Basic buddhist concepts analysed in a Christian website
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Relationship existed, and ended, left are memories. If on a very sour note, negative emotions arises (that *ucking * itch! eg.) until we've let go. It is as Buddhist we learn how to let go! God may exist or may not exist, if I were to enter hell, it does not matter!Originally posted by BroInChrist:
One can say he no longer has a relationship with his ex-girlfriend, but that does not translate to saying that the girl did not exist or does not exist. The same with God. Many people will say they do not know God, but that isn't the question yet, the question is whether God exists or not and this is hardly a matter of idle speculation. In philosophy the existence of God is always, if not usually, the most important topic of discussion. There are good reasons and arguments supporting the case for there being a God.
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Originally posted by Weychin:
If you have thought of eating ice cream today, and tomorrow we talk again about eating ice cream, are the thoughts the same or identical, or is just similiar thoughts of eating ice cream?!
I thought of ice cream yesterday and I am thinking of ice cream now. Other than the time of the thinking, it is "I" who is doing the thinking at both times. And if I go out now and buy an ice cream to eat, I acted on my thoughts. If I may say so without offence, it would be idle speculation to ask whether those thoughts are same or identical. You cannot capture a thought and compare them via some scientific method. What is not at dispute is that it was me having those thoughts about the same subject matter i.e. eating ice cream. Maybe yesterday I wanted chocolate ice cream but today I had a durian flavour. But still isn't it that I am the one thinking and acting on my own thoughts?
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Originally posted by Weychin:
Relationship existed, and ended, left are memories. If on a very sour note, negative emotions arises (that *ucking * itch! eg.) until we've let go. It is as Buddhist we learn how to let go! God may exist or may not exist, if I were to enter hell, it does not matter!
That relationship was between two real persons who existed in time and spac. Relationships begin and end, but not the people unless you are talking about being dead. There are good and sour relationships, and relationships that sucked really sucked in reality. You felt it, didn't you? It was your SELF feeling the negative emotions. It wasn't anyone else feeling it but you. You can't detach yourself from feeling what you are feeling, unless of course you numb yourself through some medical means. But that is merely suppressing your human senses which are really there. Letting go of emotions and moving ahead is actually acknowledging that these emotions are real. Even in pschology or psychiatry I think they encourage their patients to acknowledge the truth and reality of events that have happened and then move on. They do not ask the patients to deny those events.
If there is no God, then I submit that there is no hell to enter. The Bible teaches that hell is created for the devil and his evil angels, and also for those who rebel against God and refuses His offer of salvation.
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Conventionality of Self exist, simply because we have mistaken mind process as a single stream of continuity. The difference lies in point of reference the amount of emotional baggage.Originally posted by BroInChrist:
But my personal experience is that self exists. I even refer to MYSELF when I am talking or communication. At every moment I am affirming the existence of self. I am communicating to you just as you are to me. At this point there is two selfs talking to each other. It is impossible to see past "I" view. Who is seeing past the "I" view? Surely it would mean you taking a vantage point above what you can see, but this is logically impossible.
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I/you can think ice cream and yet not buy ice cream. You went and buy ice cream because craving rises, then the thoughts go thinking of buying ice cream.Originally posted by BroInChrist:
I thought of ice cream yesterday and I am thinking of ice cream now. Other than the time of the thinking, it is "I" who is doing the thinking at both times. And if I go out now and buy an ice cream to eat, I acted on my thoughts. If I may say so without offence, it would be idle speculation to ask whether those thoughts are same or identical. You cannot capture a thought and compare them via some scientific method. What is not at dispute is that it was me having those thoughts about the same subject matter i.e. eating ice cream. Maybe yesterday I wanted chocolate ice cream but today I had a durian flavour. But still isn't it that I am the one thinking and acting on my own thoughts?
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Originally posted by Weychin:
Conventionality of Self exist, simply because we have mistaken mind process as a single stream of continuity. The difference lies in point of reference the amount of emotional baggage.
