thuscomeone

I think I understand it now. It relates to what Dogen said about firewood and ash. There is continuity in the sense that this body never becomes a tree or a dog and has a linear span from birth to death. Yet each moment is complete and new, unique/disjoint on it's own because things are always changing. So there is no coming to this moment, in that, all moments that have come before this have NOT been this moment. Nothing that has come before is this moment right now. There is no going from this moment to another moment because each moment is unique unto itself. This moment does not turn into "that" moment because this moment and that moment are two completely different unique/disjoint manifestations.

I don't quite get the no coming and going part. Surely there is still change isn't there? Isn't that a form of coming and going? Does there have to be an unchanging observer in order for there to be notions of coming and going (change)?

In talking about people who want to get to a state devoid of thoughts, I wasn't referring to you, I was referring to a lot of "non dualists" and a lot of modern western buddhists, american "zennists" to be specific. The goal is often thought of to be a blank state without thoughts. I just think thoughts are extremely useful, perhaps the most useful tool we have and so they shouldn't be abandoned. I you were to "probe" me further I would say that Without them we wouldn't even know subjectivity from objectivity to begin with.

Well I surely don't want to go insane. If that were the case that resulted from perceiving the way things really are, I would rather stay ignorant and sane. The point I was trying to make is that we need to be able to make distinctions - whether valid ultimately or invalid ultimately. We need that to function. The mind itself IS thoughts which are distinctions. I feel that that is what keeps us grounded. So they don't need to be shunned. I bring this whole thing up because it seems a lot of people want to get to a state where thoughts don't apply anymore. I think that is senseless and I see no reason why anyone would want to go there. I mean, I can see not being attached to thoughts. And though it's all only mind, there are diverse, shall we say, manifestations of mind. But go on, expand on your statements above.

Not a lost soul, just asking questions. Who ever said there was anything wrong with that? As I said, though I respect your opinions, I would like responses from those who share my own viewpoint and or realization. But, as to the question of where is it, it is everywhere. The better question would be, where isn't it?

Interesting. I had my first ever lucid dream (which came interestingly without any effort on my part to even make it happen) a few days before it finally hit me just last week that there is no objective reality. Anyway, one question I wanted to ask those who, like me, believe that all is mind is: how do you account for the diversity of appearances? I would like to think that though all is mind, one who has realized this is still able to make valid distinctions. Otherwise it seems senseless to me.

Definitely. My friends have absolutely no interest in this. I figure that it is good to start learning this young as it is pretty serious stuff. I just wanted to also say thanks again for helping me out on the topic of non dual awareness in that old thread. It really got me moving forward. Now I think I see that it is a lot simpler than I imagined it to be. For a while, I was trying to create or acquire some fixed experience of awareness or presence. My problem was in thinking that non duality meant a merging of two things. Rather it is precisely that there aren't two things to begin with. There is only mind which is just seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. - all sensations. Now I see that it's really just effortless. Any striving just take one away from what is always present. That passage on thusness' blog from daniel ingram really helped me out. "Assume something really simple about sensations and awareness: they are exactly the same. In fact, make it more simple: there are sensations, and this includes all sensations that make up space, thought, image, body, anything you can imagine being mind, and all qualities that are experienced, meaning the sum total of the world. In this very simple framework, rigpa is all sensations, but there can be this subtle attachment and lack of investigation when high terms are used that we want there to be this super-rigpa, this awareness that is other. You mention that you feel there is a larger awareness, an awareness that is not just there the limits of your senses. I would claim otherwise: that the whole sensate universe by definition can't arise without the quality of awareness by definition, and so some very subtle sensations are tricking you into thinking they are bigger than the rest of the sensate field and are actually the awareness that is aware of other sensations. Awareness is simply manifestation. All sensations are simply present. Thus, be wary of anything that wants to be a super-awareness, a rigpa that is larger than everything else, as it can't be, by definition. Investigate at the level of bare sensate experience just what arises and see that it can't possibly be different from awareness, as this is actually an extraneous concept and there are actually just sensations as the first and final basis of reality."

20.

I mean...all is mind. Can you find anything but mind in your experience? Try it. Yet this mind is not self existent. It is dependently arisen.

