Very unpopular opinions

[Maddie]

11 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

a big gay disco

beloved by straight white cis men

all-inclusive tao

 

The Big Gay Disco that can be named is not the eternal Big Gay Disco.

 

[Maddie]

57 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

We have different takes on boredom but I´ll say this: unlike some spiritual practices, your writing is not boring.  

 

I would say from a Buddhist POV boredom is desire unfulfilled. 

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

 

The Big Gay Disco that can be named is not the eternal Big Gay Disco.

 

Just imagine an eternal big gay disco!

[Forestgreen]

53 minutes ago, Apech said:

Just imagine an eternal big gay disco!

Being introverted, this would count as one of the lesser Hells.

[Maddie]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

Just imagine an eternal big gay disco!

 

Sounds like a club that a couple of overly dramatic queens that take themselves too seriously would make in New York. 

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Forestgreen said:

Being introverted, this would count as one of the lesser Hells.

[Apech]

Just now, Apech said:

1 hour ago, Forestgreen said:

Being introverted, this would count as one of the lesser Hells.

Young man, there's no need to feel down, I said
Young man, pick yourself off the ground, I said
Young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy
Young man, there's a place you can go, I said
Young man, when you're short on your dough you can
Stay there and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time

[liminal_luke]

For those who might appreciate the visuals...

 

 

[Nungali]

5 hours ago, Apech said:

Just imagine an eternal big gay disco!

 

The disco at the end of the Universe .

[doc benway]

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

The disco at the end of the Universe .

 

The disco at the end of the Rainbow

[Nungali]

 

[Apech]

Skandha banana

 

 

I am sure we are all familiar with the idea that phenomena at five levels (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) are the result of 'bundles' 'heaps' or 'baskets' of causes and conditions and that the phenomena have no independent existence, are temporary and empty.  This is basic Buddhist doctrine.

 

But on the other hand - if we see, touch, experience a tree - it is real.  Indisputably real.  Where does its reality come from? 

 

 

[Nungali]

The disco up the end of the river    ^ 

[Nungali]

5 minutes ago, Apech said:

Skandha banana

 

 

I am sure we are all familiar with the idea that phenomena at five levels (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) are the result of 'bundles' 'heaps' or 'baskets' of causes and conditions and that the phenomena have no independent existence, are temporary and empty.  This is basic Buddhist doctrine.

 

But on the other hand - if we see, touch, experience a tree - it is real.  Indisputably real.  Where does its reality come from? 

 

 

 

Your first paragraph  resembles  a little lecture a Buddhist monk once gave me .

 

regarding your 2nd paragraph  , I responded to the Monk  ; ' What about 'consensual reality ' ?

 

His response was ; " Ah yes, well... there is that ."

 

perhaps the first is, as you said  'an idea'   ... mental world ,  whereas the tree resides in the physical world ?

 

PS  you 'slipped one in '  , my  up the end of the river comment was about the  disco vid I posted not your post

Edited May 25 by Nungali

[Mark Foote]

On 5/23/2024 at 4:55 AM, Apech said:

Bodhi-cheating

 

The art work of early Buddhism shows what early Buddhism and the Buddha was like.  He is not depicted but represented by a pair and sandals, or an empty cushion and so on.  He is surrounded by dancing and singing, by nature spirits including voluptuous female nature spirits, and naga serpents.
 

 

You have examples of depictions with a pair of sandals surrounded by women and snakes?

 

On 5/23/2024 at 4:55 AM, Apech said:

 
This is a shamanistic scene.  Buddha was a shaman who imparted knowledge. 
 

 

No argument there, although he was the first to give a cogent explanation of concentration and the result of concentration.
 

On 5/23/2024 at 4:55 AM, Apech said:

A few centuries after his death the great king/emperor Ashoka appropriated Buddhism because it gave a chance of a way out of the otherwise inevitable consequences of the wide-scale slaughter he had perpetrated as part of his empire building.  He felt sorry for this - sorry for himself in fact and wanted to save himself from the hell realms.  The state subsidised Buddhism he introduced was, unlike the original Buddhism both scholastic and monastic.  Early Buddhism had no written texts but under the new Buddhism the collections of texts became everything - where liberation came from listening to the text being read, thinking about them, meditating on them and so on. 
 