But I think this is also where the question is being begged. How do you determine that it is mistaken that the self does exist when it is the common and shared experience that we act like self does exist? It is a universal experience that the self exist. If even you have to say that "I" am mistaken it already presupposes an "I" to have been mistaken that there is an"I" that exist. Why act contrary to that?
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Originally posted by Weychin:
I/you can think ice cream and yet not buy ice cream. You went and buy ice cream because craving rises, then the thoughts go thinking of buying ice cream.
Indeed, if I had bought an ice cream it would be because I desired for it, though unlikely that I would be craving for it. But even if I did crave for it, it would be because those desires were real and experienced by MYSELF. If I did not exist then of course no such desires need to be entertained and it is moot to talk about it at all.
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Our experience change all time. You/I may think of ice cream, but we may want to buy or eat ice cream! You need craving for ice cream and the actual intention to buy and carry out the whole process. But suppose you have stuffed yourself silly with ice cream the past few days?! Would you crave for ice cream? Is it suppose to be the same thought of ice cream? Is'nt it the same thought, for now instead of craving, aversion rises and possible puking may ensue!
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Originally posted by Weychin:
Our experience change all time.
You/I may think of ice cream, but we may want to buy or eat ice cream! You need craving for ice cream and the actual intention to buy and carry out the whole process.
But suppose you have stuffed yourself silly with ice cream the past few days?! Would you crave for ice cream? Is it suppose to be the same thought of ice cream?
Is’nt it the same thought, for now instead of craving, aversion rises and possible puking may ensue!I hope you can see how impossible it is to avoid using pronouns. It is inevitable and impossile to talk without referring to Yourself, myself, himself, ourselves. Yes, I may stay away from ice cream after gorging on it. But it was MY doing, in all these the "I" was involved. If I really puked can I say that "I" did not really puke just because I tell myself that the self does not exist? Can I deconstruct the puke such that it does not exist in ultimate reality? But I just cleaned up my puke. How does that work?
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Such experiences are transitory, eg. impermanent. Desires are craving, difference is the intensity of it. The more we crave or desire and unable to assuage that desire we become unhappy! This is the main point of Buddhism!Originally posted by BroInChrist:
Indeed, if I had bought an ice cream it would be because I desired for it, though unlikely that I would be craving for it. But even if I did crave for it, it would be because those desires were real and experienced by MYSELF. If I did not exist then of course no such desires need to be entertained and it is moot to talk about it at all.
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"I"exist, therefore I desire.
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Originally posted by Weychin:
Such experiences are transitory, eg. impermanent. Desires are craving, difference is the intensity of it. The more we crave or desire and unable to assuage that desire we become unhappy! This is the main point of Buddhism!
All experiences are by definition temporary. I see that as a self-evident thing. If I am in pain, it is temporary, even if I felt like it lasted a very long time. Whether my desire intensity level is low or off the charts it is "I" who is having the desires or cravings or the sensations or the experiences. My point is that you cannot avoid talking about "self". The denial of the existence of self is IMO rather self-refuting and self-contradicting. You have to exist in order to deny that you exist! -
Originally posted by Weychin:
“I”exist, therefore I desire.
Exactly my point!
So why deny the existence of "I"? Isn't it like denying reality?
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Originally posted by BroInChrist:
All experiences are by definition temporary. I see that as a self-evident thing. If I am in pain, it is temporary, even if I felt like it lasted a very long time. Whether my desire intensity level is low or off the charts it is "I" who is having the desires or cravings or the sensations or the experiences. My point is that you cannot avoid talking about "self". The denial of the existence of self is IMO rather self-refuting and self-contradicting. You have to exist in order to deny that you exist!Are you in control of your body? You can't. You can't stop it from growing old, falling sick and dying.Anything that you are not in control are not yours. The "I" I'm referring to is just referring to our body. There's more to it. There are many experts here who can explain better than me.
