True Self

[Vajrahridaya]

huh...yeah I always kinda understood the "true" self as being the faceless force behind the mask (ego, personality, feelings, thoughts, desire) of humanity (6 billion body-minds, played by one force). But yea a human being is definately always changing, I think that's why its so fun playing as humans.

 

But then again it can get tiresome playing humans over and over again. Gets kinda boring, so I think sum evolution would be nice. Perhaps a body-mind that isn't so limited but remembers a time when it was so it can appreciate and more thoroughly enjoy it's new state of being.

 

But if a "true self" were to have no personality, no substance, just pure awareness, pure beingness... why would that be considered "impermanent"? I can understand how the "masks" it may wear could be impermanent but not it itself.

 

Confuzzling...

 

-Astral

 

Yeah, I think he's saying there is no permanent omni-awareness that all things are. That would be Hindu interpretation of spiritual experience based on reifying deep states of Samadhi which the Buddha did not do. So, there is no "true self" in Buddhism in the sense that you just mentioned.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Vajrahridaya

[manitou]

Getting back to what the true self actually is, I think the true self is found in a child prior to the onset of personality. I'm referring to Personality as a series of habits that formed as the result of reaction to stimuli. To return to true self, maybe the only way is to go back through personality to the mind of the true child. This is the inner journey of self-awareness, which results in self-realization if done earnestly.

[Vajrahridaya]

Sorry but this is not correct.

 

Well, not according to Anthropologists. India has the oldest known system of martial arts in existence and it supposedly traveled to China long ago in the B.C. But, of course... most of this is just the conjecture of some, not all Anthropologists.

 

Supposedly the Harappan Valley civilization created the first formalized martial arts style in an archaic form. This would be about 6,000 to 4,000 B.C. so that's about 8,000 or so years ago.

 

So, I could be wrong, but you'd have to take it up with Anthropologists, not me.

 

The Mahabharata supposedly tells a story that's even older and they mention this very early form of martial arts, but the story in the Mahabharata supposedly tells a story that's so B.C. based on areas that are most likely sunken and completely wiped away that Anthropologists cannot verify any of this. Though, they might have found the land bridge mentioned in one of the stories in the Puranas?

[Vajrahridaya]

Getting back to what the true self actually is, I think the true self is found in a child prior to the onset of personality. I'm referring to Personality as a series of habits that formed as the result of reaction to stimuli. To return to true self, maybe the only way is to go back through personality to the mind of the true child. This is the inner journey of self-awareness, which results in self-realization if done earnestly.

 

That would still be personal as a child still has individual traits, even though the state of awareness is more spontaneous and free from confining concepts. There is still the personal mind stream made up of a beginningless reservoir of past life experience, even though many of the traits will be hidden until the mind of the child starts manifesting it's concrete reflections through the physical medium it experiences karmically as the child grows up.

 

It is said though that an enlightened one is merely being as a child with the awareness of responsibility.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Vajrahridaya

[Marblehead]

By the way if you think 'self-awareness' is necessary for proper functioning in life then I can assure you that it is redundant, it is an illusion, and it only causes suffering.

 

'I' (conventionally speaking) still act, perceive, live an ordinary life, even without the illusion of a self, agent, doer, perceiver.

 

All you have said about 'car' is true but we still call it 'car', don't we?

 

So if you say the same thing about 'self' we would still call it 'self', wouldn't we?

 

What say you? Self-awareness is cause for suffering? Rubbish!

 

So who mail do you get when the postman drops something into your mail box? "You" get "Your" mail. Everything that is the composite "you" is what is named Xabir. You cannot escape you.

 

When someone calls your name you turn your head to see who is calling. You name is a part of what you are as well. The only way you will ever excape being recognized as being you is to live in total isolation. And I would verture to suggest that you won't last very long in that condition.

 

You are just as real as I am and I am very real indeed.

 

You eat for your self. You sleep for your self. You go potty for your self. Everything you do you do for your self. Sure, some of these thing will be for the benefit of others but you have done them for your self. It was you who did those things.

[Marblehead]

Getting back to what the true self actually is, I think the true self is found in a child prior to the onset of personality. I'm referring to Personality as a series of habits that formed as the result of reaction to stimuli. To return to true self, maybe the only way is to go back through personality to the mind of the true child. This is the inner journey of self-awareness, which results in self-realization if done earnestly.

 

Excellent consideration and an important one, I would suggest.

