The prison of beliefs.

[allinone]

There is no separation (or pushing away). One simply "forgives" oneself and the issue/fear drops. The underlying energy that was trapped in the issue/fear (that caused you to keep focusing on it) is freed up.

 

forgiveness doesn't exist objectively. Its a dharma, it is one word, it is coexistent, that means it arises when conditions are met

 

i don't know what forgiveness is, so you can talk about it many pages but i still not get it.

Edited May 10, 2017 by allinone

[rene]

Ok, I finally decided if I have beliefs or not. I do, based on my experiences, and here they are, all of them:

 

I believe people are inherently good inside, and do the best they can with what they got.

 

I believe life is worth living.

 

I believe when my time ends, I will cease to exist, my cellular energy will be recycled, my body will feed the coyotes.

 

Being so, what could there be for me to fear or worry about? What comes, comes - and it's all good, even when it's not.

 

Warmest regards

[allinone]

sry guys im offtopic, i appology 10x so it should be enough for at least 3 bad words.

[Marblehead]

... my cellular energy will be recycled ... 

 

 

And your cell phone will go off line when you don't pay your bill.

[Marblehead]

sry guys im offtopic, i appology 10x so it should be enough for at least 3 bad words.

 

Not a real problem.  You were still within linked concepts to the topic.  I can't interact with you because I don't speak the Buddhist language.

[Jeff]

forgiveness doesn't exist objectively. Its a dharma, it is one word, it is coexistent, that means it arises when conditions are met

 

i don't know what forgiveness is, so you can talk about it many pages but i still not get it.

 

 

Forgiveness is simply a word describing the letting go of a painful attachment. Forgiveness is more about the absence of subconscious doing, than any doing itself.

[Jeff]

...

 

What comes, comes - and it's all good, even when it's not.

 

Warmest regards

 

 

Thanks for the excellent advice.  

[Spotless]

The idea of tremendous dissatisfaction with ones life as one possible key to Awakening is not new - many great masters have brought this up. "Hating oneself" is hating that which does not exist - no reason to get stuck on the word "hate".

 

Forgiving this false self is an interesting occupation but oddly it is generally more somatic elixir- though it is part and parcel to some of the melting that is required to final exhaustion.

 

Within all the pretty pictures of Awakening and Oneness and Enlightenment - and all the not-understood quotes - we skim over the non-conceptual aspects of our sages and masters - it was not a cake walk.

 

The following quote is from someone that a few of you may consider at least Awake - it is nothing new other than he is alive and not centuries dead:

 

"Enlightenment is a destructive process.

It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.

Enlightenment is the

crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing

through the facade of pretense. It’s the

complete eradication of everything we

imagined to be true."

– Adyashanti

 

Half your sages and masters had a pretty tough time of it - so many were drunks and on the constant verge of suicide it is difficult to count them.

 

Did you like Allen Watts? If he spoke to a microphone he was plastered - virtually always half smashed if in public and lecturing.

 

We can all sit with our pinkies up and have tea and speak of "love" and non- grasping as though we have a clue.

 

But there is a reason so many sages and masters have come to Presence by deeeeeep dissatisfaction with life and great struggle - and one will not find in many of them an exception to this.

 

If one is not driven to very long hours of meditation - typically 16+ hours a day - one is driven to exhaustion - and it is in these that Presence arrives. As someone has said approximately - "you must want it like a drowning man"

[C T]

Forgiveness is simply a word describing the letting go of a painful attachment. Forgiveness is more about the absence of subconscious doing, than any doing itself.

(off topic)

 

I wonder at the effectiveness of what you have prescribed, Jeff. 

 

and the bolded statement... have been thinking over it for a while. Seems like its missing certain elements, but i cant figure out what. Subconscious doing (action) meaning actions that are performed thru sheer habitual force? And you are convinced that forgiveness is the antidote to overcome that? 

[Brian]

I think there is merit in exploring the concepts of the potential field and the energy field, and contemplating how the nature of these concepts might inform the concepts of both self and void.

[Jeff]

(off topic)

 

I wonder at the effectiveness of what you have prescribed, Jeff. 

 

and the bolded statement... have been thinking over it for a while. Seems like its missing certain elements, but i cant figure out what. Subconscious doing (action) meaning actions that are performed thru sheer habitual force? And you are convinced that forgiveness is the antidote to overcome that? 

 

 

I was describing that forgiveness is the "letting go" of some powerful attachment. As an example, say that you are super angry at some person, and constantly thinking about how you really hate that person.  Such thinking of hating that person is based upon some subconscious focus of some past memory (of hurt) that drives your ongoing "sheer habitual force".  If one truly lets go of (forgives) the underlying memory, the sheer habitual hate force will naturally drop.

