xabir2005

Exactly. There is no 'This' only but 'When there is this, that is.'

The Perfect One is free from any theory, for the Perfect One has understood what the body is, and how it arises, and passes away. He has understood what feeling is, and how it arises, and passes away. He has understood what perception is, and how it arises, and passes away. He has understood what the mental formations are, and how they arise, and pass away. He has understood what consciousness is, and how it arises, and passes away. Therefore, I say, the Perfect One has won complete deliverance through the extinction, fading away, disappearance, rejection, and getting rid of all opinions and conjectures, of all inclination to the vainglory of I and mine. - Majjhima Nikaya, 72 Enlightenment is about awakening, about realising the nature of reality, it is not a method. Methods are simply skilful means. By truly realising the nature of reality, one frees from the notions of "I" and "mine", of "existing", "non-existing", both, neither, etc. Being freed from such notions he does not make statements such as an ultimate existent, or non-existent, etc. By seeing/realising all phenomenon as it is -- as dependently originated, one is pacified from the views of "it is" or "it is not", apart from mere convention. And hence, the Buddha teaches that to see Dependent Origination is to see the Dharma, to see the Dharma is to see the Buddha. And precisely because all phenomena are empty of inherent existence due to D.O., they are without any defining characteristics. We only see inherent characteristics when we fail to see D.O.

Yes there is. The general theory of D.O. applies even without the 12 chain, the 12 chain is just a part of its manifestations. In particular 12 chain is the afflictive process of DO in a sentient being, an Arya (enlightened being) sees phenomena as DO without afflictions. Also, the early discourses present nirvana as "unconditioned by dispositions", but it is never considered to be independent, or uncaused. Namdrol: For one thing, the twelve limbs only explain the afflictive process of samsara. There are presentations however of a "reverse dependent origination". You can look those up. But the in main, the general theory of dependent origination is appropriate here: where this exists, that exists, where that arose, those arose, and vice versa. Instead of the twelve limbs of afflictive dependent origination, there is the five powers, the five faculties, the seven limbs of awakening and o on, the 37 adjuncts of bodhi, just as Shravakayana Aryas do. ------- "Thus, monks, ignorance is the supporting condition for kamma formations, kamma formations are the supporting condition for consciousness, consciousness is the supporting condition for mentality-materiality, mentality-materiality is the supporting condition for the sixfold sense base, the sixfold sense base is the supporting condition for contact, contact is the supporting condition for feeling, feeling is the supporting condition for craving, craving is the supporting condition for clinging, clinging is the supporting condition for existence, existence is the supporting condition for birth, birth is the supporting condition for suffering, suffering is the supporting condition for faith, faith is the supporting condition for joy, joy is the supporting condition for rapture, rapture is the supporting condition for tranquillity, tranquillity is the supporting condition for happiness, happiness is the supporting condition for concentration, concentration is the supporting condition for the knowledge and vision of things as they really are, the knowledge and vision of things as they really are is the supporting condition for disenchantment, disenchantment is the supporting condition for dispassion, dispassion is the supporting condition for emancipation, and emancipation is the supporting condition for the knowledge of the destruction (of the cankers). - SN 12.23 These things are concepts to the unenlightened mind. At some point there is a quantum shift of perception and then you stop relying on concepts and theories and just experience it or realise it. There is just D.O./emptiness happening, there is no conventional understanding about it. The teaching is just a raft to reach that realisation.

Yes, everything is the one taste of luminosity and emptiness inseparable. There is no One behind the many, rather, the multiplicity are all themselves the one taste of Mind.

