goldisheavy

This is an experience that's common for the human beings. If this is what makes one a master, then we have so many masters among us! Then I am a master, and so is my dad, and hell, almost everyone has had this experience in one way or another. Let the worshiping and adulation begin. These "dying" experiences are valuable, and we should learn from them, but should we suck on the person's feet for having one of those? Kindness is a good thing, but there is a difference between kindness and adulation. Kindness yes, adulation no, unless you're fooling around, then also yes. I think there is a good bit of wisdom here! What does this have to do with Wang Liping though? This is about everyone. Who here is not mad? Raise your hand. You are my bitch.

I don't think his authenticity is what's important. I think the more important thing is the psychodynamics going on inside the student's mind. For all I know Wang Liping lives on dew and air and floats in the clouds. What's important is how he and the other people relate. If they have a worldly relationship, and if the manner they dance in is nothing other than a perpetuation of convention, that's important to notice for all concerned. For the master, the question is, "why? (why do you lead on your students?) (are you pretending to be someone you are not? are you just a worldly tradesman and not a sublime master as you present yourself?)" For the student, "What do you really want? Do you enjoy convention? If yes, then paying for services like this goes into the entertainment category of your bills, and no harm done, since you know it's just mindless fun, like going to a circus. If no, then how do you expect to transcend convention by merely following it like you always had followed in the past? What's your goal, if any? What is the vision of your ideal life like?" Supposedly, if someone calls themselves "master" they do not need help and we don't have to worry about such person. But if someone seeks to learn from a master, then we worry about these people, since they are fragile and vulnerable. A master is someone invulnerable, so we can even shit a big pile of poop on the master's head and that's OK too. At least, isn't it what we think masters are? On the other hand, if masters are vulnerable, fragile and fallible just like you, then how are you different from a master? Why not call yourself a master too? If the master has more compassion, then are you saying you are a bit of a dick right now? Really? This is from one of my favorite texts: Who is this written for? Why was this written? I have highlighted the parts I wish to draw your attention to, and included the rest of the poem for context and just because it's awesome.

Well, since they don't hang out a shingle, traditionally you'd have to go on a hunting trip and hunt one down. I am sorry to say, but I am probably the closest one to such "wisdom master" here, and you can learn from me if you like and if I have the energy and inclination to teach. At the same time, there have to be people much better than me, at least in theory I know this has to be so, but I haven't met or read about them except in ancient stories about people like Chandrakirti or Garab Dorje, or something like that. I don't even think Lin Chi or Dogen are any wiser than yours truly. My real advice is that what you want to know is available to you right inside your own mind. If you address your questions to yourself and instead of jumping to the answer, just let the question sit there as you stay silent, you'll eventually get it. So your own inner mind is your highest wisdom master. You should note that your own inner mind doesn't give a damn about material needs or even you. That's right! There is a "part" of you that doesn't give a damn about what happens to you. Did you know that? Of course it's not really a "part" since it's not apart from anything. Just think it over. Ever had dreams where you die? Why would your mind kill you in its own dream? Supposedly you are your mind's pet avatar, no? Or maybe not. Just pay attention.

Think what kind of person is most desperate for some material goods? That's the kind of person that LOA is least likely to work for. If you understand what's causing the intense desire, that very same thing is also what's blocking that desire from manifesting! This is why it is said that the masters are wishless. They wish for nothing and yet they abide in a state of constant wish-fulfillment. It's not a paradox if you understand the nature of desires. Basically desires are caused by the fabrications of mind that block the natural flow of the mind and create a barrier between desire and receiving. A person without such barrier has two properties when compared to one who has the barrier: 1. this person has few wishes, and 2. it seems whatever they wish for is also what they have, and whatever they wish is also what seems to be happening... in other words, this person perceives their own will to be done in the world. Since their will is whole, and since nothing is apart from their will or outside of it, there is nothing they can wish for. Longing for things happens when you believe that certain states are outside the direct scope of your intent, and then you are left in using your intent in a structured manner to try to cajole the universe to dispense what you want, kind of like you cajole the vending machine by putting the coins in and pushing a button, interacting with it in this structured manner, and only in this manner will you get your soda. A wise person knows how to go beyond the structures and how to manifest intent directly, but this "how" is not described in terms of steps! The steps are what you use inside structures.

