Apech

Morality is about following and promoting the good. There is nothing more beneficial to oneself and others than becoming enlightened and/or immortal - and even more so if you then teach others. The idea that there is some 'nondual' state which floats around untouched by this is pure fantasy.

Bed with no supper!

yeshe = prajna

the wisdom which arises from Buddha hood is prajna - all words with the root jna in them indicate knowing/gnosis in fact they are all connected as words. The pra part can mean ‘movement towards’ and by extension ‘beyond’ since you have to be beyond to move towards. So you could translate prajna as ‘beyond knowing’ - and is ‘explained’ in the Mahayana prajna paramita ‘perfection of wisdom sutra’ . So arising from the buddhamind is an awareness beyond knowing and as a motivation a compassion which is beyond duality (I.e. not sentimental compassion) and expression of inseparability of all sentient beings. PS I was your mother once and also you were mine.

the Buddhist term for wisdom is not vijnana but prajna which has a different meaning ….hey stop pointing at me!

@steve points at a monk

The standard suggested dates for the Buddha are : c. 563 - c. 483 BCE and the Pali Canon was first written down during the Fourth Buddhist Council in 29 BCE, approximately 454 years after the death of Gautama Buddha. Nagarjuna lived around 150 - 250 AD ... just to put the 'late arrival' in context ... The Pali Canon was a product of a particular school of scholastic and dualist Buddhism - so yes it is not 'non-dualist'. However Nagarjuna developed his ideas directly from the Buddha's teachings on dependent origination: "I salute the Fully Enlightened One, the best of orators, who taught the doctrine of dependent origination, according to which there is neither cessation nor origination, neither annihilation nor the eternal, neither singularity nor plurality, neither the coming nor the going [of any dharma, for the purpose of nirvāṇa characterized by] the auspicious cessation of hypostatization.[17]" So Nagarjuna and the Yogacara thinkers in the Mahayana were not refuting the Buddha's position but elaborating/explaining it - or that is how they would see it. Also remember that it is likely that the mahayana approach if not a separate school existed alongside the Hinayana from early times in the monasteries. Given the almost 500 years gap between the Lord Buddha and the Pali Canon the claim that Theravada is original in any sense is thin.

So basically what you are saying is that reading @silent thunder is like having root canal treatment.

I seem to have mislaid my self ever since @steve pointed at me, so here's my dessert, Baba de Camelo

I had no idea how consciousness worked till I did this one simple exercise:

In the Kagyu Guru Yoga practice the union with the Root Lama - which is essentially the non-dual - is explained via the three kayas (plus a sum of all three which is the fourth kaya call svabhavikaya) "The Svabhavakaya : This is great peace and is the nature of all phenomena. It is attained through the power of the dharmakaya, through realisation. The vajrayana calls this the body of great bliss (mahâsukhakâya) because its distinctive quality is supreme, unchanging bliss. Ârya Nâgârjuna has said : « I pay homage to that which is free from the activity of the three realms ; which is the equality of space ; which is the nature of all things ;… Praise to the Three Kâyas (Kayâtrayastotra), Toh 1123, Tengyur, bstod tshogs,ka,70b3." « The svabhavakâya is the dharmakaya of the tathâgatas, because it is the locus of power over everything. » Asanga – Mâhâyanasamgraha, Toh 4048, Tengyur, sems tsam, ri, 37a4. The Tibetan adds the word « phenomena » to make « power over all phenomena » The bliss referred to is not a joyful state but the complete liberation from suffering or complete freedom. The practitioner works through his/her physical body, subtle body (lung, winds, prana) and mind ... and identifies them as not different to the nirmanakaya, samboghakaya and dharmakaya. The alignment of the physical body is indeed part of the work as is the absorbtion of mind in the dharmakaya but the essential transmission involves the non-difference between the subtle body of the yogi and the samboghakaya of the Lama/Buddha. All three together co-present result in the svabhavakaya.

the meaning of the journey is not the destination

you know what - I spent the last four years chopping water and carrying wood - and all I got was an Olympic rowing gold medal.

Most people on here have talked in terms of the non-duality of subject and object - which is of course important. But in Mahamudra they talk about the non-duality of samsara and nirvana. You can posit an end of suffering or a yogic union with the primordial mind within the standard definitions of Buddhadharma or Yoga. But almost inevitably this induces a way of thinking of escape or return or rejection of the everyday reality. Everything dissolves away and so on. Birth and death only arise from ignorance or identification and so on. Which begs the question - what do we do with this life? What do we do with the tasks presented to us, with our thoughts and emotions, with our relationships to others? 'It's just illusion, man' - is that really the answer?

"steve-who-points-at-things"

I'm absolutely certain you missed my point.

I think you missed my point.

Yes I agree, I am much more interested in practice lineages than scholastic ones. In Buddhism at least the development of the View is through a support to practice as it gives a formal framework for practice to happen - also for the ethical or self-cultivation aspect also. It's funny that the more 'non conceptual' a practice becomes, like for instance Dzogchen, the more it develops a complex set of terms for referring to the 'non-conceptual'. Somehow clear thinking at some level is needed. Subject = subject + object is quite a deep statement ... in Buddhism again the ultimate subject, like 'naked' primordial wisdom is represented literally by a naked blue seated Buddha e.g. Samantbhadra to show the ineffable nature of the subject. However in my tradition it is represented by Dorje-Chang who has all the regalia of a medieval Indian king, hat, clothes, jewellery and so on ... to show that the subject is also in the objects. Dorje - Chang means the constant vajra, vajra being the non-dual power - so that which carries the non-dual is the essence plus all elaborations of essence. The mind blowing nature of this 'idea' is mind blowing What does that mean, for subject and object to get closer? I would say that the buddha-nature is the subject and that it is just the egoic self which is attachment to a collection of fear based karmic accumulations is 'lessoned' by realising it is a fiction as a self. The linked pages are I think from Zen, which is a Yogacara school. That is one based on Mind-Only interpretation in that there is nothing real apart from the immediate Mind and its activity. The Manas, indeed the whole of the eightfold mind 'model' is not real. They are not parts of a functioning mind like engine parts or brain parts. They are simply the partial recognition of what is ultimately real which is Mind itself. Manas simply is the 'self' arising capacity in Mind, the alaya is simply the Mind storing the imprints of events and so on. I think the attraction and so the resultant popularity of Advaita Vedanta amongst Westerners who have experiences of 'oneness' or whatever is because it is an ideal monism - and so it fits neatly with the underlying duality of Judeo-Christian culture posing as a solution. It seems like an answer and unfortunately leads down a rabbit hole where the person continually affirms their enlightened state. Sorry for more 'theory'.