forestofclarity

Here is a good video series introducing Vedanta. Introduction to Vedanta

How do you distininguish between vijnana and rigpa? In your teaching, what is vijnana experientially?

I've been wondering lately if qigong forms aren't all BS. Perhaps the trick is not so much the form, but the relaxation and non-attachment that comes with practice, along with cultivating positive feelings and mindfulness. Of course, I am no expert in these areas, so I thought I'd lay this out to the experts. What do you think?

Mindfulness is only one part of the Buddhist meditation formula. The other part is shamatha, concentrative or calm-abiding meditation. It is key to practice one with the other. A good shamatha practice will allow one to create the space in which challenging thoughts and feelings may arise. The easiest and simplest way to build this practice is simply concentrating on the breath. Another good way is to sit zazen. A strong shamatha practice will not only help during meditation, but in all of life. At some point, it is also a good idea to think about having a teacher.

The smell of the lemon, the tick of the clock.

No, the Buddha did not keep silent about God. Rather, Buddha taught the origin and cessation of suffering. According to traditional Buddhist lore, before the Buddha asked the gods to end suffering. Receiving no answer, he sat under the bodhi tree. Look to the Kevatta Sutta. A monk goes up the entire retinue of gods looking for an answer to his question: where do the elements "cease without remainder." Finally, he gets to the Great Brahma: 'I, monk, am Brahma, the Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Sovereign Lord, the Maker, Creator, Chief, Appointer and Ruler, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be.' "[T]he monk said to the Great Brahma, 'Friend, I didn't ask you if you were Brahma, the Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Sovereign Lord, the Maker, Creator, Chief, Appointer and Ruler, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be. I asked you where these four great elements — the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, and the wind property — cease without remainder.' "Then the Great Brahma, taking the monk by the arm and leading him off to one side, said to him, 'These gods of the retinue of Brahma believe, "There is nothing that the Great Brahma does not know. There is nothing that the Great Brahma does not see. There is nothing of which the Great Brahma is unaware. There is nothing that the Great Brahma has not realized." That is why I did not say in their presence that I, too, don't know where the four great elements... cease without remainder. So you have acted wrongly, acted incorrectly, in bypassing the Blessed One in search of an answer to this question elsewhere. Go right back to the Blessed One and, on arrival, ask him this question. However he answers it, you should take it to heart.' SPOILER ALERT! The Buddha's answer: The Buddha tells the monk he is asking the wrong question. "'Your question should not be phrased in this way: Where do these four great elements — the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, and the wind property — cease without remainder? Instead, it should be phrased like this: Where do water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing? Where are long & short, coarse & fine, fair & foul, name & form brought to an end? "'And the answer to that is: Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around: Here water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing. Here long & short coarse & fine fair & foul name & form are all brought to an end. With the cessation of [the activity of] consciousness each is here brought to an end.'"

Here are a bunch more Vedanta traps: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mariana-caplan-phd/spiritual-living-10-spiri_b_609248.html The most common I've seen is Identifying with Spiritual Experiences and The Deadly Virus I Have Arrived.

If one doesn't see the bodhisattvas in the world, it is because one is not looking. There are bodhisattvas everywhere, revealing themselves constantly.

Which is why no one should ever set a date for the apocalypse.

I've been going through Advaitic sources again, which at a certain level, are not unlike Zen sources. Both of them discuss the formless mind or objectless consciousness. Shankara is pretty clear in Drg Drska that when he is discussing objectless consciousness, he is talking about our "witness" and not necessarily a state (i.e. nirvikalpa samadhi). There are several problems in this area: 1. Objectless consciousness is not an object. Objects, for humans, are sensory. They have color, sound, or touch sensations to them. OC has no color, no sound, and no feel. Objects include thoughts, feelings, moods, intellect, memory, etc. 2. Objectless consciousness cannot be compared to an object. I think there is a lot of confusion by comparing OC with light, space, and so on. Because it lacks any object qualities, it cannot really be compared to an object. To even call it a "witness" is to turn it from objectless consciousness into an object. Words are simply objects in verbal form. Which is why OC can't really be discussed. 3. Objects are not apart from objectless consciousness. Just like light and seeing cannot be understood apart from each other, all objects are "known" via objectless consciousness. So while OC is not an object, it is not apart from objects either. Understood in this way, most questions/problems turn OC into an object.