[Apech]

I can't help commenting because of Vajra's Brit bashing tendencies. Actually the British scholars in India were very sympathetic to what they found and did all the early work to open up the rest of the world to the wisdom in what they termed Hinduism. There was a Vedic religion which pre-dated the Buddha which was centred round the more ritualistic vedas like the Rig Veda and were really about how to worship the gods of the Aryan Brahmins. This was a hierarchical religion of the ruling caste - but you have to remember that Siddharta was born a prince ... so this would have been how he was brought up.

 

In terms of the Self. I think it is too easy to say either there is a self or there is no self. Its a kind of cop out. Paradoxically we both have a self and we don't have a self at the same time and that is the hardest view to hold. Non-dualism requires it though and just saying ... oh there is no self is no answer to anything.

[Marblehead]

In terms of the Self. I think it is too easy to say either there is a self or there is no self. Its a kind of cop out. Paradoxically we both have a self and we don't have a self at the same time and that is the hardest view to hold. Non-dualism requires it though and just saying ... oh there is no self is no answer to anything.

 

I like that.

 

(But I will still argue my side of the duality. Hehehe.)

[xabir2005]

All you have said about 'car' is true but we still call it 'car', don't we?

 

So if you say the same thing about 'self' we would still call it 'self', wouldn't we?

 

What say you? Self-awareness is cause for suffering? Rubbish!

 

So who mail do you get when the postman drops something into your mail box? "You" get "Your" mail. Everything that is the composite "you" is what is named Xabir. You cannot escape you.

 

When someone calls your name you turn your head to see who is calling. You name is a part of what you are as well. The only way you will ever excape being recognized as being you is to live in total isolation. And I would verture to suggest that you won't last very long in that condition.

 

You are just as real as I am and I am very real indeed.

 

You eat for your self. You sleep for your self. You go potty for your self. Everything you do you do for your self. Sure, some of these thing will be for the benefit of others but you have done them for your self. It was you who did those things.

'I' don't sleep for my 'self', I sleep for my body-mind, eat for my body-mind, except that there is no 'my' body-mind - just this particular functioning body-mind without an 'I' or 'my'. That said, it's ok to talk about self in the conventional sense, and for convenience. Just that there is no inherent self. An enlightened person knows conventions, but is also aware of reality. This is why he is aware there is no self and yet respond to names.

 

 

What the Reasonings Do Not Refute – Conventional Existence

If things do not exist truly or inherently, do they exist at all? Or do they totally and utterly lack existence? The Buddha is quoted as saying, “What the world accepts, I accept. What the world does not accept, I do not accept.” In the Middle Way teachings, it is said that things do exist conventionally. The conventional existence of the cup is the everyday ability of the cup to hold tea, to be washed and dried, and to shatter if dropped. The cup is a mere nominality or imputation or “say-so,” asserted by the mind dependent upon certain pieces and parts. This conventional cup serves the purpose of a cup even though if it were analyzed with the Sevenfold Reasoning, it would not be found. The fact that it would be unfindable under this analysis is not significant, since nothing could withstand that analysis. The purpose of the Sevenfold Reasoning is not to negate every possible thing that can be negated; rather, it is to negate inherent existence – the conception of which causes suffering.

 

The Sevenfold Reasoning is not applied to refute the conventional, everyday existence of things, such as the teacup, the self that goes to the grocery store, or the Yankees who won the 2000 Subway Series. There are three main reasons for not refuting conventional existence. One is that conventional existence, according to Middle Way Buddhism, is not the cause of suffering. Therefore, there is no necessity to refute it. Two, not refuting conventional existence allows Buddhism to be able to “speak with the world” by accepting what the world accepts.

 

Edited January 10, 2011 by xabir2005

[9th]

The sense of touch aids the illusion of solidity, which the human embodies in a physical way - unable as we are to dematerialize into our component atoms. (Yet in relation to their own size, there is a vast amount of space between the particles that constitute our various bodies) With the aid of this sensory experience, the idea of the self - the self image - is also subconsciously considered a solid object, a discrete persona. This layer of abstracted self - the self image - is founded on the psychology and instruction of a pre-established human society, delivered mostly by ones parents and others in the formative years of the child. In its daily manifestations and general activity, the self image is directed by thought and driven by emotion, both of which have, at their long lost origin, only derived from very basic instincts of this most socialized (or "learned") animal on the planet.

 

The conceptual framework of language does not exhibit reality but rather symbolizes it, in the way that the word "tree" is not the actual thing itself. You eat the meal not the menu. The word, the symbol - that which approximates and is but a representation of reality - is the same as any other image - and just as language itself often becomes more real to people than that which it points to, so does the image of the self become to the mind of the social animal, the human, the current earthly apex of the expression of biology.

