Tatsumaru

A brief review of this thread will reveal that most answers that were given can be summarized within the following statements: [i believe I see things as they are, even though I contradict myself.] [The universe will disappear.] [The universe will not disappear.] [There is God.] [There are Gods.] [There is no God.] [i am limited to my body and I have no control, but I am not a slave (imprisoned).] [i think therefore I exist (awareness arises from matter).] [i exist, therefore I think (matter arises from awareness).] [i believe that one disappears when one dies.] [i believe that one doesn't disappear when one dies.] My favorite one: [Existence is impermanent] was said by the same person who said [The universe will never disappear] Overall, the level of believing and self-contradiction was insanely high, which serves to show that people in this discussion are not honestly interested in truth and are instead interested in guarding their deeply held beliefs and knowledge accumulations (stuff that someone said, stuff that someone read, my father told me, my teacher told me). Thus I don't see the point of partaking in this discussion anymore personally and more replies from me are highly unlikely. Finally I want to share this song with you:

Excuse me, I'm just noting the contradictions in your statements. Fighting is not one of my goals, although I think politeness is overrated. Some posts ago you said that you are not just the brain, but now you said that if your head is removed, there wouldn't be any you left, which means that all of you is in the head/brain. Which means that you think that awareness arises from matter. You seem to be changing your ideas of what the you is and I'm just trying to understand you better. Ego = separation. As in I versus rest. I have to survive, competition. Love my ego = love my separation. When did I associate spirituality with religion ever? In fact I stated the exact opposite - I said spirituality is belief free. I associated atheism with religion. You just said you are a Taoist, but your statements do not appear to be Taoism-related. For example you said that "what you see is what you get" and that awareness arises from matter: “Dualistic thinking is a sickness. Religion is a distortion. Materialism is cruel. Blind spirituality is unreal”- Lao Tzu. “Recognize that everything you see and think is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth” - Lao Tzu I'm not attacking you why would you assume that? I'm just commenting. Is that supposed to be a good thing? Energy is movement, thus no-movement is no-energy. There is not still energy as there is no still electricity and still movement. You cannot learn from the past how to live in the now. You can only let go of the past and uncover the now. However there is a problem. The you that you think you are is also in the past, thus the you that you think you are cannot live in the now. Waking up is a suicide (of the false self).

That's how religion perpetuates itself.

Correct - I am, therefore I think. At least you realize you are not the thoughts. The opposite would suggest that one can rise from nothing and set into nothing, even though nothing doesn't exist. Modern western philosophy is certainly a problem, as Descartes never realized that thought was just another sense. True consciousness is conscious of true things, false consciousness if conscious of false things. True consciousness it truly existent, false consciousness is falsely existent. This is why you are not the 6th consciousness of thought, because it's not true. It's only an abstraction designed to glue thoughts together and create a sense for continuity that is required for survival in the physical world. But you are not that as you yourself asserted. Identification is not a problem, but identification with illusions is were suffering arises from. I have stated multiple times that absolute truth is inaccessible for the 6 senses, but that doesn't mean it's inexpressible. Please remember - we are not saying what is true here, we are saying what isn't true, so we can surrender the illusion bit by bit. The lower 6 senses are in the past, because everything you register as input is after the fact, thus the lower 6 senses never perceive the present, if you understand this you will understand why they are deceivers. It's not difficult to define, you just don't know what it is. Consider this - if you are your mother's information, and your mother is her mother's information and so on, where do "You" start in all this? It's not a trick question. To say that the banana is part of you, but isn't you is to say that the elements that constitute you are not you. Thus you believe that you are a combination of elements, but you are not in any of those elements which means that somehow you arise from not you which is conceptually wrong. Maybe you, like scientists, believe that you are a system that is the sum of it's components, but cannot be reduced to its components, because the components outside of the system would behave differently. This is why I gave you the example about removing fingers and hands and limbs, because that dissipative system that the body appears to be, isn't you. Ha! We Taoists are not allowed to kill our self. We leave that in the hands of Tao. Sounds like a Christian who believes he/she is a Taoist. I am, therefore I think is the core of Buddhism and Taoism. It's simply the realization that awareness doesn't arise from matter. You are completely independent of thought and feelings. This is nothing but a product of thought. It's hard to believe that a person who is so full of beliefs, actually realized "I am, therefore I think". Finally! I love my ego = I don't want to wake up. To enjoy separation is to enjoy the dream. There is no such thing as spiritual atheist - an atheist is a belief in no god, spirituality is belief free. Plus you seem to believe that Tao is God which contradicts your other belief. Lol! You certainly trust your senses. Nagarjuna is disappointed. Yes! Yes! The only part you are missing is that true consciousness is conscious of true existence and false consciousness is conscious of false existence (illusions). Is all consciousness energy? What about the still consciousness? Energy is movement, so what about stillness? Think about it

