Just how Great was Bodhidharma? (Systems)

[MooNiNite]

so the legend is thatHe reached enlightenment at 22 years old and then ran around in the mountains with disciples. Then at some point he sat in meditation for around 9 years without moving. maybe true maybe not. The point is that in his only around 50 years of living he attained a mastery unrivaled by practically anyone.

 

Another source, John chang says that Bodhidharma was one of 2 masters that attained a spiritual consciousness unrivaled by anyone in Chinise history. Something he equates to "level 72" .The other was ...forgot his name...anyways Not to bring mo pai into this but chang is none the less a master.

 

 

 

So i often use the DAoist alchemy levels to "rank" consciousness.

 

Ghost immortal, human immortal, earth immortal, spirit immortal, celestial immortal

 

Was he really beyond the celestial immortal stage? It would seem that many masters in chinese history have reached this.

 

Eastern Christianity has 7 levels of attainment, level 7 being a stage that a human cannot go beyond while in human form. level 5 being spiritual immortal.

 

Just how great was Bodhidharma?

Edited December 10, 2014 by MooNiNite

[Mark Foote]

Ah, he forgot his sandal. "The parasite of Shao-lin", as Yuanwu referred to him ("Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu", trans. Cleary & Cleary).

 

Here's some favorite quotes for me, from the Denkoroku, attributed to Bodhidharma:

 

"The seal of truth is not gotten from another."

 

"Outwardly cease all involvements, inwardly have no coughing or sighing in the mind--with your mind like a wall you can enter the Way."

 

"In Mystic Devices in the Room it says, 'One time Huike climbed up Few Houses Peak with Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma asked, "Where are we going?" Huike said, "Please go right ahead--that's it." Bodhidharma said, "If you go right ahead, you cannot move a step."

(all from "Transmission of Light", trans. T. Cleary, 30 "Huike", pg 111)

[thelerner]

 

"In Mystic Devices in the Room it says, 'One time Huike climbed up Few Houses Peak with Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma asked, "Where are we going?" Hulk say, "Please go right ahead--that's it." Bodhidharma said, "If you go right ahead, you cannot move a step." <slight edit>

Imo, discussions of levels get cartoonish, since many of these people are legendary which mixes up facts and fiction. Also there is little common agreement or knowledge of what a level actually is.

 

 

Still I venture, Boddhidhamra beats most people, but Hulke beat Boddhidarmra, especially when Hulke angry.

[Flolfolil]

...

Edited March 5, 2015 by Flolfolil

[MooNiNite]

How do you know for sure who is at what levels? Can you verify yourself, without relying on others words or gradations?

 

Just curious.

 

good point. but in most cases a master can tell, and also based on abilities. such as the breathless state would be someone at spiritual immortal or level 5 in eastern Christianity, then there are different signs for the higher stages also

[MooNiNite]

 

"In Mystic Devices in the Room it says, 'One time Huike climbed up Few Houses Peak with Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma asked, "Where are we going?" Huike said, "Please go right ahead--that's it." Bodhidharma said, "If you go right ahead, you cannot move a step."

 

(all from "Transmission of Light", trans. T. Cleary, 30 "Huike", pg 111)

nice quotes . although i dont understand this last one? am i missing something obvious haha?

[eye_of_the_storm]

What about world history?

[Jetsun]

 

Why did Bodhidharma leave for the east?

[MooNiNite]

Why did Bodhidharma leave for the east?

To meet with the emperor?

[Jetsun]

To meet with the emperor?

 

Maybe, it is a Zen Koan "Why did Bodhidharma leave for the east", in some circles Bodhidharma is meant to represent that which transcends all levels, ranks and stages

 

Bodhidharma came from the west with a single word, “Mu!,”

The nature of mind was his only kong fu,

Trying to grasp Dharma by using written words,

You’ll drain Poting Lake to make the ink, but it still will never do!

[Mark Foote]

nice quotes . although i dont understand this last one? am i missing something obvious haha?

 

The levels are about trance, and trance depends on something that can never quite be pinned down. My opinion. So thelearner is right, levels are deceptive; in my experience, all the levels must actually be present to one degree or another, in order for any level to be present.

 

And thanks Jetsun, for the poetry!

 

The Zen teacher I met, Kobun Chino Otogawa, said some interesting things, and one of them was "you know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around". To my mind, if you exercise intention to go right ahead, zazen doesn't walk; you cannot move a step, even though everyone will agree that you are walking around.