One is all, all is one, is talking about dependent origination, not a monistic essence. From a great disciple of the 6th Chinese Zen/Ch'an Patriarch Hui-Neng, Zhitong: Subject and object from the start Are no different, The myriad things nothing But images in the mirror. Bright and resplendent, Transcending both guest and host, Complete and realized, All is permeated by the absolute. A single form encompasses The multitude of dharmas, All of which are interconnected Within the net of Indra. Layer after layer there is no Point at which it all ends, Whether in motion or still, All is fully interpenetrating. What does it mean? "If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either... If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the tree cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshineis also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too... You cannot point out one thing that is not here -- time, space, the earth,the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper... As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it." - Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh INDRA'S JEWELED NET GRAPHIC COPYRIGHT GAIL ATKINS The metaphor of Indra's Jeweled Net is attributed to an ancient Buddhist named Tu-Shun (557-640 B.C.E.) who asks us to envision a vast net that: * at each juncture there lies a jewel; * each jewel reflects all the other jewels in this cosmic matrix. * Every jewel represents an individual life form, atom, cell or unit of consciousness. * Each jewel, in turn, is intrinsically and intimately connected to all the others; * thus, a change in one gem is reflected in all the others. This last aspect of the jeweled net is explored in a question/answer dialog of teacher and student in the Avatamsaka Sutra. In answer to the question: "how can all these jewels be considered one jewel?" it is replied: "If you don't believe that one jewel...is all the jewels...just put a dot on the jewel [in question]. When one jewel is dotted, there are dots on all the jewels...Since there are dots on all the jewels...We know that all the jewels are one jewel" The moral of Indra's net is that the compassionate and the constructive interventions a person makes or does can produce a ripple effect of beneficial action that will reverberate throughout the universe or until it plays out. By the same token you cannot damage one strand of the web without damaging the others or setting off a cascade effect of destruction. A good explanation of the Hindu/Buddhist myth of Indra's net can be found in The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra: "...particles are dynamically composed of one another in a self-consistent way, and in that sense can be said to 'contain' one another. In Mahayana Buddhism, a very similar notion is applied to the whole universe. This cosmic network of interpenetrating things is illustrated in the Avatamsaka Sutra by the metaphor of Indra's net, a vast network of precious gems hanging over the palace of the god Indra." In the words of Sir Charles Eliot: "In the Heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact IS everything else. In every particle of dust, there are present Buddhas without number." The similarity of this image to the Hadron Bootstrap is indeed striking. The metaphor of Indra's net may justly be called the first bootstrap model, created by the Eastern sages some 2,500 years before the beginning of particle physics. Compare the first picture with: Computer model of early universe. Gravity arranges matter in thin filaments. ------------------------- ...One of the images used to illustrate the nature of reality as understood in Mahayana is The Jewel Net of Indra. According to this image, all reality is to be understood on analogy with Indra's Net. This net consists entirely of jewels. Each jewel reflects all of the other jewels, and the existence of each jewel is wholly dependent on its reflection in all of the other jewels. As such, all parts of reality are interdependent with each other, but even the most basic parts of existence have no independent existence themselves. As such, to the degree that reality takes form and appears to us, it is because the whole arises in an interdependent matrix of parts to whole and of subject to object. But in the end, there is nothing (literally no-thing) there to grasp.... Source: Sunyata ('Emptiness')

The explanation is conceptual, the seeing is non conceptual, not relying on concepts. An enlightened person does not depend on concepts, he sees D.O. all the time whether thinking or not. It is not concepts that is important -- it is the quantum leap of perception that is important. There is only D.O. happening, he experiences everything as seamlessly interconnected without essence. As Buddha says, one who sees D.O. sees dharma, one who sees dharma sees Buddha. It is the 'seeing' or awakening that is important. Prior to that leap of perception, yes, D.O. is conceptual. But just because you haven't had non-conceptual direct realisation does not mean nobody else has. It is not just a 'practice method' though prior to the seeing it might be seen as so. As Thusness said there will come a time when the experience of D.O. becomes effortless because it is realised that 'it is also a natural state.' ........... The Perfect One is free from any theory, for the Perfect One has understood what the body is, and how it arises, and passes away. He has understood what feeling is, and how it arises, and passes away. He has understood what perception is, and how it arises, and passes away. He has understood what the mental formations are, and how they arise, and pass away. He has understood what consciousness is, and how it arises, and passes away. Therefore, I say, the Perfect One has won complete deliverance through the extinction, fading away, disappearance, rejection, and getting rid of all opinions and conjectures, of all inclination to the vainglory of I and mine. - Majjhima Nikaya, 72

Thusness told me yesterday: "You must realize what is inseparability of conditions and awareness. Not realizing this will result in subtly creating an essence and this is the root cause of suffering. Take what Hari (Vajrahridaya) said seriously. But also take luminosity seriously, then realize that luminosity is most clear when Anatta and D.O. is understood."

