Apech

Nobody's arguing

Right then we should discuss the purse ... and the TV rights ...

LOL ...well I meant what I meant and you meant what you meant. Jolly good thing to.

A straight head to head Icedude and MPG ... five three minute rounds only a knockout or submission counts ....

Can I put 5$ on Icedude please.

Why don't we have a banned members section where they can fight it out ... and the winner gets to become a full member again. A kind of verbal cage fight arena.

... Thank you for clarifying that point.

Yep ... you got me. LOL.

Its one of the Four Thoughts that turn the mind to dharma and as such is an antidote to complacency. Meditation on this is part of the ordinary preliminaries. "First the precious human birth is hard to obtain and easily lost. At this time I must strive to make this meaningful."

Yes!!!

Of course we must all make our own minds up about this and other questions. I was interested in the position taken by the writer of the original article as regards whether the Buddha actually ever said there was no self. And of course most people here seem to be utterly convinced that he did, and that it is clear what he meant. So I will slightly reluctantly quote from him (the Abbot of Meta Forest Monastery no less) When I used the terms abstruse and mysterious I was not actually limiting myself to the self. I was including the buddhadharma generally. I know people probably find this odd or alarming ... or just wrong ... but I am reminded that on becoming 'enlightened' the Lord Buddha himself concluded that his enlightenment was uncommunicable and had to be persuaded to teach.

No wide eyed wonder here. I also did not use the term irrational. I feel you are projecting rather onto my position on this. I am a practitioner and not a philosopher (although I like philosophy). To me the mysterious refers to that which cannot be spoken ... not to some kind of fantasy and abstruse to that which is not ordinarily understood as it is not accessible our ordinary mental processes. We see the path differently. That's ok ... we will just have to agree to disagree on some things. While perhaps we will ahve common ground on others, such as the efficacy of the buddhadharma.

I share your objection to long sutra quotes as answers to questions in online debates. Although nothing wrong with studying sutras of course. Where I have a problem is with the idea that it is ok to block out paradox and ineffability with rational formulations. OK we need to reason and its a vital tool for our work but if it obscures those moments of uncomfortable unknowing with off the shelf answers then it is a block to practice. Which is after all the point for me ... that although I have had through my teachers an excellent schooling in the basics of the Buddhist view at heart I am a practitioner and more at home in the mystery of it all.

Yes I agree that post 9 is a reasoned explanation ... but I prefer my explanation or rather non-explanation. But then I would wouldn't I

... whistling softly ....

Are not the teachings of not-self and also the precious human birth antidotes to obscurations?

...yes the standard formulations the inseparability of emptiness and clarity, or emptiness and appearance, or emptiness and luminosity, or citta and prana ... and so on ... maybe we go to sleep with words ... again I would say this is not a rational formulation ... it is abstruse and mysterious ... why else is it ineffable?

Yes I know. But then you end up with a simple statement of negation. So yes, the self which is the focus for our clinging, appetites, greed and so on... and more subtle forms of clinging ... does not exist except in a relative sense ... and it is easy actually to show that the idea of a separate, autonomous, solid self does not and indeed cannot be. Simple to prove but perhaps harder to realise ... but none the less there it is. So lets get that out of the way and we won't need any more quotes to back it up. So then once that false idea of self is gone .. what are you left with? Just nothing? Just a blankness? What?

Yes those quotes are about deconstructing the view of self and are valid in themselves of course. But taken from that view why did the Buddha not answer 'no' in the original quoted sutra?

Its not really a something ... its more like perhaps presence ... empty presence perhaps ...

Simon Cowell has let himself go.

This is all very fine ... but I still maintain that the realisation of no-self is mysterious and abstruse which is why the Buddha would not answer. Not the realisation of no self (which has no meaning really) but the realisation of no-self .... which like the realisation of emptiness is beyond words. The philosophical base is fair enough to establish a view to work from but it is of precisely no use when it comes to the actuality.

I completely disagree. It is abstruse and mysterious. Otherwise you trying to rationalise something beyond rationality.

There are 84,000 collections of dharmas to suit the needs of the different temperaments of practitioners. As you can see from the article I posted the buddha refused to answer many questions because the message is not mundane or prosaic ... it is abstruse and mysterious - a bit like the Tao.

Best wishes Fer ... for continued good health.