goldisheavy

The quickest way to Godhead/nirvana is to just be yourself. I like it. It seems almost too simple and almost too good to be true. Almost.

I can't give you an example of its absence. Or how about an example that demonstrates part of the field instead of the whole thing? The contents of the visual field is one such partial example.

If you think that's the best use of your time, be my guest.

Not "we". Just you.

I guess you have something specific in mind when you say that, since you use the word "certain." Do you mind telling me which specific traditions do you think I think are fat? As for the rest of your reply, it looks like everything I was trying to say went right over your head.

This is cool. Field of meanings is a way to refer to the contents of a field of awareness or just awareness. Everything is a meaning. All 5 or 6 senses are filled with meanings. The mind is filled with them as well. And I agree with you that a carpenter experiences a different field of meanings compared to an environmental activist. Most people don't realize that the source of meanings is internal, at the root of their own mind. They think meanings come at them through the 5 senses from the outside, from the world which is out there. This kind of appearance is what I call "lack of intimacy." Intimate contact means you don't construe the world to be "out there" and you don't construe yourself to be "in here." You don't construe meanings as traveling through the 5 gates as if they are tourists. Instead you see all meanings as spontaneous and already at their final destination as soon as they arise, with nowhere to go, no sense gate to cross.

Thanks, I'll take this off your hands.

For example look at Dogen's life. Where Dogen was born, in Japan, there was a living tradition. He went to a temple, which is a place of living tradition, and started asking questions. He wasn't happy with the answers. He thought to himself these people are full of shit. Then Dogen went to another temple and asked the same questions. He liked those answers better, so he stayed. Eventually he wasn't happy with the answers anymore and thought they really were lacking. So this second place of tradition has also failed him. Then Dogen left for China, and surprisingly, the abbot left with him. The two of them arrived at China where they met with a guy who was reputed to be best Zen master in all of China. At some point after arriving to China the abbot friend of Dogen died. Dogen stayed with the guy who was reputed to be the best master in China and received a transmission from him. When that was done, Dogen finally realized he heard what he wanted to hear and did what he wanted to do, and so he returned to Japan to start his own lineage there. The established Buddhist authorities in Japan didn't like that idea. So they hunted Dogen for a while and if I remember correctly Dogen had to run away at least once. So here it is again, tradition interfering with Dogen as much as if not more than it's helping. So what happened? Dogen is considered one of the greatest Buddhist masters in Japan, and he is said to be the originator of the Soto lineage of Zen Buddhism. Is Dogen's success thanks to tradition, or is it thanks to Dogen? Why did Dogen kept switching traditions until he heard what he wanted to hear? Something inside Dogen told him in China, "this is it." And frankly we don't even know if the Chinese master was any good. Perhaps Dogen just got tired of running around. Perhaps in all that running Dogen realized something. Well, there was one good thing that came of it. Dogen received a formal document from the master of China. This document looked fancy. It had the names of lineage holders and fancy seals on it. And it authorized Dogen to teach. So it wasn't a complete waste of time. Such documents come in handy when you want to open your Zendo.

My comment was about attribution. How and to what do we attribute success? How and to what do we attribute failure? Is the process of attribution a logically cogent one? Is it symmetrical? If we attribute success to the living lineage, why not the failure? Why the gratuitous asymmetry? Yes I am proud and I do think I know what I am talking about. I also think that your lineage did not equip you to talk to me at my level. You're grasping at the straws, son.

This is the kind of substantive and detailed criticism I've come to expect from you, Vaj.

That's a good way to put it, I think. So what do you think the field of meanings is? The expression should be self-evident. If it turns out it's not a self-evident expression for someone, I'd like to know about it. To be perfectly technical I would say that people and Buddhas have influence instead of control. But the scope of influence is much more profound for a Buddha's intent than for a deluded being's intent. Of course when I say this I am just making a statement. I am not proving it to you. At least not yet. That's nice to hear.

You know in your heart it's true.

