Otis

I won't write mine, cuz it's every bit as inane and cluttered as what you wrote. But I do want to say: great topic, and sharing of that nonsense. It's pretty humbling, when I realize how foolish the thought generators sound. The only times I really step in, though, is when I find myself chasing stuff emotionally, like if I start "scolding" a driver in another car. Then I'll try to derail the thought process. Or if I've gone over something, again and again, and I'm just digging a rut in my brain. Of course, the thought that these thoughts are wrong, is just another thought. When walking alone, my head often creates scenarios, potential conversations with another person. For awhile, I started to see this as problematic, non-empty, because the "other person" is obviously just a projection of mine. But then, I realized that the scenario-ing can be very useful, because it allows me the chance to find careful wording for me to use, if/when the conversation actually happens. I just have to make sure I don't get attached to the wording, or to my expectations about what the other person wants out of the conversation, or I will ignore the actual conversation, in favor of what I had previously rehearsed. I see the thought process as potentially very useful, just often way too frantic and compulsive.

Of course it's not the liberation that is extreme. It is the assertion that you are liberated, which is extreme. The assertion that your realization is permanent. The assertion that "you will never find a more direct method". The assertion that you see "the true nature of reality". The assertion that there "is no self", that it is a "basic fact about reality". The assertion that there is no God. The assertion that you have no viewpoint, no beliefs. These are all "is" and "is not" statements, they all display clinging to views, and they are all very extreme.

Sure, certainty can help us feel better, when there is confusion. But isn't that using certainty as an analgesic, as a crutch? I'm certainly not claiming to be beyond my own certainty, but I no longer can justify it to myself, either. I feel some times as if I deserve certainty, but that thought doesn't make much sense, when I look closer at it. If I have an argument with a girlfriend, and I'm certain as hell that I'm right, it gains me nothing. There's no advantage to winning against my girlfriend. And it works against my real goal with her, which is to enjoy unity and sharing. My posts here about certainty have almost never been well-received (I haven't gotten a single +1 on any of those posts), even though every powerful growth book I read talks about surrendering it. So obviously, talking against certainty is swimming against the popular opinion current. Maybe that means that I'm full of it, but it also might mean that certainty is one of those things which is so important to people, that it is sacrosanct. All the more reason, IMO, to really consider whether certainty is anything more than just attachment.

BTW, I am also not saying that we shouldn't learn. I am a huge fan of science, nature and history documentaries, because they help fill in so many missing gaps in my worldview. But they do not serve to make me more certain; in fact, they challenge my notions of what is right in the world. That's a huge part of what makes them so exciting for me.

Precisely, so when you say that you are "liberated" or can see "the true nature of reality", then you have fallen into extremes. You are making extreme statements, here, xabir, and they all rely on the infallibility of YOU. You pretend that you don't exist and have no viewpoint, but then you insist that your (non-)viewpoint is utterly correct. Your word games don't cover up your hypocrisy.

Well, I guess we can start calling you dogmeat, because that's exactly the position you've been taking all along.

You are utterly shameless with your declarations of the absolute. Here you are, "less than two years" in, and you declare everything with such certainty. You use words like "permanent" and "never" with no sense of irony. You boldly declare "is" statements about the most mysterious possible subjects, without the least caveat, even though you've admitted that "is" and "is not" can't accurately describe the actual world. You equate your "liberation" with the awakenings of two of the most respected spiritual leaders of the last few decades (and state that your prescribed method is equal). You've even declared that you know that there is no God. You still have never justified your use of absolutes, except with the circular I'm right cuz I'm enlightened, and I'm enlightened cuz I say so. You have made an argument above for "self inquiry", but that's a far cry from saying that some unspecified reader ("you") can "never find a more direct path to realization than the approach I have presented", which is to say that xabir knows not only the best way to liberate himself, but also the best (or equal to the best) way to liberate everyone else. You learned all that in two years?