 

It's generally agreed the books were repeated orally for the first 500 years, and only written down after that for fear that some of them might be forgotten.  They were written down in Sri Lanka.

I'm not sure when the universities began to appear.  Certainly, they were destroyed in the Muslim invasion around 700 C. E.. Peculiar that Tilopa and Naropa appeared on the scene about then.  Wikipedia points out that Tilopa was a pimp for awhile and Naropa was grossly overweight.  Nevetheless the practices they taught were the foundation of Tibetan Buddhism, or at least some schools of Tibetan Buddhism--am I right about that?

 

 

 

On 5/23/2024 at 4:55 AM, Apech said:

State funding institutionalised Buddhism into monasteries and universities - much as Constantine did to Christianity - and created a new form of Buddhism which emphasised intellectual learning and religious hierarchies.  Early Buddhist monks wandered in groups no larger than three, lived and worshipped in close connection with the local communities on whom they depended for food and supplied services such as healing and spells for good harvests and so on. 
 

 

Five monks were required to induct a novice into the Order.  Ashoka sent his son and four others to Sri Lanka.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 4:55 AM, Apech said:

 

But for the monastics the text became everything in a kind of 'sola scriptora' approach.  Attempts by modern Buddhists to re-find 'early Buddhism' fall into the trap of trying to abstract ideas from the texts and end up with a kind of desiccated secular mental exercise.  Oddly to us moderns the closest thing to early Buddhism would be vajrayana even though it has much later historical roots.  And it is the main criticism of vajrayana that it introduces magical, yogic and deity practices which places it much closer to what the Buddha was actually like.
 

 

I don't entirely disagree with your argument, here.  I think Ch'an and Zen also preserve the mystery aspect of the original teaching, to some extent.

As I've said before, the mystery aspect is just the transition from a state of ease wherein the jaw, the arms, and the legs are sensed along with "one-pointedness" to a state wherein the activity of the body proceeds from the free location of consciousness ("as though in open space").  And maybe with the addition of the extension of compassion, activity of the body (and ultimately the mind) from the free location of consciousness encompassing things beyond the senses.

 

The transcendent state of the perfect buddhas is supported. It is supported on the material aggregate, for example, like an eagle sleeping in its nest. It has a location. It is located in the heart, for example, like a figure in a vase.
 

("Self-Arisen Vidyā Tantra", Wikipedia, “Rigpa”)
 

 

… free from the fervor of zest, (one) enters and abides in the third musing; (one) steeps and drenches and fills and suffuses this body with a zestless ease so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this zestless ease. … just as in a pond of blue, white, and red water-lillies, the plants are born in water, grow in water, come not out of the water, but, sunk in the depths, find nourishment, and from tip to root are steeped, drenched, filled and suffused with cold water so that not a part of them is not pervaded by cold water; even so, (one) steeps (one’s) body in zestless ease.

 

(Pali Text Society AN III 25-28 Vol. III p 18-19, see also MN III 92-93 Vol III p 132-134)

 

 

You must strive with all your might to bite through here and cut off conditioned habits of mind. Be like a person who has died the great death: after your breath is cut off, then you come back to life. Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space. Only then do you reach the point where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.

 

(Zen Letters, translated by J.C. and Thomas Cleary, pg 84)

 

 

 

Edited May 25 by Mark Foote

[Mark Foote]

On 5/23/2024 at 4:38 PM, Maddie said:

 

I would also say more "spiritual" people for lack of a better word seem to be quite plain. Chop wood carry water. 
 

 

 

Miraculous power and marvelous activity
Drawing water and chopping wood.

 

(Pangyun, a lay Zen practitioner, eight century C.E.)

 

 

Cleave a (piece of) wood, I am there;
lift up the stone and you will find Me there.

 

(The Gospel According to Thomas, pg 43 log. 77, ©1959 E. J. Brill)

 

 

[Mark Foote]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

 

 

PS  you 'slipped one in '  , my  up the end of the river comment was about the  disco vid I posted not your post
 

 

Reality comes from the disco up the river, I'm willing to entertain that!