Anyway Thusness just told me earlier in the day... non buddhists reify a source that is non-created, only the source is not created, and everything originates from that source. But in buddhism, nothing has origination, and there is no source. There is no uncreated substance where everything arise from and return to that Source while that uncreated substance/God remains unchanged. Pristine awareness has no monopoly. As David Loy quoted in his net of indra article: In this play of representation, the point of origin becomes ungraspable. There are things like reflecting pools, and images, an infinite reference from one to the other, but no longer a source, a spring. There is no longer simple origin. [13] and said: ...What have not been noticed, as far as I know, are what might be called its "postmodern" implications because they parallel many of the major concerns of contemporary poststructuralist philosophy. These include similar critiques of self-existence/self-presence; a shared suspicion about the ontotheological quest for Being, and a corresponding emphasis on groundlessness; the deconstruction of such "transcendental signifieds" into ungraspable traces of traces; a rejection of Truth (with a capital T) as the intellectual attempt to fixate ourselves; and the questioning of both objectivist and subjectivist values...

Dr. David Loy is an enlightened and authorized Zen teacher from an authentic Zen lineage (Sanbo Kyodan lineage) having completed his koan training, so he is not without personal experience, he is not just an academic. Thusness did recommend his book 'Nonduality' to me before a few years back, and it is very well written on the aspect of non-duality. I have his book, bought it a few years ago, and would recommend others to get it. However not much is spoken about dependent origination and emptiness in that book. But take note that 'Nonduality' was the first book (his Ph.D thesis) and was written in the early 1980s and published in 1988, paperback edition 1997. However he did write articles on dependent origination and emptiness in the latter years, like in 1993 he published Indra's Postmodern Net which I think is pretty good also. Regarding the articles in 'Nonduality' which Dwai quoted one above, it is part of his Ph.D thesis on comparative religion and his emphasis was on the similarities between Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta and other systems including Taoism and more. That is why it is written with a bias towards seeing the similarities. Actually there are similarities between Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. And that is clearly described in David Loy's essay -- it is the non-divison of subject and object. However, in Buddhism it is not only this insight that is important. That is David Loy clearly stated that Non-duality is either No Self or All Self, and permits no duality between a 'true self' and 'not self', observer and observed. Which is true. So he is right that both Buddhism and Advaita is non-dual teaching, but it is not the whole story. What is overlooked/not mentioned here is that though non-duality may be experienced as an All-Self and hence subject and object are not divided, one can still extrapolate all phenomena as being extensions of a universal substratum (i.e. reifying Brahman as an Absolute/Universal Consciousness) -- and hence seeing reality as an inherent ontological essence, which is not in accord with the principles of Shunyata. Non-duality here is seen as the union/inseparability of objects with Subject, but the insight of No-Subject has not arisen. In Stage 5, there is only vivid reflection and manifestation without mirror/Subject, there is no mirror (Ultimate Subject) reflecting or being in union with the manifestations. 'Everything' is a process, event, manifestation and phenomenon, nothing ontological or having an essence. Stage 5 is quite thorough in being no one and Thusness calls this anatta in all 3 aspects -- no subject/object division, no doer-ship and absence of agent. There is no agent, not just no subject/object division. This is Buddhism's No-Self. So the difference between Advaita's non-dualism of brahman and world and Buddhism's No-Self is the difference between Thusness's Stage 4 and 5 which he explained in his comments: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/200...experience.html And also as I said earlier, Dependent Origination and Emptiness (Stage 6) is overlooked -- since the thesis is focused on the similarities on the Non-Dual aspect (Stage 4). In my opinion, we should read both David Loy's book on Nonduality, and then read the article by Acharya Mahayogi Shridhar Rana Rinpoche on Madhyamika Buddhism Vis-a-vis Hindu Vedanta, to have a balanced view of the similarities and differences. To know only the difference is not enough, we must also be able to see the non-dual aspect which is also an important insight and experience. Likewise to see the similarities is not enough, we have to see Dependent Origination and Emptiness and the paradigm difference due to this.

Yes, the teachers are just using them as skillful means. Both shentong and rangtong are extremes. Shentong is eternalism, rangtong is nihilism. It is true that Shentong is similar to Advaita. As Namdrol said: First off, Hookham's book is a very unbalanced book. It does not really matter that Khenpo Tsultim Gyatso was her advisor. And in any case, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso, when I debated him on a comparison between Advaita and Shentong, was forced to admit that the only difference between Shentong and Advaita Vedanta was "Buddhahood". You are just importing Hinduism into Buddhism. This is a really negative thing to do. The Shentong position of Dolbupa and Taranatha, etc., is that wisdom ultimately exists. That is not the Dzogchen position. In Dzogchen, the wisdom of rigpa is also not established in anyway at all. The Shentong position that there is a ultimately existing wisdom is more or less the same position as the Vedanta position that there is an ultimate consciousness. The sole difference in this respect is whether one calls it "Buddhahood" or Brahman. The Shentong position of Shakya Chogden however is more acceptable, but even here it is but a transitional view between false aspectarian Yogachara and true Madhyamaka. Finally, as I have said elsewhere, and as is plainly stated in Dzogchen texts, there is no ultimate and relative truths in Dzogchen. If one persists in thinking this way, one will never understand the meaning of the Dzogchen. In Dzogchen there is only a single truth. It is not appropriate to label it ultimate or relative.