Dude, pretty much all I have been doing for the past 10 months now (besides school) is vipassana, analytical meditation on emptiness, dependent arising, awareness - the characteristics of reality. I study these things and then observe reality to see if they are really the way things are. If they are, I accept them. If they don't, I reject them. I have never been so involved in anything as I am currently in Buddhism. I'm pretty much obsessed. I have yet to do any sitting meditation at all though. I don't have any teacher and I don't go to any dharma center or anything like that. All I've had so far is the internet - forums, articles, pdf files. I just piece together whatever I can find. I have this notebook with about a thousand loose pieces of paper crammed into it which are completely covered with writing, my chicken scratch - back to front

I've thought it over and...there is no objective world. All there is is mind - seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, thinking, etc. These (mind) make up the totality of our "reality" as sentient beings. Just try and find anything outside of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, thinking in your own experience. Good luck. And it is useless to talk about anything outside of our own experience isn't it? I can't believe I didn't see this before. It is so simple. Conditioning runs very deep I guess. Anyway...all is mind.

It's interesting, I was watching that show "life after people" today that is about what changes the earth would go through after humans died off/left. So if there is no objective world, is this just all BS? If there is no objective world, the earth would disappear and cease to go through natural changes if there were no humans?

The way that I see it is that, being mental states, anger, fear, dissatisfaction, jealousy, etc. are not so much ended as they are transformed. It's just that if you examine you can see that often times these negative states come about through ignorance (of emptiness) which leads to strong grasping. Transforming ignorance through recognizing emptiness = natural transformation of these mental states. Like one Buddhist master, Atisha, said "The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything."

I have had insights of my own if by own you mean insights that are not just what others before me have learned on the path. Off the top of my head, I've learned of the dangers of disregarding someone's words because of their personality. I've learned that age does not always equal wisdom, or in the most important areas it does not. I've learned that their just may be one right answer to the way things are whereas before I felt that nobody was really right and you could just believe whatever you wanted, sing kumbya and be ok. I've learned that religion is not all bad and I have come to re define religion in my own terms. I've learned that, if one truly wants to be happy than temporary pleasures and material pursuits should never, ever be the highest goal of one's life. Yet even these are insights which others have certainly had at some time or another, so there I go parroting again...

Love it. Spot on.

You can assume whatever you want. Look, I have been digging into Buddhism non stop for about ten months now. I did not just read what somebody said about Buddhism and then accept it as truth. What kind of moron would do that? No, I took the principles of buddhism and observed the world to see if they were true. Turned out that they are. So I accepted them. Now, having realized the same truth about the same things that Buddhists talk about, don't you think my words are going to sound similar? Or should I just reject all that now in order to continue thinking outside the box? This extreme need to be skeptical and to not conform is just as bad as the other extreme of not thinking for yourself at all. Personally, I am fine with "parroting the same buddhist talking points" because I know they are true. In order to see that these points were true, I had to start by thinking outside the box. I had to start by questioning what I thought I knew about reality. The conclusions that one derives from emptiness are completely, 100% different than what most people believe. But now that I have seen that these things are true, I am completely comfortable and safe within my box and I have no problems being within it.

It is certainly not wrong to equate impermanence with emptiness. They are one in the same. That is because things are impermanent/always changing, they are not truly existent, not non existent, not both and not neither. Emptiness is just this freedom from these extremes of existence. Because things do not truly exist, they can change/are impermanent. And impermanence is not nothingness. It is just changing form/appearances. Impermanence and dependent arising are emptiness. Yeah they are obvious to anyone who observes life. So what? In a sense, the fact that they are obvious to anyone who observes life is what makes them wonderful. You don't need to be some guy with a million degrees in astrophysics to know that things change, things arise dependently from causes and conditions and all our actions have causes and effects. All you have to do is look around you. I think one problem with our society now is that people think that nobody can possibly know anything worth knowing unless they are a scientist closed off in a lab someplace. If you're just some normal everyday guy without credentials who is observing things, people will not believe you. They'll say "oh that's too simple" as if the answer just has to be complex and indecipherable. Simple as you may think them to be, the realization of these processes from the Buddhist perspective is liberation itself (the realization of emptiness which leads to freedom from grasping). Eh I should say that realization of emptiness is one half of liberation...as xabir would say, luminosity or non dual presence is the other half. Just because somebody may have never felt that transcendent experience, just because somebody may not have realized from that experience for the first time that it is possible to completely and finally wipe away anger, dissatisfaction, fear, hate, pride, greed, ignorance, envy, attachment, etc. does not mean that transcendent experience is not possible.

