beoman

yea that'd be interesting. I heard a story where they gave a pair of Buddhist monks LSD, but soon the monks said the experience was too intense, so they had to abort the experiment (I think you can take / inject something to make the LSD trip stop). I also heard a story about a zen buddhist who took ecstasy. he said the clarity you felt while on X was similar to the clarity he was able to achieve with meditation. he said "it took me 20 years to get there, but I'm glad I did it the long way", or smth like that. I do know meditation increases serotonin levels, and that is also what X does =P.

indeed! the Buddha was also a bit of an egoist after first becoming enlightened, as he said to Upaka: "I am one who has overcome all, who knows all, I am detached from all things; having abandonded everything, obtained emancipation, by the destruction of desire. Having by myself gained knowledge, whom should I call master?" "I have no teacher, One like me is not, in the world of men and gods, none is my counterpart "I, indeed am the Arahat in the world, the teacher with no peer, the sole Buddha, supreme, ENLIGHTENED, all passions extinguished, I have gained Peace." "Those are the Conquerors who, like me, have reached the extinction of cankers. I have vanquished all thoughts, ideas, notions of evil. For that reason, Upaka, I am a Jina a Conqueror, a victorious One."

I think it's just a very direct description of a lot of things that are usually not described in such clear terms. At least that's what it was for me.

Just one issue: maybe you seeing it that way is a deluded view? how do you know it's true? in this case maybe it's helpful to talk about it. But otherwise, I agree. It is simple: just go see for yourself. I think the problem we get into here is when we try to figure it out without investigating it, then we get into all kinds of quagmires and philosophical mind games.

heh yes I definitely got that feeling. it made the book quite entertaining to read. he definitely makes it sound mechanical. But looking at Buddhist texts, the Buddha also made it sound mechanical, just in more flowery language. It's like "the monk must be mindful, notice the breath. once the monk has realized this and that, then this will happen. once he has done this, that will happen," etc. It's just harder for us to understand cause it was spoken 2500 years ago and translated a few times in the process.

Ah alright. I thought stream entry was just the beginning. I guess opinions vary here. I think it'd serve me best to delay questions on that front until I get at least stream entry.

heh awesome. i can see where Daniel gets some of his ideas from. I try to do this now but without categorizing the thought or feelings, I just notice "ah that was a feeling" or "ah that was a sound" or "ah that is a thought". but maybe I should categorize them. What's the point of 2nd gear and 3rd gear if 1st gear is enough to become an Arahat?

mm I don't know what those view are. But I have definitely had weird things happening to me since I started meditating, that I'm sure wouldn't have had I not. I'll list some here: * probably the biggest one that made me convinced there is something else is when I was lying in a bunk bed on a cruise ship. I just had my eyes closed, was listening to some rap, nothin special. Then all of a sudden I felt like the blackness that my eyes was seeing expanded greatly. like it was 2 dimensional before, and it became 3 dimensional. it was pretty fascinating. a few seconds after it happened i was wondering what it'd be like if I moved, so I sat upright (from lying down) and my body felt really heavy. it disappeared a few seconds after that. I'm not sure what it was but my current theory is that I stumbled into a jhana. * after meditating, if I lie down, I notice rapid white flickering when I close my eyes. this goes away a few mins after I meditate. * while meditating i sometimes get the sensation that the blackness before my eyes is expanding (i meditate w/ eyes closed). not to the extent as on the cruise ship, but something interesting is happening. not sure what, yet. * o once while meditating i got this extremely intense head rush that left my ears ringing and me not being able to see for a few seconds even w/ eyes open. i was doing some qi gong meditation w/ moving qi around so that mite be why. Anyway, stuff like that. now whenever I meditate I'm pretty sure somethin interesting will happen, mostly just feeling lots of little body sensations i never would before. note I wouldn't read into my experience as anything particularly special.. except for the cruise ship thing maybe. but the rest I feel like could happen to anyone. i know if I read these things a few months ago i'd be like "woa crazy!!!@!!##" but now it's like "ah just some stuff happening". and yeah lots of questioning on my side as well. that's why I started this post eh? what kinda stuff has been goin on w/ you?

Ya that's my issue when I look at the proscribing-how-to-live-your-life side of Buddhism. You get into religious territory. And things not easy for regular people to verify, like "is it ok to eat a tree". So what do trees say usually? I'm curious. Would they take a few hours to decide that Frodo is, indeed, a hobbit? =P.

