goldisheavy

This is more or less what I've read on other pages on the net. The problem with Rangtong view is that it's leaning toward nihilism. It gets rid of the self fixation, but it doesn't give you anything to live for. In Rangtong view, once you get rid of fixation, you just passively and meekly live out your life, accepting whatever life throws at you. Further, Rangtong view cannot explain intentionality. It says intentionality does not actually occur, which is crazy and completely contradicts everything Buddha said. Buddha stressed right action and meditation. Meditation is not going to happen when the conditions are right. Instead you have to decide to meditate. It's not the case that when the planets align in a certain pattern, the tide is just so, and the time of day is just so, the temperature and humidity is just so, in other words, all the conditions are right, then meditation happens. At the same time, you can even analyze the inner dimension of the mind, and from Rangton point of view, there is nothing in this inner dimension that is not dependently arisen. Thus, everything internal to mind arises from pre-existing and external-to-phenomena conditions. So again, everything is completely explained in terms of everything else, such as, current thought happens thanks to the previous thought, current feeling is caused by other past thoughts and feelings and so on. This view describes a kind of fatalism which Buddha has rejected. It's obvious why modern physicalists would be attracted to this view. The most subtle Rangton logic denies causes and conditions and denies absence of causes and conditions. That's Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna says that the present is not caused by the past, but at the same time, the present does not arise without a cause. So he's using weasel language, somewhat justifiably, but he's operating purely in rejecting terms, hoping that once the false views are abandoned, an inner realization will spontaneously dawn. The problem is that hardly anyone understands what it means for phenomena to not be caused and to not be uncaused. Hardly anyone understands that phenomena are illusions of mind basically just by hearing this kind of logic. And like with the previous view, just hearing that phenomena are neither caused nor uncaused one doesn't get any kind of positive vision for life. Instead one gets the idea that fatalism is not quite right and not quite wrong. This is a lukewarm point to be at. This is why most serious practitioners rely on the Yogacara view in Buddhism. Rangton tends to get people entrenched in looking for self in all things and trying to argue against self. This becomes a habit, and it's not a productive habit beyond a certain point. Elimination of self is only useful if you get stuck on something. But it's useless beyond that. Once you do not experience stuckness, you need a different, more positive and more fun view. Rangtong is basically like acid that melts everything. Shengtong is like sweet nectar. Rangtong tears down, Shengtong nurtures. In truth there is only one cause anywhere: intent. Intent is the cause. Everything else is a condition. Because intent is the cause, it is able to become arbitrarily conditioned given enough practice to overcome past habits. This explains mundane and supermundane phenomena.

I'm not buying it. In my personal experience most Buddhists cling to physicalism no matter what they claim. Once you start asking them hard questions physicalism reveals itself almost invariably. I'm talking about the Buddhists that hang out on the Internet, which are mostly the Western kind. I don't know what the actual Tibetans believe, but I wouldn't be surprised if they too are physicalists by and large, who learned how to pepper their physicalist views with the Middle Way rhetoric. Part of the reason for this state of affairs is that physicalism in the West has become extremely subtle and refined. We have ideas like quantum fluctuations, probability waves, and so on. This makes Western physicalism almost like Rangtong in and of itself. Modern physicalism denies solidity of ordinary objects. Of course modern physicalism has no theory of mind, other than to say the mind is a result of a specific type of brain activity. So many people who claim Rangtong view simply patch this up a bit by saying mind is real, but then they leave the entire non-mind side of the equation untouched, with all the probability waves, laws of physics, quantum mechanics, etc... so it ends up being an incoherent mishmash of a view.

You're dodging my question. I am asking if laws of physics are immutable or not. If laws of physics are mutable, then what are the conditions for those mutations? If laws of physics are immutable, please assert that. Sounds limited and physical. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.02.0.than.html Scroll to the bottom. Is Buddha just kidding around about the supernormal powers?