Hey Aaron, I don't think that science and Buddhism are in the least incompatible. Science's main philosophy is emptiness, never deciding that you are right, just closer to a useful working model. Certainty is the death of innovation, of creativity, in science. The goal of science (as I understand it) is not to become certain, but to explore. Einstein did his work, in what he called a day dream, trying to imagine what the universe would seem like, from the perspective of a photon. The concept of Relativity, BTW, is about surrendering certainty, saying: there is no correct or absolute viewpoint. Testing, of course, seeks to reduce vagueness, and increase accuracy but the emotional aspect of I insist that this is right, is anathema to science. I agree that emptiness is not necessarily getting rid of ideas or beliefs (I certainly don't know how to live without them), although I they think many do fade with time, because they mean less and less. But I do think that detachment is very much about surrender of certainty. What is letting go of attachment to an outcome? It's letting go of the certainty that one outcome is the right one. Certainty invents good and bad, right and wrong. If you really think about it, certainty is an emotional quality, more than an intellectual one. Certainty is the clenching that says: it must/must not be! I insist!

LOL! You know my point had nothing to do with that. You said, in your intro: "you can never find a more direct path to realization than the approach I have presented". That's an amazingly absurd thing to claim.

I didn't hear your post as an attack, Aaron, no worries. Nor am I saying that people shouldn't be certain. I'm not the one to tell others how they should or shouldn't think. However, I am asking, quite seriously, whether there is anything to be gained by being certain, and whether there isn't a lot to lose. I don't see any particular reason why someone cannot have an elegant and compelling worldview, but not hold on to any of it as necessarily true. IME, certainty has gained me nothing, except some false confidence or other ego boosts. It does not make my world or my arguments better. And it can be very toxic to relationships. What is the definition of a stuck worldview, like a bigot? It is someone who is rigid in their opinions. Isn't that rigidity a form of certainty? Isn't a fundamentalist, a nationalist, etc., someone who is stuck in their certainty? What is the definition of delusion? It is mistaking my view of the world, for the world itself. Isn't certainty the thing which keeps me mired in the delusion? We are all warned not to cling and attach. Isn't that exactly what certainty is, a clinging to the "rightness" of something? Isn't the ego, the self, a collection of habits, of consciousness, pre-consciousness, etc.? And isn't a habit really an expression of "do it this way", which is certainty? Isn't conditioning an inculcation of certainty? Aren't all the things that we are warned against, in both Taoism and Buddhism, really forms of certainty? Do we really need certainty? Or is it enough to pay attention, listen joyfully, and keep moving forward? No one wants to surrender their certainty, precisely, I think, because that is what the self is made of. But I think that it is the only way to live in mystery. Mystery is the opposite of certainty, don't you think? In the "no self" thread, there are competing models, but that's all they are: models. How could we ever decide which model is the right one? Even if I get great results from a model, it still doesn't make it the right one. Life is not something that can be fully put into words, and so treating the words as gospel truth is just asking to live in delusion. Only living is true, only the action, the process. As soon as we turn it into concepts, we falsify it. The only way not to get mired in that falsity, is not to cling to the rightness of the ideas. That clinging, is the very essence of certainty. Does this make sense?

A clarification is not the issue. The issue is that you are no longer drinking the kool-aid, you're breathing it.

Cool. I figured as much. Just felt the need to put in a good word for the man, whose posts make good sense to me, just about as much as anyone here.

I think gravity is a great example. If I am to say "gravity exists", what does that even mean? Before Newton, people were utterly convinced of "down". That is, "down" is where things fell, when you dropped them. This is the utterly self-evident part of gravity, but everyone had it wrong. The problem with "down" is that it denied the quite reasonable proposition that the world was round. If the world was round, then all the water would pour away, and off the planet, towards "down". But Newton showed that "down" is a local illusion, of the phenomenon of gravity (which he saw as the attraction between masses). And this view of gravity was fine, for awhile, but it missed some very important explanations. Einstein reworked gravity into the warping of spacetime, which is an almost inconceivable notion. We've all seen Carl Sagan put a pool ball on a trampoline, but other than that visual reference, how many people really get what "spacetime" means, not to mention the warping of it? And then when you get to black holes (which neither "down" nor Newton could ever arrive at), whew boy! And Einstein's view of gravity has been shifted and augmented by quantum gravity, which posits gravitons, which is also very hard to understand, in terms of mundane experience of gravity. And superstring theory has its own way of explaining gravity, which is even more mind-blowing. So, how can anyone be "certain of gravity", especially those of us who are not theoretical physicists? As far as I can tell, "I am certain of gravity" just means "when I drop things, they go down", which puts me squarely back into the early 17th century. So, thank you for that example, of how certainty is just an illusion, a self-evidentiary belief loop.

