Dzogchen Thogal: a Buddhist creative adaptation of a Daoist technique?

[Jax]

Jax, this is developing prajna, if you experience what you speak off you are buddha beyond life and death in your experience they should be no suffering, no life, no death etc.

 

Exactly so! It's how this is correctly transmitted!

[CelibacySeeker]

but where there is place for meditation, if someone have no samadhi or access to concentration how person can realize those explanations? 

[ralis]

but where there is place for meditation, if someone have no samadhi or access to concentration how person can realize those explanations? 

 

If you have a transmission by text, hanging out in nature which requires careful attention or if you happen on a teacher that is honest and trustworthy, that is the place to start. The error is that one must develop some special ability over eons of time is one that authoritarians use against persons so their particular organizational base of power can sustain.

 

There are many texts available online regarding thogal.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ralis

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[Jax]

Divine is what the Buddha Nature is. The universal Amida Buddha of Light is the Totality, Kunje Gyalpo, Samantabhadra.

[Jax]

Shamatha vipassana is used as a laboratory to investigate the principles of twofold emptiness.

[C T]

Divine is a word used by those still asleep when they chance upon anything they dont understand but resembles an unearthly/otherworldly manifestation. Its all just in the mind, like a dream... nothing is sacred, divine or profane in dreams, is there? How many times must we read the phrase 'dreamlike existence' before it finally registers? 

 

For example, light is light - there is no need to label it 'divine light' as if there is a type of light that is non-divine. 

Edited June 24, 2016 by C T

[ralis]

Divine is what the Buddha Nature is. The universal Amida Buddha of Light is the Totality, Kunje Gyalpo, Samantabhadra.

 

 

The terms you are using are just terms which place a limit on any realization experience. Whether one says, 'I am a Buddhist, 'I am a Sufi' and so forth, are obstacles and do not describe the underlying process of reality. Such leads to sectarianism and all myriad problems associated with. It is not possible to accurately describe reality and put labels on it.

 

Why not stop the use of isness in the quest to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ralis

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[ralis]

Divine is a word used by those still asleep when they chance upon anything they dont understand but resembles an unearthly/otherworldly manifestation. Its all just in the mind, like a dream... nothing is sacred, divine or profane in dreams, is there? How many times must we read the phrase 'dreamlike existence' before it finally registers? 

 

For example, light is light - there is no need to label it 'divine light' as if there is a type of light that is non-divine. 

 

The dream like existence most likely came from the use of Nepalese temple balls which there appears to be evidence of use in Tibetan temples. Dream like happens real fast.

 

 

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

What I am pointing out is that using ancient language models does not describe a direct relationship with the underlying process of reality. Perhaps some day there may be a mathematical language which more accurately describes the underlying process.

To respond to this I will have to return to Plato and Plotinus again. Such mathematical tools already exist, such as propositional calculus and set theory that can be used to “map out” in rigorous terms the logical structure of Platonism. In a work published in 1982, (The Structure of Being, State University of New York Press), the editor, R. Baine Harris, has this to say in the preface:

 

It would be a mistake to regard Neoplatonism as only a form of mysticism. Although it is a way of philosophizing that points to a form of knowing that is beyond dialectics, it does not have any mystical elements in its own dialectics. Its mysticism is to be found at the end of its philosophical progression and is not inherent in its epistemology. Philosophical knowledge, as well as scientific and artistic knowledge, are forms of discursive knowledge and, as such, have no mysticism whatsoever involved in them. p.vii

 

and in the second essay of the collection, "On Logical Structure and the Plotinic Cosmos", by R. M. Martin, the author begins with this:

 

The primary aim of this paper is to attempt to bring what in essentials is the great cosmological vision of Plotinus into harmony with contemporary science, including logic and mathematics. The brief sketch of a logicometaphysical system to be presented is thus thought to provide an at least rough approximation to some of the basic features of the Plotinic system. We need not worry as to how exact the fit is. No doubt it is very loose in some respects and perhaps too tight in others. Enough will be shown, it is hoped, to suggest that with suitable emendations and extensions, however, the approximativeness may be lessened and the fit made more comfortable throughout. (p.11, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

and concludes with this:

