Fear is the root of All suffering

[ChiForce]

Oh!, No!  Are we going to talk about Buddhist emptiness again?

 

I suppose I will have to get ready to talk about Taoist fullness again.

Is the "fullness of emptiness"...hehehehehe......Is empty and not empty.  Oh no, the world of logic is collapsing...hahahahahahaha......

[Tibetan_Ice]

That's because you cling to mysticism. You believe in miracles and so that is what you will see. I would be no more interested to see a man walk through a wall than I would be to see a dog bark. If I want to walk through a wall then I use a doorway. I have no reaction one way or the other. Logic is merely the sensing mechanism for what I feed my consciousness. Man cannot walk through solid walls unaided and that is my assertion. It is you that must prove beyond doubt that this is possible for me to alter that position.

It is not up to me to prove to you that miracles are possible. You don't believe in miracles/siddhis so that is what you see.

Your reality is very small. You cling to that.

[dwai]

Great.

 

Actually, the only problem I have with the Buddhist concept of "Emptiness" is that the thought is taken out of context and grossly misrepresented. It is then when I start my oppositional comments.

What?!?? We're going down the path of comparing how zero our zeroes are? Bwahahahaha!!!

 

Please don't invite the quote gremlins!!!

[Karl]

It is not up to me to prove to you that miracles are possible. You don't believe in miracles/siddhis so that is what you see.

Your reality is very small. You cling to that.

 

Then as far as I'm concerned miracles don't exist, but don't let that stop you enjoying them.

 

I haven't 'clung'. I asked you to demonstrate and you refused. All Mystics say the same thing when asked to provide proof-proof isn't something they want to give, they just want everyone to B-E-L-I-E-V-E. Well I don't buy it.

[Brian]

Then as far as I'm concerned miracles don't exist, but don't let that stop you enjoying them. I haven't 'clung'. I asked you to demonstrate and you refused. All Mystics say the same thing when asked to provide proof-proof isn't something they want to give, they just want everyone to B-E-L-I-E-V-E. Well I don't buy it.

There is much in life - in reality - which cannot be "proven" but is true nonetheless. While some on the forum may never have gained an appreciation for logic, there are others here who have started from "logic" and learned through experience of its inherent limitations.

 

How would you "prove" to someone born blind that sight is just as real as hearing?

[Karl]

There is much in life - in reality - which cannot be "proven" but is true nonetheless. While some on the forum may never have gained an appreciation for logic, there are others here who have started from "logic" and learned through experience of its inherent limitations.

How would you "prove" to someone born blind that sight is just as real as hearing?

 

I wouldn't. They are clearly incapable of sight and that's as true to them as it is to me. Nothing alters, we can discuss the feel, smell, taste, sound of a thing. You may as well ask how I can prove to you I have a thought in my head. That is why I say, if someone sees miracles then I cannot challenge that assertion, I cannot see them, so for me it is immaterial if they exist or not. We have those senses we have. That's game, set and match.

[Brian]

 

I wouldn't. They are clearly incapable of sight and that's as true to them as it is to me. Nothing alters, we can discuss the feel, smell, taste, sound of a thing. You may as well ask how I can prove to you I have a thought in my head. That is why I say, if someone sees miracles then I cannot challenge that assertion, I cannot see them, so for me it is immaterial if they exist or not. We have those senses we have. That's game, set and match.

I totally agree. That's why asking someone to explain something outside the realm of logic according to the rules and language of formal logic is, in fact, illogical.

[dwai]

By direct use of the perceptions we can experience that 1) there are apparences, 2) they are illusory, so 3) there should be something else too, but 4) the apparences are still here.

 

 

Exactly! We cannot deny or wish away this physical body and the mind associated with it, any more than we can make the Earth spin around some other sun in the universe. 

 

It is all par for the course though...when people embark on the spiritual path, especially non-dualism, the milestones are exactly as you put them. The second and third milestones are a result of understanding what makes a reality a reality. Rules of how we categorize and label things. In order for things to be categorized, they must be observed. In order to observe, we need the sensory apparatuses. In order for sensory apparatuses to be applied, we need something that makes it "alive". 

 

That brings us to point 3. After getting to a stage of immersion into the "something else" of point three, which naturally implies a cessation/stilling of the modifications of the consciousness (aka mind), it is very natural to assume that the appearances are in fact really ghosts and that only "that" is real. But then as we spend more time straddling both, it becomes clear that the appearances cannot be rejected any more than "that" can be. Both are real...if we understand that and the reason why they are both real, then there's no paradox. Also there is progressively less clinging to the "distinctions" as you put it.