 

I have written more about this, here: Fuxi's Poem.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Mark Foote

[MooNiNite]

i dont like to use the word trance. i think people not in meditation are in an unconscious trance. meditation is breaking the trance

[Mark Foote]

i dont like to use the word trance. i think people not in meditation are in an unconscious trance. meditation is breaking the trance

 

I myself feel better when I accept that waking up and falling asleep are about the same thing. Milton Erickson, an influential psychologist, believed the senses are sharper in a state of trance, and so do I. Comes down to what trance is actually like, as opposed to Hollywood depictions, in my estimation. If you're thinking of Buddhism, remember that Gautama the Buddha spoke repeatedly of four material trances, and four immaterial trances along with what may ensue.

[MooNiNite]

 

if your senses are sharper how are you in a trance? isn't that less of a trance?

The word trance implies a misconception, but our senses are how we perceive.

 

if a person becomes awake or enlightened they gain the ability to see

[MooNiNite]

just the way i feel

[Seeker of Wisdom]

...remember that Gautama the Buddha spoke repeatedly of four material trances, and four immaterial trances along with what may ensue.

I don't think 'trance' is really the right word here, it suggests a zoned-out state between awake and asleep like someone under hypnosis, hypnagogic or concussed.

 

Jhana is very superficially similar in that there's less conceptual activity, but actually I would see it as an opposite state - super-awake and super-focused. There is a world of difference between a zoned-out trance, in which a dominant feature is torpor, and jhana, in which the jhana factors are dominant.

 

If you define trance differently, so that these count as trances while the earlier examples are either not trance or a different type of trance, that's fine. But I think many people will misunderstand your use of words, because you're using them differently from most people. Most people associate trance with qualities of mind that directly oppose jhana.

[doc benway]

this thread puts me in mind of the wonderful King Missile song, Jesus Was Way Cool

 

A Buddha version would be way cool

 

 

 

 

[Mark Foote]

"The psychotherapist Milton Erickson held that trance is an everyday occurrence for everyone. Getting lost in a train of thought, or absorbed in an athletic endeavor, he described as examples of trance (Wikipedia, "Milton Erickson").

 

In his practice, Erickson regularly invited his clients to enter into trance, out of regard for the benefit of the client. That a client entered into trance in response to such an invitation, Erickson viewed as a result of the unconscious decision of the client, quite outside of Erikson’s control.

 

Erickson was famous for what came to be called "the confusion technique" in the induction of hypnosis, and in particular for his "handshake induction". By subtly interrupting someone in the middle of the expected course of an habitual activity, like shaking hands, Erickson enabled them to enter a state of trance. For Erickson, the confusion technique could also be applied through engaging the patient’s mind with a sentence whose meaning could not be found through the normal interpretation of the words and syntax (engaging the patient’s mind in a transderivational search).

 

Mention of the induction of trance, which was explicitly recognized and described in the teachings of Gautama the Buddha and was obliquely referenced in the remarks of Bodhidharma, the first Zen teacher in China (entering "the Way" in Denkoroku), is largely absent in the Chinese and Japanese literature of Zen. At the same time, instances of sentences whose meaning cannot be found through the normal interpretation of the words and whose utterance may therefore enable the induction of trance in the listener are ubiquitous in the literature.

 

The induction of trance serves to heighten the experience of the senses (a fact that Erickson noted), and thereby to allow a person under the right circumstances to discover activity in the senses that underlie the experience of self. Neuroscientists Olaf Blanke and Christine Mohr hypothesized that the tactile/proprioceptive/kinesthetic and vestibular senses in combination with the ocular sense are principally responsible for what is regarded as the experience of self. Particularly important to their conclusion was the observation that persons who experience themselves as being simultaneously in two places at once (a particular kind of out-of-body experience) appear to have a dysfunction in one or another of these senses.

 

For those who are already familiar with Gautama the Buddha’s teaching regarding the lack of any actual abiding self, the conclusion that the experience of self is a function of activity in the senses should come as no surprise.

 

Gautama’s most widely acknowledged sermons concern mindfulness and the eight-fold path. Less widely appreciated is Gautama’s teaching that knowing and seeing experience of the senses "as it really is" can develop and bring to fruition, not only mindfulness and the elements of the eight-fold path, but each of the factors of enlightenment as well.'