 

 

[Taomeow]

4 hours ago, Apech said:

Skandha banana

 

 

I am sure we are all familiar with the idea that phenomena at five levels (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) are the result of 'bundles' 'heaps' or 'baskets' of causes and conditions and that the phenomena have no independent existence, are temporary and empty.  This is basic Buddhist doctrine.

 

But on the other hand - if we see, touch, experience a tree - it is real.  Indisputably real.  Where does its reality come from? 

 

 

 

A daoist meditation goes something like, 

Know how to expand the acorn into a mighty oak tree, but seek to know how to contract the mighty oak tree back into an acorn.  

[Taoist Texts]

7 hours ago, Apech said:

Where does its reality come from? 

interestingly in buddhism there is no 'reality', not even a word for such. there are several dichotomies which are close like 'rupa-arupa' but 'real-unreal' is not a buddhist or indian ph. nomenclature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_in_Buddhism

7 hours ago, Apech said:

if we see, touch, experience a tree - it is real.  Indisputably real. 

in our regular state of mind yes. However if we are progressing in jhana then at some point objects will appear to us as arupa, formless and sunya, empty. Its just an aberration of our perception brought about by long sitting. It is a sign of a progress but does not mean much otherwise.

7 hours ago, Apech said:

Where does its reality come from? 

per the above, now we can answer this: our world is material, 'real' if you will.  Real to a normal mind, empty to a partially trained mind. But otherwise, objectively there is no real-unreal distinction.

 

Quote

 

 the Heart sutra, ...states that the five skandhas (along with the five senses, the mind, and the four noble truths) are said to be "empty" (sunya):

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form
Emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness
Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.^{[45][note 2][note 3]}

Note the bolded: in a typical western fashion the western commenter sees 'empty' but does not see 'form' here.  This western selective blindness is perennially amusing.

[johndoe2012]

Apparently not only westerners

 

https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation

 

Quote

Thay believes that the Eminent Master went too far. The Master was not able to see that the mistake doesn’t rest in the formula, ‘form is emptiness’ rather, it resides in the unskillfulness of the line, ‘Therefore in emptiness there is no form.’ According to Thay, the way in which words are used in the Heart Sutra, right from the beginning up to the line: ‘no birth, no death, not defiled, not immaculate, not increasing, nor decreasing,’ is already perfect. Thay’s only regret is that the patriarch who recorded the Heart Sutra did not add the four words ‘no being, no non-being’ immediately after the four words ‘no birth, no death,’ because these four words would help us transcend the notion of being and non-being, and we would no longer get caught in such ideas as ‘no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue…’ The nose of the novice monk is still sore, even today. Do you understand?

 

 

[forestofclarity]

13 hours ago, Apech said:

Indisputably real. 

 

This is a great question for investigation. What does "real" feel like? What is the basis for designation of "real"? What would an illusory tree feel like? How should a tree feel if it wasn't real? 

 

The other day, I was touching a mirror with my fingers as a dream state reality check. It was reflective, resistant to my fingers, smooth, and solid to the touch. I tried to push my finger through it, but it didn't budge. It felt like many mirrors I had touched over the course of my life. But in this case, I was dreaming. 

 

5 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

nterestingly in buddhism there is no 'reality', not even a word for such. there are several dichotomies which are close like 'rupa-arupa' but 'real-unreal' is not a buddhist or indian ph. nomenclature

 

Sat/asat is usually used in the way we use "real" and "unreal" in my experience. 

 

 

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, forestofemptiness said:

 

Sat/asat is usually used in the way we use "real" and "unreal" in my experience. 

well its close but not really, in reality (hehe) it is being-non-being or substantial-not substantial

https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/28342/what-exactly-is-sat-asat

which makes sense. if something is not real then how come we even talk about it?

