Lucky7Strikes

In my opinion, There is no deeper awareness. It is what you are right now. In fact, there are no sentient beings. They are like flowers in the sky, only in your awareness/mind's discriminations. . You are awareness, and awareness creates. It is intent. Cultivating this awareness is practice. Its purity and freedom is enlightenment.

Awareness and sentience...I think the two are interchangeable. What makes a sentient being sentient, what makes awareness aware?

There is a reason why Ananda is the one who hears all the sutras, memorizes them, attends to the Buddha, but is one of the last disciples to attain enlightenment.

I am not my body, the body is neither mine or not mine. It is an expression I have chosen, and although it delivers much pleasure and anguish, it is a tool for freeing myself from the limits of my illusions. Dual cultivation is when you share in the journey with someone else. .

_/\_

I agree. You can't force cultivation on someone who is very much in love with life's ups and downs, attachments, and senses. But sometimes I think about breaking the illusion of satisfaction people carry. Of course, without trying to be an asshole. .

I know that this topic has be done over time and time again. A lot of you are probably sick of Buddhism vs. Taoism, vs. Advaita stuff. But I am in need of guidance because I've been running into serious walls during meditation lately while pondering over all this emptiness business. So here it is: Dependent Origination states that all things that arise are dependent on the rising of everything else, hence they are all empty of inherent self existence. So there is no beginning and no end. No self, no suffering, etc. Yet the experience of everything is very real even if its nature is "illusory"... So how can there be anything called Nirvana, cessation of suffering, cessation from the cycle of birth and death....???? How can anything truly "cease" when cessation is dependent on conditions itself. I am stuck in the nihilistic sense of...the wheel keeps spinning on its own accord...whose to stop it when every part of my being is spinning with it anyway? The Way waxes and wanes, creates and destroys, rises and ceases, and so am I to simply laugh at the absurdity of all phenomena and my helpless sense of existence within it? My belief is usually that when one has become a totally selfless entity, free from desires, attachments, ignorance...that compassion will become one's true nature, and that the virtue of the Way will manifest accordingly. But I keep running into this existential wall time and time again......AGH!!

You need your body to learn how to ascend or whatever. It's a tool. I try to treat it with respect (not always successful though ) But besides any of that, I think it's more important to investigate who "you" are.

Your original post was indeed very fresh compared to the repeated prose here! .

Awesome! .

Ah, so much for clearing up Buddhism by the thuscomeone .

Buddhism, Buddhism, Buddhism. People need to stop seeing things through a pre-conceived paradigm. Taoists especially, not as dogmatic followers, but inquirers into our existence. And Buddhists, especially those who don't find Buddhism, but simply accept it, shouldn't do so either. I know many Buddhists who don't have clue about any of the things we debated here.

ME! . I am that I am.

Great post! . Existence is Awareness because nothing could be said to exist without the awareness of it. The tree and the hand comes about due to your mind's distinctions of something being a tree and some other thing being a hand. Not at all different from how your thoughts function. Karma is a made up habit of your mind identifying causes and conditions to have object truths to them. You make them up, habit it, then suffer in it. The enlightened being has completely exhausted all bounds of karma because he sees that all causes and conditions arise from grasping of "this" causing "that." He is no longer the prisoner to his minds workings. But the process of liberation itself can be said to be an enlightened act. By the way, I'm not a "seasoned" Buddhist. I don't even know if I'm Buddhist. So don't take my words at face value. .

The approach is different. The way of understanding is different: everyone has a different past and ergo attachments. There is also a different emphasis in language. Vajra had a deep relationship with Advaita so his emphasis is more on not subscribing so readily to the idea of "Oneness," or at least that's my impression. You can read through the words and think "oh yes I think I know what those words mean," but it's always much deeper than that. It's better to understand the way the understanding is arrived at. If it was so easy, the Buddha wouldn't have said so much! Well, at least I have learned much through the development of this thread. My understanding is very raw, but these discussion clarify bit by bit as for the direction of practice and textual (sutra) context. . P.S. Part of the reason I like this forum is because people don't simply accept dogma, labeling themselves of a certain religion, but strive to really understand and apply the material whether it is Kundalini awakening, Buddhism, mystical texts, etc.