The very name "a teacher" designates a conventional role, that is implied to be kind of authoritarian and it's meant for convention-upkeep. Wisdom masters really should not be called "teachers" even though, if you are lucky, you can learn from one. Alternatively call everything "teacher", even your own shoes, and really mean it as seriously as when you use that word in other circumstances, that's also fair. A wisdom master is a free man/woman, and so doesn't have to do anything. However, supposedly, and the key word here is supposedly, the wisdom masters have the mark of compassion, while at the same time having gone beyond the material needs either completely or substantially, so a combination of compassion with low or non-existent material needs often yields "free" teaching. Wisdom masters demand commitment and passion instead of money. They want dedication and liveliness. A rich man who pays lots of money but who has no true dedication, no real interest, and is not lively is turned away by the wisdom master, together with his money and all.

Good question. There are two kinds of skills, conventional and not. Conventional ones are like trades, like welding or plumbing or programming. To learn those people pay, at least for the tools and books or internet access, if not to pay for being taught in person or in a class. And then there are non-conventional ones, like wisdom. Wisdom passes beyond convention, and as such, is not a trade and should never be made into one. This is true of all real wisdom, but it's even more true of the wisdom that's meant to liberate a person from the cyclical life. Another way to say "cyclical life" is "life of convention". Obviously following some convention is not the way to liberate oneself from it. It should be common sense. For example, if you're a prostitute you cannot liberate yourself by fucking more Johns or by fucking a specific kind of John. The act of fucking for money is what prostitution is, and doing more of it, or doing it in specific manner is not the way out of it. All the sincere people understand this. So why is it a big deal then? The reason is obvious! The reason it's a big deal is because very few people really care about wisdom. People want these "spiritual" associations and skills for personal self-aggrandizement (or in the best case, health, so they can spend even more energy inside convention that ruined their health in the first place), in other words, they want to use those to add more glitter and shine to their conventional identity. So you get "So and so the democrat, the honest person, the handsome guy, the rich guy, and the spiritual guy", but the "and" part is purely conventional. In other words, since these folks do not want real wisdom, what they want is something that everyone can agree is "spiritual" (even if it's dumb or is useless), so that everyone can agree how wonderfully spiritual this guy is in addition to all the other wonderful conventional qualities they have. It's basically a form of identity-building and maintenance. It's what ties people to the cyclical life in the first place! Haha... It's stupid, but ultimately there is no harm even in that stupidity. It's just a dream. It's like having a stupid dream. No harm done. It's not impressive, useful or good in any higher sense, but it's not totally bad either. But you have to decide for yourself what kind of things you will hold in esteem. For me, I decided to have disdain and contempt for such glitter-seekers. That's my choice and my own identity building process at work. So ultimately I follow the same nature, but relatively speaking I like my choices and tastes better than those of the masses at this time. So it's kind of like saying, I'll teach you how to stop prostituting yourself if you fuck me first. Obviously it's not a sincere offer of help.

There is some truth in it, but also a whole lot of BS mixed into it. Also as it is taught, it is very materialistic and materialism is what prohibits LOA from working, as it fractures and structures intent and thus puts exactly the kind of limitations on intent that LOA tries to overcome. So in other words, if you believe that the world is run by the laws of physics and you think that a bicycle is just so much matter formed as a bicycle, then no matter how hard you squint your eyes and wish for it to come to you, it won't come, as your REAL intent has been vested into explaining to yourself why there is no way in hell the bike cannot come (due to laws of physics and reality constraints which you believe in, etc.). So the way LOA is taught is wrong. It's taught as something to help materialize your greed into the world, and that won't work. LOA is also problematic in that it can be used to justify callous treatment of others (like, well your life is crap because you attract crap into it, so I won't help you or I won't feel sorry for you, etc.).