I quote what I said before again for you: And if I were to go outside my mind in order to know if there was a world outside of my own mind, that very knowing would mean that I was still inside my own mind. It is impossible to know if there is or isn't an objective world outside the mind because to know you would always have to be within the mind! This is damn confusing but my conclusion is still that it is impossible to know if there is or isn't an objective world outside of the mind.

Pain and pleasure, for instance, are dependently arisen. Being dependently arisen from various causes and conditions, they have relative identities as "pain" and "pleasure." Yet because they are dependently arisen, they have no ultimate identities (identities in themselves). As long they continue to be dependently arisen from causes and conditions, they can have continuous identities without being truly and inherently existent. And when the causes and conditions that they depend upon shift themselves, pain and pleasure will change. So this is how we can continuously have "good" and "evil", "suffering" and "freedom", etc, without these things being inherently existent. Thus we can have a continuous and consistent ethics and morality. This very relative identity is the basis for ultimate identitylessness which is where detachment/ungraspability comes from. Only because things are dependently arisen and have relative identities/beings do they have no ultimate identities. So pain and pleasure because they are dependently arisen are already of the nature of liberation. Their very arising is liberation/detachment. In a sense, attachment to the relative world of dependent arisings and distinctions means detachment ultimately. Gold may hate me for saying that but it's true. So if cancer arose dependently in you, that very arising of it would be it's ungraspability and in being unable to grasp it your psychological suffering would be reduced. Now you would still suffer physically of course. Emptiness is absolutely not nihilistic. Without emptiness nothing could happen because change would be impossible and arising would be impossible. All there would be would be fixed entities with fixed identities/essences in themselves that could not change.

I like to think that Buddhism and Taoism have a lot in common. The reason I have preferred Buddhism so far is because I always find that it's principles are revealed in a clearer and more straightforward fashion than Taoism. Taoism seems to be presented in a more ambiguous way. But maybe that is just part of it's message...

No it's not like that. Buddhism is not nihilism and it does not ignore the relative world in which there are clear distinctions between pain, pleasure, etc. A buddhist would not pretend that their cancer doesn't exist. They just would not psychologically suffer from it maybe as much as some other people would because they would not be attached to it. Being unattached doesn't mean ignoring it. Heck, it is emptiness as constant change and the ability for change that makes overcoming cancer possible!

Would you explain what you mean a bit more here?

Correct relative view is dependent arising. You cannot assert an emptiness/ultimate truth/freedom from fixed views apart from dependent arising. Only because of dependent arising is there emptiness. So if you do not have the correct view of things as dependently arisen, you have missed emptiness.

But if I have never been outside my own mind, how can I know that there isn't rain outside of my own mind? See, if I have never been outside of my own mind, how can I know if rain is or isn't outside of my own mind? To know at all I would have to go outside and see. I cannot go outside (100% certain on that) so I cannot say that it is or it isn't there when my mind isn't there. So right now, I would have to say that it is impossible to know...

For objects arising independently of mind, look at how rain is formed. It is naturally dependently arisen, yet mind plays no part in the process of rain's arising (aside from labels). No relative truth is not thinking that this really exists. Relative truth is dependent arising of appearances. Ultimate truth is emptiness beyond the four extremes. They are one in the same. One is not "more" true than the other. I have no idea where you are getting that from. Relative truth is not spoken of in a negative light. Ever heard of samsara is nirvana? The relative is blissful and free already because it is also the ultimate. It is correct relative view and no fixed ultimate view together that liberate. Correct relative view leads to no fixed ultimate view (fixed as in existing, not existing, both or neither). Please don't act like you have some secret teaching that only you know about. Nobody here is impressed.