Apech

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Did you say breast?

Thank you for your post RT. I was disinclined to add my ramblings but you mentioned me by name and so I am drawn in Just to be clear again my thoughts have no status at all because I am not qualified to speak on these things and are more or less off the top of my head anyway. Was it Chadrakirti who introduced the 'two truths' solution? If so I think he introduced a red herring. Or even a rabbit with horns - and I believe Tsongkhapa took the whole enterprise further. There are not and cannot be 'two truths' about reality - what we are dealing with is simply the implications of perceptual confidence. I see a pillar, and thus I go and kick the pillar and so refute anyone who says there is no pillar - thus there must be a sense in which the pillar is not empty of being a pillar. But of course I then apply analysis to what actually is this pillar - and it all falls apart. Same thing happens in physics, things 'disappear' when we look to closely. It's ok of course to say, in an everyday sense 'oh look at that pillar' and not be called a liar and a fool - and mankind has come so far as to wish to establish security in this kind of perception - we want this to be fundamentally reliable - but annoyingly it doesn't stand analysis. But it is actually a kind of dream or magic show. There isn't anything other than the continuum of the mind stream. All forms appearing to rise and cease from it - even when nothing whatsoever does arise or cease. But that does not stop the strength of the mental formulations and habitual perceptions - just as rain and wind form a landscape - forming a stable projected continuum or sensorium. The pillar is empty of self. That's it. The thing is with the arya bodhisattvas and buddhas - they are not disappearing into some never-never land of beyond. They are realising in their mind streams the continuity of the process which includes the pillar. Why not? Why would the pillar disappear unless all the causes and conditions which allowed the pillar have collapsed. Emptiness is not nothing and not not nothing either. The ultimate or absolutely real is not an abstract. So I feel happy with the pillar and hope the pillar is happy with me. You are right - the pitfall of Shentong is converting buddha-nature into an eternal god/soul/entity - this is of course because both views are just intellectual views and not realised awakenings. I don't think you can have a formal view which does not have pitfalls. Otherwise Buddhism would just be a philosophy. Since Jeff and others are around, and I know they love quotes - let me quote the great and peerless Milarepa so that I too can tip toe round the error of authority: Do not see consciousness: see primordial wisdom. Do not see sentient beings: see buddhas. Do not see dharmas: see dharmata. By the power of compassion from that, The powers, fearlessnesses, dharanis and so forth That constitute the qualities of a buddha Will arise like a wish-fulfilling jewel.

I'm not suggesting a fall into nihilism by suggesting no essence because I think that the crux of the Zhentong view answers this - as buddha-nature is the essence of everything. I think the Rangtong view contains a much stronger likelihood of nihilism (as an error) - which is why many modern commentators actually place citta-matra as the more developed view! I also feel that the thought-thinking-thinker question is the three spheres which is usually addressed in the paramitas in terms of generosity and the gift, giving and giver. So thoughts, thinking and thinkers could be seen as dependently originating on each other as causes. However I do not understand the Buddhist idea of 'cause' as the same as the usual idea of causation as in one thing definitely seen as creating another - its more the original Buddha saying 'evam sat idam hoti' - 'it being thus, this comes about.' Anyway- as ever these are my thoughts only and have no status here or anywhere except being that. And I don't want to distract from RT's thread with my ramblings.

LOL you could've just answered my question without asking another one.

Discriminating wisdom means the wisdom of knowing all phenomena are pure (thus empty) beyond elaboration. So what 'other factors' condition the mind to make thoughts do you think?

