How you apply Buddhism in life

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Lucky7Strikes]

"So when you don't dream, do you recognize that you re not dreaming?"

 

When sleeping, I am just sleeping.

So you are not aware. So waking and sleeping are two different states for you. Sleeping doesn't "self liberate" does it?

 

"I'm a bit confused here, because from what I read you didn't write about the jhanas. You wrote out a lot of theory."

 

I typed this in that post: "Fully realizing this enables the individual to "transcend" the three realms (Desire realm, Form realm, Formless realm.)"

 

"Also, try holding your breath for a long time telling yourself that it is simply just arising appearances. Or as a Zen master would do, throw his ash tray on your head!"

 

It's kinda funny to me that you have completely missed the point of my posts.

That's probably because you've missed the points of mine. Keep telling yourself everything is just arising and ceasing appearances. Maybe you'll be aware while you are sleeping. But if not, maybe when you wake up you'll be in a womb already . Just another appearance yeah?

Edited September 25, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes

[Lucky7Strikes]

I've actually almost died of a heat stroke, when I was 5 years old. The doctors told my dad that if I hadn't been brought in when I was, I would've been dead.

 

Dude, that would've been such a lame fuckin way to die

 

EDIT: When I was brought into the hospital. Forgot to add that.

Um, my reply to Jetsun was agreeing to his idea that breathing or sleeping are different than dying, especially being aware of the process.

 

Not that "Hey! I almost died once! Have you?"

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Lucky7Strikes]

Nah bro, wasn't even trying to make it some sort of "Look at me" post or anything like that. Was just trying to convey that I don't underestimate death. Though to me now, it is just another dependently originated phenomenal process; different than for example waking and breathing, but equally dependently originated. Which makes it another dream-like phenomenal process not unlike, for example the imagined difference between "waking life" and "dreaming."

 

Fully realizing interdependent origination free's one from fundamental ignorance and the process of unconcious rebirth.

Yes, hence my comment to you to go try holding your breath and tell yourself its just just another interdependently originated appearance.

 

There is a Zen story that goes something like,

 

A student came up to the master and explained to him how empty all phenomena is, how they were all dream like appearances. The master who was sitting there just smoking a pipe threw his ash tray on the student's head and the student screamed in pain. The master replied, "that's empty too eh?" Something like that.

 

Anyways, my original comment was just that much of Buddhist mumbo jumbo here doesn't come from direct experience, stuff like the rebirths, the bardo, consciousness-only reality, escaping the cycle of rebirths. Usually it's limited to experiencing relaxation, spontaneity, mindfulness, bliss, sense of freedom, generally stuff of psychological nature. And I find a vast majority of practitioners are at these stages, especially in the West.

 

You like Nan Huai Chin's writings right? I found it insightful when he mentioned how many Buddhists travel the path upside down, mistaking the cause and the effect, because they are so well versed in Buddhist ideology, like interdependent origination, the twelve links, anatta, emptiness, that their "enlightenment" and realization of these aspects of reality are often inevitably shallow, if not imitative.

 

Discovering them yourself is very different than "seeing" their validity, so I find that what you wrote extensively on Yogacara and "thought based reality" to be mostly jargon and doctrine.

Edited September 25, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Lucky7Strikes]

 

Aiii, Xabir's created another monster.

 

Maybe Nan Huai Chin is referring to people like you. Do you really have direct insight into what you wrote in that post? Not just "oh no self, just appearances, this, that, things just happening spontaneously, "self liberating"" crap.

Edited September 26, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes

[Jetsun]

Anyways, my original comment was just that much of Buddhist mumbo jumbo here doesn't come from direct experience, stuff like the rebirths, the bardo, consciousness-only reality, escaping the cycle of rebirths. Usually it's limited to experiencing relaxation, spontaneity, mindfulness, bliss, sense of freedom, generally stuff of psychological nature. And I find a vast majority of practitioners are at these stages, especially in the West.

