Sunya

Marble, it's very interesting to me how you're able to so easily and smoothly ignore opposing arguments by ignoring and discarding them and swiftly re-asserting your view without even giving any argument as to why. You're a nice guy, but it's odd that you're here participating in such discussions. This isn't afternoon tea chat, most members here actually care about truth. You stand out to me since it seems you're just making small talk here and truly don't care about figuring things out, evolving, by questioning yourself and your assertions. Maybe you're not on a path and this is all good fun for you, and that's fine, but if you participate in such discussions then participate, truly participate, or else it's a complete waste for you and everyone else. At least put a disclaimer at the end of your post "I don't really care what's happening here but I'll chime in with my opinion anyway" Everything that you have said in response to me, such as the world being proved to exist by your own experience and through science, still does not answer my questions. Science is not some super method, it's used by people relying on their intellect and senses, all of which are limited and finite. How can true knowledge be based on limited senses and thinking ability? You cite your own experience but I think it's obvious to anyone who's on a spiritual path that its our own obvious experience that must bear the most weight in questioning, since what is obvious is usually ~99.9% wrong. Obvious to an ant, is strange to us, but obvious to us is true, how? Are we omniscient beings? "There are scientific processes for testing the validity of a theory" Tell me, who tests these theories? Is it not people themselves? Also you talk about something being true if its relatively true. Imagine you're dreaming, this dream world is completely illusory but it appears before you and you act oblivious to this. for you then, everything that appears before you is true, getting out of bed, going through the motions of life, and you would have the same beliefs because you can rely on them; you would read scientific reports in your dream paper and you would feel totally happy with everything. But, as stated, this is a dream world so all of your beliefs are wrong. So even though your beliefs are true, relative to the dream, in an actual sense they are wrong because they depend on ignorance and illusion. If you were to wake up in this dream world, realize that it's all illusory, would you still act the same? I'd think yes you would still get out of bed and go through all the motions, but would you have the same beliefs? No. what we are talking about here is dismantling the dream by questioning the very foundation of the dream, the foundation which all dream beliefs depend on. these foundations are: the existence of an objective world filled with objects and things, and the existence of a subjective self separate from this world. The first step is questioning how you have come to know what you know and what evidence you have for that knowledge, and the assumptions that you have which that knowledge depends on. The crux of this is the belief that we, the human collective brain, have accurate and sufficient means to judge, make sense of, and form conclusions about reality. All of science depends upon this assumption, and all of your conclusions about your own experience, whatever is obvious to you, likewise depend upon this assumption. Even if you discard science you will undoubtedly fall back on your own experience as something undeniable, the fact of which is so obvious that its unquestionable simply because its before you. The beauty of human existence is not in our ability to know truth but in our ability to realize the futility of this search.

so you're saying it's actually possible to know something? what does it mean to know? we have varying grades of beliefs, some more credible (such as me typing this) and some less (the world is made of cheese). the most credible beliefs such as an objective world existing require you to believe that the senses are accurate, that the brain is accurate, and so forth. there's no way to accurately test a belief that lies outside the limited scope of the human faculty. for you to know that a tree exists you would have to fly out of your brain, through your optic nerve, out into the world, and become the tree, unless you can do that then the existence of a tree requires belief.. though with very credible evidence pointing to it. It is very far fetched to conclude that a 'fact' exists imagine a court of law, you're the judge and you're offered evidence about the defendant charged with a crime. since you, the judge, were not actually there to witness everything, you have no way of knowing of the defendant is guilty but what you have is evidence that can convince you one way or another, either way you have to believe in the evidential justification. Belief is having an emotionally affirmative psychological position toward a given statement. As a judge, you never have all the evidence, but you choose based on the given evidence how justified you are in believing the 'facts' and whether or not the statement is correct objectively, but always, always, there are presuppositions and assumptions, did I stress always? yep, always.

