Lucky7Strikes

There are no unenlightened persons. There is just unenlightenedness. There are no persons, but only sensory awareness arising and falling. Rolling on. Earth spinning, wind blowing, a body meditating, sounds arising, insight practices being done, insight practices not being done. It's a terrible article by Daniel Ingram. The whole point of the guy was to let people know that their notion of practice is counter productive to the doctrine itself. No, it does not solidify a True Self teaching. It can, but not necessarily so. No self can simply mean that everything is just "fresh, transient, ephemeral, causal sensations." So this is what people already are. They are already thus. They can only be thus, whether they practice or not. I don't actually believe this. No, awakening IS a universal phenomena. It's not about perceiving reality this way or that, it is that the way everyone is IS already reality. It is apathy creating bullshit, because your entire paradigm is an apathy creating bullshit. Daniel misses the point of that guy. That guy is not saying that everyone is enlightened or everyone already sees the world this way or that, he was probably saying that reality already is the way it is, and that prescribing someone as enlightened, when they are simply a no-self phenomena arising and falling, is ridiculous. He again misses the point by adhering to concepts of developed and underdeveloped. Reality simply IS in that person's state of being. It is neither better or worse, just as the sky is neither better or worse than the earth.

The stick does not begin or end anywhere, the sound does not begin or end anywhere, the bell does not begin or end anywhere. Every disparity made is false, non of these are individual. Individual unit of consciousness. I like that. There is no universe but individual consciousness entities. The universe is not acting out through me. You and I are the creator of our experiences and the universe.

No. In your paradigm, non-practicing is the only way to practice. Conscious meditation or practice are all ego clinging activities of "I" meditating, practicing, etc. as in all those other activities you listed above. No one attains enlightenment in your reality, reality is already enlightened and without a self. This is not achieved by any practice but realized spontaneously. The point of practice is absolutely irrelevant in your interpretations. If there is no self, practice cannot be done by anyone, it is just performed as the rain falls, and enlightenment (your definition) simply comes about like the clouds floating by. Do not cling to practicing, it is counter intuitive to your philosophy of "rolling on." But of course, I don't think that. Do not glorify your desire for enlightenment. Do not glorify your compassion for others and to end other's suffering. Do not glorify your definition of enlightenment. It is just something that arises and passes away, just like desires, just like hatred, just like suffering. You do not own any of these, because there is no "you" to speak of here, everything happening through causes and conditions giving rise to appearances and events. It sounds paradoxical because it is contradictory. Your indoctrinated faith and immovable respect for Thusness and Longchen are the only things letting you accept the inconsistencies in their ideology. This quote makes perfect sense under my interpretations.

Yes sir, we are masturbating each others brains off too. .

Right, that's not what a decision is. Decision and choice demands an active controller. Extremity is a subjective notion. Using it to legitimize a point is stupid. If there is no thinker, there can be just thoughts. But if there is no controller, we can't say there is an decision or a choice being made in the truest sense of those two terms. If volition is the result of ignorance and there was never a self or free will to begin with, volition is denied. Volition connotes free will, a controller, you deny it. Volition is the freedom of the subjective controller. Illusory volition is then not volition. The terms: "will" "volition" "intention" in the context of their use all imply a doer. For example, we do not say the earth willed gravity, or the bed had intention, because those are without a conscious self acting as an agent. No, according to you, intentions are just another manifesting thought, another manifesting condition. No it is not a poor understanding, I'm seeing right through all the bullshit complexities, all the "buts," "howevers," you have constructed to not fully face the consequences of declaring your "no-self" doctrine. It is nihilistic. Whether I practice or not, that is as same as the universe scrubbing the toilet ey? Just as it rains there and it snows somewhere else and trees planted and trees fallen. Actually no. You need to look into what reflection means. If there is each node, that node is separate. If each node only exists as a reflection, then that node is not a separate entity but a continuation of the reflecting material, a pathway of single light. If a river flows endlessly, then there is eternity of the flowing water, its path and its characteristics. SO we can ascribe an identity to this stream, a self. Your examples are very flawed. We are not arguing about whether the sky is blue or not.

WHOA! DWAI WE AGREE! That was a great a post.

