goldisheavy

That still doesn't explain anything. For example, why do some people experience no siddhis, and some experience many? Some only experience siddhis being done by other beings around, but some can enact siddhis on their own. How do you explain all this?

It doesn't sound like freedom because it's not an option to just be in your system of thought. People experience "just be"-ness based on their fate. Some are fated to experience "just being". Some aren't. No choice in the matter. In fact, due to conditions out of your control your state of just-be-ness can be ruined at any time. Considering how inconstant everything is, it would actually be a miracle if you could "just be" for more than a microsecond. Why did Buddha preach Dharma if enlightenment is not influenced by preaching but rather is determined by the impersonal universal expression? You do realize that Buddha has personally negated the view of fatalism? Thoughts do not have any kind of power like that. I can think about any topic I want. I can even stop thinking altogether for a time. I influence my thoughts a great deal. Thoughts don't influence me in a manner that's outside my sphere of influence. Thoughts have little power individually and whatever power they do have is derived from intentionality and contextualizing beliefs (e.g., if you believe thoughts have great power, they'll have more power than if you believe they have no power at all). They are not "just happening." They are intentional. You intend these things to happen. You are responsible.

I understand. In your framework there is no logical way to explain siddhis.

Universally so, or just to some people?

Emptiness of obscurations that doesn't imply total complete emptiness of everything is the Shengtong view. Appealing to anything as self-evident is Shengtong.

I mean life isn't always pretty, including the aspect of personal relations. We shouldn't always get caught in a fight or flight response to insults. So we either fight insults by calling people to arbitrarily stop using insults regardless of how people feel inside and then applying brutal treatment when people fail at self-control or we run from them (as in, avoid discussions of controversies, or places where we believe we might get insulted). That's the fight or flight response. There is a third option. We can call it tolerance or compassion. People insult others because in part the conditions for that are right. Without addressing the underlying conditions that lead up to the insult, merely suppressing insults and controlling them by brute force, or running away from them, are cop outs.

Solipsism is not any old position though. I think in this specific case the nature of the solipsist position makes it different from all other positions and deserves exceptional treatment (i.e. don't try to apply what is generally true of all manner of positions to solipsism). No. You'd be a control freak if you took that a step further and urged moderators to take action based on your desires. Do you promote tolerance to insults?

So if I don't believe other people exist, I will attempt to spread my view to other people so that these nonexistent people will become poisoned? Right. Ignorance is only wrong within some kind of context and not in and of itself. I don't believe there is something that can be considered absolutely ignorant. Ignorance is relative, and so is wisdom. I claim to have a decent familiarity with what the Buddha taught. I claim that out of the various systems of thought, Buddhism is my favorite. I claim that all systems of thought are imperfect. I claim that Buddha is imperfect. I also claim that I am not a Buddhist. That should be enough for now.

Debating can help one gain certainty in just about any view except solipsism. As for being a control freak, how about attempting to completely forbid people from using insults?

I think every person on Earth should claim to be realized. I see no possible drawbacks. Everyone is perfect in their imperfection. You agree, right? I suggest we should allow some insults, but not too many.

What do you mean by this? I am saying things like chairs and tables and so on are dependenly arisen. My mind's conscious and subconscious contents are dependently arisen. I say the same thing about your mind's contents. Why would that be bad? Is it because this doesn't leave breathing room for your own ego? That's funny. Why would someone who believes oneself to be the sole living being waste energy debating, trying to spread the view to others, and so on? Doesn't this sound strange? I mean, if I think I am the only one who exists, why do I want to share my view? Why do I care about justice and skillful means? How do you explain all this?

There is no way to become enlightened without ever discussing topics considered controversial by ordinary beings. There is no way for ordinary beings to discuss a controversial topic and remain completely unmoved. So I would say some amount of insults and personal attacks are necessary on the way to enlightenment. Why are you not immune?

That's understandable. In my view this propensity is described as intentionality. In other words, we tend to see whatever we want to see. This applies to you and to me as well.

Why is solipsism an ignorant view? Why does ignorance scare you?

