goldisheavy

Here is an example of an appropriate conduct for anyone who imagines oneself being a Buddhist. Instead of exploiting anxiety and fear, it is to be alleviated immediately. Here's an example: In this example Vimalakirti could have played on the fear of the two monks. Instead of playing on the fear he immediately delivered them from fear. That is the right conduct.

Here's what you are missing. If natural propensity to be curious and to investigate is cut off in an arbitrary manner, such as, "Trust me, I know what I am saying, follow me and ignore whatever else you think you should know," then the mental faculty responsible for inquiry is damaged. The situation is like this. Someone comes up to me and says, "I need help. I want to get to an oasis." I reply, "I know the way." The person says, "You only ever talk of going south, but what is in the northern direction? Can you tell me?" I then break the person's legs so that he can't go north and say, "It's OK, I broke your legs so that you can't go north, I'll carry you south myself." After saying that, I just leave south and the poor guy is left to die because I broke his legs and when I said I'd take him south myself, I lied, because I can't walk for anyone else. Everyone has to walk on their own. Similarly, one needs to have a huge dose of curiosity and huge desire to deeply and honestly investigate issues. "Honestly" means investigating in a way that is accurately relevant to your person. This means dogma is poison. If I just tell you "you don't want to know this, trust me" then I am interfering with honesty. Because honestly the person wants to know something, but I am telling the person they need to remain ignorant in some ways in order to absorb my way. That's very bad. Secondly, just now you've indulged in fear mongering. You're saying if I could only remember my past lives, I would be scared, and this fear would be a proper motivation for me. Shame on you. You are a disgrace. You can't really intend to liberate beings from fear and promote fear at the same time. If I don't have fear, it is wrong to attempt to instill fear in me. If it were not wrong, then it would be OK for me to walk up to you, stick a knife at your throat and tell you that if you don't listen to me, I will cut your head off. How is that OK? It's not. But that is exactly what you are doing by fear mongering.

"State" and "unconditioned" seem like two words that don't belong together. I agree that Nirvana is a state, but Nirvana occurs in recognition of an unchanging reality. In other words, the experience of Nirvana is something that can come and go, but Nirvana as a stable experience wouldn't occur if all we could know were changes. In other words, you cannot get relief from fluctuations if your state of relief itself is constantly fluctuating. Knowing the deathless nature of one's own day to day mind one can relax. That's why Buddha Dharma, the real deal that is, is impossible to pin down to a dogma. It really escapes all extreme conceptions, and someone who appreciates skillful means should use both positive and negative language to promote wisdom.

Are you referring to various (introductory) commentary on the site or the translation of the text itself? I think if the text is authentic and the translation is decent, it's probably worth reading no matter if it's really Buddhist or not. It's easier for me because I don't have to defend my view of how Buddhism should or should not be. If I was committed to Buddhism as a religion (as opposed to wisdom), and if I developed a strong belief that Buddhist writings only and ever advocated the not-self and impermanence views, then seeing this kind of material would throw my beliefs about Buddhist religion and my vested identity into question. Then I would be like "What?? This has to be fake!!! Get the hell out of here... no way can this Sutra be real, etc..." But as it stands, it may be real or not. I don't mind either way. I'll pay attention to it if it says anything thought-provoking or interesting. I think Buddha liked to throw an occasional curve ball anyway. In the Pali Canon we keep reading about impermanent this and impermanent that and then bam, Udana Suttas talking about something permanent. (queue the hard-core Buddhists: "No maaaann.... it's undying and unborn... it's not permanent... there is a difference maaaan.... how dare you use the word 'permanent.' You'll be going to Avici hell for this one!! blblblblb :o ")

I do believe every word, but I did have a tiny doubt creep into my mind, which is why I confessed. I think the reason for my tiny doubt was that your writing is so perfect, as if it was written by a professional writer for a novel. Thank you once again for sharing. I hope your life is much easier now. I don't know if I would have the strength to go on in your shoes.

Very well said Taomeow. This is one of the examples of how and where Buddha screwed up. Buddha did and said more than one thing I disagree with. I don't consider Buddha to be flawless. Yes, knowing the context of affliction is essential for one. Two, by promoting the curtailment of curiosity Buddha was promoting a poisonous attitude of anti-intellectualism. Buddha was basically saying that mundane knowledge is utterly worthless and that all there is to do in life is to meditate, become enlightened before you die, and then whatever else you do does not matter in the least, so long as you help spread Dharma and avoid killing beings and so on. Buddha had no positive vision for life and he thought that basically life was a piece of shit on a stick. All these things I disagree with.