Nice blog.. thanks for sharing

Both are considered Monism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism [edit] Hinduism Monism is found in the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rigveda, which speaks of the One being-non-being that 'breathed without breath'. The first system in Hinduism that unequivocally explicated absolute monism was the non-dualist philosophy of Advaita Vedanta as expounded by Shankara. In short, Advaita declares - All is Brahman. It is part of the six Hindu systems of philosophy, based on the Upanishads, and posits that the ultimate monad is a formless, ineffable divine ground of all being. Vishishtadvaita, qualified monism, is from the school of Ramanuja. Shuddhadvaita, in-essence monism, is the school of Vallabha. Dvaitadvaita, differential monism, is a school founded by Nimbarka. Dvaita, dualist monism, is a school founded by Madhvacharya. All Vaishnava schools are panentheistic and view the universe as part of Krishna or Narayana, but see a plurality of souls and substances within Brahman. Monistic theism, which includes the concept of a personal God as a universal, omnipotent Supreme Being who is both immanent and transcendent, is prevalent within many other schools of Hinduism as well.

Whatever we see, hear, smell, that is relative to all its conditions and factors and have no inherent substance or any defining characteristics. It's just a dependently originated appearance. By not seeing phenomena as it is, as dependent origination, we impose our ideas on self and objects, treating them as inherently self-existing, with substance. As Buddha has said that he who sees dependent origination sees the Dharma and he who sees the Dharma sees the Buddha. We do not see that: When there is this, that is. With the arising of this, that arises. When this is not, neither is that. With the cessation of this, that ceases. so... The sound of bell ringing is, because the conditions: The person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ear, etc, is. When those conditions are not, then neither is the sound. The sound's appearance is relative to all other conditions, hence it is not self-existing, nothing inherent. Similar to apparent red flower -- a Buddha does not see a self-existing red flower with inherent characteristics (and anyway other beings see different colours and shapes), he sees dependent origination. Merely a dependently originated appearance, like an illusion that doesn't stay even a moment, unfindable and ungraspable. Nothing truly existing that has come into being or goes. Totally non-arising. Imposition means we treat self and objects as being inherent rather than as appearances. All there is is appearances. The sound is not self-existing out there, it is relative and dependent upon all factors and conditions. This has nothing to do with imposition (and definitely not superimposition because there is no Brahman in Buddhism to be superimposed upon), this is truth, and it is Precisely because all phenomena are dependently originated that they are empty. Emptiness and dependent origination is not talking about two different things, rather, it is precisely because of D.O. that things are empty, not non-existing but empty of independent and inherent existence. Emptiness does not mean anything mystical or mysterious or 'silence', it just means non inherent, unlocatable, unfindable, without essence. No inherent 'flowerness' or 'soundness'. Similarly, there is no 'selfness' serving as a background witnessing either -- pristine awareness is not the witnessing background. Rather, the entire whole of the moment of manifestation is our pristine awareness; lucidly clear, yet empty of inherent existence. This is the way of 'seeing' the one as many, the observer and the observed are one and the same. This is also the meaning of formlessness and attributelessness of our nature. The tendency to solidify consciousness into a permanent independent Self or background is removed through correct understanding.

Well said It the interconnectedness that is without beginning, without end, without coming and without going.

In silence and in noise, awareness is vividly clear. Even a single dust floating in space is vividly seen.

The Theory of D.O. is a model, a raft, for us to understand. It is important to understand first even conceptually. But when the insight comes, it is not depend on theories, concepts, etc. It's pure direct experience and insight, and the raft is left behind.

If you are referring to me, I am simply responding to the misconceptions about Buddhist teachings.

The tree has no suffering and thus need no religion.

What you have experienced is just a dimension of presence. It must be extended to all other dimensions including sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, thought. Everything is consciousness. When seeing computer screen, there is no separate seer apart from the screen, there is just the screen, the words. When hearing sound, there is no separate hearer, just sound. That alone is presence-awareness. The thoughtless experience of pure beingness is only one dimension. I have already discussed this earlier in 'Gaps and Thoughts'.