 

Yeah I agree, the taste I get from a lot of the discussions here is it is mostly head based realisations, maybe it has been realised in moments during self enquiry or meditation but nearly everyone has moments of clarity which are quickly forgotten, to really get the wisdom to penetrate deeply so you are not swept away by the hypnotism of life so you wake up and live the teachings with your entire being 24 hours a day it takes decades of dedicated practice.

[Marblehead]

Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocaine during a root canal?

 

His goal: transcend dental medication.

[konchog uma]

[rex]

Mumbo jumbo and head realisations? For sure! This is all perfectly normal for those on the path of aspiration who find themselves inspired by the teachings. It's nothing to be alarmed about, and is part of the process of working through the four stages of faith - vivid faith, eager faith, confident faith, and irreservisble faith. As the saying goes:

 

Do not mistake understanding for realisation and do not mistake realisation for liberation.

 

Having a calmer mind and increased sense of inner freedom are all good pointers that something is going on and working. This should be a cause for rejoicing and confident faith and at the very least indicates that a good foundation is being laid. Realisation? That must come with time and application of at three of the six paramitas - diligence, wisdom, and meditation.

 

[link to nice article ]

 

 

Edit: Punctuation

Edited September 26, 2011 by rex

[Lucky7Strikes]

he's the same one that tried to vacuum under his sofa but couldn't, right?

 

cause he had no attachments!

:lol: :lol:

[Marblehead]

he's the same one that tried to vacuum under his sofa but couldn't, right?

 

cause he had no attachments!

 

Yep. I do believe it is the same one. Hehehe.

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Lucky7Strikes]

Why do think it is not possible for yourself or another person, to be mentally free from the attachment to death? To "know" that there is really no difference between dying and not dying?

I never said it wasn't possible. Just that you don't know it. Please don't pretend you do, about conscious only, 12 links of d.o., bardos, rebirths, karma, interdependence of consciousness, and generally most of the stuff you wrote in that post and onwards. You don't have direct experience into any of these.

 

You are just aware in your dreams (but not sleep). You see life as it arises and passes. Experience is spontaneous and ungraspable. Everything is relegated as an empty appearance. When your view becomes effortless, all experiences are also so, hence the view needn't be upheld anymore. Boundaries between I, you, in, out, here, and there all melt into the cause and effect processes flowing on as this experience of "you." You tend to call this "self-liberation." Now leave it at that.

 

Anything more and you just sound like another New Age nut job but with a head band that says "Buddhist." I'm assuming a lot here and may actually be attributing much more than you actually have experienced. But do you understand where I'm coming from? Hence I said most of it is taken on faith.

 

What you are talking about is a psychological shift. Which is good. But don't delude yourself into believing that you truly know that there is no birth or death of an individual. Or that you can direct your life in the bardo states. This is like someone who just learned to ride a bicycle and believing he can now drive a motorcycle down a freeway, but not only that, feels like he knows where you are supposed to drive it towards.

 

We need to bring Buddhism back to more realistic and practical measures. This is what the Western mindset has to contribute to Buddhism as it evolves here, to really bring it back to what the Buddha said in the Kalama Sutta. There's just too much fascination with mystical language, theories, stories and assumptions made too quickly without discerning how one has come to that knowledge.

 

I know traditionalists like Namdrol do not like this, as I've read him making harsh criticisms of Western teachers taking the more skeptical stances regarding teachings. But I think it's a very positive development. It leaves room for true self discovery and autonomy, where the knowledge is yours and you know how you've come to that understanding like the back of your hand and not from some sutta, or a teacher, or "oh, I just experience it that way." Otherwise, people can easily become deluded in making themselves believe they know or are capable of much more than they actually are, too much of it shrouded in faith.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Lucky7Strikes]

Concerning what I have typed about D.O...Why do I not have direct experience into this insight?

You don't have direct insight into the arising of your consciousness, form, mental formations...etc, the 12 links. I know and have heard of people who attain insight into their own coming into being, so I know that this is possible. Right now you just know the principle of dependent origination and have applied that principle to your immediate experiences, which is what Nan Huai Chin is referring to when he says that today's cultivators often practice backwards. They don't realize dependent origination. They take it and apply it to reality instead. This is like learning about the principle of causality and thinking you now understand how it applies to all things because you choose to observe it.