yes but such an intellectual understanding is only the beginning, I struggle daily with constantly reminding myself, the habitual patterns run so deep. do you practice? *sigh* it's truly impossible to talk to you ralis.. pointless argumentation. you did it with VH and you are doing it with me, but i'm not VH. I don't enjoy the passion and anger of argument that you seem to thrive on, so please don't feel offended that I stop responding to your posts, it's nothing personal. I just find your karmic patterns extremely annoying and I don't want to help you perpetuate them.

any form of meditation will really help with that, whether you're doing deep abdominal breathing or visualizing yourself purifying with bright white purifying light entering you or doing a mantra or simply sitting and focusing on awareness. the key is to concentrate and continue practice daily, twice a day, as often as possible. consistency. you'll be ok

Ok.. "When it rains, both Taoists and Buddhists get wet! Yes, but.. The Buddhist says it's an 'illusion', the Taoist opens their umbrella.. " your statement does indeed point to Buddhism as idealism and Taoism as pragmatism, when that isn't the case at all. The Buddhist does open the umbrella, he just has no fantasies about it [not saying that the Taoist does] what evidence? like I said this is your misinterpretation.. nothingness is not even a Buddhist word, it's never used by any Buddhist teacher and no Buddhist teachings point to 'nothingness'. infact nihilism is seen as an extreme to be avoided. nothingness is not any good Buddhist's vocabulary.. it seems to only be used by people who lack understanding of what emptiness means, i'm guessing from studying books written in the 1930s

happy new year everyone, wishing you the best for 2010. may it be more fruitful for your progression toward awakening! just don't become like this guy..

Depression leads to awakening, what you experienced might've been the first touch of the Great Doubt spoken of in Zen. Anyway, Buddhism is not about nothingness. In your zeal for relying only on yourself you've lead yourself to a completely wrong interpretation. Apathy is a lack of compassion, and continual clinging to an old way of thinking. Depression is good though but without devotion it won't lead anywhere. All must pass through the dark night. http://www.mountainrunnerdoc.com/page/page/1523597.htm I can safely recommend the book Nonduality by David Loy as an incredible foray into comparison between the traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism.

Naw man, you disagree with Buddhism by and large but what you disagree with isn't Buddhism, its a caricature of Buddhism. This is the 'Buddhism' that Nietzsche disagreed with, and the many academics who wrote many wrong things during the early 20th century, all of whom [including Nietzsche] had no understanding of Buddhism. You're still holding onto false views when time and time again people with some real understanding have tried to explain to you that Buddhism has nothing to do with 'nothingess' or annihilation or escaping from the world or 'not opening the umbrella when it rains' or trying to walk through a tree by saying it doesn't exist 'sigh', lol. and being a Philosophical Taoist is kind of like being a Corporate Hippie isn't it?

seems like there's a real lack of understanding of Buddhism around here.

lol.

yes, of course. Great idea. I think group resolve works, but only if the intention is personal first. i.e. you have resolved to meditate with many personal reasons for doing so. I think a group can only support those personal reasons. I've fallen off the wagon actually.. and need to get back on. over the summer I meditated everyday but during school with all my philosophy classes, I've lost the daily regimen which is absolutely essential for meditative progress. now.. having started back up after a month off, it sucks! my concentration is wack, my mind is chaotic, and its really difficult. This should motivate you to not quit! You certainly do lose much gain through taking long breaks and as for progress: it takes months and months of daily meditation to make the breakthroughs necessary for insight into the true nature of reality to occur. I'm resolving to meditate everyday, at least 30 minutes, upon waking up. I'm taking formal refuge/bodhisattva vows on Jan 1st so that can only help strengthen my resolve. I'm also resolving to be increasingly ever-mindful. Post-meditation is more important than meditation itself, and I feel my lack of progress can be attributed to not carrying meditation into daily life. 24/7 non-distracted mindful awareness, a lofty goal but a worthy one. I hope that others here that are joined in my resolve will be strengthened by it, and I by them. Let us join hands in understanding the difficulty of the spiritual path and support each other through such an arduous task as watching ourselves, inspecting ourselves, and growing.