So what is life then? And what is "just flesh and bone". You seem to be stuck at the "Cogito ergo sum" level. The philosophical proposition of René Descartes (Je pense donc je suis) more widely known as Cogito ergo sum, is often considered the foundation for all knowledge. This Cartesian premise, “I think, therefore I am [or I exist],” which is to say, the “i think” or ego comes before the I am (as if awareness arises from matter), presupposes that the mental sense organ (the sixth sense) is separate from the other senses. Ironically, concerning the other five senses (hearing, touching, seeing, smelling, and tasting), Descartes articulated, “All that I have tried to understand to the present time has been affected by my senses; now I know these senses are deceivers, and it is prudent to be distrustful after one has been deceived once.” In Buddhist and Taoist traditions, six physical sense organs (the five that Descartes considered deceivers, plus the “i think”) are called the Sadāyatana’s, each having their own way of perceiving the world, and are all recognized as deceivers. Buddha never stated anything like that. In fact he stated the exact opposite - that the only true consciousness is permanent.

Well 9th, you are actually right. Movement certainly doesn't stop with perceived death. That's why there is no such thing as life or death. It's just a process. Karl, you are not even making sense anymore. At which point does the dead body stop moving. Energy never stops. Dead things do change, thus things that do not change cannot be called dead. Energy is a function of work/movement, thus if there's no change, there's no energy. This is beyond your idea of life/death. Stop trying to find an example for the absolute reality in the dream. Are you saying that you are the body or the mind? The body is just accumulation of data. You see a banana on the table - if you say this is me, you are crazy, but if you eat the banana, 2 hours later it adds to the body. Now do you think it's you? Weren't you there before? What about the mind? You go to school, you study, you get a diploma. Now you say I am x the biologist with a perfect diploma. Are you the words in the text book or the diploma, weren't you there before the diploma? So, do you believe that you are what you accumulate? Then who accumulates it? Say you are the body, but the body is a dissipative system without a single absolute particle. Where is 'you' in that process? If you cut one finger off , will you be lost? If you cut off all your limbs, will you be lost? Plenty of people without limbs - same personality. So are you the brain then? People tend to insist that they are the brain even though there is no trace of self there either. Why would one prefer to believe that they are the brain is beyond me. Just another organ in the body, just a piece of meat that gets too much attention. The rest is a bourgeois low-level zen joke: That things somehow only temporary exist, so don't get attached to them and that's the greatest liberation... If you are true to that tradition just kill yourself for complete liberation. Why wait?

What?

Some of your deductions were incorrect: "Change presupposes that something changes from one thing to another. This presupposes the law of identity." Things do not change. I explained this in a previous reply, but you are disregarding it. "A lot of people think that if nothing really exists, how can anything function? However, Nagarjuna said that it is precisely because everything does not really exist that everything functions. If everything were truly existent, existing in and of itself and thus being unchanging, things would not depend on anything. But then they could not interact with each other either because that entails change. Therefore, it is only due to everything changing all the time that interaction and functioning are possible." Thus whatever exists doesn't change, whatever changes doesn't exist. The rest of your deductions based on identity were also incorrect because they were based on the error explained above. Who is talking about the universe? The universe is not real... Again whatever exists doesn't change, whatever changes doesn't exist. Stop looking for the absolute within the dream. It's futile. This world, this life, this universe... It's a dream, time to wake up...