You're not out your depth. Just consider the nature of meanings. All the things you experience, external and internal have meanings. For example, tea cup means something. It has a certain function. It's used in a certain context. You don't wear tea cups on your feet. Trees have a meaning. Trees do not swim in the ocean. Fish have meaning. Fish don't serve as light bulb filaments. Inside copper wires it is not wind that flows. Why not? Well, that's not the meaning of wind. That is not how we know wind. Now, meanings only make sense in some kind of context. For example, it makes no sense for wind to blow if there is no space. Tea cups make no sense without tea. Tea makes no sense without someone to drink and enjoy it. Fish make no sense without the ocean. The ocean makes no sense without the Earth. And so on up to infinity. This context stretches infinitely and not a single meaning within the context can be called "first." There is no first. And there is no last. When you were born, you recognized people. You did not confuse eyes with squid, even though if your mind were blank at birth, there is every reason to think that your perceptions should have been scrambled randomly or even absent altogether. Right from birth you had enough context to learn a few things. You learned how to walk and talk, but you did not learn what it means for a person to look directly at you. You knew that. Your mother did not have to teach you, "When my head is angled such and such, and when my eyeballs are angled such and such, that means I am looking at you." No one had to teach you this. You knew this and infinitely more from before birth, or else you'd not be able to make enough sense to learn anything. To learn new meanings you need some pre-existing context, which you had. So mind does not start at birth. If the mind did not start at birth, it does not end at death. You may think that something like matter exists, something that is external to mind that backs up appearances. That can be disproved also, but I am not going to do that in this post. There is nothing outside your mind. No matter. No energy. Everything you see is just the play of your consciousness like a dream or a mirage, or like a magic show. You were never born. This world was never created out of matter. Matter only appears to follow the energy conservation principle because of the mental habits you've accumulated from beginningless time, and so on. Once you consider all this it is trivial to see that rebirth is a logical view.

It's a logical inference. Basically the mind could not have arisen from nothing at birth and it cannot disintegrate at death either. I'm not making the argument for you, because you can look up the argument yourself if you really care, or just think about it on your own. But you're right, you shouldn't accept anything on blind faith. That's a bad habit. Conventional physicalist view that the mind is merely the brain activity is wrong.

Reincarnating on the same planet is like going to bed and having the same dream you had the previous night, on purpose. It's possible, but it hardly ever happens, and when it does happen, you can't be quite sure if it's really the same or just very similar. For most intents and purpose I assume when beings are dead, they reincarnate, but never here in this realm. I suppose there could be some exceptions. Out of all the dreams I've had, I believe I've had an experience of returning to the previous dream only a few times. Most of the dreams are completely unique. So I think reincarnation is like that too. As for whether the nature feels impersonal and brutal or not, that depends hugely on your beliefs about nature. If you believe nature is one giant machine, yes, you'll get caught in its gears and it will grind you up just as you believe.

This thing looks nice. If the slats bend, I wonder if maybe they should simply be thicker? I think the design is a good one overall if the slats are made thick and sturdy enough. But otherwise why not just cover the top with a piece of plywood? It's not going to be as good looking as the slats, but it won't bend easily. Just thinking out loud.

The expectation here is that most Limburger cheese will taste the same. So say you taste a fraction of the cheese, but knowing how it is prepared, you make a reasonable assumption it's not going to be drastically different from the fraction you ate. Thus you can say you like Limburger cheese in general without being crazy. But women are not manufactured like cheese. They tend to have some individuality and unpredictability. So talking about women in general is a risky business. I wouldn't outright dismiss such talk, because sometimes it's OK to be a little provocative in my view, but if I was making a statement about women in general, I would be raising my flame shields to the maximum level.

Well, that was amazing. I almost have trouble believing something so poetic can be real, but I do believe the whole story. It's pretty mind-blowing for me even though I've had my share of mind-blowing experiences. Thanks Aaron.

Well, I tend to be loose with terms like "I," "you" and "we." In this specific case by "we" I mean myself and whoever wants to agree with me. Also, whoever wants to agree with me is not obliged to agree wholesale. It's a creative process. So if you somewhat agree, you can say, "why not change this or that, and then we have a deal?" I am open to this kind of haggling. Of course we don't have to haggle overtly, we can just assume this sort of mutually accommodating and adjusting process is happening in the background of our being. We can assume this if it's our intent to be somewhat accommodating. Also, it's possible I am missing something. So if someone finds something that I agree is missing, I will be obliged to adjust my beliefs.