wonderful! thanks for posting..this is basically what we went over in my Mysticism philosophy course which was run by a philosopher/physicist, very respected man. I love seeing physicists talk about this stuff, unfortunately most people aren't interested in hearing any of this. It doesn't matter if Buddha said it, or many other philosophers said it, or the top physicists from Cambridge are saying it, it's wrong! These people will use circular argumentation, dancing around everything you say, because they have no interest in truth. How many people are genuinely interested in truth? I'd dare say very few.

the kind that doesn't hold all of reality to be of one, eternal, self-substance that can be identified with. unfortunately this is every kind of eternalism since this is the definition of it lol. it's just my opinion though, if you dig it that's your cup of chai

No such thing as external because there's no internal, so Nietzsche, Buddha, Johnny Appleseed are all empty manifestations of Dharmakaya. The degree of wisdom in the manifestation varies, so though the manifestations are equally pure, they are not equally wise, thus discretion is necessary to choose which facets are appropriate to use as guiding forces. loaded question. there is no correct answer because the question is wrong. the cage is a metaphor for incorrect vision, there is no elsewhere. the others have only stopped wrongly seeing that a cage exists.

I see you're still picking that scab. The problem with such argumentation, and Creationists use it all the time, is that there are two standards. One standard is for our reality (nothing exists by itself, everything is dependent) and the second standard is for God, or Self, which is unconditional and exists of its own accord. This isn't logic, this is just persuasion with no logical basis. You can't have two standards in an argument. To posit the existence of something non-phenomenal requires faith and I see you have a lot of that Dwai, no offense. Nothing wrong with faith, if it's warranted, but don't confuse logic and faith. There's nothing logical about your convictions. I know that you've had meditative experience but as I tried to explain to you before, your convictions are based on interpreting your experience. Without that interpretation, without that philosophy, your conviction would crumble. As noble as it is to base faith on meditative experience over faith by emotional persuasion by a Priest or a book, it still can lead to error.

Science is always changing, always finding new and better ways to theorize about the universe. I've had a deep appreciation for it due to my Philosophy professor, who's also a Physicist, but even he recognizes that science and ultimate truth just don't go hand in hand since science is created by and interpreted by humans. Science posits theories, not facts and all data is prone to interpretation and conclusions are made out of that interpretation by humans [monkeys with very crude intelligent] How will any data found by physicists ever prove Buddhist metaphysics wrong? All Buddhist metaphysics does is show that everything is interdependent and that the ultimate reality is completely beyond human conception. Buddhist philosophy doesn't pretend to posit any truth, it does the complete opposite and forces you to give up that quest. Science is still on that quest and thus will never fulfill it because it's impossible. "God Particle" is actually just an overhyped media term, too bad you fell for it. It makes Christians excited because it could "prove" a prime mover, a substance that everything depends on, unfortunately that isn't the case. Remember when atoms were discovered? O man, people must've thought they were God's lego blocks! And the big bang? That definitely proved God's creation! So why aren't you converting to Christianity already? Doesn't science have all the answer? No, basing metaphysics off scientific discovery will only lead to confusion when those scientific theories change, they are never conclusive... always part of a bigger picture. Anyway, you haven't explained how Buddhist metaphysics will be proven wrong. Any discovery would only, eventually, prove Buddhist metaphysics right because we see the interdependent nature of particles to the Higgs Boson field, the emptiness of mass. First, I must congratulate you on being old; I guess that makes you an authority figure here. Second, if you're going to try to belittle me, at least add more substance to your response. If my arguments are wrong then explain why. My use of pronouns and lack of including animals into the discussion has no bearing whatsoever on what I said. There's no use of even talking about the animals' worldview since they have no language to communicate what they experience. We can speculate that animals do not think about such ideas as 'objective world' since language and thought is required as well as dis identifying with the self as the center of experience, all of which animals lack the potential of, presently. There is enough evidence to warrant a conclusion that animals have a purely subjective experience full of instinctual response, like many and most humans. I generalize humanity as "we", the exceptions are the enlightened who see through their dream-like subjective experience. And, I don't defer to an external authority. a] there is no such thing as external and b] if you don't learn from others then you are thoroughly deluded in thinking you can figure everything out for yourself. I study philosophy for inspiration, not reliance. I'm on a path because it's a silly idealistic dream that the ego can pick its way out of the cage, much easier to listen to the advice of others that have escaped. What's this obsession with individualism you have? It's as if... it's the cosmic point of view.. and not your own... relative..point of view.

