Lucky7Strikes

I'm not suggesting the sutra is right or wrong. I just found it funny that the course of dialogue here was almost parallel.

:lol: Ananda says this exact same thing after. And the Buddha yells at him and says the elements don't actually arise. That they are is false and appear only to the mind. Basically everytime Ananda recites the teaching of causes and conditions, the Buddha says they are false and that it is just one bright mind. He also uses the term "treasury" of the mind.

This exact dialogue happens between Ananda and the Buddha in the Shurangama Sutra. . The Buddha makes it clear that seeing-nature does not come from the organs or the objects, or from nothing. Do you think seeing is in the eyes? Ask a blind man what he sees. If you have OBE's you can see from outside of the body. In dreams you see a whole world when your eyes are covered with eyelids.

IMO, that's exactly the wrong approach. That you have to be a "thing." Actually this is kind of the primal cause of all samsaric confusions. Not realizing one's own creative potency awareness objectifies its own manifestation. So dualistic world is solidified.

I'm alive.

You also see non-division through division. It's in this very reply. "Distinguish division from non-division." Distinguish is a divisive word and view. *I don't think this much of a thoughtful reply to all that I wrote .

No that's not what I meant. I meant thinking. Does thinking see thinking? Does sound hear sound? That would mean sound is aware. (You would blast music and awareness would drift as the soundwaves) Or mental processes are aware in themselves. Where does a thought begin and end? You would be all these chopped up awarenesses and have no connection between tasting and hearing. No memory would be established or a sense of being. You may conclude that from such reasoning that objectifies that moment of thought to itself, and go, "look, there is just these disparate moments of thought, me moving, jus things arising spontaneously." And the critical juncture during this inquiry is the realization that that very thought ("look, there is just these disparate...") itself is also another rising. And one falsely thinks this is the nature of reality when really you are just impersonally experiencing things as they rise because they are objectified. This is what you call "no-self realization." This is just another way of experiencing reality and I have no problem with that. It's spontaneous and liberating, a great way to practice and let go of grasping for me/mine mental habits. But the Buddhadharma says the objects are empty also. So you inquire into thoughts, movement, phenomena, and conclude there are no inherent separation or identity to them. However, here you are missing a critical flaw in the process, because in order to investigate various arisings, they must be contained, connected, or somehow perceived in their totality. You are stepping out of the "just this arising" understanding in order to see the relationship between multiple arisings. And to justify this process, you say afterwards, "oh, that was just another arising." There is no such thing as "just arising" inquiry. Inquiry demands connection, division, multiplicity, memory, reflection. It is a fluid process. So it's like you have a loop of justification. So you come to a nonsensical conclusion that, well, it's just like magic. As a crude example this is like a man looking for his eyes and seeing objects and not his eyes concludes that objects "see" themselves. And to see whether objects really exist or not, he closes his eye and sees darkness. So he concludes objects are not really there either. He doesn't understand that this whole thing just happens in his seeing-nature and denies his seeing entirely. You can deny everything in the world, but not awareness. Because that final denial happens in awareness. Nor does it make sense to say awareness belongs to arising of disparate moments. Not does it make sense to say one can directly know that awareness comes from something else (that can only be speculated as scientists attribute it to the brain). You can say awareness dependently originates, but only in the sense that a ball bounces. The fact that the ball bounces does not deny the ball. That would be stupid. Dependent origination is just how this dimension of awareness works.

Your ultimate denies the experience of the relative. It makes you in denial of experience due to false reasoning. It's better than saying objects see. That's because you think subject has to be some "thing." This approach is already assuming the duality of subject and object, hence your analysis of them is prone to be wrong. Is space a "thing"? No, but it exists and encompasses and contains things. It would be extreme as you say to say there is this separate space that is behind objects. But it is also extreme to say there is no such thing as space or that all is space or all there is are objects. Your case is even more ridiculous. You are cutting space into "things" and saying there is space here, then there, then there. So one concludes there is no such thing as space but separate objects. Similar to time. Yes, YOU directly see it. Or are you going to say that somehow this sound is aware of itself? Yes I am. If you are not alive, you can't investigate. Unless you are denying awareness...with awareness. Yes, if there is no mindness why aren't you denying the mindstream? You can't because that's your experience. Your logic is at odds with your experience: magic! I am trying to say awareness/mind might not be some "thing" and investigating it as such is an error. Let me understand this clearly. The process is self aware. Is there something that flows through the eighteen dhatus, or are they separate. It seems like you are saying they are separate. That would mean you would have eighteen different awarenesses. If they are causal, they would have to be linked, and the line we draw between cause and effect would be arbitrary to the mind. If you say they are not separate, the mindstream would be whole. And that's what I think is the right way. That the mindstream is indeed like an infinite ocean, but we only see it as a bounded stream.