I'm sure you didn't mean this as a put-down of Marblehead, but I just have to say: Marblehead's posts, in my reading, have been among the most sensible and clear that I've read on the Bums. He shows great insight into his biases, unlike many, who pretend they have none. And he is consistently reasonable and good-humored. He is definitely fun to converse with, and doesn't try to overwhelm others, but I don't think he's a lightweight, at all!

A short inquiry into certainty: What is certainty? When I add certainty to an understanding, I am now insisting that it is right. Before, the understanding was perfectly free to be right (or not), and didn't need me to insist it. But now I insist. Why? What good does it serve me? Understanding does not need certainty, nor does clear vision. People with certainty claim understanding and clear vision, so it's easy to associate them together. But certainty doesn't improve either one. No matter how much things are making sense to me, certainty doesn't get them to make any more sense. It only insists. So certainty is just a grabbing hold, an attachment. It is saying: "I refuse to believe that this is not so". But what is won by such a refusal? Do I need certainty to be a passionate advocate for human rights? Some people would say so. But do I really need to be right, that human rights are worth fighting for? Or is it enough, just to care about people, and from that, to be motivated to do what I can? I don't have to do the right thing, just the thing that makes the most sense to me. That's the best I have to offer, anyway. Does certainty offer me anything more than a rationale, a justification, or a sense of being "right" or important? And (as I see it happen in my life), doesn't certainty really blind me, limit my options, confuse my problem-solving abilities, and alienate me from people who think differently than me? That's the effect that I see certainty having in my life. And finally, I recognize that certainty has never brought me joy. It has only brought me comfort and self-satisfaction.

Fantastic post, Aaron!

Excellent post.

You DO need to be omniscient to know the "true nature of things". For example, above you called something "permanent", but of course, the only way you could justify saying this, is if you had existed for all time, and witnessed that indeed, that permanence was true. In the classic "blind men and the elephant" story, no matter how clear you think your vision is, you can still only experience the part of the elephant which is immediately available (in time and space and breadth of senses, etc.). Only an omniscient being could see the "true nature" of the world, because what is available to an individual is just the flow which immediately surrounds him/her. How would you "know" things which are beyond your experience? How can you know that you are not deluded, since the exact same facilities (consciousness, senses, etc.) which compare your interpretation of the world to the world itself, are the very same facilities with which you engage the world? You are just comparing your view with your view, and pronouncing it "reality". Are you always right about everything? Can you predict any physical phenomena, in its entirety, ad infinitum? If not, then you should question your claims to seeing "the true nature of reality".

The big question that you continue not to answer, is how you justify (even to yourself) the claim that you see the "true nature of reality"? Without that special vision power of yours, the rest of your argument falls apart into delusional pieces. So, that seems like the crux of everything you assert. You have made no logical arguments, nor have you made any attempt to connect your assertions to mundane experience or scientific research. All you have, are your claims of omniscience, and some appeals to (selective parts of) Buddhist authority. Any willingness to explain why you (non-)believe that your (non-) view allows the (non-)you to see the "true nature of reality"?

All of this is just more jargon, dude. If you can connect your "realization" with the world of living, the sphere of the mundane (where we mortals live), then maybe you would sound rational. But you just sound like a fundamentalist, speaking your jargony (non-)beliefs as if they were self-evident "truths". p.s. I don't even see how you can say that "_____ is permanent", because you haven't been around that long. How in the world could you possibly make such a claim? Wouldn't it take a very very long time, to make sure you had that one right?