 

"You are just aware in your dreams (but not sleep)"

 

When in a deep dreamless sleep, you are really just in a deep dreamless. I said dreams "self-liberate." The habit energies/feelings associated with these dreams, don't effect me because the nature of the dreams are seen to be just luminous displays of Mind.

And dreamless sleep isn't luminous display of Mind?

 

Why doesn't the the full insight into D.O, not free one from the notions of "birth" and "death?" How doesn't the freedom from these notions effectively end the ignorance, which causes beings to bob up and down cyclical existence?

How do you know beings bob up and down in cyclical existence? Do you have insight and proof into their past lives and how this thing called karma guides them? Do you know anyone who has freed himself from birth and death, as in have you met or had experience with them? Probably not.

 

Freeing yourself from notions of birth and dead does not free you from birth and death.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes

[Lucky7Strikes]

Please, I want you to go back to when I first responded to your post and tell me why that doesn't free someone from the notions of "birth" and "death." Also, seeing that there is no duality between "samsara" and "nirvana."

Because it's bunch of stuff you have no real experience of or know to be true besides from the suttas or on faith.

 

But if you are just talking about "notions" of birth and dead, ok. I can understand how you can get rid of those things. But you don't need all that Buddhist doctrine to do that. You can get rid of those "notions" easily by taking a physicalist point of view that you are just a bobbling protein made up of millions of cells that live and die every day. So there is no real birth or death there either but just cells interacting from parent to child, and if the body dies and returns to earth, it feeds the soil to replenish plants and other animals and so forth. So if you take this paradigm to be true, not just entertain the idea of it, then you are just likely freed from the notions of birth and death.

 

As for Samsara and Nirvana, you can interpret those terms in the way you did. But Samsara by tradition means cyclical existence. And Nirvana is to be freed from it. You have no insight into neither but only theories and assumptive conclusions. You don't know if karma is true or not. If you did you would have knowledge of how you came into being, your past and future lives, the process of death and rebirth, and things of those nature directly like knowing that you can move your arm up and down; like knowing you can walk to the kitchen now and get a glass of water.

 

Basically what I'm asking you to do is put all those Buddhist terms, doctrines, and books aside, and sit down on your meditation cushion and examine what you know, how you came to know those things, and what "knowing" is, but most importantly weed out stuff you actually don't know.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes

[Seth Ananda]

Lucky, I personally think you may have a better conversation with SJ if you at least be open to the possibility that he has attained something [as he claims] and then ask careful questions to fill out the story. You may be totally right about your accusations, but you may not be either...

 

If anything he describes things well and is a good resource here.

Seth.

[Lucky7Strikes]

Lucky, I personally think you may have a better conversation with SJ if you at least be open to the possibility that he has attained something [as he claims] and then ask careful questions to fill out the story. You may be totally right about your accusations, but you may not be either...

 

If anything he describes things well and is a good resource here.

Seth.

Yeah, maybe I ought to cool down here. .

 

But I still stand by what I've written. I don't have much problem with what SJ attained or not. Just that we need to agree on knowledge that is verified through experience vs. faith.

[Simple_Jack]

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Edited September 29, 2011 by Simple_Jack

[Lucky7Strikes]

No, problem. I'm not asking anyone to believe anything I say. In fact I encourage you and others reading this to prove this for yourself, through your own endeavors. I'm merely just trying to share information that could help people to better understand the Buddhas teachings. I am not going to discuss anything having to do with my past lives, my karma from past lives, why and how I came into this life, or anything associated with my rebirth. You can take this anyway you like, doesn't matter to me.

But this is my point. That you should share any personal or direct knowledge you have regarding these. And since you are reluctant, I get the feeling that you have no direct insight into any of these things you propound to be true.

 

If people want better understanding of the Buddha's teachings there are far better sources to learn from than you or me. And if most fundamental aspects of the teaching have not been self verified, I'd present those teachings with caution, because I wouldn't know for sure they were true or not. All I have is my experiences.