I think ultimately the difference is whatever you decide it to be. I don't think there is one single objective difference. Generally I would say that the Buddha is wise, capable and rarely disappointed. A deluded being is foolish, clumsy and is often disappointed. To be wise means to understand the interrelatedness of all things, and to have an intimate "contact" with the field of meanings. (The word "contact" shouldn't be taken literally.) To be capable means to always achieve your aims. And being rarely disappointed follows from the above two qualities. Being foolish means being unaware of certain relations. And the contact with the field of meanings is not intimate, meaning the mind and that which the mind tries to assess appear to be separated by a huge gap, like "the mind is here, and the world is over there." This breaks the intimacy. Since intent is always true, if you believe the world is one and you are another, of course intent manifests this kind of fracture faithfully. This leads to clumsiness and inability to achieve things, ordinary or magical things, because you always find yourself struggling against the world. From this follows disappointment. Both intimacy and estrangement are purely perceptual, even if visceral. In other words, both are like magical illusions or like dreams. Neither one is more or less true. They are just different ways to live life.

That's just the Buddhist dogma and it's wrong. Every state of mind is logically connected with every other state. A Buddha might not want to become ignorant again, or at least, not any time soon. That doesn't mean Buddha is stuck being a Buddha anymore than a deluded being is stuck being deluded. The potentials don't ever get extinguished because they've never been created by anything in the first place. They just exist primordially. Buddha potential and delusion potential are there at all times in all situations.

OK, so when individuals succeed, it's all thanks to the liberating traditions. When they fail, it's all because they are bad or incompetent individuals and the fault lies with the individual. Got it. Here's something similar: when the corporation does well, the credit goes to the CEO. When it does poorly, the workers are blamed and fired. Sound familiar?

People do this all the time and it bothers me. People do this with tradition and with God. When something positive is happening, credit is given to God or tradition. When something negative happens, no fault is assigned to God or tradition. This is very one sided and unequal. If traditions get credits for good things, they necessarily must get faulted for all the bad things as well. That's the true nature of responsibility. If traditions are not responsible for bad things occurring, there is no way they can be responsible for good things either. Tradition is a mixed bad. It has good elements and bad. When you look around and see ignorant people, who do you thank? I thank tradition for that. It's our tradition to be ignorant as much as it is our tradition to be liberated. Many of these liberating traditions you so esteem started as one person breaking away from tradition. The significance of that is not lost on those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear. It's not a coincidence that it is like that.