Good, so the whole things is river. And the whole thing is blowing. I'm not saying anything. I'm just pointing out certain flaws in your inquiry. Yes. In order to investigate A or B, something must be able to contain the two thoughts to compare or establish a relationship with. If there is only A to B and a disconnect, neither would be aware of one another. This is what seeing is never just the seen. Seen and the heard would not know each other at all. Why do you keep thinking I'm supposing an entity? I'm not doing that. Yes and I'm saying that direct contemplation is just another flawed perception held on to.

It doesn't matter how appearance-like reality appears. You are still seeing it as an objective reality of some universal process happening as (conventional) you. No matter how d.o.ing or what not. There is no self evident wisdom in things that arise. The "seen" does not see dependent origination. Something dependently originated cannot see directly its origination. It can only do this through speculation. A baby cannot directly realize his coming into birth from non-birth (if we assume that people are originated at birth). it can only learn this after he is born. Your weather example does not hold because weather is not alive and doing the investigation. Your looking at your mind as if it were a thing and this is a faulty assumption to begin an inquiry with.

In order to convince yourself of this, you objectify the occurring world as part of another whole. This is seeing the absence of subject by just saying everything is object. To contemplate the non-locality of objects you subtly allow a subjective mind to evaluate the supposed objective experiences. And quickly revert to above reasoning for anatta to do away with that subjective mind as another object. There's something very flawed about this, like seeing a box of with one side blue and the other side yellow and concluding that there can be no such thing and throwing out the box altogether. These methods are ways of understanding reality and one shouldn't derive reality's nature from extreme conclusions from it.

Yes and you realize that by objectifying that investigative process. You conclude there is no controller by saying, "look, there is this process of me thinking and no controller." This way of investigating assumes first that there is duality of subject and object like you say, which is the wrong way to look at experience in the first place. It's an extreme way to view things, so logical conclusion from it won't make practical sense.

And my post above was inquiring into how you know this. And how you come to this conclusion besides blind belief in concepts like "emptiness." Your process of inquiry is very flawed as I now see it. You certify the emptiness of subject through reifying the object. Then certify the emptiness of the object through the eyes of a subject. I think this method of inquiry is a form of dualism.

I don't think it's right say "it's all awareness." Maybe it's all "in awareness." Like I wouldn't say these group of objects are all space. They are all in space. Awareness seems like a primordial dimension of existence. And this dimension seems to be alive and creative. I'm not saying anything. I'm just asking questions rising from logical inconsistencies in your interpretations. I don't know, but what your saying doesn't make much sense.

Wait what, are you saying objects are apart from awareness as if this awareness is some substance? Huh?

I think we are using awareness differently. I think you mean self-awareness. In dreams people are often aware of their dream, but not necessarily self-aware. I don't see a straight line cutting consciousness and awareness. It seems like awareness is more or less a gradient.

I don't know Vaj. This post doesn't really help me. .

Then there's some dreadful magic going on too. I'd say a lot of this "no-self universe process" magic I see on earth is pretty darn sad actually.

Perhaps this is true. But there's no way for you to verify through awareness that awareness arises simultaneously with something that is non-awareness. You also cannot directly verify with your awareness how it originated. In conventional terms this is like a man trying to directly experience his own birth happening from non-birth, which is non-sense because he would have no way of experiencing non-birth (again, in conventional terms).

That makes no sense. I think what you are trying to say is awareness has degrees of personality and impersonality to it.

And you do this through your subject. How do you know the emptiness of things if you don't investigate it with something. And you due this by just reifying the object. This is like saying. "There are all these things I see with the eyes. But I can't find the eyes except these things. So I must not have eyes and the objects must see themselves."

Experience this for myself?!! With what? Non-awareness?

I'm not sure you understood my question. I rephrased it better to Vaj. You say awareness/mind/consciousness is dependently originated on something that is non-awareness/mind/consciousness, hence it is non-inherent (if is d.o.s on itself, it wouldn't be dependent). How does your awareness confirm this directly. It would mean that it experiences non-awareness/mind/consciousness. Which would no longer make "that" a non-awareness/mind/consciousness. Let's say we even suppose this non-awareness/mind. That supposing would also be your mind doing so. There's no way for awareness to directly confirm that which it is supposedly dependent on. It would be mere speculation to do so as scientists due in their study of consciousness. I don't think the Buddha was speculating.

So the function of awareness is dependent origination. But my point is, no matter how subtle, blissful, strange, omniscient, cosmic, personal or impersonal any of these experience are you are aware of them aren't you? If you aren't how will you know you are experiencing it? Or who will verify those experiences even happened. They are just different formulations of you mind. So how can you say this totality is dependent on something else when the cognition of anything is within your mind in the first place? As in how can the mind/awareness know something that is non-mind/awareness and say directly that it is dependent on it for its coming into being?