I also have come down with a minor cold. 2012: The Minor Cold Awakens! Run for Your Lives!

I think most people do not tend toward non-duality, and that it's practice is rare in ever culture. Your average ethnic Buddhist, for instance, won't practice meditation or get very deeply into the literature or the practice. I imagine this is the same is most cultures. How many sincerely practicing Advaitins are out there anyway?

That's only true if you subtract the Christian mystical tradition. Western religion has always had an exoteric and esoteric set of meanings. Meister Eckhart: Some people think they will see God as if he were standing there and they here. It is not so. God and I, we are one.

No, this Swami Dayananda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayananda_Saraswati_(Ärsha_Vidya)

If you are looking for traditional Vedanta, one of the most recommended is Swami Dayananda. Also, you may want to look at advaita academy: http://advaita-academy.org/pages/default.aspx

Science is like mainstream economics. Mainstream economics gives us a wink and says "assuming that people are rational actors with complete information"--- a wink we all know to be completely untrue in our own common experience. Likewise, science assumes that there is an objective reality "out there" to begin with, like some mountain waiting to be discovered. Yet this is not what we find, in our own experience nor in scientific discoveries. We do not find the hard, static matter of certain ancient Greeks, we find a world constantly changing. Quantum experiments show that the fundamental nature of a particle appears to change depending on how we choose to measure it. Independence and separation, the hallmarks of the scientist worldview, are illusions. All things are energy, and energy is hardly fixed. By its nature, it changes, transforms, moves, and vibrates. Trying to capture this with concepts, no matter how fluid, is doomed to failure. I'm now old enough to have seen in my life many changes in science, especially the brain, which was once declared to be a static, fixed thing.

I would ask this: when you look at a chair, can you draw a line or see a boundary between your seeing and the chair itself? If so, where does the seeing end, and the chair begin? When you touch a chair, is there a boundary or a line between your sensation of the chair and the chair itself? When I look directly into my experience, I see no such line or boundary.

This may get you started: http://www.kamakotimandali.com/blog/index.php?p=540&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Separate and dependent are contradictory notions. Dependency shows how you are NOT separate from other things. For example, the air we breath connects us to the world. The food we eat connects us to other living beings. Our bodies are literally made of star dust and powered by the sun. We may be different than the sun, but I would not say that we are separate.

This is an important point, and a key dispute between Buddhists and Advaitins, and sharpens when we discuss deep sleep. I feel that deep sleep can be interpreted in one of several ways: 1) the cessation of consciousness altogether. This is more of a (non-Mahayana) Buddhist view. However, consciousness feels continuous. I feel as though I am "me" in the morning as the night before. Further, deep sleep can be interrupted at any time, and the mind springs forth (literally). If consciousness ceased, then why should it be reborn at all, much less feel as though it is the same? 2) a modern Advaitin view, that we remember having slept well which means we were conscious. I don't think this is satisfying, because memory occurs now and tells us nothing of the state then. 3) deep sleep is consciousness without objects. Typically, one may expect a blank nothing. However, a blank nothing would have both space and time. Without objects, there is no space and time. This strikes me, as of right now, to be more of a satisfying view. However, there is an aspect of ignorance in deep sleep. It is difficult because the waking mind isn't there in deep sleep to inquire about it.

"Exist" and "real" are just categories in the object oriented mind. In direct experience, right now, I experience no line. Re: Rupert Spira: listen to his interviews. He's a master in dialogue.

Just to clarify, I am not agreeing that subject transitions into objects. We often make subject into object, but this is a mistake in my mind. The mind is object oriented. What I am saying is that OC is not an object, and cannot be compared to an object. Paradoxically, I do not find that it stands apart from objects. Where is the line?

TI, this is the Vedanta forum. I don't see how your sources relate to Vedanta.

I believe this is exactly the problem. If you can make it into an object, it is not what you're looking for. Shankara points this out in the Drg Drsya. Ramana Maharshi put it this way:

Why not share your concerns with the abbott?