I think it's fair to say that Santa does not exist only if you are fair and mention all the other things that also don't exist. On the other hand, if you say Santa is imagination and cars and chairs are real, you are lying and doing the person a disservice. Either nothing exists or it all does. When you begin to pick what exists and what does not, you are doing nothing other than forming or reinforcing your own reality validation framework, which is a samsaric and binding mental construct and nothing else.

Exactly. What happens is that Buddhists have a wonderful teaching but they cannot digest it and put it into practice. So all they do is just repeat the teaching and they don't understand how the actual digestion of the teaching changes the meaning of the teaching. They think its meaning is constant, like an eternal atman, the meaning of the Buddhist teaching is constant and unchanging, forever. Arguing with any -ist is a waste of time. Once the person commits themselves to a line of thinking, they can no longer think at all and arguing with such one is a waste of time. A Buddh-ist is one of the worst kind of -ists when it comes to mental stubbornness. Buddhists may not be as violent as the dogmatists from other religions, but when it comes to being hard-headed, they can stand toe to toe with the most hard-headed individuals from any religion, even Islam, which is famous for its insane hard-headedness and lack of flexibility, and never mind other religions. All that talk about compassion and kindness is window dressing. The mind of a buddhist is rigid like a stone that cannot change at all. And maybe that's OK too, but why pretend to work on flexibility then? Theoretically Buddhists work toward the tolerance of the inconceivable phenomena, but the way most Buddhist go, not only do they not tolerate the inconceivable, they cannot even tolerate simple conceptions from other religions, and even the tiniest dispute throws them off keel internally, which is why Buddhists always try to suppress disputes and to install a fake unproductive peace instead. I came to this conclusion after interacting with many Buddhists. It's basically a waste of time to talk to any religious person. I thought Buddhists were different from other religionists, but they aren't. Any person that makes religion rather than wisdom their aspiration is a moron who is hopelessly stuck in samsara and has no chance of escape.

Some egos are so big and arrogant that they assume they can become non-existent on demand. Better watch out. No! That's totally not fair. Some objects of consciousness are describable and some aren't. To say that an object of consciousness should be describable is an ad-hoc limitation that has no purpose or reason behind it.

Things get very subtle from here on out. The thing that Lao Tzu was talking about is a recognition of the indefinite as opposed to the definite. So the chunking in this case is between the concrete and abstract or between the well defined and the not-well-defined. Dao is both well-defined and not-well-defined as they are in wholeness, and simply because Dao includes the not-well-defined, it inherits the not-well-defined's property of mysteriousness, thus Dao is also mysterious, even though the non-mysterious is part of Dao too, you have say that on the whole Dao is mysterious for the reason that if a system consists of 1 million well understood elements, but even even ONE element of that system is mysterious, the entire system has to be called mysterious as well, simply due to dependency. In other words, mystery infects things that depend on it with its mysteriousness. Things get especially hairy if you discover that mysteriousness is not something adventitious, but is a fundamental and essential element of cognizance. The problem is that most humans equate recognition with something concrete, but mysterious recognitions that are recognized to be distinct from concrete ones are (erroneously, in my view) not understood to be recognitions. This creates a feeling that something exists outside the mind, but in reality nothing is outside mind. So discerning an apple from an orange is what everyone understands to be identity-making function. One concrete object is discerned from another concrete object, and everyone can agree that this is what recognition is. But an experience that is non-concrete (I call those abstract, because to me abstractions are real and not just some mental generalization, but rather, abstractions are real experiences/phenomena like anything else) is felt to be non-concrete in contradistinction with the concrete ones, so it is also a recognition and a phenomenon. So a phenomenological study is not complete without examining the mysterious. How do we know that an apple is non-mysterious in the first place? Where do we get an idea of ordinariness from? I say it's because in the back of our mind we also know what the non-ordinariness is truly like, or in other words, we are all omniscient actually.

And yet you are able to recognize awareness, right? You're making statements with regard to the true nature of awareness. You're saying what isn't real awareness. So since you're recognizing something, what is that something? Recognition is a phenomenon. Call it fake if you like. Whatever. Outside of the constantly churning soup of phenomena I don't see anything at all. Phenomena is all that can be referred to, pretty much by definition. You might try to say that you're not actually referring to awareness, but that just gets very squirmy very fast.