I don't condescend to you. I am explaining to you the reasons for leniency. Enjoy forgiveness yourself and then extend forgiveness to others in turn. How is that a bad deal? Why not? Aren't you beyond ego fixations, thuscomeone? Hasn't your sublime view freed you from emotional disturbances? I suppose you don't want this discussion to be personal, but you want your enlightenment to be personal. Well, it doesn't work that way. You have to get wet and dirty to become enlightened.

If I truly held to a solipsist view, then on the basis of what would I abandon it, considering I wouldn't experience anything as external to myself? Is solipsism what scares you in my view?

You don't need to study physics as a science to know what I am talking about. For example, there is a force of gravity on the surface of the Earth, right? Is there a condition when the force of gravity is not felt right on the surface of the Earth? If yes, what is that condition? You should be able to answer this. OK, please explain how these powers operate. Do they break laws of physics?

No. Even if I gave you 500 lines of criticism you shouldn't abandon your false views. You should only abandon your false views when you become personally convinced they are false through your own personal investigation. Whatever anyone says at best should serve as inspiration to investigate. So what I am saying is basically a suggestion that, hey, there is something wrong with this view. Why not check it out?

thuscomeone, please understand that even if people generally regard you with warmth, unless the people are Buddhas, they are bound to get upset at this or that thing you are saying. Once people are upset, it's only natural to throw in an insult, or to use curt language. If we take a hard and unforgiving line toward this behavior, we'll have to limit our conversation only to noncontroversial topics. This means we'll destroy every useful and significant conversation. So when I say it's OK to get heated up, I am not saying let's just insult each other with abandon. I am not normalizing limitless amounts of insults. I am normalizing some amount of insult for the reason I described above. Plus, beings have to practice tolerance and if everyone is sweet to you, why do you need tolerance for? The whole point of tolerance is so that you can allow people to treat you harshly from time to time, up to a certain reasonable limit.

Those are not parts, but arbitrary imaginary designations. Not exactly true. What you should say is "there is no physical space apart from the possibility of spacial characteristics such as width, length, distance and spacial relations." This describes the limitation of the physical space in a language that is hard to argue with. In your formulation you tie space to objects, which is a mistake, because people can conceive of an endless expanse of an empty space. This is done in mathematics all the time. But mathematical space (which is used in physics) is not something other than the possibility to apply spacial characteristics coherently. Which part of the book is the quality of readability or joy of reading? This is a tragically simplistic, formulaic view. You should abandon it.

Relax thuscomeone. I hope no one takes the nanny approach with this. It's OK for people to get a little heated. We are all relatively mature and we know that if we can't stand the heat, we don't belong in the kitchen.

It has no parts. A ray of sunlight has no parts. And yet it is shiny and bright. It is directional. Etc... in other words, qualities do not require parts. Another example, space. Space has qualities but no parts. And these are merely mundane examples. Because I am not convinced by superficial bursts of Madhyamaka rhetoric. I dig deeper to see what's up really. People learn to repeat all the cool words while in the hearts of hearts continuing with the old limited beliefs. This happens all the time. All the time.