 

A few final comments. The foregoing contains a sketch of the barest beginnings of the Plotinic system. Additional primitives, of course, are needed, many further principles, much further elaboration. Only the barest logical maquette, so lo speak, has been given here. Enough has been shown, however, it is hoped, to enable us to see that the system could be further developed in such a way as to throw more and more light on the full logic of the All-Soul and of the accompanying metaphysical theory. Further, this can be done in such a way, as here, as to bring it into harmony with contemporary scientific theory, both in mathematics and in the empirical sciences. There should be no fundamental conflict, it is contended, between the great Plotinic vision and modern science. But the latter should not be disregarded in our attempt to understand the former. Hence the presence here of set theory and of scientific law as having their proper roles in the entire system.

 

Also it is interesting that in the delineation of the lower souls, an intentional kind of metalogic is needed, and that in the delineation of the Plan, the semantical truth concept. Without these resources, including of course quantification theory, it is unthinkable that the liaison here could take place. Perhaps this is the reason no one has attempted it heretofore—apparently the resources were simply not available. In any case, it is hoped that the foregoing helps to show the usefulness of modern logic as a tool of philosophical analysis. Logic should not be seen only as a subject apart, a logica docens, having to do just with abstract metamathematicaI structures, but also as a logica utens, helping out not only in the clarification of philosophical problems, but in the analysis of the great historical texts as well. (p.23, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

And what would be gained from such a Herculian intellectual effort? It would be a rigorous proof that there “. . . is a way of philosophizing that points to a form of knowing that is beyond dialectics".  This way of “knowing”, the one beyond “dialectics”, is the only real knowledge, the direct apprehension gained in Noetic experience, and to rigorously demonstrate that this is true would be of value, though on a practical level, you don't need to go that far, just as you don't need to know the details of the rigorous proofs of calculus to be able to use it for Science or Engineering. All that one needs is enough of an understanding to be able to model spiritual experience such as claimed in Buddhism or Daoism and be able to use that to separate useful theory, theory that is a true help in realizing the practice, from dogmatic dross. That level of understanding is available with a lot less effort than the rigorous proof and it was with that level of understanding that, circa 1980, I took Platonism as my working model of reality. It has worked quit satisfactorily since then.

 

Finally for those who may have found the discussion of the “undescended soul" in my previous post difficult to understand given its very “academic” technical vocabulary this quote from an essay by John Finamore may speak more plainly:

 

Ptotinus had argued that the human soul was always attached to its higher self, that in fact the higher self did not actually descend into the body but rather 'illuminated' it or saw its reflection in rmatter, as in the mirror of Donysius, and came wrongly to identify itself with that image. In this way, the soul could be said to be 'trapped' in this lower world, yet still be above this world. Its highest aspect was 'there' with the lntellect and the Forms, but we human beings are unfortunately and disasterously unaware that this is so. (Dionysius, Vol. XVII. Dec. 1999, 83-94, p. 83, at Academia.edu, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

[ralis]

To respond to this I will have to return to Plato and Plotinus again. Such mathematical tools already exist, such as propositional calculus and set theory that can be used to “map out” in rigorous terms the logical structure of Platonism. In a work published in 1982, (The Structure of Being, State University of New York Press), the editor, R. Baine Harris, has this to say in the preface:

 

 

and in the second essay of the collection, "On Logical Structure and the Plotinic Cosmos", by R. M. Martin, the author begins with this:

 

and concludes with this:

 

And what would be gained from such a Herculian intellectual effort? It would be a rigorous proof that there “. . . is a way of philosophizing that points to a form of knowing that is beyond dialectics".  This way of “knowing”, the one beyond “dialectics”, is the only real knowledge, the direct apprehension gained in Noetic experience, and to rigorously demonstrate that this is true would be of value, though on a practical level, you don't need to go that far, just as you don't need to know the details of the rigorous proofs of calculus to be able to use it for Science or Engineering. All that one needs is enough of an understanding to be able to model spiritual experience such as claimed in Buddhism or Daoism and be able to use that to separate useful theory, theory that is a true help in realizing the practice, from dogmatic dross. That level of understanding is available with a lot less effort than the rigorous proof and it was with that level of understanding that, circa 1980, I took Platonism as my working model of reality. It has worked quit satisfactorily since then.