I think RT is very elite, xabir, since you refer to the in-crowd as "liberated". You are a bunch of people who think that they're enlightened. But it was not RT I was referring to as a**holes, but the larger group of those with utter certainty that their view is the correct one. I'm talking about people who believe that they see the "true nature of reality". People like members of the Westboro Baptist Church, racists, nationalists, fundamentalists of all stripes. These are all people who choose to ignore phenomena, when it does not agree with their predetermined self-enlightenment. These are people who refuse to consider that they might be misinterpreting, or that some other model has validity. The darkest villains of history all fit into this category. And most of them saw themselves as "fighting the good fight". I'm offering these examples, as a mirror to what certainty usually accompanies. Of course, I expect you to (non-)believe that you are exempt from that group, despite your self-appointed privileged (non-)view. I know I cannot change your mind, but I will leave you with two small challenges, should you choose to accept them. 1. Really explore the questions of "what can I really know?" and "is it really possible for a human being to experience the actual world?" and "how can I really justify my claims of being right?" Explore without immediately bridging the gap in explanation with the standard "this is not a belief/view, but direct insight". Don't give yourself any easy out, and don't take any short-cuts, because if you are truly liberated, you should be able to withstand the most intense scrutiny. 2. Explore the nature of certainty, and what its relationship is to delusion and ego. Explore what the opposite of certainty is (what I'm calling "emptiness"), and why it might be very worthwhile spiritual discovery, to practice in that state. Ask yourself: is it possible that I have mistaken "more free than I have yet experienced" for "liberated"? Is it possible that I mistook "no inherent existence in my mental model of reality" for "no inherent existence in the actual world"? Is it possible that I mistook "enhanced clarity" for "the true nature of reality"?

Xabir, Obviously, I can't know whether you have "beliefs" or not. But you sure imply that you do. Why do I say that? Because you have repeated yourself, over and over again. You have used some variation of "hearing, no hearer", probably a couple dozen times in responses to me, despite the fact that I have been clear that this "argument" is utterly unconvincing to me. This is a sign of a habit-bound person, utter inability to phrase your explanation in any other form. Someone who is "liberated", who sees the "true nature of reality", should be able to describe the world in multiple dimensions, in stunning clarity, because that is supposedly how you see it. You should be able to hear my skepticism, and adjust how you explain yourself, so that there's something in your words that builds a bridge of understanding for me. You should be able to use everyday words, instead of always falling back on Buddhist and RT jargon. You should be able to be utterly clear, and lead me towards an epiphany of my own, rather than just declaring over and over, these small handful of self-contradictory concepts. And more than anything, you should be aware of the danger of certainty! This is an epiphany that you do not seem to have yet had. Obviously, by your response to Marblehead, above, you've had some epiphany, and you've thus had some "luminous" experiences, thereby. But does this constitute "liberation"? Does this mean that you now see "the true nature of reality"? Only you have decided that it means that. Only you have convinced yourself, that your experience is anything more than just an experience, a step along the way. Isn't it entirely possible that you've had an important insight, and felt a lot of great experience, thereby, and thus have come to a premature conclusion of your own enlightenment? Isn't it possible that others on this board have already experienced what you've experienced, gone through it, and realized that there is more? Isn't it possible that you are only on the tip of the iceberg? Are you going to leave no room for these possibilities? Are you going to just stop listening to other people's interpretations, because you're convinced you're already in the right place? Are you sure this is sensible behavior? Are you sure the Buddha would approve? Are you sure you're not going to feel like a total idiot, in a few months or years, when you look back and realize how limited your view really was? Your path is your own, of course, xabir, and I don't really expect to make any headway in convincing you to look deeper. But I don't mind ridiculing your certainty, because you're asking for it. And I don't mind using you as an example of how not to do it, because who am I harming, if there is no "you" there? Best of luck.

