Lucky7Strikes

It's not an issue of existence and non-existence. It's an issue of whether mind is dependently originated or mind is dependently originating. . Xabir's anatta is exactly that: no doer, no controller, phenomena just rolling on. So everything just dependently originates through conditions, and mind is simply a chain or a stream of those conditions, called a mindstream. But you can see it other way. That dependent origination/emptiness is simply a characteristic of the mind's arising. That those conditions are created by the mind. As for parroting claims, it's more to do with the way Xabir accumulates knowledge and practices. You need to be familiar with his blog and history of practice to see it.

You already knew what you were supposed to know. That's not really inquiry or establishing any sort of view. That's why you have a hard time actually debating points with your own words and anecdotes without quoting or through Thusness's words. It is a resort to an authority when we are debating using reason, unless that discussion centers around a certain quote or a passage. It's basically, "it's true because x said so." It shows that you are incapable of using your own understanding to coherently relay a point and somehow your personal experience is better understood in another person's linguistic framework. This also partially reveals that you have conditioned yourself according to that framework in the first place. p.s. Buddhist texts that you've picked out. Articles you've selected.

The use of the word reality did not mean that. The usage is to contrast the the illusory nature of the idea of solidity of form to mind. Mind does have reality in the sense that we are experiencing being alive right now. That's the most basic realness you get otherwise that word doesn't have function. For instance, if you say everything is illusion, then everything is also real. We both agree that mind's manifestations are empty. Why haven't you understood this similarity yet? It's probably because you also have this tendency to pigeonhole everyones views into the 7 stages of Thusness. You see hindu Mind every time such a notion is raised. Also why is the third Karmapa dragged into this? Do you need him to stand behind you for you to feel safer about your realizations? These are seemingly trivial but very significant indications of how narrowly you understand others. Why don't you approach individual spiritual understandings on their own basis without carrying a measuring stick into discussions to see how he/she measures up to your stages? This is more alarming that you began doing this without even experiencing them yourself for years. Not really. You deny you. Anatta: just seen, heard, tasted. Maha: You feel universe. Universe eats. Determinism is not necessarily leaving things to fate. It can be leaving things to conditions, or dependent origination. Empty out everything from source to dependent origination is your view. That contradicts: There is no doer, no controller. No one but just manifestation, d.o. and conditions rolling along (why don't you quote the part from the Visuddhimagga that says that). That is your view. We went over this a long time ago and this was the conclusion we reached.

You want others to know, because you want to help them, about things you do not even have direct realizations of? Why, because it is Buddhist? IMO, that's a very condescending manner and has an underlying dogmatic tendency to it. You may not notice it yourself. I for one, do not understand why from years ago you would defend Thusness's teachings when you yourself did not have sufficient realizations yourself. That's just pure faith clothed in wisdom. You should stop quoting because you have a tendency to excessively rely on them to help your points. Often times your posts lack any personal reasoning or explanations but is just a cut and paste splatter. This not only gives off a false sense of knowledge, but of authority. Why do you need to revert to a quote to express your own realizations? Are you incapable to expressing them yourself? We are not discussing sutras or teachings of Padmasambhava or the Karmapa. We are discussing your methods and realizations. Most people are busy, lazy or do not have the mindset to go read Buddhist texts in depth to check if indeed your interpretation is correct. Buddhism heavily relies on context and needs to be digested widely. Hand picking quotes is not only misguiding but is really taking advantage of other people's lack of knowledge in Buddhist texts, especially in a forum where a range of spirituality is respected.

It's very subtle, but the consequences are deep. This is Xabir's point: Mind is just label on the process of causes and conditions happening that are self-aware. So when you eat, it's not you eating, its universal causes and conditions coming together of you eating. And when you decide that everything is empty and ungraspable, you experience everything as they arise spontaneously. Note, the element of determinism. You don't exist. You just dependently originate according to conditions. My point: Causes and conditions are and always were illusions of the mind's construct. That there is no reality other than mind and its ideas and conceptions chosen to be experienced. None of its manifestations are truly real, so we agree to a degree on emptiness and dependent originating nature of mind. Where Xabir sees an impersonal process, I choose to see mind's limitless potential for manifestation. This is rather free will. You exist and choose to experience certain conditions based on views, habits, beliefs, actions.