 

Finally for those who may have found the discussion of the “undescended soul" in my previous post difficult to understand given its very “academic” technical vocabulary this quote from an essay by John Finamore may speak more plainly:

 

 

Will any language accurately describe the underlying process? Meaning which takes the form of a verbal construct appears as culturally specific as opposed to a universal construct?

[Jax]

Light is the light of physics, not the Clear Light of Rigpa or Dharmakaya.

 

The mathmatic model is already good enough as in QFT; quantum field theory. No entities or ontological status can be found at any level. This coincides perfectly with Madhyamaka.

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[C T]

Tell that to Ramalinga who achieved Rainbow Body

through his practice of gazing at the light of a butter lamp

and worshipping its light as god!

Yes, that is possible, worshipping whatever one chooses along the way, but naming it 'god' or whatever one finds greater than self is thus limiting the endless possibilities, i think. Im not against worship, nor reverence, just as such things can and do often happen in dreams, especially for those who have awaken a spiritual connection. Just as in your example, the achievement is the yogi's merit, and thru the medium of the butter lamp he crossed the barrier, yet, if given the same butter lamp to someone else, its simply a butter lamp. As Jax mentioned earlier, reification of any sort is ultimately self-defeating. 

[ralis]

Are you a physicist? QFT field theory is extremely dense and very few on the planet understand it well enough to explain it. In general it is explained mathematically.

 

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/

 

 

 

 

2. The Basic Structure of the Conventional Formulation 2.1 The Lagrangian Formulation of QFT

The crucial step towards quantum field theory is in some respects analogous to the corresponding quantization in quantum mechanics, namely by imposing commutation relations, which leads to operator valued quantum fields. The starting point is the classical Lagrangian formulation of mechanics, which is a so-called analytical formulation as opposed to the standard version of Newtonian mechanics. A generalized notion of momentum (the conjugate or canonical momentum) is defined by setting p = ∂L/∂q̇, where L is the Lagrange function L = T − V (T is the kinetic energy and V the potential) and q̇ ≡ dq/dt. This definition can be motivated by looking at the special case of a Lagrange function with a potential V which depends only on the position so that (using Cartesian coordinates) ∂L/∂ẋ = (∂/∂ẋ)(mẋ²/2) = mẋ = p_x. Under these conditions the generalized momentum coincides with the usual mechanical momentum. In classical Lagrangian field theory one associates with the given field φ a second field, namely the conjugate field

(3.1)   π = ∂

L

/∂

φ̇

where L is a Lagrangian density. The field φ and its conjugate field π are the direct analogues of the canonical coordinate q and the generalized (canonical or conjugate) momentum p in classical mechanics of point particles.

In both cases, QM and QFT, requiring that the canonical variables satisfy certain commutation relations implies that the basic quantities become operator valued. From a physical point of view this shift implies a restriction of possible measurement values for physical quantities some (but not all) of which can have their values only in discrete steps now. In QFT the canonical commutation relations for a field φ and the corresponding conjugate field π are

(3.2)   [φ(

x

,

t

), π(

y

,

t

)] = iδ

3

(

x

−

y

)   [φ(

x

,

t

), φ(

y

,

t

)] = [π(

x

,

t

), π(

y

,

t

)] = 0

which are equal-time commutation relations, i.e., the commutators always refer to fields at the same time. It is not obvious that the equal-time commutation relations are Lorentz invariant but one can formulate a manifestly covariant form of the canonical commutation relations. If the field to be quantized is not a bosonic field, like the Klein-Gordon field or the electromagnetic field, but a fermionic field, like the Dirac field for electrons one has to use anticommutation relations.