I love this video. Even though I've already seen it, I love seeing it again. Thanks CowTao!

I'll do my best. But I can't promise anything because I am not a robot. I too need rest sometimes.

Alright. Nice talking to you. After you get some rest we'll do it again.

It's the other way around. Whatever is dependently originated has no power to manifest anything. For example, what does water manifest? Nothing. What does computer manifest? Nothing again. What do clouds manifest? Nothing. Whatever is dependent is helpless and impotent. Mind can manifest arbitrary appearances precisely because it's not itself anything like its vividly apparent suggestive manifestations. This is exactly why it's so hard to realize what mind is and why it is so easy to have false conceptions regarding mind too. Ordinary beings are lead astray by taking the suggestions inherent in the suggestive appearances literally. So when they see a water mirage, they think there is literally actual water there. When they see an appearance suggestive of a computer, they think there is real computer behind that appearance, backing up the appearance.

If mind is dependently arisen, there should be a condition for its cessation.

I'll reply to myself and do what I consider to be an acceptable job answering my own questions. 1. Whatever one finds manifested is intentional. If that's the case, why can't ordinary people say readily go through walls? That's a logical question. On the face of it this situation suggests that certain things are outside the scope of intent. But what is really going on here? As it turns out, our experiences are structured by our beliefs. Beliefs are stable intent formations. So when we tacitly and implicitly believe that all objects must have a property of spacial integrity we find that our experience conforms to this because of the principle number 1. Beliefs are said to be stable in the sense that once you believe something, you don't need to make a conscious effort to continue believing that same thing. They are formations because beliefs have a certain character or shape to them, albeit an abstract one. Another belief we might have is a belief about intent itself. If we believe our intentionality only extends to our "physical" body and no further, and that objects outside our body have natures independent of our intent, again, thanks to principle 1, our experience will conform to that belief. Of course we don't just have two beliefs. We have many beliefs. Often these beliefs support each other and need each other to be true. So for example of what might happen, imagine someone begins questioning the belief in object integrity and experiences sliding through an object previously or customarily considered solid. At this point all kinds of questions and alarm will appear, such as, "Is this real? Am I dreaming? Where is the real world? Is my mother safe? My father? Am I dead?" Why so many questions? Well, because one has a worldview. A worldview is a collection of beliefs that describe the world as we know it. If one of these beliefs is found to be false or flexible, it throws all the other beliefs into question. So if this one is not quite true, what else is not quite true? This is very scary and most people go right back to ordinary life after something like this happens. It is because beliefs resonate with each other, they stick together and support each other that this happens. People who learn not to be scared by strange stuff are said to have developed tolerance of the inconceivability of phenomena. It simply means magic is no longer scary. It's not scary because the world as an ordinary person might know it is gone and it's OK for it to be gone. Instead a different world manifests. This different world reflects the new worldview. If someone performs a magical action over and over regularly it stops being perceived as magical and becomes ordinary. What is considered magical is relative and unstable. In some realms going through walls is ordinary. In other realms it is magical because it's rare and poorly understood. In others it is impossible. So in a sense all actions are magical. Even walking and breathing are magical in some sense, but we don't see it that way because it's so ordinary and common. For a being who has dwelt in a formless realm for one aeon, having a physical body would be very strange and scary, and also very magical. For us, even a taste of the formless realm is scary and magical. Besides beliefs there is also a force of habit to contend with. So for example, suppose I believe I can exercise, but I don't. Why is that? That's because avoiding exercise is habitual. Once exercise becomes a habit, it's hard to stop. So habits have force of their own regardless of beliefs. This leads us to the second principle: 2. Phenomena tend to continue. This describes the tendency of patterns to be stable, even in the absence of supporting beliefs. So for example, one time I had a lucid dream. In the dream I knew beyond doubt all my surroundings were nothing more than my mind's creations. So I tried to go through the wall and failed. I just bounced off the wall. So even though I believed it was definitely possible, I still bounced off. Why is that? Well, habit was a large part of it. I was so used to bouncing off objects that it was hard to do otherwise. Also, I had to think what would it be like to go through the wall. I mean, I couldn't even imagine it. Is it like moving through tooth paste? Or is it like moving through space? Or like through water? Will I feel the wall inside my body? There are many options. I decided moving through the wall should feel like moving through space while not feeling anything special inside my body. Then I focused and meditated for a few seconds and successfully went through the wall just as I wanted. Similarly in many lucid dreams I've been able to fly, but not in all. Why not? Again, when I am lucid not only do I know I can fly, but I even know I've done it many times, so it's not even all that unusual. Still, in some dreams I fail to fly anyway. Why? Sticking to the ground is a habit. Beliefs tend to continue because of the habit principle, but they are still intentional because no habit is outside intent. To get a feeling for how beliefs can be both intentional and outside one's conscious awareness imagine you wear a pair of shades because it's a sunny day. You get indoors and put the shades on top of your head. As your attention gets absorbed in this and that activity indoors you forget about the shades that are on top of your head. The shades are on your head intentionally but at the same time, you lose awareness of them because your attention become absorbed in something else. Similarly, people get absorbed in day to day minutia and forget many of the deep overarching beliefs that form the basis of their worldview. But still, all beliefs are intentional and they can all be changed, even if it's not easy to do so. So, someone who has challenged one's beliefs many times and thus softened them up is likely to encounter beings who demonstrate unusual powers of intent (siddhis). As one's beliefs continue to soften further, many siddhis become accessible to oneself directly. Someone who has very conservative, limited and restricted beliefs which are held very strongly, which haven't been softened in any way, is very unlikely to even meet or to even read about a person who can exercise the powers of intent. This explanation probably leaves some questions unanswered, but that's OK. It's already a long post.