Absolute = Something that exists in and of itself, it cannot be further simplified, it doesn't change or move. Ab-solute literally means it cannot be in a solution with - thus it's not relative. Self is the absolute truth about who you are aka that self which exists in and of itself This is the Buddhist/Taoist definition of self with which I agree. Essentially it's the same thing I said, but in more detail. Self is synonymous with Tathagata/Clear Light/Tao: Tathāgata: the Other Buddha; that can never be destroyed, and knows no death, only eternal life. This is a subject that the majority of Buddhists stay far away from, and non-Buddhists, with the exception of some Taoists, ever farther. Tathāgata was the term that Sakyamuni referred to himself as, instead of the pronouns me, I or myself. Tathāgata is the Buddha that most Buddhists, those on the Long Paths, don’t want to discuss. “Those who cannot accept that the Tathāgata is eternal, cause misery” - Mahaparinirvana Sutra. What? How can Buddha say that; didn’t he say everything is impermanent? The Buddha said the Self is “indestructible like a diamond” - Mahaparinirvana Sutra. No way! The Buddha said there was no self. “I will now show you the nature which is not produced and not extinguished” - Shurangama Sutra. Buddha said that “Buddha Nature [the Tathāgata] is the True Self and like a diamond, for example, it cannot be destroyed” Dharmaksema. Yes, Buddha taught impermanence, suffering, Emptiness, non-self for child-like students; yet on the day of Parinirvana, the Tathāgata taught eternity, happiness, and the Self, saying , “now, when his students have overcome the sickness of false views and possess a healthy, more mature appetite, he can teach them the Tathāgatagarbha.” “Those who hold the theory of non-self are injurers of the Buddhist doctrines, they are given up to the dualistic views of being and non-being; they are to be ejected by the convocation of the Bhikshus and are never to be spoken to” - Lankavatara Sutra 765. So why did Sakyamuni Buddha speak of non-being? He told a story of a woman with an ailing infant. The sickness of that child requires that it temporarily desist from drinking its mother’s milk while the medicine which has been administered to it is assimilated. To facilitate this, the mother smears her breasts with a bitter substance, and this deters the infant from suckling at his mother’s breasts. But after the medicine has been absorbed, the child can drink the health-bestowing mother’s milk to his heart’s content – although at first he is hesitant and fearful of doing so. This relates to the doctrine of non-Self, Emptiness (which many commentators on Buddhism equate with “non-substantialism” or “non-essentialism”) and Self: when his students are still spiritually “sick”, the Buddha gives them the bitter medicine of “non-Self” and Emptiness; but when they have progressed into greater health and maturity, he teaches them the reality of the Tathagatagarbha. A commentator mentions how early in this sutra the Buddha has to reprimand his enthusiastic “non-Self”-championing monks who “repeatedly meditate upon the idea that there is no Self” for being perverse in their understanding of Dharma and wrong-headedly applying the teaching of non-Self where its writ does not run – to the real Self. “As when a garment is cleansed of its dirt, or when gold is removed from its impurities, they are not destroyed but remain as they are; so is the skandha self freed from its defilements”- Lankavatara Sutra 756. The clearest definition of Tathāgata (and the most important mantra for those on the Direct Path) is this:Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!

Exactly, input that is conditioned by the past cannot perceive reality. As I have said many times on this thread - to say that truth is personal is to say that there is no difference between true and false. Let go of the past, and you will uncover truth. No, the ego cannot let go of the past, because ego is of the past. I'm going to re-post this video because it's one of the most important videos ever.

Yes, truth is the recognition of reality. I'm not sure what you are talking about regarding the metaphysical absolute etc. Existence exists, sure. A thing is a thing, sure. Let's make it even simpler. What do you know for sure? Forget about gods and selves and metaphysics, let's examine the basics... One thing you know by default is that existence is not nothing, because nothing doesn't exist. When the word "nothing" is mentioned, many people think of it of some sort of infinite blackness or something else, but that's not correct. Nothing doesn't exist. No such thing as nothing, thus infinite blackness is infinite blackness. Even if the whole world is an illusion and a simulation etc, it's still isn't nothing. So far so good right? Now at this point it's a good idea to ask who am I?/what am I? Forget about souls, reincarnation, metaphysics etc. Just inquire into what's going on. The idea of self may arise from the fact that you feel separated from your surroundings or because you don't have control over what's going on. You don't feel omnipresent or omniscient, nor do you remember creating the whole world. If you created the whole world (like Solipsists think) then who created you? Did you appear out of nothing even though nothing doesn't exist? Solipsism is easy to dismiss. Nihilism is easy to dismiss as well as shown in my previous post. When you see someone dying you can verify that the you who you think you are is not absolute. Now many people will say, but what about the soul, isn't it absolute? The soul concept can be dismissed easily as well. Basically the idea of soul is that there is something absolute in yourself, that goes somewhere else when the body dies. Again we ask " Can an absolute thing exist within time?" If you say yes that means that you think that there are things which change, but do not change at the same time which is wrong. Thus there is no absolute self within time and thus no soul. You are only left with two choices: A. There is no self. B. There is a self outside of time. Vedantins and some Zen schools believe there is no self and the idea of self is an illusion. Most Buddhist schools that I know of talk about an absolute self that is outside of time, except for maybe Theravada. The Buddha wanted to uncover why people suffer and he realized that people are attached to things that do not exist. He realized that people believe that processes are things, that a Table for example has intrinsic, essential "tableness" that the table arises from. So he observed life and realized that the table is made of wood, and the wood is made of soil, and the soil is made of bodies (generally speaking). He realized that a Table is only an idea, because that same Table could be something completely else for someone else, like chair for someone or food for termites. He realized that people are attached to things that do not exist absolutely and that if you are attached to something that is not absolute then suffering is inevitable because whatever is not absolute is constantly changing. So then he wanted to find out if there is something absolute, and so on. Buddha realized that the root of suffering is the desire for things to be other than they are. Or in different words the desire for illusions to be truth, which is important, since you want truth to be defined within the context of the relative which is futile. Again - to say that truth is personal is to say that there is no difference between true and false. Relative truth is personal truth, there is no such thing. I explained this many times, but you are in denial. This is going to be the last time. Please read it carefully. 1. If there is no self, then there is no self that was born and that will die. That much is clear. 2. If there is a self, then it can only be absolute. If the self is not absolute then whatever you call self is changing, if it's changing it's dependent on something else to exist, because change means interaction, if it depends on something else to exist then it's a process that's not limited by boundaries, because if it's limited by boundaries then it cannot interact with whatever it originates from. To put it simply if it's not just you, then how can it be just you? If it's not a self, then how can it be a self? Thus if something is changing it's not absolute. If what you call your self is changing it's not absolute, but based on the logic above it cannot be a self. unless it's absolute. If you want to continue this discussion please disprove my logic, otherwise I'm not interested in repeating the same thing over and over.