The clinging to Luminosity happens, as you said, due to misinterpretation of the luminosity as being a part of a greater Luminosity. Which is another dualistic attachment to "This" and a presupposed "Other" beyond one's own immediate experience. The reality is that the contents of Awareness, which is necessary for the Awareness to be and know of its existence, is Dependently Originated. it is dependent on the "creation" that happens in other mind systems. Nothing within experience can arise out of no where even your thoughts and imaginations. Awareness IS dependent on Dependent Origination, but the semantics of "being originated" connote that Awareness is born out of something when that is not the case. It is unborn and eternal. Dualistic eternalism and non-dual eternalism mean very different things in this case. One is still a state of clinging to a separate identity (as in, of the world/of Brahama/of God etc.,) persevering though an outside condition where as the latter is a recognition of all experience as already non-dual. The emphasis is therefore different for each individual. Imho, I think there is an effort on your part to disassociate with the emphasis on non-dual Awareness because of your past roots in Advaita where the experience is interpreted differently. So Dependent Origination complements your understanding in a more effective way, where as some see causes and conditions (emptiness) but not the non-dual aspect.

Check out thread where I run into walls. . I think some Buddhists would disagree with the "Mother Womb."

Good Night! _/\_

Yes, but that state cannot be eternal. For that state to be recognized as something that has occured, you must reflect on its existence. Otherwise, it cannot be said to have happened. Yes, there is no denial that my experience, its contents and discrimination, are dependently originated by the paradigm of creation shared by other mind streams. Awareness's nature is to establish, for it cannot be purely subjective. It becomes-self aware (Path to liberation), or suffers (Samsara, by the dual contents (relativity, D.O.) of creation. Awareness is phenomena...it can't be learned. You are talking about the state of luminosity which makes the truth of Awareness = phenomena clear.

Ok. I too am mixing up illusioned body bound consciousness, and phenomena non-dual Awareness. Awareness = Relativity/Dependent Origination. No disagreements there. Again, no disagreements here, except that the Beetle is Aware, or it wouldn't have existence in its own consciousness. Yes, the Buddha sees into all causes and effects simultaneously with the delusion of them. Yup. Awareness becomes bound by defining itself as a life form within an environment. It can become imprisoned into a limited conscious being like a beetle you mentioned above. The beetle can only act according to its created nature and instincts.

Hrm...sounds similar to what I wrote above. "And its quality is of dependent origination, for Awareness cannot be without a reflective subject/object established. There cannot be total subject." What are the critiques for Solipsism? I am not very knowledgeable of it. Uh, Brain in a Vat?

Consciousness, as in "Consciousness "of"" is dependently originated by the content. Awareness is not chained by history or interpretation of history, because it sees that all distinctions and discrimination of cause/effect/subject/object are false. There is only the quality of dependent origination, but nothing that is actually originated from one to another. Awareness is not a universal substance. Awareness becomes bound when it falsely identifies with the content of creation, such as the body, and imagines itself suffering through a world actually separated by discrimination of time and space. There is no world beyond. When you are in world beyond, are you out of Awareness? That's ridiculous. Yes, later you become what has happened. It is inevitable for you to recognize that there was the experience of nothing, hence the discrimination of a state "before" and "after" are made. Thus, the bliss heavens of complete non-dual Awareness yogis achieve eventually end. I think you are clinging too much to your experiences of meditative states. Truth should be applicable to all conditions and experiences. .

There is no such thing as an entire cosmos, except that which I am experiencing right now. Have you known the world without being Aware? It is not eternalism, because there is no distinct "I" in experience. Experience itself is the I. And its quality is of dependent origination, for Awareness cannot be without a reflective subject/object established. There cannot be total subject.

They reflect only because you have made the distinction of "other" and "I" real. There are no set causes and conditions, the difference is made and therefore you suffer from it. D.O. is simply the function of the Luminosity, and yes you can say Luminosity is dependent on its content (NOT originated, because that tends to point to the birth. Existence cannot be born, it cannot come from non-existence, or it wouldn't be existence.) , but that's like saying a person is dependent on being a person. "You," the true Self/Luminosity/Awareness" are not originated from anything, because you yourself is the whole of phenomena. Only the way in which it operated tends to mirror other Mind systems. Like being on a same frequency of sorts. I really liked your rainbow example above! . Lol. . Your girlfriend might as well be right in your view! To say that Awareness and intent are dependently originated and chained by true causes and conditions asserts fatalism. No purpose! Haha! .

Well you are right now aware. Seek the source of your sense of existence. See it in the body, the environment, the past, the present. Try to find where your sense of existence, the "I" ness comes from. Steve f made an awesome post regarding this a few pages back. I suggest reading through Ramana Maharshi's work for self-inquiry. He was quite good at it I presume. . Haha! I'll see where my practice goes from here .