doc benway

I'd also like to here V elaborate. There is the "time delay" effect in which everything you experience, even thought, has to be stored in memory and then reviewed as memory to register in awareness. For that reason you are always reviewing a memory of what just happened, rather than experiencing anything instantaneously. I suspect that breaks down during unconditioned awareness where there is no experience or experiencer, no record or review of memory, but that is a gratuitous assertion because such concepts break down and are immeasurable at such times. V?

To clarify - this theory proposes the idea of "imaginary time" which is at right angles to "normal time." There are no boundaries or singularities in this model because time becomes a surface or a wave function rather than a line. This theory does not say that the Big Bang did not occur and does not say anything positive or negative about creation or a creator. To quote Hawking: "I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time, at the big bang. But there's another kind of time, imaginary time, at right angles to real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end. This would mean that the way the universe began would be determined by the laws of physics. One wouldn't have to say that God chose to set the universe going in some arbitrary way that we couldn't understand. It says nothing about whether or not God exists - just that He isn't arbitrary." Don't get me wrong, I don't really understand this stuff all that well but I do find it fascinating.

So what is the nature of color in the absence of an eye? It is a vibration of a particular wavelength. Color does not exist until there is a sensory organ that is stimulated by the energy which in turn is interpreted in your cerebral cortex. A related question - how do you know that when you say you are seeing something that is green that I have the same experience as you? What is the nature of sound in the absence of an ear? Vibrational disturbances in the air are nothing more than just that. It is not until the tympanic membrane is disturbed and creates an electrical signal in the auditory cortex that sound exists.

I like your words V, welcome

Yeah, tough stuff to reconcile. We don't need to see things the same way. A few other ways to think about it - without an eye to see, is there sight? Without an ear to hear, is there sound? It's not so much that the brain creates something that was not there. The brain makes sense out of potential or flux that otherwise is "no-thing". Another perspective is to think about what it is that separates the brain from what is outside of it. We have this illusion of separation from our environment but any biologist or ecologist will agree that there is no such thing as an organism independent of its environment. The separation is created by the sensory apparatus and the apparent boundary of skin, shell, bark, whatever. And the question of independent existence is not limited to the Buddhists. The Chan/Zen traditions are perfused with Daoist philosophy and sensibility. The Dao De Jing talks about things in a way that is wholly consistent with the Buddhist concept of Dependent Origination. Some have argued to the contrary but Taiji, that is Yin Yang, is an expression of just that. And the Dao is said to be change, movement. Dao is a verb, not a noun. Actually, heartmind is more a Buddhist concept (the Daoist concept is very different), so I sort of saw this as a "Buddhist" thread to begin with.

I agree with you, belts are for holding up the pants - Then why give a 4 yo a black belt? It is a completely meaningless and artificial gesture. You're beginning the conditioning process already that the belt and rank has value. If you want to teach the 4 yo what is important, teach him to value the training for what it is, not as a stepping stone to a meaningless reward. Because when he gets that belt, his family is proud, his friends are proud, everyone congratulates him on his "black belt" and you've already inculcated this mistaken idea that the belt and rank are important, intentional or otherwise. That's just the way it is. From the responses to this topic, I think most of us understand the relative value of training vs rank.

Amen

Hi Scotty, This may or may not be of any value but one analogy that has helped me to grasp the concept goes something like this. My body can be seen as an antenna. My senses are all tuned to receive and interpret energetic data. So depending on the specific characteristics of the energy being perceived, it has a different interpretation by the brain. Light energy leaves a visual imprint on the cerebral cortex, sound energy - audible, the very densely pack energy of "solid substance" is tactile, and so on. So the universe is a seething cauldron of energetic information that has no tangible substance or form and we are an organic antenna that tunes into an extremely small band of that information and creates the experience of existence. The interesting question then arises, what is the nature of energy? And there will be a variety of answers - a vibration (of what?), an attraction (of what?), a flux, and so on - it can get very metaphysical. So from the perspective of my human existence, everything I know and experience occurs through the sensory apparatus of my body and is experienced by the interpretive mechanism of brain. The brain creates the world, but at the same time, the world constitutes the brain. This is one simplistic way of thinking about dependent origination. It's important however to not make "energy" into the foundation or "stuff" that makes up the universe, Because even energy has no substance, it simply refers to change or potential. I love the heart sutra (and I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist) but I don't particularly like it's nickname. In English, it's probably better translated as The Sutra of the Heart of Perfect Wisdom or as the Wikipedia proposes Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom. To me it's more about the wisdom and transcendence, than the heart - and that's because my Western background and conditioning creates certain associations with the words perfect wisdom and heart. And perfect wisdom is closer for me to the nature of this sutra than is the Western concepts of heart. Perhaps a better English word than heart would be essence or core or foundation. Edited to say that this stimulated me to read a bit about the history of the heart sutra and it's fascinating... nuff said

Only if spontaneity and pleasure go against your true nature! I've met some folks that may just fit that category... Are you one of the THOSE? Just teasing... i appreciate the acknowledgment

Doing nothing can be very difficult! Especially doing it well... I have a nice t-shirt that reads: It is good to do nothing... And then to rest.