I read somewhere that it's very common for brothers and sisters to fight early in life. The hearsay I heard was that if you fight early on, you'll probably be good friends later on, but if you are friendly early on, you'll probably grow apart later on. It seems the hearsay is not true in your case, but it is in my case. My sis is 3 years younger. I don't talk to her much, but when I do, we have a great conversation. I love my sis and she loves me, but we used to beat each other a lot when we were growing up. I'd really hurt my sis hard, but she was no slouch! She'd hurt me so bad, it was amazing. I'd see the stars. She is so tough! I am proud of my sis. She was one of the toughest girls in the army. Anyway, when I was little, most of the time I used to beat my sis because I thought she was too greedy. She'd never even so much as let me touch the presents she'd get for birthday for example, even if I just wanted to look at it for 5 mins and give it back, no go. So I got so angry that first, why was she so greedy and so possessive, and second I was angry that my parents were letting her get away with the greed and were not correcting her wrong attitude. So I took it upon myself to beat the living day lights out of her for being greedy. Am I a nice guy or what? Well, probably not that nice in that case. But we have a very good relationship. I feel like I can share anything whatsoever with my sis, and she can share anything with me. I love and respect my sister and I think she turned out to be a great woman. Maybe even a goddess! I like to think I had something to do with it, the selfish asshole that I am.

I don't think I buy the whole noumena thing. A unit of recognition is phenomenon. If noumena is something we can recognize, it is a phenomenon in and of itself. If we cannot recognize it, then we're not talking about it right now. The problem I have with some thinkers is that they elevate certain abstractions above reality. That's very very wrong to my mind. Nothing is above or outside reality. There is no onlooker to reality. If the onlooker is real, the onlooker is part of reality and is not above it. Since the onlooker, if real, is part of reality, there is no WAY the onlooker can onlook onto the reality without affecting it. So looking means changing and being changed in my view. There is no such thing as passive observation. To be passive onlooker means to be outside reality, but if you're outside reality how can reality leave an imprint on you? What's the connection? Over and out.

I believe there is a fairly "standard" and well accepted definition for it. In any case, I myself like the definition I am about to give. I think it's simple, and it makes sense to me and I think it's a fairly well accepted one. A phenomenon is a unit of experience. That's it. It doesn't have to be space or time bound. It doesn't have to be compounded. It's very general and that's the whole point. The point is that in philosophy you want to be able to talk about any experience whatsoever, without limitations, and a word for a "chunk" of the experience is "phenomenon". If you ever wonder how is it we can chunk our experience into chunks...I've wondered that myself too. It seems like the mind or the universe or whatever has a natural chunking ability. This chunking ability is the identity-making ability. It's what sees a wave as "something" rather than as not seeing it at all. If you look at the water in the ocean it doesn't move. It goes up and down. But to our mind there appears to be a moving wave that approaches the shore, even though the water is not moving anywhere. So this ability to mentally pick out a feature is that chunking ability and that's why we talk about phenomena.