 

That's why, both in Vedanta as well as Buddhism, there are the two levels of reality. That which is called the "absolute reality" and that which is called "relative reality". 

Edited August 15, 2015 by dwai

[Tibetan_Ice]

Then as far as I'm concerned miracles don't exist, but don't let that stop you enjoying them. I haven't 'clung'. I asked you to demonstrate and you refused. All Mystics say the same thing when asked to provide proof-proof isn't something they want to give, they just want everyone to B-E-L-I-E-V-E. Well I don't buy it.

No you asked me to prove, not demonstrate.

There is a difference.

[Aithrobates]

 the realm of logic according to the rules and language of formal logic is, in fact, illogical.

 

Please note that I never talked about formal logic. I was talking about the tetralemna and so obviouly evoking buddhist logic, and other related logics.

 

Anyway it's a good point. Logic in our minds has been confused with that intellecutal game that is formal logic, a modern, western variety. It is a descendant of arsitotelician logic, and is based on the dilemna.

 

You can read eveywhere about this dilmena, about this principle of noncontradiction, and you'll see that it is attributed to earlier philosophers, because we read them with the eyes of old good Arsitotle.

 

Parmenides is specially held responsible for that. But if you read his fragments you'll see something else. Something very close to Buddhism and Vedanta. And something he's not personnally responsible for, as it was given to him, as it is, by a goddess.

Edited August 15, 2015 by Aithrobates

[Boy]

I totally agree. That's why asking someone to explain something outside the realm of logic according to the rules and language of formal logic is, in fact, illogical.

 

no, it's epistemological :-)

[Brian]

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your propositional knowledge.

 

[Wu Ming Jen]

Fear is the root of western culture. We are taught to fear god to fear everything If something is not like us we use western medicine techniques of kill it or cut it off.

 

Adapt or suffer, only we can choose to suffer or not. A good state of mind with balance and harmony with all things does not know suffering.

 

So when the commercial comes on with all the kids or animals starving or abused send some money for our own suffering minds. 

[Bud Jetsun]

When viewed as a tool, logic isn't a bad thing anymore than any other practice is a bad thing.

 

If a pragmatic approach is taken, a logic powered Karl arrived at a state where he is able to choose to remain peaceful and kind, where many dogmatism powered failed to maintain kindness.

 

The missing trick is realization not to replace the human constructed tools of logic or practices for reality.

 

Remember, Buddha wasn't a Buddhist, he was a man seeking the nature of reality not a man seeking mindless repetition of some practice, or loops of intellectual construct play.

 

With Unlimited Love,

-Bud

[Tibetan_Ice]

...

 

If a pragmatic approach is taken, a logic powered Karl arrived at a state where he is able to choose to remain peaceful and kind, where many dogmatism powered failed to maintain kindness.

...

 

Such is the state of a practiced therapist.

 

You seem to be under the delusion that kindness and detachment are markers of truth.

[Bud Jetsun]

Remaining unbreakably peaceful and kind just requires realization it's always exclusively ones choice.

 

That said, it's a surprisingly rare thing to actually get realized. When visiting a Zen school on a night they had an open public QnA with the multiple decade practiced master there. We had a 2 minute kindly phrased exchange of ideas regarding the nature of reality, at which point he suddenly lost his cool and ended the session with 20min remaining.

 

What practical good was this 2 decades of effort on his suffering? Or why was this practice not able to culture mindfulness in kind discussion after so much time practicing?

 

In my humble guess based on a small sample of delusional memories of experiences, it's only the often painful realization process that is the reason for practice.

[Wu Ming Jen]

Kindness that does not know one is being kind and detachment yet fully involved and responsible may have some truth to it. If we choose to only look at one side I think that is called unbalanced and out of harmony. Heaven and earth shows the way.

 

Who can be a companion of heaven and earth? My mind of comprehension fails every time, the picture of reality is divided into this and that not ever knowing that this and that are two parts of the same thing.

[Aithrobates]

the human constructed tools of logic

 

What I've been trying to say is that true logic is not human constructed. That's why ancient greeks never claimed logic was a smart invention of their own, but a divine gift.

 

Again "logic" as been confused with this intellectual game of positive knowledge, of paradigms held true, untill a shift will propose another one.

 

You observe that there is both light an darkness in the world, and so that both light and darkness are aspects of Reality, and so that you must accepts that they are one, despites the fact that the mind finds it paradoxical. This is logic.