WIth all due respect to the author of this quote, there are 100 billion neurons in the brain (that is one hundred thousand million, just to appreciate scale) and 1 billion neurons in the spinal cord. To think that 40,00 neurons in the heart are the source of significant intuition or thinking is a fantasy and simply an effort to use anatomical data to validate spiritual concepts. The 40,000 neurons in the heart are primarily responsible for regulating and causing contraction of the heart muscle in an organized and stable fashion. This doesn't mean that heart-mind is not a valid concept, it is beyond concept, it is the nature of being, I just don't think that using "pseudo-science" to validate the concept of heart-mind is a useful approach. The neurons in a heart are not connected to anything in the recipient after a heart transplant. The continue to beat the heart as they are designed like little atomic clocks, click, click, click, but there is no neurological communication to the rest of the body. Heart-mind goes beyond understanding. If one empties the mind of all thought and concept, all choice, desire and aversion, heart-mind remains. It is ineffable - cannot be understood through thought because it is beyond thought. It is what is pointed to by Krishnamurti when he asks us to investigate the possibility of whether the mind can go beyond it's contents. It is like asking a tooth to bite itself. Thought arises within it but cannot "know" it. But it's always there.

I think you make an excellent point and I don't completely disagree. On the other hand, those of us who take the martial arts very seriously see it a little differently. Would you ask a 4 year old to study math for 2 years and then give him the equivalent of a high school math diploma even though he can't solve trigonometry problems? Sure, I guess you can and it may make him feel good but he doesn't understand trigonometry. Give a 4 year old karate lessons for 2 years and give him a black belt and can he defend himself against a pedophile or begin to teach martial arts to other children? It's really just a matter of perspective and intention. I think there is a lot of truth to this. I've trained with a number of teachers over the past 40 years. The excellent teachers were all doing very poorly economically. The financially successful schools were not worth my time and I was in and out quickly after seeing their approach and the quality of their senior students. One exception is the school I most recently taught for. There was a time when they did very poorly financially (during the time I was training there) and recently my teacher's son has taken over the program. So far, he seems to be doing an excellent job of maintaining a high quality of instruction while dramatically improving the school's financial stability. We'll see how things are a few years from now by so far so good.

Good stuff - we are in 100% agreement. There are many who grasp at the words more literally and turn it into dogma. You clearly are doing the work to see the truth behind the words in your daily experience. Godspeed!

Thanks for the clarification, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that individuals mistakenly believe this then. I'm currently reading Mind Beyond Death by Dzogchen Ponlop. In this, and in other readings and listenings about what transpires after death, there appears to be a distinct implication of a continuity of "experiencer" going through the bardos after death and then somehow "forced" to reincarnate for another life. An implication that if "I" do not become fully realized, "I" will have to repeat this over and over until such time as I am fully realized. There is reference to preparing for these bardos through multiple practices. There is mention that for fully realized people, the bardos after death do not exist yet for those who are not, there are three bardos after death. What is it that experiences these bardos and is subject to rebirth? It feels very much like a threat, a negative motivation to practice the Buddhist rituals in order to prevent the pain and suffering of rebirth. This is what I do not buy into... We die, the experiencer is no longer, we are pure heartmind. Another organic being arises and is imbued with the essence of heartmind and so on... I don't accept the continuity other than to say we are all "me", we are all the "experience" of heartmind constrained by our organic self during life and free of all that dust and distraction during death.

