Reality vs. Unreality

[dwai]

1 minute ago, neti neti said:

 

Surely, our sense of accomplishment or attainments may seem to give us meaning and purpose. One could even argue that the living of life righteously is gain in and of itself.

 

But really, the boons of your labor were always yours. Gain or loss, the ebb and flow of this world comes and goes. You are the constant, already "there", wherever that is.

 

As one persistently concerns themselves with That, one discovers their concerns are miraculously taken care of.

In other words, wherever (and whenever) you go, there you are! 

[neti neti]

Just now, dwai said:

In other words, wherever (and whenever) you go, there you are! 

 

Ha! Whaddya know? I was who I was when I got here! 

[Nothingness]

This is a very complex theme. 

First of all it always depends on the perspective you are talking from.

 

I wish someone would comment on it with such a precise, simple and clear way that gave no margin for assumptions or interpretations. 

 

From my own understanding and experience, when you wake up in the morning, the world appears. 

When you go to sleep at night, the world dissappears. Therefore, the world has no reality on its own apart from you.

If it is not self shining and self existing, depending always upon your awareness for it to exist, then it is 100% like a dream. 

 

We say dreams are unreal and illusory. 

So the world must also be considered unreal and illusory based on this assumption. 

Edited August 20, 2017 by Nothingness

[Marblehead]

58 minutes ago, Nothingness said:

 

From my own understanding and experience, when you wake up in the morning, the world appears. 

When you go to sleep at night, the world dissappears. Therefore, the world has no reality on its own apart from you.

If it is not self shining and self existing, depending always upon your awareness for it to exist, then it is 100% like a dream. 

 

I think you might be placing too much importance on your self.  Reduce your ego!  You are not the center of my universe, I am.  (But I'm not the center of your universe.)

 

 

[wstein]

10 hours ago, Nothingness said:

From my own understanding and experience, when you wake up in the morning, the world appears. 

When you go to sleep at night, the world dissappears. Therefore, the world has no reality on its own apart from you.

If it is not self shining and self existing, depending always upon your awareness for it to exist, then it is 100% like a dream.

 

So how do you view things that wake you while you sleep (like an alarm clock, siren, cat)?

[Nothingness]

Hi wstein, very good question.

 

It is actually very hard to put this answer into words.

The world awaking me up is a 'knowledge' of the mind AFTER it has awaken up.

It is only after I (mind) wake up and become awareof the world that I can say that it was "the world" (siren, alarm etc) that has awoken me (mind) up.

Therefore it is only after I am aware of the world that the 'knowledge' that the world has awoken me, emerges.

This means that even this 'knowledge' needs my awareness to exist, so it (and the world) is still non-existing on its own. 

 

I'm not sure I managed to convey exactly what I wanted to say, it's easy to understand via direct experience though.

 

What we have to ask ourselves is: Has the mind really risen up in the morning? Let's not assume it has and let's investigate..

Edited August 21, 2017 by Nothingness

[Nothingness]

On 20/08/2017 at 1:47 PM, Marblehead said:

I think you might be placing too much importance on your self.  Reduce your ego!  You are not the center of my universe, I am.  (But I'm not the center of your universe.)

 

 

Hello Marblehead.

 

Certainly, I am just a product of your imagination.

If so, then I must come from you, from your own projection. If I come from you, then there must be no real difference between us in essence, which would make me, as you, the center of your universe!

[Miffymog]

 

 

17 minutes ago, Nothingness said:

Hi wstein, very good question.

 

It is actually very hard to put this answer into words.

The world awaking me up is a 'knowledge' of the mind AFTER it has awaken up.

It is only after I (mind) wake up and become awareof the world that I can say that it was "the world" (siren, alarm etc) that has awoken me (mind) up.

Therefore it is only after I am aware of the world that the 'knowledge' that the world has awoken me, emerges.

This means that even this 'knowledge' needs my awareness to exist, so it (and the world) is still non-existing on its own. 

 

I'm not sure I managed to convey exactly what I wanted to say, it's easy to understand via direct experience though.

 

What we have to ask ourselves is: Has the mind really risen up in the morning? Let's not assume it has and let's investigate..

 

I think you've done a very good job of explaining this point of view. I've read similar ones from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, but I do like how you've explained it too.

 

For me, I don't quite go this far, because to do so requires too much thought on my part to explain or understand it, and I try to avoid any trains of thought that require, well, too much thought. What you say may well be true and fits in with an experiential point of view, but it is, for me, on the extreme side.

 

For example, are we material or spiritual beings? For me both.

 

Were we ever born and will we ever die. Right now, maybe not, but in the end yes.

 

It can be nice going to the extremes for these points of view, but I'm more of a middle ground kind of guy.