Thank you for your disagreement and even more for your respect I will attempt to explain why I think what I think. If I give the complete 'verse' from which I quoted it might help. I take thoughts to mean mental events. So what do we mean by the essence of thoughts? And what distinction do we make between the thought and its essence (or mind and its essence if you like?). Well, the essence of thoughts is that they are empty of self. So in fact they have no essence. If we take a thought, or feeling or mental image and deconstruct it - we will find nothing which is the inner nature of that thought, or which is particular to that thought in the sense that it makes that thought what it is. In other words rather than being things (as normally understood) they are more like effects. Like waves on water and not like water - except in of course the waves are water. But if we just look at the display of the waves we might forget that they are water. We might even start to say to our selves - look at all those waves I wonder if they have an essence - something that makes waves to be waves? But as soon as we examine them closely we will see oh! its just water! If a realised being examines a thought that thought becomes immediately liberated from its own ground. That is, the mere awareness of the thought liberates it because ... and only because the thought is empty. If we sit in meditation and watch the unceasing play of mind, the arising and ceasing of mental events, then because they are nothing other than the dharmakaya (or buddha-nature) we can realise that the view which is samsara (which includes things as things and thoughts as thoughts) is 'inseparable' that is non-dual with nirvana (which is the the pure liberated self-illuminating mind). So it is not that we have thoughts and so on over here ... and over there the essence of thoughts as being different to thoughts and identical to the dharmakaya - it is that we have both and at once the awareness of thoughts and their perfect liberation in that which they always were and never ceased to be i.e. dharmakaya. So thoughts are dharmakaya. Feel free to continue disagreeing ... while I wallow in my ignorance

If understood correctly then yes.

The Short Prayer to Vajradhara (a daily recitation for Kagyu lineage) - to quote: http://www.rinpoche.com/dchng.html NAM TOK NGOWO CHÖ KUR SUNG PA ZHIN The essence of thought is dharmakaya, it is taught. CHI YANG MA YIN CHIR YANG CHAR WA LA They are nothing whatsoever, and yet they arise.

No but the staff are very friendly:

I don't know that sutra - but the translation you offer does not make grammatical sense in English. However on googling it I found it in a Dharmawheel conversation in the same form so I guess that's where you got it from. The same conversation has this: In Mahamudra specifically (and not in Dzogchen as far as I am aware ) you have the statement 'all thoughts are the dharmakaya' - which is saying the same thing. The standard Mahayana interpretation would talk about purifying or cleaning the mind - and we all engage in this at some time in order to free ourselves from the confused states in which we find ourselves - but there is a more direct way of seeing where you realise that the adventitious accumulated 'obstructions' are in essence not different to the ultimate nature of the mind and are at base illusory int he sense that they are empty of self. So to talk about underlying luminosity is a just a relative way of speaking. This goes to the heart of the Zhentong view of the relationship between Buddha-nature and what we now perceive to be.

genuinely shocking given his age!

If you don't want to go the whole hog to North Korea - you could just sit it out in the DMZ. I can't imagine a more secure and protected place on earth.

Tunisia? Morocco perhaps. I'm not disputing your right to say that but just checking facts. Mind you most govt.s are well dodgy. Oh and God bless her Majesty.

I realise that in a certain sense you do have to clear out the crap - but in mahamudra even the adventitious phenomena such as thoughts, feelings and memories are the ground of realisation.

RT, I'm not sure I accept your definition of Zhentong. This quote from the Forward of 'The Lamp That Dispels Darkness' - a commentary on Karmapa Rangjung Dorje's Shastra 'Distinguishing Consciousness and Primordial Wisdom': ''...Rangjung Dorje, ... shares his colleague's (Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen) vision of buddha-nature as an entirely pure primordial basis inherent in all beings and empty of all incidental, conditioned, relative phenomena." I do not think this is an argument for the existence of individual essences of things but simply a pointing to the dharmakaya as possessing the positive qualities that arise as buddha-nature or the self-luminous mind. This is I think, and these are my words so open to finding fault with, a practitioners view rather than a purist view arising from just an analysis of name and form and so on. So I would go along with what Jeff is saying. Also its worth mentioning that Brunholtz (Sp?) in Centre of a Sunlit Sky seems to say that Mikyo Dorje thought that Zhentong was nothing other than Yogacara - or rather that Zhentong was a kind of advanced form of Yogacara - which also interesting is a way of yoga and thus a way of practitioners.

1 ) you just lost your argument by Godwins law. 2 ) You booked holiday in Turkey? You could probably get a cheaper package deal in North Korea.

Because they have to invade Poland first

I didn't get an invitation.

Easy on the leeches old boy.

He's a libertarian - I saw him interviewed on youtube - quite interesting. Not my cup of tea but a decent fellow I thought.

Seriously! but you are familiar with Homer I assume.

If they're up for grabs I'll take his long term awards.

Kay Burley has been broadcasting from Clacton all afternoon on Sky News - on the basis that this is the most Eurosceptic place in Britain. Just about sums up the whole tawdry affair as far as I'm concerned.