Vmarco

Interesting that there is no un-recommended Buddhism book list. Although many books have at least a tidbit or two for your several hours of work in reading it,...are they really worthwhile? I couldn't begin to count the useless Buddhists books I've read,..and most did not even make it into my memory. However here are a few that I do not recommend: Open Heart, Clear Mind, by Thubten Chodron The Heart Of Understanding, Thich Nhat Hanh Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh Anything by Thich Nhat Hanh Anything by Pema Chodron Essentials of Mahamudra, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche Open Heart, Open Mind, by Tsoknyi Rinpoche Buddhism Is Not What You Think, Steve Hagen (great catchy title, doesn't deliver)

I saw ZZ Top in the spring of '72,...there were maybe 60 people at the outdoor venue,...ZZ Top was flawless! What more could someone ask for? Naropa said, "By learning to recognize the transcendent Light during his lifetime, an adept may return to it without difficulty when the shock of death threatens to disorient him.' "For the rest of my life I want to reflect on what light is". Albert Einstein

Swami Amar Jyoti in the article, "illusion of time, space, and ego" http://light-of-consciousness.org/ said: "if you watch waves roll upon waves, that phenomenon is exactly what does not allow you to the water clearly. To truly see the water you have to be still and unattached, not seeing the waves. If you succeed in that, you are Enlightened." Simply change water for light. When you cease seeing the waves (of light), you are Enlightened. V

And within the vibration of each grain of insignifant sand, contains the blueprint of the Whole. Nothing is ineffable,...except for those who have built barriers against the effable. Undivided Light is realizable,...but not through Divided Light. Truth is realizable,...just relate with that which never changes. Gods change,...thus Buddha said don't relate with with it. If you wish to continue relating with change,...with duality's constructs,...then your not ready to wake-up. Swami Amar Jyoti wrote, "As long as you are projecting yourself into time and space in your calculations, your measurements, your excuses,...as long as time and space conceptions are consciously or subconsciously occupying your mind, you will not attain enlightenment....Time and space leave you at the end, however, not before that. It is hard to transcend time and space before finishing with all of one's conceptions. Practacally all conceptions are dependent upon the conceptions of time and space." was a very good article, "illusion of time, space, and ego" http://light-of-consciousness.org/ "From beginningless time until now, all living beings have mistaken themselves for things and, having lost the original mind, are turned around by things." Buddha, Shurangama sutra

According Robert Thurman, neither the you that you think you are, nor your chair exists: As for Buddhism and Taoism,...in my opinion, the Priests of neither Path "gets it." Light however, illuminates both. If you wish to expand your understanding of Tao, read this book: http://www.archive.org/details/WalterRussellTheSecretOfLight It was written by Christian, but will open an inquiry, through which we can converse, that could shift your direct awareness in ways that many would think impossible. If you could comprehend just 20%, it will be like standing in Laozi' sandals. Look forward to the possibility of such a conversation. V

Agreeed,...you cannot separate space from time,...but as neither space or time exists, why try? LOL Both Buddha, and Quantum Cosmologists, suggest that never was a Big Bang. Sure, such a concept makes things more palatable for ego,...but is that the right thing? Swami Amar Jyoti wrote, "As long as you are projecting yourself into time and space in your calculations, your measurements, your excuses,...as long as time and space conceptions are consciously or subconsciously occupying your mind, you will not attain enlightenment....the worse fallacy of ego is this; that it does not take itself as a conception." "illusion of time, space, and ego" http://light-of-consciousness.org/ Perception is a dream,...that means you are a dream to. It does not mean that everything but you is a dream. Please stop with the Big Bang/Singularity stuff. It's man manufactured fiction,...a theory that will never, can never be proved. Because time (and space) does not exist. The Present exists,...but there is no Present in time,...and thus no Present in space. Quantum mechanics works on all levels, all the time, and in all space. I agree that it does appear to works with skandhan notions of conceptions. There is ABSOLUTELY NO ENERGY in Undivided Light,...the fulcrum upon which Duality effects its motion. Energy is merely the perceived motion of Duality attempting to find unity with Undivided Reality,...which it never can, because it was never really separated,...and does not exist. Absolutely no energy beyond duality,...absolutely no energy in non-duality,....absolutely no energy out of time and space. That applies directly to your experience of life,...and just because you might refuse to be honest enough to see it, doesn't mean it's not true. To understand Non-Duality is to understand Undivided Light. The thread 'What is Light' has everything one needs to realize Non-Duality. V