 

In this same way the framework of biology provides impulsive activity that necessitates eating, sleeping, shitting, fucking, etc. In all activities of a structural framework, the mechanics of their operation is a set of laws relative to the physicality of that structure. Even conceptual abstraction follows the same basic logic which is used by biological limitation. Yet the awareness of a given object (sight, sound, sensation, emotion, thought, etc.) is what provides the space for that object to be presented in the first place.

 

All events and activity, objects and so forth appear as something like a movie in first-person, but it is only upon the blank screen of naked awareness that this is possible. Most people have no awareness of awareness - rather they are beings which are entirely subject to the reactionary mechanisms of deterministic law, also known as "karma". There is nothing of their being which has gravity in itself.

 

However as soon as awareness itself becomes the focus of perception, the center of gravity begins to shift. The content (or objects of perception such as sensations, emotions, thoughts) eventually becomes secondary to the space in which it arises, rather than remaining as the dominant focus - which is the position it occupies in the life of the average person. It is this gradual shift provided by practices of internal self-cultivation which is the objective of all valid wisdom traditions.

 

When the entire nervous system perceives as a single cohesive unit, the possibilities are far beyond the comprehension of the conceptual mind. However there is a barrier of fear which is no less than that of imminent death. This is because the totality of perception includes a clear view of human mortality, amongst the manifold other possibilities. It is often surprising to people how tricky their own mind can be in avoiding reality as it is, and this is why people say "ah ha!" when they finally understand their own mind's deception upon themselves.

[Vajrahridaya]

I can't help commenting because of Vajra's Brit bashing tendencies. Actually the British scholars in India were very sympathetic to what they found and did all the early work to open up the rest of the world to the wisdom in what they termed Hinduism. There was a Vedic religion which pre-dated the Buddha which was centred round the more ritualistic vedas like the Rig Veda and were really about how to worship the gods of the Aryan Brahmins. This was a hierarchical religion of the ruling caste - but you have to remember that Siddharta was born a prince ... so this would have been how he was brought up.

Yes, of course.

 

 

In terms of the Self. I think it is too easy to say either there is a self or there is no self. Its a kind of cop out. Paradoxically we both have a self and we don't have a self at the same time and that is the hardest view to hold. Non-dualism requires it though and just saying ... oh there is no self is no answer to anything.

 

Nagarjunas two truths paradigm. I prefer Dzogchens one truth paradigm where you just stay in the middle experientially, but yes. Concepts will always reveal paradox.

[pennyofheaven]

[Vajrahridaya]

[pennyofheaven]

Right, that's called Eternalism, an extreme view which the Buddha rejected. This view merely leads to long lived god realms and formless bliss realms that end up getting recycled by this attachment to a supreme and unchanging source as an ultimate and true Self of all.

 

The other extreme that the Buddha rejected is Nihilism.

 

Your view is very Hindu, know it or not. The Buddha rejected this view of reality, not based upon a lack of experiencing what you are talking about, but because there is a deeper interpretation of the very same experience which leads to a subtler clarity about the causes and conditions of the experience you are referencing to have such a view.

 

Why long lived god realms and formless bliss do you think? You are not taking the perceptions with you? They cease or go back to their original state and what is eternal is just that. Nothingness with potential.

[Vajrahridaya]

Why long lived god realms and formless bliss do you think? You are not taking the perceptions with you? They cease or go back to their original state and what is eternal is just that. Nothingness with potential.

 

Because when the karmas (actions) in thought, intention and deed are focused on this as a platform for all things and beings, it absorbs them, but only to the depth and intensity of your focus, which can last eons, until the end of a cosmic eon when the rest of the universe you are occupying goes into collapse during the big crunch, this subtle attachment recycles you into the new universe ignorant of the one prier, to do the process all over again, thus true liberation is not realized.

 

It's really hard to explain this subtle level of understanding, but the Buddha explains it well and other Buddhist masters after him.

 

Basically, if you take your experience of faceless and formless consciousness as proof of an eternal platform that is uniform for everything, then this subtle interpretation of experience, which is non-conceptual is the actual seed for re-becoming, because emptiness and dependent origination is not realized, but rather you are merely reifying the seed agent for re-samsaric emergence.

 

I'm trying to be as succinct, while being freakin' totally tired at the same time... and I think I'm not doing a good job. If you want to know what the Buddha taught, you'd have to really study what he taught directly.

 

Anyway... I'm not saying that the experience is "bad" or "wrong" but that the tendency to interpret the experience as the "true Self" of all is not going to lead to final emancipation or to put it differently, is not going to lead to complete insight into the nature of yourself/others.