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Using pronouns and words are just a platform to convey ideas. Using "I"is iust a convenient way of relating objective and subjective in a conventional way. I am going to puke, I am puking now, I just puked! "I" is simply like a finger pointing to an occurence, after which one moves on!Originally posted by BroInChrist:
I hope you can see how impossible it is to avoid using pronouns. It is inevitable and impossile to talk without referring to Yourself, myself, himself, ourselves. Yes, I may stay away from ice cream after gorging on it. But it was MY doing, in all these the "I" was involved. If I really puked can I say that "I" did not really puke just because I tell myself that the self does not exist? Can I deconstruct the puke such that it does not exist in ultimate reality? But I just cleaned up my puke. How does that work?
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Good rebuttal! Similiar to what Buddha asked Ananda of where the mind resides in Shurangama Sutra! Stumped me more than twenty years to grasp l, so not easy to grasp! So assuming "I" exist, independent of the aggregates, not a construct, so where do "I" of BroInChrist resides ?Originally posted by BroInChrist:
Exactly my point!
So why deny the existence of "I"? Isn't it like denying reality?
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Unfortunately, apart from asking you to try and experience it for yourself, I do not yet know how to explain the whole experience/experiencer relationship that I wrote earlier to make sense. If you're interested, the first thing you can try to ask yourself is who or what exactly is being referred to when you say "I exist". The key here (in fact, the first step) is to know about this core of existence that is often referred to as the "soul".
For the other points, I'm afraid I'm not actually qualified to talk about the buddhist position since I'm actually quite bad at understanding scripture. So what I'm writing from here on is likely to be not what the guys in this forum would accept as the "correct" view:
Let's look at things two ways. The first way is at the thing outside of experience i.e. "objective reality". Does the Sun exist? Sure. But the Sun itself is made up of a bunch of matter. It's dependent on these stuff to exist. Just like a car is reliant on all its parts existing to be given a label called a "car". So, conventionally, they exist. But the way they exist is through dependence on other factors so that we can affix labels on them.
The second way is to look at experience ("subjective reality") itself. Does the sun exist? Yes I experience it as existing, thanks to my senses. If for some reason I experience sunlight as utterly cold then my experience of the sun is totally different to yours. In this sense, yes it's like the blind men and elephant analogy.
But the fact is, there's no way to experience "objective reality". Experience is all we have. Some buddhists who lean towards the earlier theravada teachings believe that the Buddha actually had no interest in "objective reality", because there's no way to get to experience it anyway. The problems we have are just inside our world of experience.
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Originally posted by BroInChrist:
What I find most intriguing is why, if there is really no subject or object, that universally we communicate and live as though object and subject exists. I mean, even as a Buddhist communicating Buddhist beliefs to others you have to speak in terms of object and subject. You cannot communicate without presupposing them. So how is it possible to deny the very existence of something that must be presuppose to even begin to deny it? In the same way one would have to use the very laws of logic to deny that laws of logic exist.
Subject and object may be spoken merely for convenience of communication, putting very gross labels is necessary for communication. It does not necessarily imply that there is a true inherent existence of subject or object. Anyway, we are not using laws of logic or dualistic concepts to reject dualistic concepts. We are just challenging, investigating, and pointing out at the fallacy of inherent and dualistic concepts that we have been employing in our perception and communication in day to day living. We do not create new concepts, we simply investigate and expose our existing concepts/views.
For example, we know there is no inherently, independently, unchangingly existing thing called a "weather" that can be pinned down as an entity.But for convenience we say "how is the weather like tomorrow"? "Weather" is simply a convenient label or convention for pragmatic purposes of communication. It does not correspond to a solid reality. 'Weather' is empty of any inherent core or essence that can be pinned down or located anywhere, it is merely a name imputed on an ever-changing process of clouds forming and parting, rain falling, wind blowing, lightning, snow, etc etc.
The same goes for 'car' and 'self'. Even though there is no inherently, solidly existing 'car', we speak of car for convenience. No inherently existing car can be pinned down or established, merely an aggregated appearance that functions interdependently as a gestalt.