Then that's not a decision. It's just a rolling of events and actions. Your usage of the word "hence" is out of place here. It makes no sense to drive a causal relationship from "nothing is random" to "there is no control" I'm just pointing out how messed up your logic is all the way through. The "but" in the second sentence is a blatant contradiction, if there is no controller, then there is also no one who has intention. The two cannot be used together, it's like saying rabbits are all white, but they are all blue also. You denied volition, also known as free will. You said that we are the universe. First off, you need to look into what "pre determined" means. Pre determined does not mean that there is a greater God making things happen (as your paranoia often seems to center around), it simply means that causes and conditions are established in objectivity so that no one can be exempt from it. For example, if we take the universe to have objective laws and that the human psyche is also limited to a set of chemical conditions, one can theoretically deduce every event and choice by factoring in all the established causes and events from the past. There is also no free will in this paradigm. No you see, you are being inconsistent with your ideology. By the way, you completely missed the point of that example. I didn't write it for you to consider the purpose of blaming or praising someone, but the disappearance of values with the extinction of a true choice or a self. In the context of your explanation above, an isolated mindstream is a self. Purely by definition, because it is clearly distinguished from another element (other mindstreams), and uncaused by them, it is itself. But again we run into an inconsistency, since you have equated consciousness with phenomena, and phenomena is by nature impermanent, we can't have impermanent factors create a permanent continuation. It also makes no sense to say that there is the individualization of "no self hood." If phenomena has no self and is the arising of disjointed appearances as consciousness, there is no continuation found in the universal manifestation of that very event. It is simply arising and vanishing like the wind blowing by.

Let's look at the "process" of deciding. We must look into the very usage of the word that conveys a specific meaning, and not the word itself. Decision implies a choice to be made between alternatives by a conscious agent. Why? Now if there is no one behind the decision to control the outcome, that isn't really a "choice," but rather an outcome of established cause and effect. For example, we can't say that the rain "decided" or was in the "process" of deciding to rain on a certain day. Yes, there were possible alternatives that unit of H2O could have taken, such as remain in its cloud form, or become snow, etc, but we can't really call those alternatives, because the laws of the environment has already governed how the rain was going to fall. So the concept of the rain deciding anything becomes silly. The words "choice and decision" are always used to in this manner with the premise of an agent having viable alternatives, to challenge established causes and effects by his/her own perspective and free will. Denying free will, but validating "choice" by saying, oh but choices are simply made without anyone choosing, defeats the very purpose of that word's usage. In your paradigm we can't blame the sinner as we can't blame the mountain, and we can't praise the Buddha as we can't praise concrete. Everything arising and passing away, rolling on of the universe.

I think Non knows what to do.

This has nothing to do with clinging to free will or not, equaniminity or partiality. Rather it's about whether free will exists. You can't not have free will then suddenly have free will. That makes no sense.

Good. Hitler = the Buddha = Universe all acting out in your world. No decisions by anyone made. Just actions all rolling on. Everything just a process. Admit this. This is what your reality supposes. You can't have your cake and eat it. Deny free will and this is how it is. Those wholesome and unwholesome actions are just like the rain falling, the sun shining. No controller. Just the way it is. If you deny a controller to the decision, you deny the very meaning of decision. An auto-pilot process is not a decision. So in your world too CowTao, I guess a ragning serial killer is on the same place as the saint next door. All just Universe doing acts.

1) Meditate, look into your desires, insecurities, find where it arises, read some books on Buddhism, practice Qi Gong, and generally all the stuff on this forum. 2) SEE A THERAPIST (preferably a woman, not to have sex with her, but to just get used to becoming comfortable around women) 3) Read some books on getting women or take a course or making friends (stuff like this is everywhere these days). 4) Get a hooker. In all seriousness. Strong obsessions, a lot of it having to do with societal conditioning, can't be uprooted simply by meditating or insight (although it can be done). The only positive thing that might come out of this is seeing through the foolishness of sexual obsessions. 5) Just go out and try to have conversations, join a group, or something social. But above all, I recommend brutal honesty into your situation. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Ask where your insecurity comes from (Am I so ugly? What constitutes ugliness? Why don't people like me? What is it to like someone? What is it about my life that has led me to this? What can I do differently?) and you probably have all the answers but have just shunned them. This is the toughest, but most of the things I recommended above will lead to this. Face your fears. Good luck!