 

(from Fuxi's Poem, by yers truly)

 

 

'(Anyone)…knowing and seeing eye as it really is, knowing and seeing material shapes… visual consciousness… impact on the eye as it really is, and knowing, seeing as it really is the experience, whether pleasant, painful, or neither painful nor pleasant, that arises conditioned by impact on the eye, is not attached to the eye nor to material shapes nor to visual consciousness nor to impact on the eye; and that experience, whether pleasant, painful, or neither painful nor pleasant, that arises conditioned by impact on the eye—neither to that is (such a one) attached. …(Such a one’s) physical anxieties decrease, and mental anxieties decrease, and bodily torments… and mental torments… and bodily fevers decrease, and mental fevers decrease. (Such a one) experiences happiness of body and happiness of mind. (repeated for ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind).

 

Whatever is the view of what really is, that for (such a one) is right view; whatever is aspiration for what really is, that for (such a one) is right aspiration; whatever is endeavour for what really is, that is for (such a one) right endeavour; whatever is mindfulness of what really is, that is for (such a one) right mindfulness; whatever is concentration on what really is, that is for (such a one) right concentration. And (such a one’s) past acts of body, acts of speech, and mode of livelihood have been well purified.'

 

(Majjhima-Nikaya, Pali Text Society volume 3 pg 337-338, ©Pali Text Society)

 

 

I would like to think that Gautama would have included the vestibular, gravitational, and proprioceptive senses if the science and the language had been around in his day.

 

As to trance, you guys have been watching too many scarey movies!

Edited December 14, 2014 by Mark Foote

[Seeker of Wisdom]

...Getting lost in a train of thought...

The exact opposite of jhana. Trance as defined here is the exact opposite of samadhi. Here is the first jhana described from the personal experience of Jay Michaelson (realitysandwich.com).

 

...The first jhana is like the "big wow," an awesome peak experience that arises after the mind has finally settled on the object of concentration with focused, sustained, one-pointed attention...There is also a sense of seclusion of finally being safe from the chattering mind.

How does that even remotely resemble being 'lost in a train of thought'?

 

If you read any description of jhana/shamatha or vipashyana and compare it to 'lost in a train of thought' trance, they are absolutely different things. In the former there is high mindfulness, alertness, focus. In the latter, focus is dim and mindfulness is low.

 

How can someone with high mindfulness be lost in a train of thought? Someone can't be mindfully vague about what's happening, or identifying with it, any more than someone can be a sober drunk. The Buddhist practice would be to mindfully observe thoughts as they come and go without identification, judgement or being lost in them.

 

...Mention of the induction of trance, which was explicitly recognized and described in the teachings of Gautama the Buddha...

 

No. Jhana or absorption or something like that, categorically not trance.

 

...At the same time, instances of sentences whose meaning cannot be found through the normal interpretation of the words and whose utterance may therefore enable the induction of trance in the listener are ubiquitous in the literature...

If you ignore how koans are used. They are used precisely at the right time to the right person to pierce a particular delusion or duality - inducing satori, not trance - or the practitioner is given a koan to focus on with great concentration until the Great Doubt builds, with the same result. It has nothing to do with trance, everything to do with cutting through habitual dualistic perceptions by attending to something that makes no conceptual sense until the mind gives up trying to conceptually process it, allowing gnosis.

 

...The induction of trance serves to heighten the experience of the senses (a fact that Erickson noted), and thereby to allow a person under the right circumstances to discover activity in the senses that underlie the experience of self...

I fail to see how being 'lost in a train of thought' goes along with a penetrating, mindful awareness of the six senses (including proprioception, etc) as they truly are. Wouldn't samadhi be more helpful than an extra dose of mental dullness and distraction?

 

...Neuroscientists Olaf Blanke and Christine Mohr hypothesized that the tactile/proprioceptive/kinesthetic and vestibular senses in combination with the ocular sense are principally responsible for what is regarded as the experience of self. Particularly important to their conclusion was the observation that persons who experience themselves as being simultaneously in two places at once (a particular kind of out-of-body experience) appear to have a dysfunction in one or another of these senses...

Interesting - but two problems. Firstly, surely that is how the sense of physical location is constructed, not how the sense that the body is a self is constructed? Secondly, it completely ignores that people also take aspects of the mind to be self, not just the body.