[Marblehead]

'I' don't sleep for my 'self', I sleep for my body-mind, eat for my body-mind, except that there is no 'my' body-mind - just this particular functioning body-mind without an 'I' or 'my'. That said, it's ok to talk about self in the conventional sense, and for convenience. Just that there is no inherent self. An enlightened person knows conventions, but is also aware of reality. This is why he is aware there is no self and yet respond to names.

 

Well, okay. You just agreed with me while disagreeing with me.

 

Your words: I sleep for my body-mind

 

Yes, "you" sleep for (the composite, non-eternal) "you".

 

I have no problem using the word "self" for the composite, non-eternal body-mind that makes me what I am.

 

But surely, you do understand that 'your' body-mind is not the same as 'my' body-mind. Now, if there are differences then they cannot be the same. Therefore there is 'you' and 'me'.

 

And so the reality is that we both exist at the physical plane at this point in time. Therefore we interact with other physical essences in a conventional manner.

 

If we were to discuss the seventh dimension (if there is such a thing) we would be speaking in non-conventional terms.

 

Funny thing about time/space. Here today - gone tomorrow.

 

Hehehe. You and I do have a lovely time discussing this concept from time to time. I doubt we will ever totally agree, one with the other, because of the roots of our belief systems.

 

But hopefully the words we speak with each other will help some reader along with their understandings whether it be of the Buddhist or Taoist orientation.

[Marblehead]

The sense of touch aids the illusion of solidity, ...

 

Hi 9th,

 

Valid inclusion to the discussion.

 

And believe it or not, I have no problem with what you have said.

 

However, (hehehe) in my life I rely more ont the atoms that compose things rather than the space between the atoms.

 

Of course, I am a materialist. I hold to the understanding that the Manifest is just as real as any other aspect of the totality.

 

Awareness of my chair allows me to rest my weary bones. That's good enough for me.

[9th]

Hi 9th,

 

Valid inclusion to the discussion.

 

And believe it or not, I have no problem with what you have said.

 

However, (hehehe) in my life I rely more ont the atoms that compose things rather than the space between the atoms.

 

Of course, I am a materialist. I hold to the understanding that the Manifest is just as real as any other aspect of the totality.

 

Awareness of my chair allows me to rest my weary bones. That's good enough for me.

 

Awareness of the first portion of the first sentence of my post is one thing... awareness of the rest of it is quite another. If such selective listening is good enough for you, I might question why you would come to a forum such as this - but I dont need to. Its actually quite evident. Also, you are not alone in such endeavors. In fact, its very pervasive.

[Marblehead]

Awareness of the first portion of the first sentence of my post is one thing... awareness of the rest of it is quite another. If such selective listening is good enough for you, I might question why you would come to a forum such as this - but I dont need to. Its actually quite evident. Also, you are not alone in such endeavors. In fact, its very pervasive.

 

So why do you have a problem with me and what I have said? Why do you even bother being here if all you can do is criticize someone who has resopnded to what you have said? I read your entire freaking post. What do you want me to do? Repeat the whole freaking post and respond to every word you said?

 

What do you believe is so evident?

 

No, I am not alone. There are many members here who oftentimes agree with what I post.

 

So I compliment you on your post and all you can do is be negative?

 

Perhaps you need to relax with a cup of tea?

 

Anyhow, I place great reliance on my observations of the physical. I don't need to take something apart in order to find the usefulness in it. Maybe others do. That for them to do.

 

So you go ahead on and think whatever you care to about me and why I am here but I assure you that based on your above post you have no freaking idea.

 

And life goes on.

[9th]

So why do you have a problem with me and what I have said?

 

I don't.

[Marblehead]

I don't.

 

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

 

I had to go check my blood pressure after making that last post to be sure I wasn't over-doing things.

 

Take care.

[Vajrahridaya]

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

 

I had to go check my blood pressure after making that last post to be sure I wasn't over-doing things.

 

Take care.

[9th]

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

 

I had to go check my blood pressure after making that last post to be sure I wasn't over-doing things.

 

Take care.

 

We shall be taking much more than that!

 

but thanks for your offer anyway, its good to know how much time you are willing to spend of your own volition

[Lucky7Strikes]

But surely, you do understand that 'your' body-mind is not the same as 'my' body-mind. Now, if there are differences then they cannot be the same. Therefore there is 'you' and 'me'.

Yup, this is a valid argument. .

[Marblehead]

We shall be taking much more than that!

 

but thanks for your offer anyway, its good to know how much time you are willing to spend of your own volition

 

There are certain times of the day when I am restricted (my own choosing) to what activities I can get involved in. Talking with others about Taoist Philosophy is one of the most enjoyable things I can think of to do during these times.

 

 

 

 

Hi Lucky,

 

Thanks.