If there is no controller, doer, that defies the very meaning of choice and decision. If choices are just "made," that is not a choice but just phenomena rolling on. Like clouds going by, like the rain falling, like the earth spinning. You didn't understand the context of "beyond me." Read my post over please. This has nothing to do with my ability to save the person or my psycho physical combination. It's just all happening, rolling on, ey? Denying a controller, and a thinker in the manifestation of phenomena denies the very meaning of choice and free will. How do you not understand this? There is no good or bad in your paradigm. Things just happen as they are. You can't blame the rain for being good or bad, you can't blame the volcano from exploding. If unwholesome and wholesome happens they are neither wholesome or unwholesome just as the rain in not unwholesome or wholesome. Since no one is the controller of Karma and all those factors, you are nothing but a happenstance in the universe's continuation. Decision implies a doer. That is the very concept of decision. If decision is just "made" that is not a decision. Same with intention. Hitler did not make any choices in your reality. The phenomena called "Hitler" just happened that way.

Uh uh. "Should I save him" and "Should I not save him" will rise according to the condition at hand. It is not a matter of my choosing or not choosing to save that person but the arising of that intention "rolling on" into that moment. Whether I save him or whether I don't save him is absolutely beyond me, because there is no me to make the choice. If the decision to tell that person to "YES, GO DROWN" come up, then it is no better or worse than risking my life to save him. Just universe rolling on.... So I guess Xabir you were born lucky, a lucky manifestation of the universe, to be born where you are, to have had the opportunity to come across something called enlightenment, and have something called a path to enlightenment, to have the thought "I will practice" arise. The universe just happening through these events that is "you" (but not really because there is no doer here). And I guess those people in Haiti weren't so lucky, being born where they were and the earthquake trumbling down upon them because the universe just happened to manifest as those situations. And I bet Hitler had no choice but to kill millions of innocent lives and burn them alive, just the universe happening that way, no doer, and no choice. This is your reality, and I wholly oppose its ridiculousness.

By your accords: The Buddha is not awakened. In the paradigm of anatta (I understand the word differently), there is no one who awakens. Awakening just happens. The purpose of my analogy is that one cannot put a value to any mode of existence if we say that everything is just the objective universe acting itself out. Everyone is born, suffers, or whatever just like the rain that falls from the sky, so how will you say that the Buddha is in anyway better or more awakened than a pig, or that any reverential effort was made towards enlightenment, what value will you put on compassion and wisdom, and what does being "selfless" matter at all. In fact, since the one who puts in the efforts to liberate himself does so because he is inclined to do so, and enlightens because the conditions were just so, and acts compassionate just because it is so, then how is this different from a pig just born so, eats so, shits so, is selfish and so on? So says your brain. .

Then they should be butchered like pigs. .

Free will cannot be with an inherent self. If there is an inherent self in phenomena, that self is chained to causes and conditions and therefore cannot be free. Yes, it makes me very angry. Having no free will is very scary indeed. Think about what it entails. Everything crumbles down do a puny excuse of "oh, it's just the way it is." Bullshit. This existence is the result of each individual "selves" creating and being created. It's an interplay of will and struggle, not some "oh, it's just rolling on!" All spiritual quest begins from anger and fear. A pig (let's assume pigs are unselfconscious) lives exactly as Thusness's description of a enlightened person. It's awareness rises as whatever phenomena or instinctual urge of the moment. It eats, shits, sleeps. The pig is chained to its body and habits, but it feels no sense of doer ship. It just lives and dies. Don't tell me that the Buddha is a rolling pile of shit (I love pigs by the way).

"No doer is there who does the deed; Nor is there one who feels the fruit; Constituent parts alone roll on; This indeed! Is right discernment. Look your own quote says there is just deeds, there is just things happening, and literally "rolling on." Your suffering is rolling on, your enlightenment is rolling on, your desire for enlightenment is rolling on, the universe is rolling on. Uh...no, no deeds "should be done," deeds are done, practice is done. Should means that universe has a direction and that would create an entity of it, the universe just IS, just IS whatever phenomena arises, eh? It's not me wanting, there is just this wanting happening. The bodhisattva is also someone who just happened to become a bodhisattva, and the saving is just something that happened. Just like taking a dump happens. You can't have your cake and eat it too guy.