 

Plenty of people say words to the effect of 'awareness is self', 'the thinker is self', etc, which this hypothesis says nothing about. These ideas have no link to physical senses. Nor does it deal with 'body is self' because their theory only explains how the sense of the body's location is constructed, not the idea of its selfhood.

 

...I would like to think that Gautama would have included the vestibular, gravitational, and proprioceptive senses if the science and the language had been around in his day...

In Ven Analayo's satipatthana book he refers to proprioception re: contemplation of the body. All experience is a great target for vipashyana.

 

But that doesn't change the role of trance in Buddhist practice - there still isn't one.

 

...As to trance, you guys have been watching too many scarey movies!

This is a straw man. Nobody has said anything about trance opening you up to demonic influence or being harmful or whatever. It can be a really good tool.

 

But the fact remains that Buddhist practices are designed to reduce the factors of mind associated with trance, being 'lost in a train of thought', which isn't helpful for awakening, and replace them with the jhana factors, which are.

[Mark Foote]

Interesting - but two problems. Firstly, surely that is how the sense of physical location is constructed, not how the sense that the body is a self is constructed? Secondly, it completely ignores that people also take aspects of the mind to be self, not just the body.

 

The sense of physical location, informed by the sense of proprioception and the sense of gravity, can allow the experience of action without the exercise of volition.

 

"When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point."

("Genjo Koan" by Eihei Dogen, trans. by Aitken and Tanahashi)

 

From my write, here:

 

"The relinquishment of volitive activity in relaxation is familiar to everyone as a part of falling asleep; such a relinquishment of volitive activity can also take place as a part of waking up. With a relinquishment of volitive activity in waking up, an ability to feel can enter into the location of awareness such that the weight of a fly generates activity of posture and carriage.

One of the difficulties many people have in falling asleep is the notion that they must somehow turn off the activity of their senses in order to do so; although sensory overload can definitely serve to keep a person awake (at least for awhile), calm acceptance of the activity of the senses is actually a necessary part of falling asleep.

The sharpening of the senses that occurs with a relinquishment of volition is a part of falling asleep and waking up (although a bout of insomnia may be required to see that this is so in falling asleep). The distinction of the senses, including the sense of mind, frees the location of awareness to shift and move with proprioception."

 

 

More, from my blog:

 

"Whatever... is material shape, past, future or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, or whatever is far or near, (a person), thinking of all this material shape as 'This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self', sees it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Whatever is feeling... perception... the habitual tendencies... whatever is consciousness, past, future, or present (that person), thinking of all this consciousness as 'This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self', sees it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. (For one) knowing thus, seeing thus, there are no latent conceits that 'I am the doer, mine is the doer' in regard to this consciousness-informed body."

 

(MN III 18-19, Pali Text Society III pg 68, underlining added for this Tao Bums post)

 

...about "perfect wisdom":

 

'"By means of perfect wisdom" is an affirmation that seeing through the conceit "mine is the doer" depends on a knowledge inherent in human nature, a knowledge that escapes the use of reason.'

 

I say that because until a person experiences action of the body without the exercise of volition, they cannot find a way to believe it exists, even though they may have seen it in someone else during a performance of stage hypnosis or in the presence of someone like Kobun Chino Otogawa.

 

The practice of Gautama was the intent concentration on in-breaths and out-breaths, both before and after his enlightenment. That his observation of cause and effect could have been so selfless is the reason his descriptions have endured (but he also made mistakes as a teacher, as when his "meditation on the unlovely" resulted in the suicide of scores of monks).

 

For me, "this is not mine, this am I not, this is not myself" is a a part of freeing the mind in an in-breath or an out-breath, and yet freeing the mind is preceded by composing the mind in an in-breath or out-breath: this is proprioception alongside of equalibrioception as a nececessity in the movement of breath, and the experience of detachment and the cessation of volition in an in-breath or out-breath can take place out of necessity in an in-breath or out-breath. Mindfulness of detachment and mindfulness of the cessation of volition constitute the fourteenth and fifteenth aspects of Gautama's practice, preceded by mindfulness of composing the mind, of freeing the mind, and of impermanence.

 

Deliverance from thought without grasping is non-thinking, but in this consciousness-informed body there can be no doer of non-thinking; it's a matter of relaxed necessity in the movement of breath."