More or less - I think that the common interpretation of "reincarnation" or "rebirth" is one in which we imagine that there is something coherent of us as individuals that persist after death and is reborn. Whether this is our memories or beliefs or personalities or all of the above. It is also possible to look at the early Buddhist transmissions in a different way, which is the way I "imagine" it. There is the individual human (or animal or plant) and the unique combination of genetics, experience, memory, knowledge, conditioning, and all of that is "stored" if you will in the brain/body. Suffusing all of this and animating it is the heartmind which could be looked at as the source of consciousness or awareness, the spark of life, dependent origination of experience... whatever. I don't want to get into a semantic debate about what to call "it." So when the body dies and the brain dies, what is left? Is there some entity that continues beyond true death that houses memories, beliefs, personality - "me" and my unique make-up? I think not. How would that remain? What shape would it take? How would it separate itself from heartmind? How would it persist and experience the bardos beyond death? I just don't buy it. My current feeling is that once the body/brain dies, "me" is no longer. Heartmind continues. Heartmind is that which "is." It is what allows "me" to feel that I am "me." Every living thing is me, no living thing feels like they are other than me - the heartmind. And every rebirth is the manifestation of heartmind in whatever particular organic form that arises. There is nothing that " causes the rebirth that brings about manifestation as a human and not - say - as a dog or a bug?" simply because there are dogs and there are bugs and there are humans. All arise and all are "me." There is always birth and death and every me is me, the awareness of heartmind manifesting as me in different forms. And the conglomeration of all the me's everywhere combines somehow to form the glory of existence. Every tradition that guides us to heartmind points at the fact that there is some state of being (or non-being, please let's not get bogged down in semantics) which is sullied and obscured by our conditioning, desires, choices, whatever. To approach this "experience" we simply need to let go of these obstacles, allow the dust to settle or the clouds to part and allow the purity of heartmind to shine through. So what sullies or obscures heartmind is simply all of that stored in the brain/body and once that is gone there is nothing left but the purity of heartmind. And we can get glimpses of this and even learn to abide in it for relatively extended periods of "time" with a little practice. But I don't think there is anything that exists beyond death to cloud it. What does persist is the social and cultural conditioning that is passed from generation to generation that causes each "reborn" expression of heartmind to find itself again lost in the mire of samsara. And so the Mahayana tradition asks us to strive for the liberation of all sentient beings. In other words, we must rid ourselves of the yoke of social and cultural conditioning, for total enlightenment to occur. But we also are taught that nirvana is samsara and that tells me that the Buddhists understand that there will always be suffering as long as there is life. The two are Yin and Yang. While we live we can connect with heartmind but we also experience samsara. Perhaps after we die there can be glimpses of samsara within nirvana. I don't know and can't know right now so it's not worth worrying or arguing about that and I simply don't accept such assertions which to me are religious dogma. Sorry to be so wordy but this helps me to sort of work through this stuff and clarify it for myself. Words just don't do it justice but this is the direct experience I've had so until something is compelling enough to make me feel otherwise, that's how I see it....

Much of what is said and written about Wu Wei in the classics seems to me to be a very lofty aspiration but how many of us actually achieve a total evaporation of self and pure being in complete accordance with Dao and nature? Call it abiding in heartmind or choiceless awareness or unconditioned awareness or buddha mind or whatever. Perhaps one or two people in a generation? Maybe none? We can all express our opinions on that. But even the "sages" or at least those authors who are remembered as Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi (where is the proof of Lao Zi's human existence?) must have known that the vast majority of mere mortals never achieve this lofty goal... So what I think is worthy of consideration is what are we to do as average humans to live in a manner that is "going with" rather than "going against" Dao? One approach I've taken is to look at Dao as my own true nature, rather than trying to project my abstract image of what "Dao" is on the world around me. It is in my nature to think and feel and desire and choose. Much of this is heavily influenced, maybe even completely created, by social and cultural conditioning as well as physiological and environmental factors. We can certainly argue whether there exists a pure state of humanity where all of that conditioning is absent and we are purely a reflection of Dao and nature with no cloudiness on a permanent basis - I'm not yet convinced this does or ever has existed but that's beside the point. So I am a thinking, feeling, choosing, desiring being. Is it Wu Wei to deny this, to fight this? Perhaps. To the extent that I can let go of the conditioning and the preferences, I will do just that although the irony is that this is, in itself, a choice and a desire and, therefore, a departure from what is currently. Anyway, to the extent that there is residual conditioning, can I work with that in a skillful way to approach something that may be considered Wu Wei? I believe it is possible. I advocate that each of us conduct an ongoing and profound examination of our selves. Our motivations, behavior, choices, reactions, and so forth. How do I react to situations and relationships with others? What makes me angry or afraid and where does that come from? And on and on - it's a long and arduous undertaking. And the more I understand myself, the more I can understand my core values - those things that are at the root of my conditioned (and non-conditioned) being. Do I value integrity (that's a big one for me). Honesty? Compassion? Loyalty? Once I am able to get directly in touch with this, I can approach Wu Wei. If I am able to make choices that support my desire to live in accordance with my own core values, that is living in a manner of Wu Wei. I am going with rather than against my own nature as best I can understand and experience it. Then I am much more likely to be comfortable with who I am and where I am going in life. After some time spent doing this work I found that love and compassion tend to arise very naturally. If I can combine this approach with developing skill in acceptance, I am even closer to Wu Wei. When I can be in the present and accept my condition and understand that I need absolutely nothing to change to be here and now and totally complete in this "experience" then I don't need to make choices and the desires take less hold of me. Can I dwell in this state forever and at all times? Not by a long shot. Can anyone? Perhaps, it may be worth a try. But until this state becomes permanent, these other two attitudes of living in accordance with my core values and abiding whenever possible in a state of awareness without preference or choice is a way to approach a life of Wu Wei.