See http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2009/03/conceptions-of-self-in-western-and.htmlIt is important to realize what is meant by the “self” rejected by the Buddha as illusory. Not only are human beings declared to lack a soul or self, but so is everything else: rivers, mountains, this paper, and your pencil, all lack a separate self. What this means is that they cannot have any existence except in terms of the interconnected net of causal conditions that made their existence possible. All things (including human beings) are composites, in other words, they are composed of parts, and have no real existence other than as temporary (impermanent) collections of parts. They are essentially patterns, configurations, or Gestalten rather than objectively existing separate entities. They possess no separate essence, self, or soul that could exist by itself, apart from the component parts and conditions.
Consider, for example, an automobile. Does it have an essence or a “soul” when separated from its component parts? Does it have any real existence apart from its parts? One could try the following mental exercise. Removing one of the tires of the car, one could ask oneself, is this the car? Successively taking away the windshield, a door, a piston, a bolt, the radiator cap, and continuing until the last piece of metal, plastic, glass, or rubber has been removed, one would never find the part which, if removed, transforms what remains into a non-car. Such part, if found, would have represented the essence or the “soul” of the car, and yet it was nowhere to be found. Now all we have is a pile of parts—where is the car? At which point did the car disappear? If we reflect carefully we are left with the realization that there never was a car there—all that was there was a conglomerate of parts temporarily connected in a certain way, so as to result in a particular mode of functioning, and “car” was just a convenient label to designate this working arrangement. The word “car” is nothing but a label for the gestalt formed by the constituent parts, and although it is true (as realized by Wertheimer and the other Gestaltists) that the whole is more than the sum of the parts (one cannot drive sitting on any of the separate parts, or on a random heap of them, but driving is possible when one puts them together in a certain way), it is equally true that a gestalt cannot continue to exist when separated from its parts. The gestalt, the “whole,” cannot exist by itself; it does not have a separate self or “soul.”
But what about a person? According to Buddhist psychology, what we call a “person” is the composite of five groups of elements or skandhas. The skandhas are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. Just as an automobile is a temporary collection of car parts, a person is a temporary arrangement of these five aggregates or skandhas. There is no separate, independent self or soul that would be left if we removed form (which includes the body), feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. While these aggregates are together, the functioning gestalt we call a person exists; if they are removed, the gestalt ceases to be. For this reason, the self can be said to be “empty” of reality when separated from its component aggregates— a view of the self radically different from Western perspectives. But it is not only the self that is empty, and cannot exist by itself; the skandhas themselves are also empty.
The five skandhas, like everything else, are dependently arisen, and cannot exist by themselves. Take the form of one’s body, for example. What would remain of it, if one removed one’s perception of it, one’s feelings about it, one’s impulses to act on it or with it, and one’s conscious awareness of it? Form is empty of reality when separated from perceptions, feelings, impulses, and consciousness. And what about feelings? They also cannot exist by themselves. Feelings are feelings about something, about one’s body, one’s perceptions, one’s impulses, one’s state of consciousness. The same is true of the remaining skandhas—each one is composed of the other four. They are in a state of interdependent co-origination, they inter-are (Hanh, 1988).
The teaching of “dependent origination” is at the core of the Buddha’s teaching or Dharma. In its simplest expression, dependent origination is a law of causality that says “this is, because that is; this is not, because that is not; when this arises, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases.” Despite the apparent simplicity of this formulation, it is a farreaching principle, that leaves nothing untouched, and, in fact, causally connects everything in the universe, for it implies that all phenomena, whether they be external objective events or internal subjective experiences, come into existence depending on causes and conditions without which they could not be. These causes and conditions can themselves be either internal mental states or external events.
Borrowing an example from Hanh (1988), consider a piece of paper: it can be, because a tree was, since the tree had to be in order to be cut down to make the paper. This same piece of paper, is also because there was rain and sunshine, for without them the tree could not have grown. The same is true for the seed and the fertile soil, and for the logger who cut the tree down, for without them, the tree would not have been there for the paper to be. But for the logger to be, his parents had to be, and the food they consumed, and all the conditions that made their lives possible, and those lives upon which theirs in turn depended, and on, and on. There is no end to this causal interconnectedness. Everything in the universe is connected to this piece of paper through a web of causal conditions. If the component conditions are regarded as elements, we can say that this piece of paper is composed of non-paper elements, or, in other words, that conditions other than the paper itself are necessary for the paper to exist. Stated differently, the paper cannot exist by itself; it lacks a separate self, soul, or essence. The same is true for anything else in the universe, including a person. It is also true of cognitive or mental states, because for every emotion, for every perception, for every thought, there are necessary causal conditions without which they would not have come into being. Everything is dependently arisen, everything exists only if the necessary conditions are there. This means that nothing is ever truly independent or separate from everything else.