 

I know that you didn't understand the details of my posts. Though, let's forget about proving death and rebirth between successive lives. Like CowTao said: Let's focus instead on the bardo of becoming in each moment. The "birth" and "death" of the "self" in each moment, since the teachings are something to be applied in this current lifetime of ours. Applying the teachings in order to lessen our self-created suffering in this life-time.

I do. Your posts can be readily found on a Buddhist wikipedia page, a book on Buddhism. Anyone can write out what you did after reading an article on Buddhism. They show understanding of how certain ideas relate to another, but not necessarily how you came to believe in them or their logical or experiential evidence.

 

The present moment doesn't bother me as much. My day to day attachments don't cause me too much suffering, and I think these are generally overstated. I don't see much self-created suffering from day to day. It's rooted much deeper in our ignorance of our identities, and this includes insight into our past and future births, karma, the role of consciousness, generally the big ideas. Actually I believe It is the primary cause of these day to day attachments if you dig far enough.

 

Though, I want to add something before I continue: You are aware that the main goal of dream yoga is to not only maintain conscious awareness in the dreamstate in order to recognize dreams as the displays of non-dual empty-luminosity...But to actually carry this into everyday life in order to realize life's inherent lack of "substance," and nothing more but the dream-like displays that are neither existent nor non-existent. This is a very profound samadhi. Not like the mundane absorptions. In accomplishing this: Attachments and desires, that would normally pull you this way and that way in life; no longer have the effect on you like they did before. You no longer dwell on things so much.

Yes, yes. But let's not put this state of mind on a pedestal. It's just a psychological shift in viewing things. That's all. It has potential to lead to greater awakening because the depth of the shift can alter denser forms of our existence and deeper conditionings, but there are other ways I can use to not dwell on things so much. It's not so special in its ability to remove attachments as you seem to think. For instance this body, in your idea of things, is considered another form of attachment. But believing things to be mere lacking of substance does not remove the body from experience.

 

In my experience, to put over emphasis on these ideas can be counter productive to cultivation, because it can delude oneself into becoming stuck to shallow states of awareness that regurgitate on its own fascination with non-attachment. Or you may begin to consider everything to be a dream, like phantoms, but don't really delve into how it is like so, the mechanics of it, or why you have came to such a conclusion. To me this is an important part of the spiritual path, the "how things work" aspect. Only then can we utilize our understanding to truly lead out lives.

 

I feel that people need to understand how insight into the nature of things affects your entire being and is not just a "head realization." I'm gonna post some excerpts from this article (My link) discussing the insight of the stages of the path:...

 

You don't haver to prove to me that you have good reading comprehension. That's not what I look for when I'm having a discussion. I like it better when people share experiences and verified knowledge.

 

That quote to me is filled with unnecessarily repetetive. It's really just pointing to a state of mind. See everything as a dream. See everything as impermanent. See this in everything. They are just pointing to a relaxed, spontaneous, clearer state of mind. And this can lead to deeper effects, but calling it nirvana or enlightenment or effortlessness is mere wishful thinking. Classic cases of overestimating one's attainments in this natural states can be found in a lot of teachers, in neo advaita or even Tibetan traditions, like Sogyal Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, or Chogyam Trungpa, who left their fare share of scandals despite all this supposed knowledge. It's not so easy.

 

I'm not criticizing any "head" realizations. There are actually no such things because any realization affects the whole awareness, the term is really a straw man idea one develops due to arising friction among beliefs. And one's inability to console them results in labeling one a "head" realization and the other something else.

 

There are depths of realization and in my experience it's not "head" or something else but how willing one is to delve into one's being. This willingness is an attitude of the skeptic, an openness, that is usually set back by a lot of these useless terminology and ideas we develop from reading terms like "everything is like a dream." Two people saying that can have extremely varying degrees of how this idea has penetrated his being. And if one does not know how that idea holds true, worse, one becomes a slave to that doctrine. And doctrine, imo, is never any good unless it is utilized to rise interest in sets of ideas that aid in one's own evolution.

Edited September 29, 2011 by Lucky7Strikes