HE,...you are so focused on retaining some meaningfulness to a concept that is meaningless, that your emancipation from such a meme could be lifetimes away,...which is not a good thing for humanity. Wu Wei is not Oneness, does not act to bring things into Cause, nor has a nature. If you want to know about Wu Wei, study Undivided Light. If you want to know about god, don't look for it in Buddhism. Perhaps you should try ACIM,...these are questions submitted to the Foundation for Inner Peace: 1. If a God did not create the world or the body, who did? Moreover, who are we and how did we get here? This is among the most commonly asked questions, and is certainly an understandable one. Almost all people believe that they are physical and psychological selves, living in a material universe that pre-existed their coming, and which will survive their leaving. The difficulty in understanding that this is not the case lies in the fact that we are so identified with our individual corporeal selves, that it is almost impossible to conceive of our existence on the level of the mind that is outside the world of time and space. When the thought of separation seemed to occur, A Course in Miracles explains that man seemed to fall asleep and dream a dream, the contents of which are that oneness became multiplicity, and that the non-dualistic Mind of man became fragmented and separate from its Source, split into insane segments at war with themselves. As the Course explains, these fragments projected outside the mind a series of dreams or scripts that collectively constitute the history of the physical universe. On an individual level, the serial dramas our ego personalities identify as our own personal lives are also projections of our split and fragmented minds. Thus we are all actors and actresses on the stage of life, as Shakespeare wrote, living out a dream that we experience as our individual reality, separate and apart from Who we really are as Real Self. Moreover, our minds have projected many different personalities in the collective dream of the fragmented little self, complicating the whole process. Therefore, the question "How did we get here?" must be understood from this perspective of the collective and individual dream. In other words, we are not truly here, but are dreaming that we are. As A Course in Miracles states: "[We] are already home, dreaming of exile" (text, 169; T-10.1.2: 1). And this is how the dream seemed to happen: Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which man remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting [to laugh] did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects (text, p. 544; T-27.VITI.6:2-3). These "real effects" constitute the physical world we think is our home. The following passage is perhaps the best description in the Course of the process whereby this effect came into existence, once man took seriously the tiny, mad idea that there could be a substitute for Love. As we shall now see, this resulted in the making of the physical universe which is believed to be an opposite to our true Home: The physical universe substitutes an illusion for truth; fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it. You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Home, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions. That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to bide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable (text, pp. 347-48; T- 1 8.1.4:1-6.-5) But A Course in Miracles further states that the world was made as an attack on Reality (workbook, p. 403; W-pIl.3.2:1), and this was accomplished, again, by the collective split mind of man that believed in its hallucinatory dreaming that it had usurped First Cause. This is the beginning of the ego's unholy trinity that was mentioned above in question 4 on page 4. The guilt over his seeming sin of separation and usurpation demanded that man be punished. Consequently, the fearful man sought to flee from his own insane projection of a wrathful, vengeful Reality who wished to destroy him. Therefore man projected his illusory guilt and fragmented self out of the mind, thereby miscreating a physical world of time and space in which he could hide from the non-physical Reality he believed he had dethroned and destroyed. Within these multiple dreams, the one man appeared to split into billions of fragments, each of which became encased in a body of individual insane dreams, believing that this would render personal "protection" against the ego's image of a wrathful Reality's ultimate punishment. It is important to note still again that we are speaking about the collective mind of the separated man as the maker of the world. Every seemingly separated fragment is but a split-off part of that original one mind that sought to replace the One Mind of Man. Thus, the individual fragment is not responsible for the world, but it is responsible for its belief in the reality of the world. 