 

But if you start claiming that light is good and dark bad, because you like the day better, and that there are dangerous animals roaming in the night... Then you are etablishing a systems based on human preference, and beliefs, that is constructed. That is not logic.

 

Same thing if you're doing science and etablish an hypothetical system, say that the cycles of light and darkness are caused by the mouvements of spheres inside a geocentric universe. This become the truth and stays like that untill someone comes with an heliocentric model. That is not logic. Because it is as well based on belief, belief that you hypothesis is right, even if you can not verifiy it.

 

The first case is based on perceptions only, on evident things, it does not call on human judgement, it just take nature as it comes. The two others includes judgement, distinctions, classifications, speculations about non evident things, etc... Human constructs.

 

Of course the greeks abandonned this for the aristotelician approach, and so in the west we now call logic this kind of artificial, dead ,contructs. But Indian and Tibetan logic kept the old logical ways.

[ChiForce]

WTF is logic anyway???  A set of paradigms and you are supposed to reason with your mind with a set of rules.  New paradigms, new rules.  Simple logical conclusion.  They are only true as long as you play by their rules.  Let's take "form is formless, formless is form."  Logic would say WTF is this???? 

 

From a Taoist paradigm, form inherently has no instinct value but dualistic.  Once the mind realizes that form is formless, it gives rise to a new form.  That the mind is no longer subjected to the condition of the external environments.  It can create its own manifestation.         

[Marblehead]

 It can create its own manifestation.         

It can create its own fears too.

[Aithrobates]

WTF is logic anyway???  A set of paradigms and you are supposed to reason with your mind with a set of rules.  New paradigms, new rules.  Simple logical conclusion.  They are only true as long as you play by their rules.

 

If your talking about what most people now name "logic" now, I agree. 100%

 

But again, that is now what I'm talking about. What was distorted in order to gave birth to that sick game was entirely another thing, very close to Eastern paradigms. It has been hidden when latter philosophers re-interpreted it according their own views.

[ChiForce]

It can create its own fears too.

It can't because the mind is intentionally creating a new form because it realizes that form is inherently formless, impermanent....fear only arises when the mind thinks it has no controls over form.  This is very deep because we are talking about the mind having the ability to recognize the inherent nature of its "inner" existence as well as its outer relation with the world...which are both impermanent.  Most people can realize the former.  The latter????  Not that easy because we still have to work and to earn a living and feed our family and etc....   

Edited August 15, 2015 by ChiForce

[ChiForce]

If your talking about what most people now name "logic" now, I agree. 100%

 

But again, that is now what I'm talking about. What was distorted in order to gave birth to that sick game was entirely another thing, very close to Eastern paradigms. It has been hidden when latter philosophers re-interpreted it according their own views.

Is freaking hilarious when people, no name mentioned it, talk about logic like the next Jesus Christ.  If you look at the history of philosophy, by the end of the 1800, philosophers aren't occupied with Plato or Aristotle. Hehehehehehhehehehe..........Romanticism and existentialism took hold.  By 1940, the world was at war.  Because logic failed to save the world???  Hahahahahahaha.....        

Edited August 15, 2015 by ChiForce

[Bud Jetsun]

Greeks enjoyed the wisdom of realized beings wisdom.

 

They used the arrangement of letters "logos" to describe the divine energy of nature that is part of a seed sprouting or a human eating that sprout and the body knowing without our guidance how to convert it into the remarkable self-replicating and adaptive device we call our "own body".

 

Since that time, the term has been badly confused by unrealized to first mean logic of nature, then eventually man's own word construct arrangement delusions.

 

Unlimited Love,

-Bud

Edited August 15, 2015 by Bud Jetsun

[Marblehead]

WoW!  I wasn't expecting that response.  You went Buddhist on me.

It can't because the mind is intentionally creating a new form because it realizes that form is inherently formless, impermanent....

Boodist!  Impermanent, yes; formless, no.  Be still there are those who think they will live forever.

 

fear only arises when the mind thinks it has no controls over form.

You just contradicted yourself.  (I actually agree with this though.)

 

This is very deep because we are talking about the mind having the ability to recognize the inherent nature of its "inner" existence as well as its outer relation with the world...which are both impermanent.  Most people can realize the former.  The latter????  Not that easy because we still have to work and to earn a living and feed our family and etc....   

Yes, deep as well as water I don't want to get into.

 

But I agree with your last sentence.