Clear as mud, I'm sure, but I hope I'm speaking to your points. As to the jhanas, I make sense of the first four by recalling Gautama's description of what ceases in each of them: dis-ease in the first, unhappiness in the second, ease in the third, and happiness in the fourth (yet all the meditative states are marked by happiness, a contradiction he acknowledges this way:

 

"(The Tathagatha does) not lay down that it is only a pleasant feeling that belongs to happiness; for, your reverences, the Tathagatha lays down that whenever, wherever, whatever happiness is found it belongs to happiness."

 

(MN I 4 , Pali Text Society II pg 69))

In particular, settling into whatever stretch we find ourselves in is the cessation of ease; the natural distinction of the senses, including the sense of mind, is the cessation of unhappiness; stretch beyond the comfort zone (but not beyond what's healthy) is the cessation of ease; and the distinction of sense beyond the boundary of the senses (but with the spirit of friendliness, of compassion, of sympathetic joy, and of equanimity) is the cessation of happiness.

Edited December 14, 2014 by Mark Foote

[ChiForce]

What's with the these levels talk? You do know that at the 4th stage of Samadhi and Jhana, you are pretty much liberated...

 

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-samadhi/jhana.html

 

Along the way, you have already possessed various super powers relating to the mind itself. Your Dharma wisdom becomes so sharp and illuminating that it can illuminate centuries of darkness with a single thought. Trance??? Are we talking about the use of drugs now??? When you are in a state of Samadhi, you have the full awareness of the world without having your mind becoming attached to your thoughts. A trance state means that you are spacing out....

[ChiForce]

The exact opposite of jhana. Trance as defined here is the exact opposite of samadhi. Here is the first jhana described from the personal experience of Jay Michaelson (realitysandwich.com).

 

 

How does that even remotely resemble being 'lost in a train of thought'?

 

If you read any description of jhana/shamatha or vipashyana and compare it to 'lost in a train of thought' trance, they are absolutely different things. In the former there is high mindfulness, alertness, focus. In the latter, focus is dim and mindfulness is low.

 

How can someone with high mindfulness be lost in a train of thought? Someone can't be mindfully vague about what's happening, or identifying with it, any more than someone can be a sober drunk. The Buddhist practice would be to mindfully observe thoughts as they come and go without identification, judgement or being lost in them.

 

 

 

No. Jhana or absorption or something like that, categorically not trance.

 

 

If you ignore how koans are used. They are used precisely at the right time to the right person to pierce a particular delusion or duality - inducing satori, not trance - or the practitioner is given a koan to focus on with great concentration until the Great Doubt builds, with the same result. It has nothing to do with trance, everything to do with cutting through habitual dualistic perceptions by attending to something that makes no conceptual sense until the mind gives up trying to conceptually process it, allowing gnosis.

 

 

I fail to see how being 'lost in a train of thought' goes along with a penetrating, mindful awareness of the six senses (including proprioception, etc) as they truly are. Wouldn't samadhi be more helpful than an extra dose of mental dullness and distraction?

 

 

Interesting - but two problems. Firstly, surely that is how the sense of physical location is constructed, not how the sense that the body is a self is constructed? Secondly, it completely ignores that people also take aspects of the mind to be self, not just the body.

 

Plenty of people say words to the effect of 'awareness is self', 'the thinker is self', etc, which this hypothesis says nothing about. These ideas have no link to physical senses. Nor does it deal with 'body is self' because their theory only explains how the sense of the body's location is constructed, not the idea of its selfhood.

 

 

In Ven Analayo's satipatthana book he refers to proprioception re: contemplation of the body. All experience is a great target for vipashyana.

 

But that doesn't change the role of trance in Buddhist practice - there still isn't one.

 

 

This is a straw man. Nobody has said anything about trance opening you up to demonic influence or being harmful or whatever. It can be a really good tool.

 

But the fact remains that Buddhist practices are designed to reduce the factors of mind associated with trance, being 'lost in a train of thought', which isn't helpful for awakening, and replace them with the jhana factors, which are.

Yup, right about the state of Samadhi. Also, in a state of Samadhi, you gain the Clear Light Mind. Yes, you would literally dwell in this clear light and to see this Clear Light. A trance state is basically a dumb mind and a stupid mind being attached to whatever thoughts and emotions it is carrying along.