Individuality, Nonduality, Anatta, Nirvana

[CedarTree]

Imagine I am sitting at Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery in America, or Wat Pah Nanachat (Ajahn Chah Monastery) in Thailand, or Panditãrãma (Sayadaw U Pandita-Mahasi Sayadaw Center) in Burma, or at some 3-year silent retreat in the tradition of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu or Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

A lot drops off (Anatta), Nonduality is experienced, with wisdom one awakens (Nirvana).

There is a dynamic with multiplicity (Individuals), Emptiness, Awareness, Etc.

How is awakening related to the individual?

This is to be open to all traditions and view points. There may be members with not as much formal knowledge as others that yet have diamond tidbits of wisdom.

Let us be encouraging and delve into what each other presents with a lot of respect so this discussion can draw out important understandings and content.

[CedarTree]

An individual from another forum said:

 

Quote

Awakening is clearly something that happens to a living being, altering their perspective or revealing fundamental truths, however you wish to express it, and, while those fundamental truths might be expressed in ways that involve words like "empty of a self", still, it is the sensations that previously made up both self and other that are revealed in some very vivid, clear, immediate, transformative way.

Thus, when they awaken, from their vantage pointless vantage point, the whole field of their unique experience is awakened, but, as basically everyone who has awakened and asked other people if their awakening suddenly awakened everyone else, the answer is "no".

So, while it can't really quite be called an "individual thing", still, it clearly happens to an individual, or a unique sense field, or however you wish to put it. When the Buddha awakened, for example, he still clearly noticed that his awakening didn't awaken everyone, as everyone else also noticed.

I am curious to know the background to your question and what practical value you hope the discussion will have for yourself as well as others. Thoughts?

 

I think sometimes in our singular focus on Anatta we don't delve into the meaning and dynamics of "Individualism" and or "Specificity".  I guess in an abstract way I am opening up those topics for discussion and the communities wisdom around it

[Jetsun]

How does awakening relate to the individual? You don't wake up, rather awakeness wakes up, or the universe, or something else wakes up through you. So in that sense awakening can be a great blow to the individual as you get absolutely nothing out of it. 

 

Yet the experience is still localised, which is why there can be a kind of paradox. Why it is localised I believe is because we all have energetic constructs within us which block others awakeness from seeping into our own awareness, which often don't work very well when you are in close proximity to the truth. It can't be said that any awakening is different than any other in the sense that it is always the same thing which wakes up, it is the same thing which wakes up in the Buddha as that wakes up in you or me, yet there is still an individual flavour or character to all of our unique expressions of that.  

[dwai]

On 8/13/2017 at 11:35 AM, CedarTree said:

An individual from another forum said:

 

 

I think sometimes in our singular focus on Anatta we don't delve into the meaning and dynamics of "Individualism" and or "Specificity".  I guess in an abstract way I am opening up those topics for discussion and the communities wisdom around it

Anatta is the limited body-mind. It never really existed in the first place. 

 

What awakens? Was it ever asleep in the first place? Even the experiences of the body-mind was being witnessed by the empty awareness. 

 

[allinone]

transmitter, receiver- 1st skandha, mind and matter

homeostasis or constant- feeling skandha

4th time- determination, concentration

5th amplitude- consciousness.

 

nirvana and samsara, is the up and downslope.

Edited August 15, 2017 by allinone
messed up(too lazy to put things into order), but well the idea is important

[CedarTree]

On ‎8‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 9:16 AM, Jetsun said:

How does awakening relate to the individual? You don't wake up, rather awakeness wakes up, or the universe, or something else wakes up through you. So in that sense awakening can be a great blow to the individual as you get absolutely nothing out of it. 

 

Yet the experience is still localised, which is why there can be a kind of paradox. Why it is localised I believe is because we all have energetic constructs within us which block others awakeness from seeping into our own awareness, which often don't work very well when you are in close proximity to the truth. It can't be said that any awakening is different than any other in the sense that it is always the same thing which wakes up, it is the same thing which wakes up in the Buddha as that wakes up in you or me, yet there is still an individual flavour or character to all of our unique expressions of that.  

 

I think you are getting at what I am saying.  It is true that maybe there is no experiencer just experience and life lives through you but there is a vantage point of individualism/specificity.  That is this interesting dynamic I am trying to delve into and draw out content.

[Michael Sternbach]

Higher entities seem to be extremely individualistic. So I believe there is indeed some kind of paradoxical dynamic at work which leads you as much beyond yourself into a more universal reality as it actualizes the innermost core of your unique individuality.