Of course the red flower has an independent existence with its characteristics. What it does not have is the mental perception of red. That perception is human. But the flower very much has its own characteristics, which give rise to the perception of red. This is the same mistake you're making throughout your argument, and calling it "liberation". It's not that the actual things in the world do not have inherent existence. It is that the things that we think we see, are not real, because they only exist in the brain. There is no reason to believe that the actual world does not exist, only that it is unknowable. When I see the "red" flower, my brain translates the interaction between my retina, and the photon which bounced off the flower. The signal which is sent to my brain, is translated as "red". Therefore, the flower itself is not "red" in the way that I see it, but it certainly does have enduring characteristics, which give rise to the experience of "red" in the brain. What the Buddha was saying (as I understand it) is not literally that there are no things, but that our experience is not of the thing itself, but of the simulation of the thing that we generate in our head. It is ego (i.e. habit) which puts together the image of the world, including the redness of the flower (although obviously the image is hugely influenced by photons bouncing off the actual world). Suffering rises, not because of belief that the world exists, but because we mistake our inner model of the world, for the world itself. For example, if my inner model of my girlfriend is that she's totally in love with me, then I am flattened, whenever she disagrees, or has a bad mood. If my inner model is that other people are mean and judgmental, then I will spend my life avoiding them. Etc. Liberation, IMO/IME, is about surrendering the importance of the mental models of the world, which of course do not have inherent existence, and which yes, do lead to suffering. But your explanation is IMO taking Buddha's words far too seriously. (Odd that you've included a lecture on the middle way, since you show no willingness to take a nuanced view on existence). So far, the (non-)beliefs that you have explained have, as far as I can tell, nothing to do with life or the world, as I've experienced it. They have no explanatory power, no predictive power, and no suggestion as to how to live life. They sound like nihilism, and sound every bit as useless as nihilism. Now, I'm the first to admit, that the world is not what we think it is. Quantum physics is clear on that. But to deny that it has "inherent existence" is to utterly redefine what it means to exist. What special definition are you making (something must be permanent, unchanging, to exist? - what?). You say "thinking" exists, but then you deny the entire world's existence. This seems incredibly backwards to me. At the very least, demonstrate how your (non-)view of the "true nature of reality" serves some purpose, explain why it's useful to think in the way you do. Because you sound like you're full of it. Seriously, look at the history of mankind, and ask who are the biggest a**holes? They're always the guys who think they have some special viewpoint on reality, who think they're clearer and more privileged in their vision. Who think that reality is exactly the way that they define it, rather than the way that everyone else sees it. Who refuse to doubt their interpretation, and refuse to accept anyone else's way of looking at things. This is the group that you're emulating: the a**holes. Are you sure that this is the company you want to keep? Aren't you the least worried that you're going to wake up from this messianic delusion of yours, a few years from now, and realize what an incredible arrogant you-know-what you've been? Is this compassion, to think that you know it all? To ignore the reasonable-ness in someone else's argument? Is this wisdom, to have already decided that you're done, and through with illusion? It's a good thing that you're "liberated", so that my words won't seem cruel to you. And if you're not liberated, then I think I'm doing you a favor, by calling you on this. You are exactly what's wrong with Ruthless Truth. People who take on one (half-)truth, and become convinced, thereby, that they are enlightened, and that they now see things that others do not see. You sound exactly like a member of a messianic cult, who has been convinced that he has now grown into messiah-hood himself. Seth Ananda, if you're tuning into this, please take heed! Do you really want to be like xabir, some guy who refuses to listen to reasonable alternatives, someone who repeats the same "hearing, no hearer" drivel over and over again, and mistakes it for wisdom? Someone who has already decided that they've arrived, and therefore leaves no room to grow, no room to learn? Is that what you want with the "no self" pabulum they're feeding you at RT? Self-doubt is liberation. Self-certainty is entrapment. The more sure you are, the less able you are to grow, to see, to experience. Thinking you are always and already "right" is just a recipe for conflict with the world.

Agreed. Good stuff, GIH!