When the hell did I mention helplessness? I just said everything rolls on. You can't even hold a relevant conversation anymore. You can't even listen. The teacup is too full, a dead record player. Just quoting random out of context phrases here and there. Oh, and by your paradigm, there is nothing I can do. It's not even helplessness, everything is just happening. Helplessness happens, suffering happens, Buddhahood happens, being a rabbit happens, compassion happens, choice happens. Great world.

What the hell does this have to do with what I wrote above? I did read it. It's filled with inconsistencies and subjective definitions and categorizations of "cause" "conditions" "Karma" and "will." All used to ameliorate the consequences of denying a self and the obvious result which is: no free will. No free will, phenomena roll on, Buddha = a monkey. LOL. The whole "universe eats." HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA. And HE is enlightened? HAHAHAHHAHHA. The "universe" suffers, the "universe" enlightens (your definition of it), the "universe" become a Buddha, the "universe" meditates.... You're hopeless. You can only reply again and again with this luminosity, stages, subject-object, how great this state is being spontaneous and all that, when I ask logical consequences of adhering to this state as reality. It is like talking to a heroin addict, trying to convince him that there is life out of being high, and all he can talk about is how great getting high is and how this state is really the real way to experience "reality."

Phenomena roll on. Buddha roll on. Cockroach roll on. Longchen roll on. I roll on. Roll on, roll on. No doer, no one. Great philosophy.

Thusness and Longchen are not enlightened. Freed from suffering is not being in a blissful state. Freed from suffering is to suffer and not suffer at will, and hence suffering and not suffering are transcended. Same with fear and responsibility. Fear is a valuable thing when seen for what it is. Most people who adhere to this state probably suffered great damage to their egos of selves (most likely from a personal relationship), sought refuge and upon accidental or willful experience of I Am ness or I Am not ness, cling to the sense of release, a drug like orgasmic state (which is actually a healing practice) that comes from letting awareness be as conditioned habits allow it to be. No self as a Dharma Seal makes perfect sense under my understandings. Most of your quotes, except those by Thusness and Longchen, make sense under my interpretations And I will, for your sake, explain to you why being like them is like being a squirrel. A squirrel has no sense of him self (anatta), he experiences everything as they arise (oh, luminous clarity bullshit here), he lives on established instincts, lets whatever be, be. The main thing is that the squirrel is not self-conscious, hence experiences everything as simply flowing manifestations (man, that squirrel doesn't suffer from a "self"! Ha! he must be enlightened!). Denying of free will leads to all kinds of nonsensical conclusions such as these. Free will is paramount to the meaning of existence. If it is denied, I will hold the Buddha as nothing more and nothing less than a crawling cockroach or a serial killer. All just phenomena rolling on. You have to also stop using quotes out of context and simply cutting and pasting. It is good if it is used wisely and selectively, but you don't. It makes your points very random and impersonal, and perhaps you've already lost the ability to think for yourself. It is very draining to go through them (not to mention most points you make are contradictory, just see how many times you use "but" "however" "this does not mean") and I imagine most who converse with you stop at a certain point because of these factors, not necessarily because they agree or disagree, but because you play like a broken record player. I have posted this not as a reply to our endless talk over awareness, so please do not reply down that road.

No the koans are there to destroy your established ways of conceptualization, of the meaning of "being one" or "being two" and apply it to experiential insight. Space and the object within that space are not one, not two. Time and events that take place in time are not one, not two. Existence and awareness of existence is not one, not two. Space is not limited to a particular object, but necessitates "objectness" or absence of "objectness," time is not limited to a particular event, but necessitates "eventness" or "eventlessness," Same applies to existence.

Xabir, or a rolling pile of manifesting dirt, I shall say, I will stop replying to your writing from now on, go write your reply and I'll give it a read, but let this be it. More talk here is absolutely pointless. Anyone who denies free will and says we are just arising phenomena I will vehemently object to. You, Thusness, Longchen are all drunk on the state of no-self believing it to be reality. So scared of suffering and responsibility, residing in the bliss of falling away, you have decided to live like nothing but pigs and dogs who live without being "self aware," just letting feelings rise and fall, guided by instinct and no conscious will of one's own. Like a goddamn animal scared to face oneself.