The disagreement is in our understandings of mind. The point, however, is that Xabir is not here to learn, but to preach dogma because he thinks he will get merit from it. Or some other reason. He is in his eyes here to correct people. Another problem is his inquiries and realizations are often supported not by himself, but by hand picked quotes and assumptions presupposed on a teaching. They are not genuine inquiries but tailored paths. The biggest problem is people who come across his posts for the first time will often miss this, especially people not familiar with Buddhism, and believe what he writes to be some sort of truths or absolute Buddhism or deep personal realizations.

They are not just similar. They are eerily parallel, the language is imitative in style and vocabulary. You can get brainwashed into any sort of direct experience. I'm not discrediting your attainments and realizations. Only you can be the sincere judge of that. But the way you present them lacks any sort of personal originality. Several years ago when we began discussions on Thusness's stuff and Buddhism, you showed the same conviction in his words as you do now. And at that time you lacked any in depth personal realization as you admit. What does this say about your approach to spirituality, that you were willing to debate for pages on end on something you did not have thorough experience of with an iron conviction? How can you have confidence in your inquiry when you had already convinced yourself of someone else's truths? And christ, more and more quotes. The whole point I'm directing at you is NOT about emptiness, self, no-self, yada. But your notably dogmatic approach to spirituality.

Right. Your purpose here is to lead people into your version of Buddhism to gain merit. This is something I did not fully understand until I came across that passage. You come to thetaobums with a specific purpose in mind, with this sense of spreading the Dharma. There are a bunch of rockheads here, including me often times, that makes us sound like close minded fools. But I don't come here with a purpose or to preach or to correct, I come on this board like many others, I presume, with not much of well defined agenda at all but out of interest and passion in spiritual knowledge. People on the bums are different from those on Buddhist boards in that they are mostly individual thinkers and practitioners who seem to trust their own judgments over scripture or religious dogma. This at least leaves room for discussion and open mindedness, because there is an admittance to one's own shortcomings. Your underlying goal on the other hand, is to instruct people here who are less familiar with Buddhist sutras, handpicking passages, selling yourself on authority alone under the Buddhist banner.

Ok, not to mention this is almost verbatim Thusness's words... You made a leap in your inquiry here, this is precisely the error that I've been mentioning, like a man trying to look for his eyes, and not seeing his eyes, concludes, there is no eyes, that eyes are empty, or that the eyes are in the seeing, or that seeing is in the objects (which is close to what you are saying). Just because it cannot be found, does not mean it does not exist. You have to understand the very method of finding. You've forced yourself to this realization. It is not authentic. Exclamations of practitioners upon realization, especially in Zen, are all unique. I have a collection of thousands of songs of enlightenment and they each have their own character. But what I see above is word per word a copy of someone else's sentences ingrained into your mind. Why does Padmasambhava say that is is the source, origin, and Karmapa that is the basis? Why not do they simply say, as you do, that the mind is a label placed on interdependent origination? Or that awareness is inherent to the universal process of dependent origination? Or that that mind is dependently originated from something else? Rather Karmapa says "limitless mind."

This is not your language, but Thusness's. You are parroting. To point out a few problems with this post: 1) The pure consciousness/beingness as you speak of is not necessarily "as if a higher being is being lived through you." 2) Non-duality is not necessarily subject/object merging as you prescribe. 3) Coming back to a source is not One Mind or awareness. You are prescribing problems in the path that is personal and that does not apply to every seeker. The danger in this is that people might come to misunderstand their views according to your problems instead of developing their own insights. I personally do not believe you actually encountered truly any of the Presence/One Mind/or whatever "error" you write about because you had already made yourself believe that those were errors. Instead you just pretend; a finish line has already been set up. Moreover, people who come across your posts like this will mistakenly believe that those insights were attained through your own inquiry, but this is not the case. The case is you had already indoctrinated yourself to Thusness's path and language even before practicing or understanding what they meant by fully encountering those realizations. Hence all your understandings are lacking in their originality. You didn't arrive at them but more or less brainwashed yourself to them. So you can only explain youself within a very narrow frame or words and examples. You are spreading poison by imposing this on others as if this was what the Buddha taught. This is difficult for others on this board to see who come across your stuff as if they were fresh. But as someone who has engaged in sincere dialogue with you in the past years, a lot of your faults are revealing. The way you engage people on the bums is also incredibly close minded and has an element of proselytism (yes, I remember the part where Thusness told you to acquire virtue by doing this). I noticed your posts on dharmawheel has a completely different attitude to them.