I guess I am breaking some unwritten rule by posting twice, but this came to my mind, so why not. Please forgive me. I agree that actually many people, or heck, everyone is important and makes everything what it is. I am not even myself without anyone here. It's not that I wouldn't exist without one of you people, but I'd be different. I wouldn't be the same. And since I like myself, it means I like all of you, this includes Mak Tin Si, even if Mak Tin Si posts 20 times things I don't agree with, he is important to make me what I am, as crazy as that sounds. Actually when Mak Tin Si doesn't post about ghosts, when he posts about the culture related to his way of life, I find it interesting. I like reading about the magic circle on the turtle, and about FU and maat (or what's the word for magic?) and so on. Although I wish Mak Tin Si would attempt to explain how FU actually works, the principles behind it, instead of saying things like "for this, use this Fu, for that use that one." That's interesting but not as interesting as it would be to understand the deeper and more general principle behind the workings of it. I also wanted to give honorable mention to NeuralWire "the Bardonist" (I don't know if he will accept this title or not...). And if I signed up with someone to teach me Tai Chi Chuan I think it would be xuesheng, but alas, there is no Tai Chi Chuan over the internet. I like to read YMWong, but he doesn't post that much. Now I am thinking this whole exercise is making me feel stupid, because I feel like I am not giving enough credit to everyone here. Let's say that strawberries is more fun to eat, and oatmeal is somewhat less fun. But oatmeal is very good. I eat oatmeal when I get a chance. But even though strawberries are fun, I can't keep eating strawberries without break. I hope this makes it easy to understand how I feel. Also I noticed I picked mostly men. Is it prejudice? Personally I don't think so... I think women just don't say as much as men do. I don't know why. Do women get involved in spiritual things that much? I think in the new age movement there are lots of women, but not as much in Daoism or Buddhism. I could be very very wrong here, but that has been my perception. Or is it just off-the-beaten-path things? I think there are lots of women in the mainstream religions/paths like in Christianity or Islam. From the Western point of view, to study something like Daoism or Buddhism one has to show initiative, since it's not the mainstream teaching. Maybe men show more initiative. Like my wife! She loves when we talk about spiritual things and she loves when I share whatever cool writings I find on the net or elsewhere, but she rarely starts things on her own. I always seem to have to find something first and show her. She hasn't shown me any cool spiritual text that she's found. She's just not motivated to find those. She used to like to do lots of genealogy, but to me genealogy is extremely boring. Like what do I care who my ancestor is? Maybe I care what they thought at some high level, but do I really care who they went to school with and that they were famous for fixing watches or some junk like that? Not me.

This is the biggest pile of garbage I've ever seen assembled in one place. The amount of nonsense is staggering here. I can't even bother to reply in detail anymore. Just keep doing what you're doing. If you hit the wall hard enough, eventually you'll be forced to realize there is a wall there that way.

The answer is no, there are not. The whole concept of living with the Dao is to be free from artifice, to be natural and easy going. To go with the flow, so to say. So a Daoist way of finding a girlfriend is to simply live your life, do what you enjoy doing, avoid excesses, and the girlfriend will show up in the course of time. You don't need to use a special technique to get her. You don't need to plot and scheme to get here. In fact, plotting and scheming are derided and ridiculed by Daoists. On a practical level, may I suggest the following: Get a hair cut and a shave, or if you have a beard, trim it. Take a shower and brush your teeth. Eat well. Sleep well. Exercise a healthy amount. Eating, sleeping and exercising will give you a pleasant countenance. Girls generally (key word "generally") don't like to hook up with people who look like they haven't slept in weeks or who have the face of a drug addict or some other excess, don't like walking tubs of lard, etc. Just use common sense. After you follow all the common sense items, just be yourself and talk to girls. Eventually you'll find the one that makes sense. You'll be surprised how often people skip the common sense part. How hard is it to spend 20 mins on calisthenics in the morning or evening? But how many people do? Enjoy your life. If you hate your life, why would someone want to share hatred of life with you? But then again... there are all kinds of people out there, so maybe there is even someone like that too.

You can eat with a fork, a spoon and chop sticks. How good it is to use one vs. another has more to do with the user than with the instrument. A moron with a subtle Buddhist doctrine will be no good at all. A wise person with an unsubtle Advaita doctrine will be very good. An idiot can find a way to stab himself with a feather, while a knife is perfectly safe in skilled hands. This is why Buddhism is good as a source of questions, but sucks as a source of answers. When you get answers from Buddhism, you get words. When you get questions from Buddhism, you get the mystery if you stay with the questions for a long time in life/lives. But if you understand this, then Advaita has great questions too. If you compare Buddhism to Advaita as to their capacity to give answers, you're wasting everyone's time.