Dolpopa was a controversial Tibetan, his views aren't shared by most since its seen as a monist teaching, swaying into the extreme of eternalism. Ask any physicist what solidity means and he will give you a lengthy explanation about molecular workings, Buddhists have a much simpler explanation: conditions, but both will tell you that solidity does not exist as an inherent quality of an object because it has relative existence. What does solid mean? Here are some definitions: "of definite shape and volume; firm" "entirely of one substance, one character, with no holes inside" So solidity is when an object has no holes, is of one substance. Ask any physicist of this is true, of anything. He will simply tell you to name one aspect of the universe that isn't made up of smaller things that are constantly moving. For example if you are small enough to fit into the cracks of a wall.. you can go right through it. From your vantage point though, as a human, the wall does indeed seem solid but in reality there are many cracks. Also, from your point of view it seems that everything is standing still but on a molecular level there's actually utter chaos, nothing is standing still, and there's way more space than matter on this level. Solidity then is simply a word we used describing a facet of our experience, it has no reality whatsoever outside of your relative experience. Since we are talking about 'objectivity' here, I don't understand how you can say that the wall is truly solid, when that solidity depends entirely on your relative position and interaction with it.

awake, yes you are on the right track. this is very good! it's best to focus on the sensation itself and feel it in its barest form, not treat it as an intellectual exercise. it's great to feel a sensation and subsequently experience its dependent causes (such as the rising up of memories of previous events) but for your purposes its all about the bare sensation. what meditation practice do you do? I would absolutely highly recommend the book "Essentials of Mahamudra", I actually just read the page discussing this very topic today! interesting coincidence. the book describes meditation (shamata and vipashyana) in very clear detail and also talks about problems that come up and how to get through them for successful progress. It's a translation of an old Tibetan text that the 16th Karmapa had translated, saying that its very useful for Westerners due to its clarity. so focus on the sensation but don't over concentrate which could just increase the feeling, what you want to do is sort of lightly become aware of the sensation, notice the mind's pattern of succumbing or jumping into the feeling, or maybe the opposite of escaping the feeling, and feel the sensation for what it is. you're practicing vipashyana, very clearly discussed in Essentials of Mahamudra

No. but the world as you think of it, yes. What is 'objective world' ? To a human this means a reality filled with things, a 3 dimensional reality full of stars, planets, oceans, animals, various elements, atoms, chemicals, etc. That world will cease to exist because that world is a representational world made up of thoughts. None of those things truly exist. They depend on us for their existence because they are just ideas that we have, just labels and conjectures based on metaphysical assumptions that cannot be proved. In fact, there are no 'things' in nature, much less any distinct separation between anything. It is humans that make the distinction. It is humans that observe (through limited senses), categorize, name, and make conclusions and base their world-view off of these conclusions. When we talk about the "Real World" we are talking about the actual world that exists separate from the subject, but what I'm getting at is that you have to be careful here because we tend to objectify the world based on assumptions. The assumption that 'things' and 'objects' exist as separate independent things, that our perception is correct and not tainted, and that the subject is in fact different, distinct, from world. Read some Nietzsche, he wrote very interesting stuff about this and was no doubt inspired by Buddhism. When we discuss objective world, we are actually trying to get at absolute truth but through the human medium. Saying that the objective world exists and saying that it doesn't exist are both wrong since they both carry many assumptions. What does exist mean? What does objective mean? What does world mean? There's nothing that can be said about the real world that isn't false, much like there's no way for an ant to communicate to another ant the plot of Sherlock Holmes. Anything the ant says will be wrong because there's no way for it to grasp the complexity of the tale. It's impossible.