6 hours ago, johndoe2012 said:

Apparently not only westerners

yeah the guy is marketing himself to the western audience, hence the translation into english. apart from his lame arrogance

Quote

 Thay needs to make this new translation of the Heart Sutra because the patriarch who originally compiled the Heart Sutra was not sufficiently skilful enough with his use of language

and apart from calumniating the author of the Heart Sutra

Quote

Avalokiteśvara (meaning "the lord who looks down", IPA: /ˌʌvəloʊkɪˈteɪʃvərə/^[1]), also known as Lokeśvara ("Lord of the World") and Chenrezig (in Tibetan), is a tenth-level bodhisattva associated with great compassion (mahakaruṇā). He is often associated with Amitabha Buddha.^[2] Avalokiteśvara has numerous manifestations and is depicted in various forms and styles. In some texts, he is even considered to be the source of all Hindu deities (such as Vishnu, Shiva, Saraswati, Brahma, etc).^[3]

it is not even clear what does he try to say

[forestofclarity]

37 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

well its close but not really, in reality (hehe) it is being-non-being or substantial-not substantial

https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/28342/what-exactly-is-sat-asat

which makes sense. if something is not real then how come we even talk about it?

 

Shankara evidently thought this was a sloppy dichotomy, so he developed the idea of mithya as a bridge. 

 

[old3bob]

 

so I'd interject that there is not a real unreal, but there is incomplete or incorrect perception, which btw the way and in a way is also pointed to in Buddhism with the saying (paraphrased) along the lines of samsara being properly understood is nirvana.... thus imo and with that all the speculations  about "illusion" can be tossed.

Edited May 26 by old3bob

[Apech]

17 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

 

You have examples of depictions with a pair of sandals surrounded by women and snakes?

 

No but read this:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/budd/hd_budd.htm#:~:text=In the earliest Buddhist art,empty space beneath a parasol.

17 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

 

No argument there, although he was the first to give a cogent explanation of concentration and the result of concentration.
 

 

It's generally agreed the books were repeated orally for the first 500 years, and only written down after that for fear that some of them might be forgotten.  They were written down in Sri Lanka.

I'm not sure when the universities began to appear.  Certainly, they were destroyed in the Muslim invasion around 700 C. E.. Peculiar that Tilopa and Naropa appeared on the scene about then.  Wikipedia points out that Tilopa was a pimp for awhile and Naropa was grossly overweight.  Nevetheless the practices they taught were the foundation of Tibetan Buddhism, or at least some schools of Tibetan Buddhism--am I right about that?

 

The Muslim invasion was about 1200 AD and Naropa dates to the 10th century.  Their practices were transmitted to Marpa and this became one of the four schools of TB namely Karma Kagyu.  But there were various waves of Buddhism to Tibet including Padma Sambhava in 9th Cent and Atisha in 10th.

 

 

17 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

 

 

 

Five monks were required to induct a novice into the Order.  Ashoka sent his son and four others to Sri Lanka.

 

 

I don't entirely disagree with your argument, here.  I think Ch'an and Zen also preserve the mystery aspect of the original teaching, to some extent.

As I've said before, the mystery aspect is just the transition from a state of ease wherein the jaw, the arms, and the legs are sensed along with "one-pointedness" to a state wherein the activity of the body proceeds from the free location of consciousness ("as though in open space").  And maybe with the addition of the extension of compassion, activity of the body (and ultimately the mind) from the free location of consciousness encompassing things beyond the senses.

 

The transcendent state of the perfect buddhas is supported. It is supported on the material aggregate, for example, like an eagle sleeping in its nest. It has a location. It is located in the heart, for example, like a figure in a vase.
 

("Self-Arisen Vidyā Tantra", Wikipedia, “Rigpa”)
 

 

… free from the fervor of zest, (one) enters and abides in the third musing; (one) steeps and drenches and fills and suffuses this body with a zestless ease so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this zestless ease. … just as in a pond of blue, white, and red water-lillies, the plants are born in water, grow in water, come not out of the water, but, sunk in the depths, find nourishment, and from tip to root are steeped, drenched, filled and suffused with cold water so that not a part of them is not pervaded by cold water; even so, (one) steeps (one’s) body in zestless ease.

 

(Pali Text Society AN III 25-28 Vol. III p 18-19, see also MN III 92-93 Vol III p 132-134)

 

 

You must strive with all your might to bite through here and cut off conditioned habits of mind. Be like a person who has died the great death: after your breath is cut off, then you come back to life. Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space. Only then do you reach the point where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.

 

(Zen Letters, translated by J.C. and Thomas Cleary, pg 84)