It's more involved than that even. Splitting time continuum into moments is not an accurate analysis of the situation, but there are bigger problems, such as failure to come to terms with the overriding dynamic relatedness of meanings. On what do laws of physics depend? What is the scope of intent in your view? Is it finite? Infinite? What limits intent? How can a person overcome the limitations that hinder intent? Please don't quote anything. Just speak from your own mind as to what you believe is true. I would accept an occasional quote from someone else, but you're a veritable quotaholic, you need to ween yourself off quoting so much. I want to have a discussion with you personally and not with your book shelf. I hope you can appreciate my interest in your personal beliefs.

This is still an incorrect view because in this view intentionality is not in a position to affect things outside consciousness and consciousness plays the role of being a victim to various processes outside of itself. Do you believe laws of physics are inherently real? If not, on what do laws of physics depend? You definitely suffer from a physicalist hangover yourself. So obviously dependent arising doctrine was not good enough to clear you up either. Your delusion is a subtler one than thuscomeone's though. I bet you believe the brain activity gives rise to consciousness and upon death consciousness simply terminates.

Forget about this. The main debate right now is between physicalism and everything else. No Buddhist school of thought embraces physicalism to my knowledge. Both tongs reject physicalist explanations because physicalism is precisely the idea that substance, something inherent, exists. Substance is considered inherently existent. That's kind of what the law of the conservation of energy is all about. It says that there is an eternally fixed amount of stuff and this stuff transforms itself according to laws of physics and mind is simply brain activity. This is the view of physicalism. This is the view that gets heavy representation at this time.

I'm thinking that dependent origination is a poisonous teaching because when physicalists hear of it, instead of uprooting physicalist ideas, it simply entrenches and legitimizes physicalism. thuscomeone is completely lost right now. He thinks that objects exist outside mind, bouncing around like a bunch of billiard balls, and then eventually some of the balls bounce up against the mind, which is kind of like a ball with the distinction that the mind ball can feel, whereas other non-mind balls don't feel anything. So dependent arising is seen as these little balls of matter bouncing around according to rules of physics. With this kind of view a rebirth in a physical realm full of suffering (struggle for limited resources, status posturing, etc.) is absolutely guaranteed. Physicalism is an incorrect description of reality. There is nothing whatsoever outside mind simply because each object does not know itself, rather, there is one knowledge that knows all the diverse objects. There is one knowledge and one intent. Knowledge has many aspects, it's not flat, it has character and it changes, but it's still one unbroken state of knowledge. It's the mind's function to discern. When the mind discerns something to be outside of itself, it's purely imaginary. There is no basis for the mind to believe something exists outside itself. In other words, there is no reason to believe that the state of knowledge is influenced by something unknown outside knowledge. If such things exist, they have to be taken on blind faith. There is no way to know that which is beyond knowledge. It's like in a math formula (y = x*x + xb + 3 + g + ab) there can be many elements, but only one relation is described by the formula. In fact, if there were not one relation in a math formula, the formula would have no meaning at all.

I was asking if any experiences are internal to the mind. You said the apple, the apple store, the apple tree, all these are external "things." I was asking if some similar "things" are internal to the mind.

Is there anything internal to the mind? If yes, what?

Why can't mind alter its own state via intent?

How do you know that if your mind was all that existed, it would never change?

How do you know these things exist outside your mind? Just like mind. Mind is not a thing.

Infinite potential is self-existent though. It doesn't depend on anything. And whatever shows up in our conscious awareness only has meaning in relation to this infinite potential of whatever else there could be showing up but is not showing now. In this sense the mind is indeed primordial. It doesn't depend on anything to exist and there is nothing beyond mind. Don't flatter yourself. You're saying that apple, the store the apple came from, the apple tree, all these exist outside your mind?

The mind is ultimately the same mind. To understand why so, you have to understand the role of infinite potential. Do you agree that infinite potential is one and the same potential for every conceivable mind? You're lying. When I imagine an apple in my mind, what is it that's not my mind that's causing the transformation in appearance?

Define mind more precisely.