I had a similar feeling when trying to determine who "I" am. I thought, it must be whatever is watching everything. Then I noticed that I was watching what was watching, so maybe I'm that watcher of the watcher. Then I noticed I was watching that, so I'm the watcher-watcher-watcher. Hey let's use some notation. I watched that, so I'm the 4-watcher. No, the 5-watcher. No, ..... , etc. Maybe you can say "I'm the thing that watches all those". So I'm the meta-watcher. But then you have 2-meta-watcher, 3-meta-watcher, etc... so I think that's the same problem. About large numbers, the book "Godel Escher Bach" had an awesome conversation about it, though I can't find a link now. Also here is a really interesting article about large numbers: http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html . Yea it's quite boggling. but I think insight meditation helps penetrate the bogglement. just gotta practice

Man this is why human language sucks... cause you say as the "I" and "free will" are let go of, *one* actually is *inclined* to deeper practices. But those starred words directly contradict the quoted words right before them. Ya I'll just practice till I can do that =).

The first part I quoted is confusing. If there's no free will and it's just causes and conditions then what exactly am "I" doing by "setting in motion" the path to my enlightenment? The second part answers the question. Practice, gain a non-dual perception first-hand, then these questions will make more sense =). In the meantime I think talking about all this is just mental masturbation... all these discussions leave me with a "hmmmmm..... maybe...." feeling, which is hopefully the best one to have in these matters =P.

haha that is awesoome! true friendship indeed mm unless you're trippin on acid.. maybe killing him in your mind would be some symbolic meaningful thing-y...

I think he meant "I dismiss what you say for certain reasons, which I list here, so I consider that you only believe that because it is dogma and you believe your dogma without looking more deeply into it." Which is what you're saying here, I think..

Are they smart enough to not inhabit trees that will be cut down soon due to a logging operation? =P. And if the trees are cut down what happens to them? And also does it bring bad karma on anyone involved in the cutting, considering they probably didn't know the spirits were there?

It isn't strictly a Buddhist term is it? I did use the word for it, anatta, but it seems like non-affiliated non-duality is the same thing (like from a site like http://www.nonduality.com/ ). But thanks for your vote! I like the idea of free will in any case. It would be boring if we didn't have any, although also very interesting in what an illusion we have created for ourselves if it doesn't exist.

Hmm so basically it's "don't cause suffering to things that can experience suffering" in Theravada, and in Mahayana it's the same except "skillful means" might prevail. About something being capable of thinking, suffering, or being reborn - I don't know how to tell whether something can be reborn. I'd have to take it on others' words that we can be reborn into animals, but not plants. If the conglomeration of sentience that we are now can be reborn into a somewhat less sophisticated conglomeration of sentience (a gopher), then to me it seems it could be reborn into something that's just a conglomeration of general feelings of where sunlight is. I also don't know how to tell something can think. Looking at a bacteria, it is easy enough to see it doesn't think - it just reacts to chemicals in its near vicinity. But it seems like that's how insects and fish also behave.. it's hard to tell whether a being is really sentient, and where do you draw the line? at what point do reactions to chemicals manifest as sentience? another philosophical question.. I guess it's best to err on the side of caution. About it being capable of suffering - same thing. Maybe it reacts to pain, but is it just chemicals reacting, or does it "feel" pain? That makes sense. Can't be picky when someone is giving you food. similar things apply if the people giving you meat bought it for you / for the monks, if they're particularly compassionate. It's just more complicated cause and effect. I've heard heard karma is all about intent, so I guess even if someone kills an animal for you and gives it to you without saying so, it's not your fault? Then the problem arises of when do you not know something so it's not your fault, but when could you know something if you tried to learn about it better and it's your fault? You could physically ask the layperson where he got the meat, then go to the butcher, then go to the slaughterhouse, and watch the animals die, and then look at the piece of meat in your hand and be like "oh great..." not that the animal was killed for you in particular, so that doesn't change anything I suppose.

Well that directly answers my question! But it also directly contradicts what you (or maybe just the article) said earlier about "never killing." So there are indeed gray areas here, and it seems that to decide what to do you can just pick the tradition that goes with your views. Why is that story only in Mahayana Buddhism actually? Does Theravada not recognize that that event between the merchant and the Buddha took place? This makes sense. but then how do you define sentient? What about very undeveloped nervous systems like in worms? Fish can't even recognize themselves in the mirror (actually not many animals can). Also by saying some beings are sentient and some are not, aren't you contradicting the idea of anatta that there is no self to be sentient? It's just a combination of perceptions, right? The plants just have a less complex combination of perceptions. At what point do you define a mass of perceptions to be "sentient"? This brings me to another question I have on anatta vs. free will, but I'll ask that in another topic. Here I think is a big gray area, and perhaps a lack of understanding of economics. If there are a sufficient number of monks in any area, and they just buy meat without it having been on purpose killed from them, but just from general stores, then demand of meat will be increased because of the monks. This will cause an initial raise of prices. At this point, the meat producers will start producing more meat to make more money, leading to an increased supply of meat. So indirectly the animals are being killed for the monks. It's all just karma - cause and effect, just in this case there is less of a direct connection between the monks being there and more animals dying. Does that make it OK?