[Marblehead]

5 hours ago, Nothingness said:

Hello Marblehead.

 

Certainly, I am just a product of your imagination.

If so, then I must come from you, from your own projection. If I come from you, then there must be no real difference between us in essence, which would make me, as you, the center of your universe!

Gave me a chuckle.  But no, I'm not buying that.

 

I stated somewhere before, I don't have a functional imagination.  I couldn't even do calculus because I couldn't imagine an imaginary number.

 

Give me a tail and I will pin it in what I think is the appropriate place but beyond that, no imagination whatever.

 

And I will not accept the responsibility for creating you.  Your mom and dad did that.

 

[wstein]

8 hours ago, Nothingness said:

The world awaking me up is a 'knowledge' of the mind AFTER it has awaken up.

It is only after I (mind) wake up and become awareof the world that I can say that it was "the world" (siren, alarm etc) that has awoken me (mind) up.

Therefore it is only after I am aware of the world that the 'knowledge' that the world has awoken me, emerges.

This means that even this 'knowledge' needs my awareness to exist, so it (and the world) is still non-existing on its own. 

 

... Let's not assume it has and let's investigate..

Its not so clear to me that the knowledge follows after the awareness.

 

If I understand, you can't say why you have awaken. All you have is some knowledge of unclear origin that something, perhaps named, woke you up. In other words it might well have been you spontaneously waking and then attributing a fictional cause to that awakening.

 

I going to assume for the moment that you believe you still exist in some sense while not awake (if not please clarify). Though one can't be sure, there seems no reason why other things might also 'exist' while you are asleep.

 

You seem to be equating 'knowledge' with 'exist'. I feel things can exist without your knowledge of them.

 

Further question: what is it that is 'aware' of the world? Most likely possibilities are consciousness, conscious mind, unconscious mind. Perhaps you are self identifying with the conscious mind (as you)?

[9th]

Quote

 

To summarize the main difference: while the Madhyamaka held that asserting the existence or non-existence of any ultimately real thing was inappropriate, some exponents of Yogācāra asserted that the mind (or in the more sophisticated variations, primordial wisdom) and only the mind is ultimately real. Not all Yogācārins, however, asserted that mind was truly inherently existent. According to some interpretations, Vasubandhu and Asaṅga in particular did not.^[12]

 

The position that Yogācāra and Madhyamaka were in dialectic was expounded by Xuanzang in the 7th century. After a suite of debates with exponents of the Madhyamaka school in India, Xuanzang composed in Sanskrit the no longer extant three-thousand verse treatise The Non-difference of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra.^[13]

 

Some later Yogācāra exponents also synthesized the two views, particularly Śāntarakṣita in the 8th century, whose view was later called "Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Madhyamaka" by the Tibetan tradition. In his view the Mādhyamika position is ultimately true and at the same time the mind-only view is a useful way to relate to conventionalities and progress students more skillfully toward the ultimate.^[14] This synthesized view between the two positions, which also incorporated views of valid cognition from Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, was one of the last developments of Indian Buddhism before it was extinguished in the 11th century during the Muslim incursion

 

 

[Nothingness]

On 22/08/2017 at 0:00 AM, Marblehead said:

Gave me a chuckle.  But no, I'm not buying that.

 

I stated somewhere before, I don't have a functional imagination.  I couldn't even do calculus because I couldn't imagine an imaginary number.

 

Give me a tail and I will pin it in what I think is the appropriate place but beyond that, no imagination whatever.

 

And I will not accept the responsibility for creating you.  Your mom and dad did that.

 

You could say mom and dad created this body, but not this personality nor "me".

You created me, without responsibility, just a joyful projection!

Edited August 23, 2017 by Nothingness

[dwai]

On 8/21/2017 at 6:00 PM, Marblehead said:

Gave me a chuckle.  But no, I'm not buying that.

 

I stated somewhere before, I don't have a functional imagination.  I couldn't even do calculus because I couldn't imagine an imaginary number.

 

Give me a tail and I will pin it in what I think is the appropriate place but beyond that, no imagination whatever.

 

And I will not accept the responsibility for creating you.  Your mom and dad did that.

 

That you who is projecting all this is Calculus and beyond itself

Just relax and witness. What has to happen is going to happen anyway

[Starjumper]

Unreality doesn't exist, 'one' doesn't exist.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Starjumper

[Nothingness]

23 hours ago, wstein said:

Its not so clear to me that the knowledge follows after the awareness.

 

If I understand, you can't say why you have awaken. All you have is some knowledge of unclear origin that something, perhaps named, woke you up. In other words it might well have been you spontaneously waking and then attributing a fictional cause to that awakening.

