I've been cause by such and such conditions and is called a car." As for your first sentence, if you believe in the distinction between matter and thought, in the seen, there is then definitely not just the seen, but all sorts of material designs occurring. It is no non-dual at all, but separated in the seer (the brain and its consciousness, the seeing, the interpretation of information, and the seen, which is the material itself). Also, so it seems you don't know what mind is a product of. So what is you basis for saying that mind is dependently originated on...what? Namdrols example sucks. Humans give birth to humans like rice seed to rice..ok...and humans die just as rice plants die and go into the soil. Rice plants don't die and become rice seeds again. So how is this any adequate observation to proving mind from a previous life?

Mhmm, and that makes it not some "spontaneous arising" either, since you have an idea (conventions) and an another idea about that idea (that it isn't real). If you do not conceive of the conventions that it is a car, how will you know that it is a car or that it is something you can "drive"? You are not looking enough into the mind but just blinded by mere experience. Of course you conceive of a car, it just does not cross your mind in the form of language, "this is a car," but through habitual reaction. If you take an alien being and put him in front of a car, he won't recognize what it is. He will have a totally different habitual contextualization to the experience of seeing the car. He won't know any of what you wrote above, its purpose to drive, what it is composed of. If there were just shapes colors and movement, how could you reflect later that it was a tree you saw? Second, when I am hearing music, my mind is at once interacting with the music according to many variables that have conditioned that experience of listening beforehand. For example, someone who had been listening his lifetime classical music, if you give him some Ramones (punk) music, he would think it's garbage. Yet if a punk fan listens to it, it's sheer brilliance. So no one "just listens to music." Hahahahaha! Did you read the last sentence there? "My realization is based on realizing." Great explanation there. Realization is based on realization!

Good for you, you exceptional yogi.

...no...that's not what happens when the mind "reifies" things. You are not getting attached to an object or the santa claus, you are becoming attached to the beliefs in them. Believing is a act, a verb. You reify your own actions. On the surface to an assuming eye it appears that you are reifyng the objects, but really its the state of mind that is being given an entity. The process is like this: you clench your fist. Then you clench for it too long and forget what it feels to unclench it. Then the clenching of the fist becomes like an object, "a clenching fist." Doesn't it have to "interact" with something to make B? If you say just, A then B then C, how do you know A comes from a cause since all you are experiencing is A then B then C, as in, only the manifested effects? You are not answering my questions but stating your convictions again. For the millionth time, I am inquiring into the question of HOW. Do you understand this word? I am going to write it a few times so you really understand it. HOW? HOW? HOW? And I don't care what Zen thinks or what Mahamudra thinks or whoever thins this or that. Repeating these two points is becoming very tiresome. So I'm going to write this point repeatedly again for you. I DON'T CARE WHAT SOMEONE ELSE THINKS. I CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK AND HOW YOU"VE COME TO THAT REALIZATION. Ok? Anyways, you talked about these units of phenomena to explain dependent origination. So you need to define what this unit of phenomenon A is before we have the next phenomenon B. You mentioned "sitting" and "eating an apple.' Are they different phenomena? What about when you sit and eat an apple? Then are A and B happening simultaneously? You also missed the reason I asked you "where does the interaction of B and C happen." I asked you that question because you said phenomena A comes from the interaction of B and C, and you said that you knew this from direct experiencing. So how do you directly experience the cause and the effect simultaneously whilst in moment A to know the difference? So if we go back to (sheesh, another borrowed example, one recycled for maybe six years now from Thusness) your example of: "Everything becomes a process of interconnected activities. The person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears, etc, i.e. the conditions, all comes together and then manifests itself as the drumbeat sound - and in that sound JUST the sound but it is the entire universe coming together and manifesting the sound. This can lead to the Maha sort of insight and experience." Whilst hearing the sound of the bell, how do you also know the causalities including "the person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, etc." Also since you have to move onto a new phenomenon C, and A needs to interact with another phenomenon to produce it, whilst experiencing "just A," the sound, how will you experience it interacting with a phenomenon B to produce C? Moreover, this is not an example of disjoint causal manifestation. The person, the stick, the bell, are not disjointed. They are actually connected seamlessly in one fluid motion. Is the hitting apart from the bell and the stick and the air? Where does the person end and the stick begin for you to say definitively that they are disjointed? Where does the sound become disjointed from the vibration of the face of the drum that enters the ear and is perceived as the sound of the bell? Ok, again, these are just blatant statements. For the first sentence, I didn't say thought = the brain. But it could as well be that the brain's activity is what we tend to experience as thoughts, just as nerve cells are what we experience as certain feelings. If you don't hold materialistic views, you need to explain why you don't. This is a question addressed in the other thread also. Why do you not hold materialistic views? As for the second sentence, why doesn't it hold to your experiential investigation that thoughts do or do not abide in the head. These are just meaningless definitive statements you are tossing around. Please explain instead of just spouting paragraphs of "empty because d.o. because empty, just luminous" bullcrap so we can have an actual discussion. Why does dependent origination, basically the principle of causation, negate location? Location is merely a relative term for where something is. Why does dependent origination deny it? As for your claims of "no essence," why does the principle of causation deny the existence of an essence? To take your example, if A and B interact to make a completely new C, why is that the reason to deny that C has an essence? In fact, it seems that this idea supports the essence of appearances. Essence means: 1. The intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, esp. something abstract, that determines its character. 2. A property or group of properties of something without which it would not exist or be what it is. You clearly distinguish a new phenomena apart from the phenomena that causes it. Hence that defines this totally new phenomena, it gives it an "essence," a definition. The property of C is that is is distinct cause of A and B. Actually, I think on the contrary. The principle of dependent origination is very difficult to understand conceptually and applying to reality is as difficult. The fact that you think it's simple shows that you haven't given it much contemplation on the meaning of cause and effect, and more importantly the knowledge of cause and effect. What you are missing in all these replies is a sort of insight into insight. You need to examine your own insights more carefully, in line not with the question, "what I know," but rather "how do I know."