[CedarTree]

I was listening to a Dharma Talk by Shoryu Bradley, the abbot of Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery in America a day or so ago and there was a certain point that stood out:

 

The world that is always there when we let go of our idea of what it is, and let it manifest through our own life.

It is actually the world of impermanence and lack of independent existence. It is the world of emptiness.

This world in which all things give and receive together as one body without being concerned about individuality or universality. Simply expressing life.

Other names for this world are "Nirvana", "Indra's Net", "Emptiness", "The network of inter-dependent origination", Pure land Buddhists may call it "Amitabha Buddha's Compassion", Some of us might call it "Grace" or simply "Life".

- Shoryu Bradley

 

Maybe individuality and universal are moved beyond in some way.  Not negated?  It would be interesting to hear how this is formalized though if that is at all possible.

[9th]

2 hours ago, CedarTree said:

Other names for this world are "Nirvana", "Indra's Net", "Emptiness", "The network of inter-dependent origination", Pure land Buddhists may call it "Amitabha Buddha's Compassion", Some of us might call it "Grace" or simply "Life".

 

shit... problem solved!

[Marblehead]

9 hours ago, 9th said:

 

shit... problem solved!

Yeah, life really isn't as complicated as most of us cause it to appear.

 

[9th]

Its not a new idea, of course...

 

Quote

 

“The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue

 

You must learn how to stop your internal dialogue at will. At the beginning of our association I delineated another procedure: walking for long stretches without focusing the eyes on anything. My recommendation was to not look at anything directly but, by slightly crossing the eyes, to keep a peripheral view of everything that presented itself to the eyes. If one keeps one's unfocused eyes fixed at a point just above the horizon, it is possible to notice, at once, everything in almost the total 180-degree range in front of one's eyes. That exercise is the only way of shutting off the internal dialogue.
 
To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery, and stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. The rest is just padding. Nothing of what we do, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, can by itself change anything in us, or in our idea of the world. The provision is, of course, that that change should not be deranged. Therefore a teacher doesn't clamp down on his apprentice. That would only breed obsession and morbidity.

 

Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words. You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way. You are too heavy and self-important. Let go!"

― Carlos Castaneda

 

 

 

Quote

 

For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description that has been pounded into you from the moment you were born. The reality of our day-to-day life, then, consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we have learned to make in common. I am teaching you how to see as opposed to merely looking, and stopping the world is the first step to seeing.

 

The sorcerer's description of the world is perceivable. But our insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders us almost deaf and blind to it. When you begin this teaching, there is another reality, that is to say, there is a sorcery description of the world, which you do not know. As a sorcerer and a teacher, I am teaching you that description. What I am doing with you consists, therefore, in setting up that unknown reality by unfolding its description, adding increasingly more complex parts as you go along.

 

In order to arrive at seeing one first has to stop the world. Stopping the world is indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In this case the set of circumstances alien to our normal flow of interpretations is the sorcery description of the world. The precondition for stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned.

 

After stopping the world the next step is seeing. By that I mean what could be categorized as responding to the perceptual solicitations of a world outside the description we have learned to call reality.

 

― Carlos Castaneda

 

 

[CedarTree]

I think in some ways the real hard thing to understand is the nature of "Individual" vantage point and it's relation to the truth of Anatta.

 

Also how this vantage point stays the same or differs in dynamic with awakening and once it is achieved.

 

Thoughts?

[9th]

"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.

 

"In the same way, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live the holy life under the Blessed One as long as he does not declare to me that "The cosmos is eternal," or that 'The cosmos is not eternal'... 'The cosmos is finite'... 'The cosmos is infinite'... 'The soul is the same thing as the body'... 'The soul is one thing and the body another'... 'After death a Tathāgata exists'... 'After death a Tathāgata does not exist'... 'After death a Tathāgata both exists & does not exist'... or that "After death a Tathāgata neither exists nor does not exist,"' the man would die and those things would still remain undeclared by the Tathāgata...

 

"So, Māluṅkyaputta, remember what is undeclared by me as undeclared, and what is declared by me as declared. And what is undeclared by me? 'The cosmos is eternal,'is undeclared by me. 'The cosmos is not eternal,' is undeclared by me. 'The cosmos is finite'... 'The cosmos is infinite'... 'The soul is the same thing as the body'... 'The soul is one thing and the body another'... 'After death a Tathāgata exists'... 'After death a Tathāgata does not exist'... 'After death a Tathāgata both exists & does not exist'... 'After death a Tathāgata neither exists nor does not exist,' is undeclared by me.

 

"And why are they undeclared by me? Because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding (nibbāna). That's why they are undeclared by me.