Terrible.

Beautifully said. I am very happy to hear this. It's intent that's thrown under the bus sometimes. When people learn how to deconstruct the deceptive obviousness of objects by trying to locate an enduring essence of an object, they get the idea that this process is to be enthusiastically applied at all times to everything. In other words, people stop actually contemplating what anyone is saying. They come into a discussion knowing in advance that "whatever is being discussed is empty, so let's pick it all apart." With this kind of attitude they know in advance, before they even hear anything, before they consider the issues, that they'll be applying a deconstructive argument to it. This becomes a formula, a habit, a cognitive short-cut. The short-cut aspect means you no longer need to consider anything because you know in advance everything is empty, case closed. It becomes a dogma and a cause of great ignorance. Knowing in advance how you'll approach the argument before you even hear it is simply prejudice. Emptiness is not an absolute truth. It's a philosophical technique to get people to stop grasping so much. If you grasp emptiness as the truth, you are hopeless. Saying "emptiness is empty of emptiness" is a sign of that hopeless disease. Instead of admitting a mistake, the person digs in even deeper by further solidifying their stance on emptiness as the absolute truth. There are many positive qualities that shouldn't be dismembered and disassembled by emptiness analysis. Of them intent is probably the most important one. Fatalism leads to depression. It leads to a life where you are watching the universe happen to you, as if you're watching a TV show. It makes you into a passive watcher, as if uninvolved. It's a deceptive state. Someone who believes in conditioned free will can relax too. Believing in free will does not mean struggle. Believing in free will does not mean having to ignore conditions. I can choose to do many things, but I cannot readily choose out of infinite things thanks to conditioning. So conditioning narrows the expression of will. Wisdom widens the readily accessible playing field by giving the possibility to melt conditioning beliefs that structure one's experience. But even if we are grievously hampered by our beliefs, our minds strongly conditioned, we still have a choice. We can still choose which way to lean. We can lean toward wisdom or away from wisdom. We can lean toward curiosity and engagement with life, or toward ignoring life and going with the status quo. We can always choose which way to lean even in the most grievously conditioned situation. Enlightened beings have a much broader ability to choose because they have freed up the constricting beliefs. Thus the lives of enlightened beings don't have to be so narrowly and inflexibly structured. They can lead spacious lives full of countless opportunities without feeling like life or universe is forcing them to be this specific way or that specific way. It's important to stress the positive qualities, like free will, ability to choose. Right action. Right intent. It's very important. It's also very important not to develop cognitive short-cuts. Always look at life as it really is. Emptiness and dependent-arising can easily become dogmas and poisons. Easily.

Link? We don't reify mind because the word "reify" means to make something abstract more concrete. Reification fallacy Related: Objectification

So when someone commits a crime, we should put universe in jail, right? You're blaming the universe for the way you live your life?

Do you decide to spend time on this forum? Or is it something beyond your control?

I understand this cop out. It's like saying I have free will because I am fated to have free will. It's a rhetorical trick that fails to reflect the reality of life. Buddha had the same flaw as me. He too rejected fatalism because he failed to see how it reaches and embraces everything.