While there are close analogies between quantization in QM and in QFT there are also important differences. Whereas the commutation relations in QM refer to a quantum object with three degrees of freedom, so that one has a set of 15 equations, the commutation relations in QFT do in fact comprise an infinite number of equations, namely for each of the infinitely many space-time 4-tuples (x,t) there is a new set of commutation relations. This infinite number of degrees of freedom embodies the field character of QFT.

It is important to realize that the operator valued field φ(x,t) in QFT is not analogous to the wavefunction ψ(x,t) in QM, i.e., the quantum mechanical state in its position representation. While the wavefunction in QM is acted upon by observables/operators, in QFT it is the (operator valued) field itself which acts on the space of states. In a certain sense the single particle wave functions have been transformed, via their reinterpretation as operator valued quantum fields, into observables. This step is sometimes called ‘second quantization’ because the single particle wave equations in relativistic QM already came about by a quantization procedure, e.g., in the case of the Klein-Gordon equation by replacing position and momentum by the corresponding quantum mechanical operators. Afterwards the solutions to these single particle wave equations, which are states in relativistic QM, are considered as classical fields, which can be subjected to the canonical quantization procedure of QFT. The term ‘second quantization’ has often been criticized partly because it blurs the important fact that the single particle wave function φ in relativistic QM and the operator valued quantum field φ are fundamentally different kinds of entities despite their connection in the context of discovery.

In conclusion, it must be emphasized that both in QM and QFT states and observables are equally important. However, to some extent their roles are switched. While states in QM can have a concrete spatio-temporal meaning in terms of probabilities for position measurements, in QFT states are abstract entities and it is the quantum field operators that seem to allow for a spatio-temporal interpretation. See the section on the field interpretation of QFT for a critical discussion.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ralis

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Will any language accurately describe the underlying process? Meaning which takes the form of a verbal construct appears as culturally specific as opposed to a universal construct?

 

It worked in Greek and translates well into English, the whole modern tendency is to put it in mathematical form, Martin's essay being full of the technical symbols of propositional calculus and set theory.

 

Here is an example English paraphrase based on the first proposition about the One in Plato's Parmenides:

 

If the One is a Member of the set of those things that are example of themselves, it is singular and simple, being singular and simple it is not a member of the set of wholes with parts, and thus has no beginning middle or end, either in space or time . . .

 

This amounts to a propositional/set theoretical argument that the One "exists" outside of space and time, if and only if it is an example of itself.  Plato finishes this argument by allowing that the idea of something existing outside of space and time doesn't make "sense", which some take to mean he is rejecting it, but many don't think that the rejection is to be taken seriously.  I think there is a deeper rhetorical and pedagogical purpose at work in such a rejection, and it is a pointer to the unexamined concept "existence".  I am also quite aware of many issues related to this dialogue, but I don't have time to go into them, it took me years of reading and reflection to reach understanding that I have of these issues, I can hardly summarize it in a few posts on the Dao Bums.  Plotinian Platonism ("neo-Platonism") is in many ways an extended dialectical commentary on Plato's Parmenides.

 

I just improvised the above example to illustrate how it could be put in set theoretical form.  Plato's original arguments are already largely in propositional form, though propositional logic, that of the "if . . . then" variety had not been explicated, even in the form that the Stoics were to use it.  Plato's arguments are not rigorous and are probably not intended to be completely rigorous, even if they could have been at the time, but I think that they are aimed to stimulate a guided discussion, rather then a proof that could be read and then forgotten.

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[Jax]

There are no personal self entities either as a "you" or as a some deity to worship.

 

QFT is easy to explain for laymen. There are only fields with no particles or independent entities. It's one unified field. David Bohm's writings on the Implicate and Explicate order offer the math and quantum physics.

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[C T]

So people can achieve Rainbow Body by worshipping whatever as god?

 

Thats not what i said. 

[Wells]

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Edited July 1, 2016 by Wells

[C T]

Then how do you explain that Ramalinga achieved Rainbow Body through his practice?

You said he did, i didn't.