Suffering has never been a huge deal for me and ending suffering is very low on my list of priorities. Number one for me is wisdom. I love understanding things. Understanding is pleasurable and empowering. I also love to play. The only kind of suffering I reject is needless suffering or meaningless suffering. At the same time I view certain kinds of suffering as meaningful and worthwhile and I don't seek to eliminate those kinds. If you look at things from this point of view that I am describing, things look very different compared to making elimination of suffering a number one goal. For one thing, I feel like I am a lot less cornered than what you describe. I don't feel like I am boxed in by suffering on all sides. I feel in control and powerful. I feel influential. I don't feel as if I am fighting a losing battle against suffering and I am down to my last and most clever trick, and it's either all or nothing now, and this trick better work. Wisdom is a thing of utmost beauty. I am positively motivated to find wisdom. I don't go to it out of fear or because I am running away from suffering. I go to it because it's wonderful and because wisdom has seduced me with it's power, elegance and beauty. For me having an insight is in and of itself pleasurable and wonderful. I don't necessarily need insights for something else. It's just a good and lucky thing that often insights end up being pragmatically useful. This is all very wonderfully written out. What you say is very clear to me and I enjoyed reading all this. As is normal, I will now disagree. You speak of reaction as if reaction is somehow separate from the mind. And I tell you that reaction is conditioned by the mind. In other words, how you react to your state of mind depends on the state of mind. This sounds confusing at first because it lacks details. Let's add some details. The state of mind you are reacting to is more superficial. It is what is readily apparent. For example, you are reacting to a flesh wound, or you are reacting to the obvious physiological appearance of fear. All this is what I call "superficial." How you react to these things will be governed by the meaning you assign to what's happening. And how you assign the meaning depends on a deeper layer of the mind. So what does it mean to have a flesh wound? Well, it's a threat to our personal integrity. Why is it a threat? Well, wounds can become infected and so on. Why is that bad? Well, infections can lead to suffering and death. Why is that bad? I don't know if there is life after death and I worry this one life is all I have. I don't want to die too early. I want to enjoy life to the maximum extent possible and life as a human being is the only life I believe in. Woa! That's a lot! All this stuff is hanging out deep in your mind, far below the superficial level. If something tickles you, why isn't that suffering? It isn't because the meaning of tickling is different. So how you react to events depends on the meaning you believe these events have. And these meanings are a reflection of your core beliefs about reality, and that in turn is a deep structure in the mind. If you think you can retain all the same meanings of events and yet react differently to events from how you normally do, then you're strongly deluded. Meaning is the actual truth. If you think something is truly apocalyptic, you will panic every single time no matter what. Training will not help. The only way to reduce panic is to change what things mean. Something that used to mean apocalypse no longer means that. Then and only then you react differently. So reactions cannot be altered in a purely mechanical way. You must realize that events have meanings and your reaction reflects that meaning faithfully every time. If you want different reactions you need to assign different meanings. Reactions do not exist in vacuum. Reactions are not attached to events as if from outside. Reactions are enmeshed together with events and together with the state of your mind. In fact you cannot even observe the state of your own mind completely. Why not? Because to do so would imply to take a position outside of your own mind, as if external to it. We can't do that. So all our knowledge of our own mind is necessarily twisted and there is no way to untwist it, ever, because you can't get to outside of yourself. Some of us learn to like this state of affairs and we don't feel trapped in this at all. We dance in illusion. We learn to twist things with grace and skill because we know everything is twisted; we enjoy twisting instead of trying to vainly straighten things out. This says you don't think knowledge affects your state of being. You don't really understand the true nature of knowledge then. You underestimate how absurdly powerful knowledge is. Context, knowledge, beliefs, psychic structure -- all these name the same thing. There is no way for me to prove any of this because it's a matter of recognition. It's like if you look in the mirror and don't recognize what you see there as yourself, there is nothing I can do to prove to you it is you. Recognition requires willingness. It is intentional and not mechanical. When you mean to recognize something, that's when you do and not at any other time. If you are set to be a certain way, you will be. This is the source of stability. Our stability is not perfect, but it's not something to sneeze at either. The fact that many people die believing largely the same things they were born believing shows how stable the mind can be. I agree, but the problem here is you refer to this as "just", as in "just woken up", like it's trivial and inconsequential. The reason Bob does not "just wake up" is because Bob is wired deep down to see life in a certain way, to experience the field of meanings called life in a certain way, with certain meanings given to him by his deep mind. Until that changes, he's going to go on being the Bob he's always been. And no one can change it for Bob. If and when Bob changes his deep beliefs, it will be Bob's doing and not the Gurus or running around the globe. That's a liberating insight, I agree. Well, first you say "with that intelligence" and then you say "on their own." You are lying to yourself. Plain and simple. But don't worry, it happens to the best of us. Look at the last sentence above. Sure, that's good to know.

There is nothing that is irreversible.

I disagree. It's not the tradition that brings the person to liberation but a thorough examination of one's most fundamental beliefs. If anything, traditions promote a good deal of secrecy, anti-intellectualism and dogma, all things that inhibit an honest examination.

Well said. Zen people are astonished almost universally when I show them some Zen text like Dogen's Zanmai-o-Zanmai where Dogen urges the meditator to actively think about the meaning of meditation instead of just being like a "dead tree" idiot. What??? Thinking??? What about "just sitting"?