I'm glad I am derailing it in that case! Mostly I was looking for anything like "that man is a crackpot, and doing those things will cause you to go insane". But seeing as most of the replies here take it as a given that he is accomplished, a master of meditation, and that the book is a good guide to at least stream entry, I can see that won't happen. Thanks to all who replied! Now I just want to see how this right action discussion pans out.

I'm glad you linked that article, as I have a few issues with it. This discussion has renewed my interest in a topic which I forgot about. It's rather philosophical, but I want to see how Buddhism deals with them. First, what I was getting to before, I was trying to rephrase an old philosophical question. You have 1000 people in a cave, including you. The cave begins to flood. In the panic, everyone runs to the only exit, a narrow cave mouth. However, the first person to get there is grotesquely obese, and promptly gets stuck (never mind how he managed to get in in the first place =P). There is no way to remove him without killing him (again, this is a bit contrived). So what do you do? Do you kill him to save the other 998 people, or let everybody die? It's very contrived but you have two choices: 1) Do nothing. Start meditating, maybe. Tell everyone it'll be fine, they'll be reborn. Talk about how you should never kill anyone. Then all 1000 people die. 2) Kill the fat guy. 999 people survive. Ok, it's unfair to pick on fat people, and I don't mean to be mean =P so replace "fat guy" with "average human being who unfortunately got stuck". From the article you just linked, the answer is a resounding "don't kill him, never kill anyone". However, doing nothing in this case is also an action, and in this case, an action that inexorably leads to 999 people dying just as surely as plunging a large stake into the unfortunate vanguard would lead to him dying. So what do you do? It's easy to say "never kill" but in this case both action and inaction lead to death. About it being contrived: there are more realistic moral gray areas in real life too. Like, do you test a drug on people that is potentially dangerous but if it works could save many more people? Anyway, that's not important. ====================== About the article. Alright, you should never kill or condone killing, and never steal or condone stealing, with the intent to do so. So you should never kill a person. The article only talks about that. What about an animal? I think the Buddha himself mentioned not to kill animals. What about eating them? Many Buddhists are vegetarian but I believe the Buddha never said "never eat meat". But eating the animal is condoning its death. Forget that someone else had to kill it - that's kind of weaseling out of it, isn't it? What about termites that infest your house? Do you kill them or just move? I guess just moving is the easy answer here. What about when you're sick? If you're sick with a virus, technically the virus is just strands of DNA, so you're not killing anything. But a bacteria is a living being. Your body is constantly killing these to keep you alive. You can't say "kill if it keeps you alive," since that goes against the "never kill under any circumstances" idea, but here you don't have a choice, and I doubt most people would refuse penicillin at the risk of dying. What about plants? They are also living beings, yet you eventually have to eat something! Why is killing them OK? The only answer I can think of is to say it's OK to kill some things but not others, but then that runs into a host of other problems. So that's the issue I have with saying "never kill anything". ================ About never stealing or never lying: sometimes these things are ambiguous. I assume "never lie" means "never tell a lie when you know it is one", since you could just believe something untrue to be a fact. But what if telling the truth will directly lead to someone dying? Like you saw someone steal an apple, and the law catches him, but they didn't see him commit the act, so they call you as a witness. They ask "did he steal the apple?" If you say "yes" he gets executed. If you say "no" he is let go. If you say "I refuse to answer", well, maybe they kill him anyway, I don't know. So you won't have told a lie but he will die as a result. ============== By now you can see where my arguments are going, so I'll stop here. It's maybe tangentially related to the action model of enlightenment, in the sense that sometimes it does seem impossible to know absolutely what the right action in a given situation is.

Isn't it more accurate to say "you could if you wanted to, but you don't"? Or let's say you had all of your best friends and family in front of you, and they were being systematically shot until you committed a small crime, just for the pleasure of the people doing it to make an "enlightened" being do something "unenlightened". Would you be physically incapable of committing whatever small crime and saving your family? Would you just say "well it's not me that's causing my family to be killed, I'm just going to chill and watch", because of your 'perfect actions'? Ironically this question is one that I thought of posing when I first got into Buddhism, but later realized it's probably not that important. However, now that you talk about "perfect action", I'm curious what you think. I also realize you could just have compassion for everyone involved but still not do the small crime. but wouldn't that cause "more" suffering than if you just 'conceded'?

Using Daniel's framework... would you say that's more work on the level of Training in Morality, or is it more insight practices that lead to that (from non-returner to Arhant)? or something else entirely? right now my scope is either: morality, concentration, or insight, mostly cause I just read the book.

How would one go from Arahat to Buddhahood? =P. Does anyone know? Not that I have to worry about that at this moment... Which insights? Anything you recommend reading? hehe alright I'll bring it up again later then =P.

is that the distinction between an arahat and a "buddha"? just mastering how to live life in light of an awakened perception?

the way transforms all yet life still goes on; hunger; waffles in the sky