To say that mind is all that exists means to say that beyond the state of mind changing nothing else changes.

Congratulations. You've just posited something independent. Is mind a thing?

When I imagine an apple and then imagine a pear instead, that's a transformation and not creation. At the same time, an imaginary apple is not "something else" and neither is an imaginary pear "something else". You're indulging in a non-sequitor.

That's wrong. You are saying only that which is dependently arisen exists. In that case, in dependence on what does dependent arising arise? On what does dependent arising depend? Is there a situation when dependent arising does not take place?

I am saying the conventional definition of mind is wrong. Creation implies producing something out of nothing. Mind is able to transform appearances. That's why mind is an orchestrator and not a creator. Wrong. It's easy to point out things that are dependent but hard to point out something that's independent. That's the reason why teaching Dharma is hard. It's just the other way around. All identities make sense only in relation to other identities. This is why something that is not dependent is very very hard to identify. It's precisely on account of mind's independence that it resists attempts at identification.

There is mind because there is knowing. Knowing doesn't require matter or other objects of knowing because knowing is imaginary. Knowing is conditioned by beliefs and habit, so because of this we find our life experience to be structured, steady, predictable, and easily changeable only along the habituated paths of change. Mind and matter do not form a duality. Color and red are not a duality either. Are you familiar with the idea of a categorical mistake? The idea is that you list things that rightly belong to a category and then you list the name of the category as if it were one of the things. Examples: 1. Red, blue, green, orange, color. (Color is the name of the category and doesn't belong in this list.) 2. Apple, banana, orange, kiwi, fruit. (Fruit is the name of the category and doesn't belong in this list.) 3. Appearances suggestive of water, appearances suggestive of immaterial thoughts, appearances suggestive of wood, appearances suggestive of air, appearances suggestive of distance, mind. (Mind is the name of the category and doesn't belong in this list.) So when you say that mind is a logical complement of matter, you are making a mistake. You're mentally making a list of examples of matter such as, brass, wood, glass, and then adding mind to this list as if it belongs there. The reason you make this mistake is because you are deceived by suggestive appearances. In other words, wood is just an appearance of wood and not actual wood. Brass is not backed up by some brassy matter, it is simply a suggestive habituated appearance and so on. All these appearances are a result of mind's functioning. That's why you can't really put mind on that list. Mind is not something you observe on par with other appearances. Thoughts are not mind. Imagination is not mind. And so on. You don't actually observe mind. But you know mind is real because you know anything at all! The fact that you know anything whatsoever is the truth of the mind's reality. If you consider an object we both agree is dependently arisen, such as a table, is it right to say that the table influences something? Dependently arisen appearances of objects influence nothing at all, not even each other. Do you understand this?

Exactly right. The streamness of mind is an appearance. There are problems with viewing the mind as an actual stream, like an actual river say.

Mind always exists. There is no condition which makes mind non-existent. In other words, the stream of knowing cannot be made to vanish. Further, mind is intentional and intentionality provides a single focal point for each mind, so minds are indeed subjective, deeply so. The idea of a point is not to be taken literally. It doesn't mean an actual point. It just means orchestration.

5 radiances are one single radiance of mind. Counting minds is a difficult problem. There are realms where only one mind appears. In other realms multiple minds appear. Neither condition is inherently more or less true. In our specific realm we can say that you have a mind and I have a mind. It doesn't mean there are two permanent minds, one permanently labeled 'goldisheavy', and another permanently labeled 'Vajrahridaya'. For example my single mind can transform into 4 new minds, or 10 minds can come together to become one mind. But there is at least one mind at all times. You can never get into a situation with zero mind. Also, when one mind splits to become multiple minds, that is an intentional event. When multiple minds merge to become one mind, that is also an intentional event. These kinds of shenanigans cannot really happen to you against your truest and deepest will. So there should be no fear regarding this possibility.

Absolutely correct. There is no matter at all. Not even an iota worth of matter can be found anywhere.