 

I going to assume for the moment that you believe you still exist in some sense while not awake (if not please clarify). Though one can't be sure, there seems no reason why other things might also 'exist' while you are asleep.

 

You seem to be equating 'knowledge' with 'exist'. I feel things can exist without your knowledge of them.

 

Further question: what is it that is 'aware' of the world? Most likely possibilities are consciousness, conscious mind, unconscious mind. Perhaps you are self identifying with the conscious mind (as you)?

Knowledge always follows after the Awareness.

How can you know if there is no Awareness? Without awareness, you wouldn't know.

 

What I am saying is that even the knowledge of "the alarm has awoken me up" comes after I have awareness of the world.

This means that even "the alarm has awoken me up" is second to awareness, not prior, which means "the alarm has awoken me up" is a 'knowingness' that comes AFTER I give existence to the world by being aware of it.

 

So this 'knowingness' and the world are both not self-existing and self-luminous on their own, ONLY when I am aware of them.

Without my awareness of anything, that anything cannot simply exist for me. What exists must always be, not just sometimes. If it exists sometimes, appearing and dissapearing, it can't be the Real Existence, just a temporary existence, or as some like to call it, illusion.

 

I am not equating 'knowledge' with 'exist'. Things exist if I am aware of them. I am equating existence with awareness.

If I'm unconscious nothing exists for me. If a flying dolphin exists right now living in Saturn, and I wouldn't know about it, then how can we say it exists? We can only say it exists when we are aware that a flying dolphin living in Saturn exists (ex: I read about it on the NASA Website or saw on TV).

 

I surely exist while I am sleeping, because when I wake in the morning, I know I slept. Or if someone wakes me up in the middle of the night and asks me what I was doing, I say, I'd was sleeping.

 

Although not what I am saying, attributing a fictional cause to that awakening is also very well possible. 

 

What is aware of the world is the "conscious" mind, the unconscious mind is something different. Whenever I write "I" here, I am talking about the mind, although I know I am not really it.

[Starjumper]

Nothingness doesn't exist.  Perky does exist.

[wstein]

6 hours ago, Nothingness said:

Knowledge always follows after the Awareness.

How can you know if there is no Awareness? Without awareness, you wouldn't know.

You can know without awareness if you are creating the thing. I.E. I know this exists because I created it.

 

What I am saying is that even the knowledge of "the alarm has awoken me up" comes after I have awareness of the world.

This means that even "the alarm has awoken me up" is second to awareness, not prior, which means "the alarm has awoken me up" is a 'knowingness' that comes AFTER I give existence to the world by being aware of it.

So this 'knowingness' and the world are both not self-existing and self-luminous on their own, ONLY when I am aware of them.

Only the knowingness is created by your awareness, not the things you are aware of (in this case the alarm).

 

How is it that the alarm can wake you if it does not exist (to you) until after you awake and become aware of it?
How is it that you can become aware of 'the world' that does not exist (to you) yet?

 

[Marblehead]

10 hours ago, Nothingness said:

You could say mom and dad created this body, but not this personality nor "me".

You created me, without responsibility, just a joyful projection!

Okay, now you are adding conditions.  I would almost agree with you but logically I can't.  Yes, I have created the image I have of you.  But I will suggest that it was you who caused me to view you for what I do.  So we could therefore say that it was you who caused the creation of the image I hold of you.  Damn!!!  You are a god!!!

 

 

[Marblehead]

10 hours ago, dwai said:

That you who is projecting all this is Calculus and beyond itself

Just relax and witness. What has to happen is going to happen anyway

Oh, No!  I can't be relaxing when there is work to be done.  I do what needs be done, remember?

 

And we both know that I do not hold to the concepts of destiny or karma.

 

 

[dwai]

2 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Oh, No!  I can't be relaxing when there is work to be done.  I do what needs be done, remember?

 

And we both know that I do not hold to the concepts of destiny or karma.

 

 

Nothing to do with either karma or destiny or free will. Anything that happens is as it has to happen. Even work can be done while being relaxed. Being relaxed doesn't have to mean being inert.

 

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, dwai said:

Nothing to do with either karma or destiny or free will. Anything that happens is as it has to happen. Even work can be done while being relaxed. Being relaxed doesn't have to mean being inert.

 

 

Isn't that saying that everything preordained, and hence no such thing as free will? More just a movie that is going along?

Edited August 23, 2017 by Jeff

[Nothingness]

On 23/08/2017 at 9:01 AM, wstein said:

You can know without awareness if you are creating the thing. I.E. I know this exists because I created it.

 

Only the knowingness is created by your awareness, not the things you are aware of (in this case the alarm).

 

How is it that the alarm can wake you if it does not exist (to you) until after you awake and become aware of it?
How is it that you can become aware of 'the world' that does not exist (to you) yet?