I used to like picnic... too bad picnic doesn't seem to post anymore. I also like Lin Ai Wei on his good days, when he's not just preaching dogma he's been taught. I like xabir2009 or whatever year or number goes there, although I don't like how hard-headed and inflexible xabir is... so I sometimes really like xabir and sometimes I think that xabir shares some of my opinions purely by accident and not due to actual wisdom, but simply due to being brainwashed in a semi-lucky manner (but in my view all brainwashing is bad, even if you're brainwashed with wisdom, still bad). Xabir's constant deference to Thusness and other people, like Namdrol, is really irritating to me. There was also a guy here who's gone, whom I liked. I think his name was "farmerjoe". He'd ask these seemingly simple questions, but I always found so much wisdom in his questions. He'd tell me that he's so unsure of himself and has hard time voicing himself, since he doesn't believe he deserves a voice, or some junk like that, but I always found it amazing that a guy who seems so wise would be so unsure of himself, while people who seem so stupid seem so sure of themselves. (I bet a lot of your think that about me too, although my self-assuredness is a rainbow kind, like a vision that disappears with the morning mist, and it's also clown-like). The best diplomat has to be stigweard. Stig is so diplomatic that it almost makes me sick to the stomach. I sometimes wonder if Stig has any actual thoughts or opinions of his own, or if he exists only to try to reconcile others and otherwise has no purpose in life. It's true that yoda doesn't get into any arguments, but I don't admire yoda. I prefer a fool who makes an effort and sometimes wins some and sometimes loses some to a guy who plays it safe and never strikes out. "Whoever doesn't take risks, doesn't drink champagne." -- proverb. Sometimes being wise is really a waste, because when you're dying you realize you were peaceful and pleasant, but you achieved nothing whatsoever except mediocrity in all areas. And last, but not least, I like myself the best. Sorry! At least I am honest.

Many people have a perverted notion of what it means to be humble. I'd say almost everyone has this perverted notion. The perversion is an idea that to be humble means to lower oneself before others. To consider oneself more stupid and less worthy than others. To listen to others no matter what they say. To always be polite, so as to conventionally validate others' presence. And so forth. This is not what it means to be humble. To be humble means to have little presumption. If we say it means to have no presumption at all, that itself becomes presumptuous, because how can one verify the absence of assumptions? One can only assume that one makes no assumptions, and that's a dangerous assumption to make. So instead, one simply is wary of assumptions and tries not to over-rely on them. What kind of assumptions? Assumptions like "he is better than me", or like "I know less than she does", or like "I am not worthy" or "comparing myself to others is very meaningful and useful", "life must be taken seriously at all times", "I must follow regulations if I know what's good for me". That's the kind of assumptions that must be questioned by anyone who tries to be humble. So someone who bows a lot and is very polite, is actually a very arrogant individual. Very presumptuous, and all the sages avoid such one like the plague. At best, they'll take your money and let you go. At the worst, a sage might eat such one for dinner. So what happens when such one tries to enter into a relationship with the master? Here's what happens. The thought occurs, "I am not as smart as the master. I will venerate the master and learn everything I can." While this SEEMS good on the surface, the hidden meaning of this is, "I am only with the master because I am stupid. If I wasn't as stupid as I am now, I wouldn't be with this guy at all." That's not very pleasant, is it? It's very very dirty. Stinky. Filthy. And the conscious mind may not notice the stench of such false humility, but the subconscious mind knows this right away and it cannot be fooled. The master feels this either subconsciously, if the master is a real master and not a fake one, then consciously as well, due to the real master's refined contact with the field of meanings. The master knows, "this guy doesn't give a rats ass about me or what I do.... he's only here because I can give him something... I am like a tool for this guy, and what's worse, when I teach what I know to this guy, he won't enjoy it, but he'll use it as a tool to get OTHER things that he REALLY enjoys for their own sake." So for example, the guy wants to live longer not for its own sake or for fun, but so the guy can get more money over time, or fuck more women, or become more important and indispensable to others, and so forth. So longevity instead of a beautiful ornament of awareness becomes a crutch for attaining the real ornaments. It's kind of like cleaning off your dirty shoes with the statue of Buddha or Laozi. The proper instrument for cleaning shoes is some kind of stick and cloth. You don't take bed sheets to clean off your shoes. So one doesn't take something beautiful and use it as a crutch to attain something far uglier. That's just retarded and demeaning. So if you approach the master thinking you are more stupid, you are telling the master bad things. You are telling the master, "I am with you because I am a moron." Or, "I am with you because I lack discernment. If I had better taste, more discernment, I'd be either by myself or with another person." That's not very flattering, is it? Look in your soul. Look for the very depth of your motivation. Find those dirty socks! Throw them out. If you don't respect yourself, the Universe, the Dao, will not respect you either. If you keep following masters, you'll keep getting rejected and not only will you never find a real master, but you won't even find a real friend. And that's a tragedy. Enjoy life. Value yourself. Don't assume too much or too little. Have fun. Don't lick anyone's shoes thinking it ennobles that person. It doesn't. It debases the other person. Reject false humility in favor of true humility.