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Originally posted by Weychin:
You would have realised that the Yahweh in the Old Testament and the God of Jesus Christ has different roles. One is a patron deity of the tribes of Israel has much anger, that wage much destruction on Israelis’ enemies and anyone, including Israelis who worship other gods.
The other is the New Testament God that embraces Gentiles but with a double standard with Jews as chosen people and professing(conditional) love and forgiveness.
This are aspects of Christianity I more familiar with. Please pardon my ignorance.Indeed... as I and Thusness discussed in April 2006:
<^john^> What has Jesus taught really? :)
<Presence> i dunnu much about christianity
<^john^> When u read bible, u must notice that there is a clear distinction between old and new testament led by a transformation of consciousness.
<Presence> old testament isnt by jesus rite
<Presence> old testament was shared by all judaist faiths
<Presence> icic
<^john^> u know what is myth?
<Presence> ya
<^john^> what is it?
<Presence> like stories?
<Presence> old stories
<Presence> lo
<Presence> lol
<^john^> u should not treat myth as fantasies.
<^john^> myth is the way the ancient man understand the world and phenomenon existence.
<Presence> oic..
<Presence> so wats the diff between old testament and new testament
<^john^> we must look beyond the symbols.
<Presence> icic
<^john^> God in the old testament is different from the new testament.
<Presence> god in old testament is more like a creator isnt it
<^john^> u know u can meet God and ask him how is he :P
<^john^> has he taken his lunch
<Presence> hahahah
<^john^> it is mythical. The ancient man personify everything
<^john^> during their time, the capacity to abstract is still not there.
<Presence> oic...
<Presence> ya
<Presence> true
<^john^> therefore they are closer to nature and they experience through their feelings and emotions
<Presence> icic..
<^john^> stones and all inanimate objects to them are all alive.
<Presence> ya more like..
<Presence> ya
<^john^> their lifes are full of colors
<^john^> but then they are closer to nature and are more in touch with Presence. :)
<Presence> oic..
<^john^> their senses are sharper and clearer.
<Presence> icic...
<Presence> how u know
<^john^> kok ur head...telling u the diff...
<Presence> o kk
<^john^> those ppl that led by Moses were slaves
<Presence> oic..
<^john^> they needed a God to fight with other gods to lead them free
<^john^> their God is the God of freedom and has to be all powerful.
<Presence> oic..
<Presence> ya briefly remembered that part
<Presence> then they cross the ocean rite
<^john^> yes led by Moses.
<Presence> ya
<^john^> This is the God of old testament but when it comes to Jesus...it is very different
<Presence> oic how is it so
<^john^> we witness a the capacity to abstract God as omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient
<^john^> the kingdom of heaven is no more on top and God is no more high above.
<Presence> oic..
<^john^> it is deep in us
<Presence> icic
<^john^> height has been changed to depth.
<^john^> there is a clear transformation of consciousness
<Presence> oic..
<^john^> myth then slowly becomes a religion
<Presence> transformation of consciousness does it mean jesus became enlightened of some sort?
<Presence> icic
<^john^> the teaching of Jesus is often in the form of parables.
<^john^> his path is the way of faith.
<Presence> oic..
<Presence> hmm but according to some, his way is also of knowledge (gnosis)
<^john^> gnosis is hidden knowledge.
<Presence> oic
<Presence> ya
<^john^> and mysticism
<Presence> ya..
<Presence> so jesus was a mystic rite?