Karma means intent, and it is not justice or fairness. Moment to moment fluctuations in intent are relatively harmless. The biggest problems, the knots, are the beliefs. Beliefs are intentional formations that are very stable. For example, you believe in gravity. Thus gravity manifests during the day and in dreams as well. That's how stable it is. That's just one example. Of course gravity doesn't cause a whole lot of suffering on its own, but because most beings perceive gravity so easily and readily, even in dreams, it's my go-to example of how powerful a belief can be in structuring living appearances. So for example, say you believe in matter. This belief means that there is a fixed amount of stuff in the universe, and that to get some you have to spend some. Conservation of energy in physics. There is no free lunch. Resources are limited and hard to get at. Now you add a belief that the joy of life is limited to only one life. What's the consequence? People become anxious and paranoid about losing their lives. People begin clinging to life because they think if they don't get the most out of this life, their chances for fun are over at death. So either we get our fun now or never. This results in being crazy about survival. That craziness then results in a feeling that unless you're at the top of the social heap, your position is not good enough, not safe enough. So it propels people to struggle for the socially dominant positions, status plays, etc... So you have limited resources plus extreme anxiety, paranoia and neurosis. You worry about every little thing you do and say. Why? Because based on what you do and say your social position will rise or fall. Why is that important? Because if your social position falls you find it hard to get jobs, hard to find leads to work, hard to make business deals with others and so on. Why is that important? That's important because these are the ways to get a piece of the limited pie. Why do you need these things? To sustain life. Why struggle to sustain life? This life is all I have. And so on. This is a huge knot. That's how karma works in reality. Karma is not justice! Karma is intent. There is nothing right or wrong about believing in physicality and in humans only having one life. And yet, even though these beliefs are not just or unjust, nor right or wrong, they cause huge suffering. In fact the whole idea of justice arose as a way to try to mitigate some of the suffering caused by excessive competition and paranoia. So justice is a reactionary measure in the final analysis. So if you do lots of good deeds now, there is absolutely no reason to believe you'll be rewarded in the future. That's not how karma works at all. Instead, if you believe in limited resources and one human life, you'll struggle no matter how much good you do. Even if you're a king, people will plot to kill you. If you're a CEO, you'll find it hard to avoid abusing workers and will most likely try to squeeze the most out of them, thus resentment will grow, and your senior executives will be plotting and scheme to hasten your retirement so that they can occupy your spot, every ready to reveal any kind of damaging information about you, etc. So even if you perform a mountain of good deeds, your rewards will be short lives as long as you hold to the beliefs that generate the basis for suffering. There is no justice ultimately. If any justice exists it is only because we demand it and we make it so intentionally, as a compassionate stop-gap measure. In day to day life I fight for justice. Why? Because justice makes our hell of a world more tolerable right now, short term. But justice is not a long term solution. Justice is very important in the short and medium term to provide good conditions for life. But in the long term nothing short of enlightenment will be satisfactory. Once you deconstruct various knotted beliefs you will experience living in a realm very different from this physical realm. Imagine a realm where resources are infinite and struggling and competition make no sense at all? Sound good? Is justice even necessary in that kind of realm? Right. So we have pragmatic day to day goals and long term goals.

From the second link: It's the nature of mind to know and intend. These qualities cannot be reasoned away. When Buddha has finished his task, he declared, paraphrased, "This is it, the task of the holy life completed, there is nothing further for this life." Buddha declared this over and over in many Suttas. What is this declaration indicative of? It indicates recognition. What is recognition? It is knowledge. So Buddha did not empty his mind of knowledge even at the end of his path. Nor did Buddha empty his mind of the views of intent, since Buddha was always opposed to fatalism and held that 1) intent is morally significant and has implications beyond this life and 2) supernormal actions are possible when intent is not conditioned by false beliefs about reality, and Buddha even told people how to train themselves in the supernormal actions. So intent is hugely, hugely significant. One could say it is the very core and center of the Buddhist path.

And yet people still have intent which you cannot get rid of. The past is not a sufficient cause for the present and the future, or else the present and the future would be in the past. That's Nagarjuna. What is the implication of this? Some Hindu ascetics maintained that people meditated because it was their fate to meditate. In other words, they said the past of these meditators was such that the causes and conditions were right for them to meditate. So they meditated as an expression of this kind of fatalism, like they had no other choice. Buddha has rejected this view. In this view if I do something bad, I am fated to do it, and it makes no sense to talk about morals or right action. Further, it makes no sense to talk about liberation, because people are either fated or not fated to become liberated, so there is no point in trying to alert them to possibilities of liberation and the ways toward it. So Buddha recognized that intent is key. If you don't intend to relax your fixations, they can't be relaxed against your will. So this relaxation of fixation is still a very personal happening. This means, some people choose to relax and some choose to cling to their own bodies. So while the body self is false, there is still some kind of identity there because we can clearly see some people choosing to relax and some choosing to chase the objects of senses in a very tense way. When Buddha relaxed, all sentient beings did not relax. So Buddha's relaxation was private to Buddha. Why? Because intentionality is real and has to be confronted instead of being swept under the rug. And the reason past doesn't completely create the present and the future is because if it did that, it would leave no room for intent to function, and we know beyond any doubt intent is real and functional.