This is silly. This is like trying to hammer the hammer you are hammering with. You are missing the fact that there is no subject or object pole to empty out. That very way of approaching reality is flawed like trying to measure the degrees in a circle through squares. All this isn't really a reply to my post, but a re affirmation of your views in the same language you seem only capable of doing. It's a head scratcher by this point how you are incapable of having a discussion outside of your lingo. We were discussing your way of inquiring, as in how you came to the conclusions you have, and the only thing you can do is quote a passage from a sutta. This doesn't indicate inquiry, but scripture dogma, not unlike any blind belief to tweak your views accordingly. You can't seem to explain your inquiry otherwise. Stop quoting sutras! And the same passage over and over, as if you are Bahiya himself. I can quote passages from the Avatamsaka that says the mind the the painter of reality, the world is in the mind, the Lankavatara says all this arise from universal mind (not to speak of more eternalist sounding Nirvana sutta) and Lonchenpa and Padmasambhava say all arises in the mind's illusion, the Shurangama sutta likewise says all phenomena is in the treasury of the Buddha's clear mind, certain Dzogchen points to pure consciousness, the Bodhidharma texts declare all things come from the mind, on and on just from the top of my head. And by hand picking quotes to your taste you give off the air on thetaobums as if your word is the one and only dharma. The path you are on is directed towards cessation, arhatship, but imo is not the path of Bodhisattvas who have mastered the illusions of mind. Your view will eventually empty out all dhammas. In traditional alchemy there are two stages, one of dismantling and the other of reconstructing. Just dismantling is only a stage in the path to purify all the unnecessary clusters made from confusion. To become attached to mere dismantling by hammering things apart, one should comprehend how and why it is constructed in such a manner. Arhatship is just a path of purifying attachment but does not point to insight into the nature of the construction. Becoming a master alchemist is to become knowledgeable of both ways of the craft so you become a master of your own existence as well as attain skillful means to heal other messed up bodies.

Contemplation, ime, is anything but simple. You are not contemplating the bahiya sutta the way you did there, but indoctrinating yourself to it. There is a problem with this inquiry in that you are assuming that those sensations are inherent in their processes and not affected by the way you choose to perceive them. You are establishing a certain objective process and wrongly attributing awareness to them as if your senses "own" awareness in themselves, or inseparable. The very error arises when you say to yourself, as you wrote, "I will investigate what is in those sensations." You have already established a subject/object duality of thinking sensations as true or different from perceiving. "Who am I?" used in that manner can only let one glimpse the I AM realization. That question simply makes you wrongly search for an I as if it were a thing, which is an incorrect approach in the first place. The better question of reaching I AM is rather "how do we know? What is knowing/awareness/consciousness?" and "what is the most basic fact we can know?" The I AM understanding does not merely connote a sense of or some experience of certainty of being, but a comprehension through inquiry into the nature of awareness, whether it can feasibly belong to something, arise from something, findable, etc. So before you inquire, to inquire into your way of inquiring itself, to sort through hidden assumptions before coming to a conclusion.