The existence or not of an objective world is an interesting problem and is given much attention to in Western philosophy, specifically post-Kant who referred to the real world as noumena and the observed world phenomena. As soon as you have any idea about the real world, let alone sense it, it becomes phenomena because it's interpreted through the limited human faculties. Noumena can only be held as a representation, but there is a problem with this view because the noumena is held to be unknowable by the subject, and this is true in a sense because nobody becomes enlightened, but this only depends on the existence of a subject, which is in-itself just a thought-form. We must stop seeing thought-forms as existing in themselves and not existing solely in the mind. The nondual mystical traditions address this problem by eliminating the dichotomy between 'objective' vs 'subjective' by either collapsing onto the subject (Vedanta) or negating the existence of subject/object due to their interdependency (Buddhism). How can an objective world exist, truly? How can a subjective world exist, truly? You can imagine your dreams as a purely subjective world but all your dreams are just ideas brought on through experiences in the world. You can say that an objective world exists because you believe a tree does fall when nobody is there to hear it. You will say argue: A tree is standing today, tomorrow the tree is on the ground therefore it fell. Rightly so, but who is examining? who is inquiring? All observations of the objective world depend on subjects since they are the ones experiencing the world. Is there 'treeness' in a tree, truly? Or is 'treeness' constructed by the human mind and superimposed upon the thing-in-itself? When you inquire into the truly objective world you are not asking if a tree still falls when nobody is there, no you're actually asking what, in essence, is a tree? I think the very same question must be asked of the subject. The whole issue of 'subjective vs objective' world depends on a strictly defined subject and the existence of separate objects, or at least a separate world from the subject. But the very world before us only becomes the world when experienced through us, and we become ourselves only when in play with the world. Both 'world' and 'I/We/Us' are thought-forms existing only in the human mind. The real world is completely beyond any concept. Nothing can be said of the Dharmakaya. Our only Way then is to negate ideas and experience the non-conceptual groundless ground for ourselves. When we ask "Is there an objective world outside of the subject" we must first ask what objective means and how that differs from the subject. Secondly we must ask how these two ideas can exist without each other. And thirdly, we must see that both are interdependent ideas and cannot exist absolutely.

whoever is interested in a Christian mystical pov I would first and foremost suggest the modern writer Jim Marion ; his book "Putting on the Mind of Christ" is incredible, as he was a Christian monk who had Kundalini experiences but went beyond that to seeing God everywhere as a completely non-dual state (the goal of Kundalini you could say), al though I hate to use the word "state" you can say he has full realization of the Absolute, which always is and always was, while also perceiving the relative level as well, i.e. through the human dualistic mode. He talked about Kundalini as subtle energies that purify the body of negativities and related the experiences to the Dark Night of the Soul, the K energy is cleaning you out so you experience your darkest fears and pent up anger, all those emotions deep in the unconscious comes forth to be cleansed. He recommends to simply surrender during this process and keep practicing. though he doesn't mention how he specifically kept moving, which practices. probably just prayer. concentration is the necessity really... the object is all up to you. external (candle), or internal (breath, mantra, prayer). concentration will awaken kundalini and concentration will get you through.

I think it's simply what was appropriate at the time, given the conditions of the people. Padmasambhava was a master, a fully enlightened being. the fascination has to do with the Tantric system of using symbology to motivate and devote yourself to awakening to your true nature.

really enjoyed that video. I will recommend it to others.. thank you for posting

that catweed video is ridiculously ridiculous haahah