I agree for the most part. But when someone decides to promulgate a doctrine that contains passages that call for death to unbelievers, that's when I get off the "all religions should be respected" bus. I'm sorry, but if someone's doctrine is basically saying that I need to be killed, people can't seriously expect me to support such a doctrine. And we all know what I am talking about here, and this is a rather extreme example to make the point obvious. There are many things I disagree with contained in many religious doctrines, and I find many of them ugly and many of them are hard to tolerate, but somewhere the line must be drawn and inciting murder of anyone who disagrees is as good a place as any to draw such line. I would also include things like the caste system, demonizing of sex, viewing women as lesser beings -- all these are good examples of some other things I don't want to tolerate or respect. If we can agree on these bare bone basics, then yes, I agree to let everyone believe whatever they want when it comes to metaphysics, God, the meaning of life, how many times one should fast, etc. I've noticed deeply authoritarian streaks on many Buddhist forums, and it is ugly. I've also seen a good deal of fear mongering on some of the Buddhist forums, for example, telling people they are going to hell or saying they'll be reborn as animals if they don't hop on some doctrinal bandwagon, etc. I hate such things. This is one of the reasons why I can never be a Buddhist myself. I really dislike religion and I choose to respect people in a manner very similar to what you describe. I respect people based on the quality of the highest aspirations people hold and based on the personal integrity with which people pursue those aspirations in life. I reject all dogmas. Dogmatic knowledge is defined as knowledge that should be accepted purely on its say-so. I don't think we should accept anything on anyone's say-so, even if it was God or an angel. Even if God could speak, we should challenge everything and make sure it stands up to reason and experience. Dogmatic attitudes are a plague on mankind. More than anything I want freedom of conscience and freedom of thought instead of freedom of religion. I think religion often directly opposes freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. That's why I am very mixed on the whole "freedom of religion" idea. I think freedom from religion is really more to my liking. How many times have I seen reasonable questions get dismissed by the religious authorities. It happens a lot. If you ask uncomfortable questions, you are told to forget your question and have faith instead. I don't accept this kind of intellectual bullying at all. So all the talk about every prophet being Buddha is not really to my liking. I will agree that some of the people outside Buddhism have been very wise, perhaps enlightened, and should be considered for inspiration on par with the Buddha. That I can agree with. Like I said, Buddhism does not have a monopoly on wisdom and enlightenment is basically a perfection of wisdom. So I have a lot of respect for people like Socrates, Zhuangzi, and even "just" writers like Richard Bach, and many many others. I also like to read the findings of modern science, even though modern science is not a person. And because modern science is not based on personality worship there is not necessarily some specific scientist to pay homage to, rather, I pay homage to the process of science and to the ideals of science. So for an obvious example, open exchange of information is one of the scientific ideals and I support it wholeheartedly. This is one of the reasons I get upset about all the secret clubs readily observable in the spiritual space.

I hear you. I enjoy ice cream. But if you give me a box of ice cream I am not going to respect you more. Is respect really that cheap? Perhaps it is. Yes, I guess that's one of the main reasons why I don't care about respect to begin with. If I respect someone, it's more likely because I respect what that person stands for, I respect that person's highest aspirations and the personal integrity with which one pursues one's dreams.

I wouldn't call such approach ethnocentric. I would call it doctrine-centric. Buddhist doctrine is what is esteemed here and not the ethnicity of the view holders. As a personal example, if we go by my ethnicity I should be Eastern Orthodox Christian right now. I am not. I am not ethnically Buddhist. I respect Buddhism because of the meaning of the words in the Buddhist doctrine and because of Buddha's life example. Also, I wouldn't say that Jesus was enlightened except for the sake of hollow and somewhat insincere politically correct attempt at peace. But at least I am relatively OK with Jesus. I positively hate Mohammed for many reasons, mainly his personal warlordism and the unkind and brutal doctrine he spawned in his wake. I don't agree with this. I think enlightenment refers to someone who has wisdom and who is not deceived by common day to day appearances. It is someone who leads an examined life, like Socrates. Such a person may have transcendent experiences or may not. What matters more than anything is wisdom and not experience. Recognition of the true nature of phenomena is what matters. They are not all Buddhas. Some of them are ignorant psychopaths. I think becoming a Buddhist groupie is contrary to the spirit of Buddhism. Buddhists more than any other people have relied on reason and that's why they get respect. They don't just bullshit your head off because some schizophrenic angel vision told them to. Buddhists do not have a monopoly on truth, but there is a damn good reason why Buddhists get more respect than Muslims or Christians. I don't agree with Buddha or Buddhism on everything, but I certainly respect Buddhist doctrine much more than any other doctrine save the Daoist perhaps, and even then, only when it is high level stuff like Daodejing and Zhuangzi and not the stuff about energy manipulation and bodily immortality.