 

I can know without awareness if I am creating the thing? 

To create something, there has to be a you. To be a you, you have to be aware, even if it's a low-level-awareness.

I'm not sure I am completely understanding what you are trying to say. Could you please clarify it a bit?

 

The alarm is created by me as soon as I wake up. When I'm sleeping, no alarm exists. If I put a camera recording the body sleeping, the camera and body still are non-existing for me, and when I wake up, I (mind) become aware and they appear.

Awareness always precedes creation.

 

I only know that the alarm awoken me up when I wake up, which means, when I wake up, I created the universe and the alarm clock. 

Have you ever done lucid dreaming? This can happen exactly like that in a dream.

Example: I'm sleeping, the alarm wakes me up and I get up and go to the bathroom (This all happening in a dream, exactly like here) 

Then suddenly you wake up from that dream and you wonder, oh boy.. that alarm clock waking me up when I was sleeping in that dream.. it's was all fake. Do you get what I mean?

 

For me, the world doesn't exist without my awareness of it. How do I know? I can't know the world exists if I'm unaware of it.

 

[wstein]

1 hour ago, Nothingness said:

I can know without awareness if I am creating the thing?

To create something, there has to be a you. To be a you, you have to be aware, even if it's a low-level-awareness.

I'm not sure I am completely understanding what you are trying to say. Could you please clarify it a bit?

I see NO reason one has to be aware in order to to be.

A blind person can make a painting, yet they can not ever see it. Is there still a painting? I say there is a painting because the blind person painted it. That blind person knows what was painted only because they painted it.

 

I only know that the alarm awoken me up when I wake up, which means, when I wake up, I created the universe and the alarm clock.

Have you ever done lucid dreaming? This can happen exactly like that in a dream.

Example: I'm sleeping, the alarm wakes me up and I get up and go to the bathroom (This all happening in a dream, exactly like here)

Then suddenly you wake up from that dream and you wonder, oh boy.. that alarm clock waking me up when I was sleeping in that dream.. it's was all fake. Do you get what I mean?

I have done vast amounts of lucid dreaming.

I have had 'false awakenings' while lucid dreaming, several in a row actually.

I remained 'lucid' through all the false awaking including still being lucid when waking up into this world.

 

An alarm clock can wake you out of a dream only if it exists in a world in which you are are sleeping.

Its true that dream worlds cease when you wake. That is because you cease continuously creating them. It has nothing to do with your awareness of them. This world exists because you and others are continuously co-creating it. Even though at times you stop participating in creating this world, others continue to do so.

 

For me, the world doesn't exist without my awareness of it. How do I know? I can't know the world exists if I'm unaware of it.

Basically you are fixated in the value of 'knowing' which for you is based on being 'aware'. I'm not sure why you think only you continue when you are not being aware.

 

Since you don't trust any other sources of knowing, there is nothing I can say or show you to make you understand my experience of reality. My experience suggests that I remain even without any knowing or awareness. Further my experience suggests that other 'things' also are able to remain when I am unaware of them.

[Nothingness]

5 hours ago, wstein said:

My experience suggests that I remain even without any knowing or awareness. Further my experience suggests that other 'things' also are able to remain when I am unaware of them.

Tell me how do you know you remain if you are unaware?

To know you remain you have to be aware that you remain, else you wouldn't know you remained. 

Also, how do you know that 'other things' are also able to remain when you are unaware of them? 

You say that because the mind, at a later time, rises up again (as in waking) and you say 'things existed when I was unaware of them'. 

 

If you faint now, became unconscious into a 'deep sleep state' and you (that mind-personality) never wake up again, you will never be able to say 'things remained'. Only if you (that personality-mind) wakes up again, can you say 'I think things remained while I was unconscious'. 

Edited August 25, 2017 by Nothingness

[dwai]

2 hours ago, Nothingness said:

Tell me how do you know you remain if you are unaware?

To know you remain you have to be aware that you remain, else you wouldn't know you remained. 

Also, how do you know that 'other things' are also able to remain when you are unaware of them? 

You say that because the mind, at a later time, rises up again (as in waking) and you say 'things existed when I was unaware of them'. 

 

If you faint now, became unconscious into a 'deep sleep state' and you (that mind-personality) never wake up again, you will never be able to say 'things remained'. Only if you (that personality-mind) wakes up again, can you say 'I think things remained while I was unconscious'. 

There is a witness that stays even when the mind has stopped. It witnesses the start and stop of the mind, the rise and disappearances of objects. Only problem is that the story-teller i.e. the mind must rise to tell us that story. 

 

So both @wstein and @Nothingness are not wrong, imho.