 

The "hating" is the ongoing (subconscious) action, while "true" forgiveness is really the letting go (and hence absence) of action.

[silent thunder]

one of the greatest benefits of my life process has been what I've lost.

 

chief among these is the loss of my desire to resent people, or events that I found unpleasant, or that seemed to cause me hurt.

 

so much useless suffering I heaped on myself, long after the original condition of that suffering has passed.

 

the one I set free when I let go of resentment, or the desire for retribution and revenge over some perceived slight... is me...

 

forgiveness is my liberation...  release is the action of realizing this truth

[Stosh]

thats only if one sees eating as self-existing, which it is not. So there are primary and secondary conditions that contribute to actions arising. Eating for example. The secondary attributes of a wooden chair can certainly contribute to the eating process. Alternatively, one can sit on a pumpkin too 

“Wherefore, Sona, whatsoever body there be, whether past, future or present, inward or outward, gross or subtle, low or lofty, far or near . . . every body should thus be regarded as it really is by right insight. Thus ‘this is not mine,’ ‘this am not I,’ ‘this of me is not the self.’”

 

This discussion was about whether there is atman , and anatman , and whether Buddha asserted either. 

But clearly he is talking about things that exist , and though my self my not be the universal atman , (Stosh being an illusory  psycho-physical thing) that doesnt mean I do not exist as ephemeral-Stosh. 

 

This type of negation is meant to dispel the idea of a permanent, truly existing personality, the satkaya-drishti. It is clear that the skandhas, the ephemeral person, cannot be the eternal, unchanging atman.

While the Buddha clearly and repeatedly said that there was no atman in the skandhas, he did not directly or specifically deny the existence of the eternal atman of the Upanishads. As Bhattacharya says:

The Buddha did not say, “There is no atman.” He simply said, in speaking of the skandhas/khandhas, ephemeral and painful, which constitute the psycho-physical being of a man: n’etam mama, n’eso ’ham asmi, na m’eso atta, “This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my atman.” 

The scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy, in his book Hinduism and Buddhism, agrees: “The repeated expression ‘That is not my Self’ has so often been misinterpreted to mean ‘There is no Self.’”

 

So I deem that there is a Stosh who can eat , or sit on a pumpkin , or an eye that can see.

Its just that the eating , Stosh , and pumpkin , are not of  eternal unchanging character.  

Edited May 10, 2017 by Stosh

[C T]

I was describing that forgiveness is the "letting go" of some powerful attachment. As an example, say that you are super angry at some person, and constantly thinking about how you really hate that person.  Such thinking of hating that person is based upon some subconscious focus of some past memory (of hurt) that drives your ongoing "sheer habitual force".  If one truly lets go of (forgives) the underlying memory, the sheer habitual hate force will naturally drop.

 

The "hating" is the ongoing (subconscious) action, while "true" forgiveness is really the letting go (and hence absence) of action.

If you insist. Anyway, this is veering away from the topic so thank you for indulging my curiosity. 

[C T]

 

So I deem that there is a Stosh who can eat , or sit on a pumpkin , or an eye that can see.

Its just that the eating , Stosh , and pumpkin , are not of  eternal unchanging character.  

Precisely so. 

 

What is seen and that which is seeing, and the faculty allowing the action, do not arise independent of each other. 

[Michael Sternbach]

Precisely so.

 

What is seen and that which is seeing, and the faculty allowing the action, do not arise independent of each other.

 

Okay, let me try to figure this out: The eating of the pumpkin wouldn't happen, if there was no Stosh. By the same token, without eating, Stosh could not exist.

 

Edit: There would also be no eating without the pumpkin, of course.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

Also, the eating turns the pumpkin into Stosh.

[Michael Sternbach]

And the pumpkin would not be able to follow its Dao if it wasn't eaten by Stosh.

[Stosh]

So Stosh is a pumpkin ?

[Brian]

And overindulgence turns Stosh into the non-existent pumpkin (as does staying at the ball past midnight, I think). Quite intriguing, isn't it?

Edited May 10, 2017 by Brian

[Brian]

The real question is, can either alligators or cows turn Stosh into a pumpkin pie...

[Michael Sternbach]

So Stosh is a pumpkin ?

No, but he was.

[Michael Sternbach]

The real question is, can either alligators or cows turn Stosh into a pumpkin pie...

Yes, but only through a series of intermediate steps.

[Brian]

No, but he was.

She turned me into a pumpkin!

 

You don't look like a pumpkin.

 

I got better.

[Marblehead]

I believe in The Great Pumpkin!