My mind is so subtle, that even Buddha's mind is like a hunk of wood in comparison. Even if I drink 2 liters of vodka, I am more subtle than this entire forum put together. Have no fear. Now then. Nirvana can be said to be a realization. But if we mean it to be the same kind of realization like we understand all conventional realization to be (like the kinds of realizations you have, for example), it would be a temporary phenomenon with a start, middle and end to it. Since nirvana is not that kind of realization, since it is special, it's not wrong to compare it to Brahman. Brahman is not some kind of essence. All essences are objects of perception, and beyond being objects of perception, there can be no essence to find. The smart Hindus understand this. They understand that Maya means "no essence anywhere". At the same time, if you say that there is no essence, are you capturing that perishing does not enter into extreme? You're not! You're not capturing that at all. So to say that there is no essence leans toward nihilism. This is why the "no essence" is an antidotal teaching, and is NOT the truth. It's said to those whose propensity it is to overfixate. Nirvana doesn't have a start, middle or end to it. To say that Buddha entered Nirvana is a figure of speech that's said to encourage people. Its purpose is compassion. It's not a definitive teaching on what actually happened to Buddha! To understand Buddhism properly you have to become an independent thinker and think for yourself. As long as you continue parroting others, and as long as you come to Buddhism for answers as opposed to coming to it for questions, you will remain an ignorant idiot. Buddhism has no answers and it doesn't describe reality at all. Had Buddhism been an absolutely accurate description of how things truly were, it would contradict itself, because the core teaching of Buddhism is that there is no such thing as "how things truly are". There is no particular state that is the true state, no particular meaning that is the correct meaning, and so forth. That's what it means for phenomena to be empty. But you don't get it yet, because you focus on conceptual answers instead of contemplating questions and allowing yourself to be led into the mystery. No. Buddha's wisdom is not so clear and categorical as you make it sound. What you describe here is basically garbage.

Indeed. It's kind of like there being a man who said how he found a beautiful garden with wonderful apples. And this man is long gone, but here we are eating this man's calcified feces in order to try to recapture the taste of apples this man used to eat when he was alive. That's kind of what we do with Buddha's words. We need to find our own gardens and eat some of those apples first hand instead of eating the result of eating the apples. It might as well refer to Brahman. It all depends on how you want to define Brahman and Nirvana. Nirvana is a strange beast. It's not temporary. It's not phenomenal. Oh wait, that's just like Brahman! Nirvana does not arise and cease, or it wouldn't be called "the end of suffering", would it? I didn't take anything out of context. Buddha was a complicated man who said some contradicting things. Buddha was also an asshole sometimes. He wasn't always a nice guy. He was mostly nice, but he was still a man, and couldn't help but to have flaws. It is said to be the nature of mind or consciousness or the nature of all phenomena. Kind of like wetness is the nature of the water. But if you say wetness is not water...well...it's kind of true, but it's not very honest either, because outside of water there is no talk of wetness.

Actually you can, but you must be a high level bodhisattva. Haven't you heard about Chandrakirti milking a picture cow to get real (as we think of "real") milk in order to demonstrate what it means for the appearance to be empty? Now, if you don't believe that, that's a different story. A more accessible and lower-powered version of the exact same phenomenon is hypnosis. You might want to read up on it or better yet, go get hypnotized by a pro to understand the power of words.

Like this: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn....8.03.irel.html