2. Does A Course in Miracles really mean that a God did not create the entire physical universe? We answer this question with a resounding affirmative! Since nothing of form, matter, or substance can be of Source, then nothing of the physical universe can be real, and there is no exception to this. Workbook Lesson 43 states, in the context of perception, which is the realm of duality and separation: Perception is not an attribute of Source. Perception has no function in Source, and does not exist (workbook, p. 67; W-pI.43.1:1-2; 2:1-2). In the clarification of terms we find the following crystal clear statement about the illusory nature of the world of perception, which Source did not create: The world you see is an illusion of a world. Source did not create it, for what Source manifests must be eternal as Itself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others [e.g., the greater cosmos, as we shall see below in a passage from the text). But the time will come when all things visible will have an end (manual, p. 8 1; C-4. 1). And finally, a similar statement in the text: Source's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet Sources laws reflected everywhere [through the Holy Spirit]. Not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because Man believes it is, and from Man's belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely. (text, p. 487; T-25.111.2; italics ours). These passages are important, because they clarify a source of misunderstanding for many students of A Course in Miracles who maintain that Jesus is teaching that God did in fact create the world. They assert that all the Course is teaching is that he did not create our misperceptions of it. Statements which contain the phrase "the world you see," as in the above passage from the manual for teachers, do not apply simply to the world we perceive through our wrong-minded lens, but rather to the fact that we see at all. Again, the entire physical universe, the world of perception and form, is illusory and outside the Mind of Reality. Therefore, nothing that can be observed -- nothing that has form, physicality, moves, changes, deteriorates, and ultimately dies -- could be of Source. A Course in Miracles is unequivocal about this, which is why we speak of it as being a perfect non-dualistic thought system: It contains no exceptions. And so the seeming majesty of the cosmos and perceived glory of nature are all expressions of the ego's thought system of separation, as we see in this wonderful passage from the text: What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade will not return. Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is (text, p. 572; T-29.VI.2:7- I0). To attempt to make an exception to this fact is to attempt a compromise with truth, exactly what the ego wants in order to establish its own existence. As it states in the workbook: "What is false is false, and what is true has never changed" (workbook, p.445; W-pII.10.1:1). And again in the text: How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all (text, p. 600; T-31.1.1:1-4). In conclusion, therefore, no aspect of the illusion can be accorded truth, which means that absolutely nothing in the material universe has come from Reality, or is even known by Reality. Reality is totally outside the world of dreams. 3. What about the beauty and goodness in the world? Following the above answer, we can see that the so-called positive aspects of our world are equally as illusory as the negative ones. They are both aspects of a dualistic perceptual universe, which but reflect the dualistic split in the mind of Man. The famous statement "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' is also applicable here, since what one deems as beauty, another may find to be aesthetically displeasing, and vice versa. Similarly, what one society judges as good, another may judge as bad and against the common good. This can be evidenced by a careful study of history, sociology, and cultural anthropology. Therefore, using the criterion for reality of eternal changelessness that is employed in the Course, we can conclude that nothing that the world deems beautiful or good is real, and so it cannot have been created by Reality. Therefore, given that both beauty and goodness are relative concepts and thus are illusory, we should follow the injunction to always ask ourselves: "What is the meaning of what I behold?" (text, p. 619; T-3I.VII.13:5). In other words, even though something beautiful is illusory, it remains neutral, like everything else in the world. Given to the ego, it serves its unholy purpose of reinforcing separation, specialness, and guilt. Given to the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, it serves the holy purpose of leading us to an experience of truth that lies beyond perception. For example, a sunset can reinforce the belief that I can find peace and well-being only while in its presence, or it can help remind me that the true beauty of Man is my Identity, and that this beauty is internal, within my mind and independent of anything outside it.