 

"And what is declared by me? 'This is stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the origination of stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the cessation of stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress,' is declared by me. And why are they declared by me? Because they are connected with the goal, are fundamental to the holy life. They lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding. That's why they are declared by me."

 

— Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta

[ChiForce]

Awaken means you break through the first and the hardest skandha...FORM.  What is form?  Your subject-object identification and how and where your suffering originally originated.  You break through FORM, your kundalini energy WILL rise, period.    This happens to be the Dharma Gate as well.  No, is not easy.  The more emotionally you are entangled in this world, the harder it gets.  That's pretty much what awaken means....no flowery language needed.  

 

Non-duality...I am afraid, could only be experienced in dreams or in a Samadhi...either in your sleep or meditation.  

 

Nibbana???  I don't know.  It may take several life time of mind cultivation to get there.     

[CedarTree]

I think maybe understanding the nature of "Life" & "Death" might play into the Individual "Vantage" point and misunderstandings about it's nature.

 

Thoughts?

[CedarTree]

[Nothingness]

Simplified:

Individuality: Who you think you are (a person).

Anatta: The reality of who you think you are... which is non-existent.

Nonduality: What you consider the opposite of your relative dualistic existence (your definition of Nirvana's nature).

Nirvana: The Absolute Reality.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Nothingness

[9th]

Tathāgata is a Pali and Sanskrit word; Gotama Buddha uses it when referring to himself in the Pāli Canon. The term is often thought to mean either "one who has thus gone" (tathā-gata) or "one who has thus come" (tathā-āgata). This is interpreted as signifying that the Tathāgata is beyond all coming and going – beyond all transitory phenomena. There are, however, other interpretations and the precise original meaning of the word is not certain.

 

Modern scholarly opinion generally opines that Sanskrit grammar offers at least two possibilities for breaking up the compound word: either tathā and āgata (via a sandhi rule ā + ā → ā), or tathā and gata.

 

Tathā means "thus" in Sanskrit and Pali, and Buddhist thought takes this to refer to what is called "reality as-it-is" (yathābhūta). This reality is also referred to as "thusness" or "suchness" (tathatā), indicating simply that it (reality) is what it is.  Tathāgata is defined as someone who "knows and sees reality as-it-is" (yathā bhūta ñāna dassana). 

 

Gata "gone" is the past passive participle of the verbal root gam "go, travel". Āgata "come" is the past passive participle of the verb meaning "come, arrive". In this interpretation, Tathāgata means literally either “the one who has gone to suchness” or "the one who has arrived at suchness".

 

Another interpretation, proposed by the scholar Richard Gombrich, is based on the fact that, when used as a suffix in compounds, -gata will often lose its literal meaning and signifies instead "being". Tathāgata would thus mean "one like that", with no motion in either direction.

 

According to Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, the term has a non-Buddhist origin, and is best understood when compared to its usage in non-Buddhist works such as the Mahabharata. Shcherbatskoy gives the following example from the Mahabharata 

 

(Shantiparva, 181.22): "Just as the footprints of birds (flying) in the sky and fish (swimming) in water cannot be seen, Thus (tātha) is going (gati) of those who have realized the Truth."

 

[CedarTree]

33 minutes ago, Nothingness said:

Simplified:

Individuality: Who you think you are (a person).

Anatta: The reality of who you think you are... which is non-existent.

Nonduality: What you consider the opposite of your relative dualistic existence (your definition of Nirvana's nature).

Nirvana: The Absolute Reality.

 

For some reason I think everything but the Nirvana point was gold.

[Nothingness]

18 minutes ago, CedarTree said:

 

For some reason I think everything but the Nirvana point was gold.

Let me make it more clear then:

Nirvana: The Absolute Nothingness from our current point of view, as it surpasses every possible understanding, so one can't say it is "anything", but just "nothing", or perhaps apart from both.

[CedarTree]

2 hours ago, Nothingness said:

Let me make it more clear then:

Nirvana: The Absolute Nothingness from our current point of view, as it surpasses every possible understanding, so one can't say it is "anything", but just "nothing", or perhaps apart from both.

 

Nope I don't think that's on point either.

[9th]

Quote

"This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Nibbana."

 

— Ananda Sutta 

 

Quote

"There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support [or mental objects]. This, just this, is the end of stress."

 

"There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned."

 

— Nibbana Sutta

 

[Fa Xin]

I have no idea what any of it means. 

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Fa Xin said:

I have no idea what any of it means. 

 

The above Sutta quotes are not particularly deep.  They are views from when one is beginning to see beyond the local body mind, but has not yet realized actual "being". In classical chakra terms, it would go with opening the 6th chakra.

[CedarTree]

It must be my Theravada side but I love how the Pali Canon talks about Nibanna