I think that it is individuals who are primarily corrupt. Organizations and institutions by and large are exploited by, or created by, corrupt individuals. That said, there are certainly examples of systematic and organized abuse and/or protection of corrupt individuals in religious organizations as well. If we were to look at the statistics available, some religious organizations have considerably higher incidences of abuse, whether individual or organizational, than others. The question is, how accurate are the statistics? This is touched upon in your link. I don't think any religious organization is exempt but clearly some seem to be worse than others. Thanks for that link.

I think GIH gave a great and succinct answer to "what" it is although I don't completely buy all of it, see below. There are many methods and practices that are designed to guide you to direct "experience" of heartmind. I use quotes because heartmind is not experience per se. It is pure being absent one who is experiencing and absent anything that is being experienced but these are just words. The Advaita Vedanta technique of abiding in the question "Who Am I?" is particularly effective - see Ramana Maharshi. More contemporary non-dual writings can be effective (Sailor Bob Anderson, Steven Harrison). Jiddu Krishnamurti and Anthony Demello both have "non-methods" that help guide one to this "state of being" And certainly myriad Buddhist and Daoist methods. A good friend recently gave me a set of CD's called Radiant Mind by Peter Fenner. He was an ordained monk in Tibetan Buddhism but for some reason left the monastery and returned to lay life. I just started listening to the CD's and so far he seems to be doing exactly what you are looking for - assisting the listener and getting in touch with the heartmind directly. I can't speak to his credibility and I've only listened to the first of 7 discs so far but you may want to check it out. I have trouble buying into what I consider Buddhist dogma when it comes to things like what is referred to above. Once the body and brain are gone, does the individual continue to exist? I know the TIbetan tradition (and others) believe so. I know that there are claims of such by reincarnated "souls" and folks who have "died and come back" but to me this is unsubstantiated dogma. Until I have direct experience or compelling reason to accept otherwise, my view is that the memories, experiences, preferences, personality, and all that which makes us distinct individuals is a reflection of the "hard-wiring" if you will of the brain/body and is a consequence of genetic memory, direct experience, anatomical and physiological characteristics, etc... When that is gone through true death (not just a 15 minute, transient "death") "we" are pure heartmind absent any individual characteristics. This makes the most sense to me. Disclaimer - I have one foot in both the Western scientific and Eastern spiritual camps. This certainly informs my viewpoint. A new and unique manifestation of heartmind occurs with each rebirth and develops a unique expression of heartmind, genetics, anatomy, physiology, cultural and social conditioning, etc.... Might there be fragments here and there that are expressed giving rise to the dogma that espouses reincarnation? Possible but I'm not completely convinced - just my $.02.

To get my black sash in Wing Chun one requirement was to fight the Shifu until he was satisfied I was ready - no spectators. He beat the crap out of me but was skillful enough to leave just marks, no real damage. I did manage to get in a nice punch to the face and cut my knuckles open on his somewhat buck teeth! When I studied a Japanese style many years ago (Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Karate), the black belt test was all in Japanese, lasted about 6 hours, and was very tough. Lot's of stuff we'd never seen or learned before the test as a way to get us to think on our feet. The tricky thing was that you didn't know it was conducted in Japanese until you got there! Fortunately I was always on the intense side and studied some language, history, and traditional sayings and so forth on my own so I did well on that part. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Baby black belts... I guess it's good that it helps keep the schools open in tough economic times... I wouldn't do it nor would I send my kids to such a school.

Sounds good

Nicely said. I would not consider a young child to be mature enough, either psychologically or physically, to earn a black belt in a martial art. My "definition" of someone deserving of a black belt is someone who is able to demonstrate proficiency in the basics of the art which would include basic applications. In addition, I've always been an advocate of including some assessment of maturity, stability, and responsibility. This is quite nebulous, granted, and yet important, IMO. The issue is one of economics only. To pacify parents, one must show them something tangible to keep them bringing their kids in and paying their tuition.

It is not a contradiction or quotation, IMO. It is because "knowing" when enough is not based on knowledge. It is not based on facts, memories, ideas, concepts, and the products of learning. It is a knowing in the bones, in the heart mind, it is direct knowing through awareness. It is connecting with something other than the conditioned mind. It is returning to the source.