If you believe that there is no self, then you won't be able to die, because you weren't born. If you believe that there is a self, then you won't be able to die, because you weren't born. Better find out.

Well you better scold whoever wrote the Heart Sutra fast then, because that's precisely what it's doing. Remember what was said by the Buddha: "The Tathagata doesn't come and go". If you think that the present is part of time then you must disprove the following statement: "There is no present in time" and then "The Tathagata doesn't come and go". (because if present was part of time, then there is nothing outside of time, but if there is nothing outside of time, then the absolute Tathagata is within time, which means it's not absolute and it does indeed come and go) I don't envy the one wishing to fit the absolute within time.

Are you saying that the present is the past? That's problematic, because that means there is no present, only past. But how can there be past without a present. If you are considering present as an effect then there must be something preceding the present. What is it? Are you saying the present arises out of the past? Then what does the past arise out of? I love radical thinking, but I don't think you are correct.

Lol. Replying to you reminds me about my grandfather who is also extremely stubborn. It's okay though, I'm not in a hurry. So basically you believe that there is no absolute truth. Absolute truth by definition doesn't change, so if you are saying that there is no such thing, then you are saying that there is no absolute truth, which is silly even from a conceptual point of view, because if there was no absolute truth, then the absolute truth would be absolutely nothing, and thus an absolute truth. Since you love your schools of philosophy so much, guess which school is based upon a denial of absolute truth - Nihilism. Their view is that nothing really exists except the relative, meaning that there is a real world in your brain and nothing else which already contradicts the notion that nothing exists. The consequences of nihilism are to believe that somehow you are able to interpret an external event with your brain, even though there is nothing outside of your brain. Thus somehow you are absolute because nothing is outside of your perception, but at the same time relative because everyone has their own idea of reality. Furthermore you somehow appeared out of nothing and exist in nothing, even though nothing doesn't exist. You somehow appeared out of yourself, from nothing... No wonder Nietzsche (a prominent nihilist) lost his mind. Remember what I said in the beginning - to suggest that truth is personal is to suggest there is no difference between true and false. If everything you come up with is true, then there is no false. Thus truths can contradict each other and that is not problem, thus there is no truth and no lie etc. Forget about Aristotle, who didn't debunk anything. Aristotle believed in gods and duality. Aristotle believed in oneness, ignoring the fact that there is no one without a many. He didn't uncover a single absolute truth. Focus on Socrates and Plato if you are true seeker of truth. I'm not an expert on quantum theory, although I'm familiar with some basic premises and I can say that they are certainly problematic to people who cling to Aristotelian logic for their identity. Such people are not interested in truth. Quantum theory states that on the sub-atomic level there are no particles which is consistent with Buddhism's "Form is emptiness, Emptiness is also form". Gautama uncovered this many years before expensive laboratory equipment simply by wondering about absolute truth - there cannot be an absolute particle that gives rise to the relative world since that would entail change for the absolute particle. Thus scientists will never find an absolute particle. As for change being reality - consider the present. Present is just a single moment, not an event, thus the present is not part of time. So if present is not part of time then, there is nothing changing in the present. So where is that reality you are talking about? Are you saying that there is no present and only past? That would be a bold statement... and an incorrect one. To put it simply a nihilist believes that nothing really exists, but the relative, because somehow there is a self, even though nothing exists. You have to choose either nothing exists and no self exists, or a self exists beyond time. You don't get to mix absolute and relative truths. That is the ego's highest desire, to make the impermanent permanent. Such quest is doomed and is the root of suffering according to Buddha.