No,...I had your "Tao Teh Ching quote" in mind when I wrote post #13 As for dogs,...Vicious breeds were bred to be vicious. Although many may deny it,...people own vicious dog breeds out of their own perceived fears. Although only a few million per year are actually injuried by vicious dog breeds,...they terrorize hundreds of millions every year. I'm a walker and have been attacked several times,...not only do I have to be very careful in what "public" areas I walk, I also carry mace, in my hand, while walking. In the past 20 years, the people owning vicious breeds has gone up tremendously. No caring, relatively compassionate person would own a vicious dog breed. No one who sincerely desired World Peace would own a vicious dog breed. Obviously, in America, I could never get elected to anything with such a view. V

What would peace look like? Perhaps when the only place one could see a Pit Bull or vicious breed was at the zoo,...that would look like peace. V

So is that kps?

Yes,...rallying for peace, is war. I wouldn't say the world is already at peace, but perhaps inherently engaged in a harmonic balanced interchange, when viewed unselfishly. Shantideva said, "All the joy the world contains Has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself." I read an interesting article by Swami Amar Jyoti called "illusion of time, space, and ego" http://light-of-consciousness.org/ "Yajnavalkyra, a great Vedantic sage, when nearing his old age wished to renounce. He had two wives, Maitreyi and Katyayani, but life had ceased to give him any fulfillment. It was like chewing gum that had lost its taste; just chewing rubber. He went to his wives and said, "I'm going to renounce, so I will divide my property between you." One wife, Katyayani, was satisfied and thought that this was fair. But Maitreyi asked, "Will all this wealth and property you leave me give me immortality?" She was a wise woman. He told her, "no, you will be as good as any other wealthy person would be." She replied, "Then what shall I do with it? I will go with you." In the forest, Maitreyi asked Yajnavalkya, "tell me more about immortality and love in the world." Yajnavalkya told her, "Look Maitreyi, you love me for yourself." She was shocked. "How can you talk like that? I came here with you and renounced everything and now you are telling me that I love you for my own sake?" Yajnavalkya told her, "don't be agitated, try to see clearly. Would you have come with me if that were not what you wanted for yourself? Did you come just to be with me and to help me?" Their conversation continued but he did not only accuse her. He added, "a husband also loves his wife for his self." She was satisfied. And he went on. "You have to go very deep to see it." THe said, "you worship the sun for yourself because it gives you sunshine. You love the food for yourself. You love enjoyments for yourself. You revere your rulers for what they give you. And as long as you are doing for the self, for the ego, that ego will die and you will not attain immortality." He told her, "Try to see behing the individual soul of everyone. What is the most common factor? From where do we all come, Maitreyi?" She could see the point; if you want to be immortal, if you want to go beyond all concepts, if you want to know your true Source you have to become completely still and transcend time and space. Time and space leave you at the end, however, not before that. It is hard to transcend time and space before finishing with all of one's conceptions. Practacally all conceptions are dependent upon the conceptions of time and space."

Are you sure? What if everything was the samething,...and if you understood one thing, you would understand everything. As you "personally ascribe to the Vedanta view of the world more closely than any other"...how about this: "As long as you are projecting yourself into time and space in your calculations, your measurements, your excuses,...as long as time and space conceptions are consciously or subconsciously occupying your mind, you will not attain enlightenment." Swami Amar Jyoti from the article "Illusion of time, space, and ego" http://light-of-consciousness.org/

Please forgive me if I've ever implied a "sixth sense experience of light"...the sixth sense, which arises from the sense organ of thinking, cannot directly experience Light. Mastering one's human-ness (or skandhas) would be noble,...depends on the master. If the master is a product of the skandhas, what's really mastering what? The human condition usually has the ego drive the vehicle,..so how does one (the non-ego or beyond ego self) take over the driven? ACIM 6 IV 5 said, "the ego uses the body to conspire against your Mind (in this context the Mind has no relation to intellect), and because the ego realizes that its 'enemy' (the Mind) can end them both (ego and body) merely by recognizing they are not part of You (the Mind), they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the Mind, which is real, that the Mind is ego's learning device; and further, that the body is more real then the Mind is. No one in their right Mind could possibly believe this, and no one in Their 'right Mind' does believe it" Considering that,...one needs to uncover their Unborn Awareness, before the senses, especially the Sith Sense, can be truly mastered,...and Light directly recognized. As for your eschewing,...that's great. Tilopa said, "clear light cannot be revealed, By the canonical scriptures or metaphysical treatises, Of the Mantravada, the Paramitas or the Tripitaka; clear light is veiled by concepts and ideals." Doesn't matter if that is truth or opinion,...but something to consider if you have yet to uncover a single truth. V V

That's why the first Absolute Bodhicitta lojong is "treat everything you perceive as a dream"