.....I think you just affirmed the contents of my post here. . Intellectual conviction leads to certain non-conceptual experiences and also the other way around. "Experiential investigation" is just deeper and more sincere inquiry than playing with concepts. There are various modes of non-conceptual experiences and they are interpreted in varying ways according to reason and inquiry. What is glaringly missing from your posts are anecdotes of personal investigation. You often substitute other people's inquiry to justify your points. It's not really a matter of "why" but "how." As in "how" did you come to decide that your view is indeed a valid realization rather than reverting to faith in someone else's teaching? Also it is not "obvious." That's not really a good way to engage in discussions. It's a dismissive attitude. Maybe you should try to answer the questions you posted: "why is mind luminous? Why is mind empty? Why is phenomena impermanent? Why does grasping and craving result in suffering?" Imagine you are sitting across a materialist scientist. Are you going to quote him Buddhist scriptures to prove your view of the world is more legitimate than his? He will produce much more evidence before you to show that you are psychologically deluded and is just another religious fundamentalist, while all you can do, from my judgment, is give him quotes from a Buddhist practitioner a thousand years ago or tell him it's just the way you experience things...

This is an example of replying to a sensible post from Otis without any explanations but just flat out, "this is just the way it is!"

@ Xabir There is a great difference in your approach to spirituality compared to others on this thread and the tao bums in general. In a majority of your posts there is an over reliance on proof by authority rather than secular explanations of your realizations. Much of your statements are no more than "this is a realization, because it's in this quote" (not to mention that all those quotes can be interpreted differently in wider contexts). Or more frighteningly, "this is just how it is, because I see it that way." There is a noticeable lack of just... explanations. I don't see how this is different than a Christian fundamentalist exclaiming, "I realize everything is made by God, because as it is said in passage x in the Bible" or "I know God is up there in the sky. I see it that way and you don't." If you have direct realizations of the nature of reality, why not just explain it in your own language, rather than using lofty terms like "dependent origination" or "emptiness" or at least explain them according to how you've come to understand them? I think a lot of Buddhist jargon alienates people who have chosen to rely on their personal abilities to reason and wade through authoritative dogma. And because many spiritual practitioners have respect for Buddhism, it does disservice to take advantage of this by throwing quotes at people, making it look like you are the master of Buddhist teachings. It's even more insulting to tell people to go read some hand picked sutra when you are well aware that many Buddhist sutras are diverse in their teachings and sometimes seemingly contradictory in meaning. It's also as if you are already assuming that that person should succumb to Buddhist teachings. This isn't a Buddhist board like dharmawheel.net. If Namdrol posted on thetaobums the way he does on that board, it would look like sheer religious dogma because he chooses to explain things only in Buddhist terms.

This also gets at spiritual practitioners eager for enlightenment, who immediately shun their desires in fear and start running towards another pole. Great post. .

Then what makes you different from a dog?

Does anyone have the directions for the hand mudras for Kunlun Level 3? Any additional information regarding the practice would be great. Thanks! PM me if you feel like this is against copyright. I've done Kunlun on and off for the past 2 and half years and the waterfall meditation is really a closing down practice. Also, whatever happened to the book?

Ah thanks!

Bump...

This is just a vicious cycle of self-affirmed beliefs. http://i.imgur.com/H7EAJ.jpg

I agree. All those are stupid reasons by people who themselves don't really know what to live for. I believe people have the right to commit suicide, but it's unfortunate because they likely did not see another way out. IMO, the main reason why you shouldn't kill yourself is you don't yet know the potentials of life. And all this spirituality stuff is to explore our existence. It's much better to have come to this point at some point in life with serious intentions behind it rather than tucking it away with half-assed answers. I don't know exactly what answers you expect. Certain Taoists will tell you you can reach the heavens through alchemy. Buddhists will say enlightenment. Christians..whatever, you get the point. One's reasons for living is most personal. It's really up to you to decide. .

Jing leaks out of the genitals. From what I understand the kidneys and ming men point is where jing is generated and stored.

I don't know it just sucks. Having been around spiritual communities and students I know and have seen the type of women who could easily be taken advantage of with fancy claims to some awakening or wisdom. I can vouche for this on experience that people become attracted to others because they are put on spiritual pedestals, a "savior mentality" of sorts. Those women are usually people with troubled pasts and most vulnerable. It's just not a healthy relationship.