<^john^> perhaps and a yogi too. :) -
Originally posted by BroInChrist:
I guess this is why I find it intriguing to speak of no-self. A car exists or it does not. I own a car. I sit in it and drive in it everyday. It has real existence, not just by convention or conventional use of language and words. The car really exists. If one wishes to go philosophical and say that the car CAN BE deconstructed in the mind such that you no longer have a car but only the various parts that can be made into anything, of course I agree with that. But that's just being philosophical about it and theorizing, or you might actually physically wreck it, but you are still left with the physical parts, you cannot deconstruct it until it disappears into thin air. The fact remains, and the reality remains, and the law of identity applies, that there is a car in which I am really using. The car objectively exists right here and right now. The reason why a car exists is because human intelligence has been applied to matter, an intelligent cause resulting in an intelligent product that serves a purpose.
You are just using conventions to communicate your experience from top to bottom. It does not correspond to true, ultimate existence.
The reality we are rejecting is not conventional truths. It is ok to use conventions to describe your experience. We are simply rejecting that your notions of reality correspond to some objective and independent existence separate from all conditioned manifestation.
So just understand that we reject an unchanging, independent, separate, existence that can be established, pinned down, located, as some core essence of self and things.
We understand phenomena to be empty of self-essence but vividly manifesting in appearance just like river flowing, weather weathering, but empty of some fixed unchanging 'I' or 'core' anywhere. Instead everything is a gestalt that dependently originates. We are not denying experience (we are not nihilists), we are simply rejecting a solid view of core-essence in self and phenomena. This allows us to experience the world as fluid, dynamic, interdependently manifesting from moment to moment, which is the true nature of phenomena: ever-changing, empty of a self and dependently arisen. As Thusness puts it in 2005: "Viewing things as solid entities and categorizing them as 'this' or 'that' is due to the poverty of our thinking mechanism, it is not reality."
As I wrote before:
Emptiness is not a thing, but emptiness is also not a nothing. By saying 'emptiness is not ...' is simply to negate the false conceptions of what the Buddhist teachings on Emptiness is about.
Shunyata (Emptiness) means whatever appears are empty of independent or inherent existence, be it a sound, a form, or any other phenomena. This is because it is the 'interconnectedness' that give rise to the sound or experience (The person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears, etc, i.e. the conditions).
Thus, whatever arises interdependently is vividly clear and luminous, but empty of any *independent* or *inherent* existence. This is not the same as nothing or nihilism.
Nagarjuna:
Whatever is dependently co-arisen,
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way. (Treatise, 24.18)
Something that is not dependently arisen,
Such a thing does not exist.
Therefore a nonempty thing
Does not exist. (Treatise, 24.19) -
Originally posted by BroInChrist:
While ultimate truth is not ultimate reality, wouldn't ultimate truth declares or reflects what ultimate reality is? If an ultimate reality is rejected, what then is left of reality? By my lights, the ultimate reality is like the ground of all being or existence. I believe that God is the ulltimate reality, the great I AM. From Him comes the source of all that exists in the universe. The universe exists because God made it, but God is self-existing and eternal. If He is not self-existing, then there must be someone greater. But since God is defined as that which there is no greater, we cannot go backwards or it becomes irrational and illogical. Philosophically speaking God is called the necessary being of which there can only be one.
Questioning on 'Who am I?' or 'Who is the Source?', the I-thought or egoity will dissolve back to Source and that Source is realized.
Something that Thusness wrote in June 2006:
This is an interesting topic and since it is allowed to discuss more about God in a Buddhism forum, I would like to talk a little more about the experience of 'AMness" in all things.
Like a river flowing into the ocean, the self dissolves into nothingness. When a practitioner becomes thoroughly clear about the illusionary nature of the individuality, subject-object division does not take place. A person experiencing “AMness” will find “AMness in everything”. What is it like?
Being free individuality -- coming and going, life and death, all phenomenon merely pop in and out from the background of the AMness. The AMness is not experienced as an ‘entity’ residing anywhere, neither within nor without; rather it is experienced as the ground reality for all phenomenon to take place. Even the moment of subsiding (death), the yogi is thoroughly authenticated with that reality; experiencing the ‘Real’ as clear as it can be. We cannot lose that AMness; rather all things can only dissolve and re-emerges from it. The AMness has not moved, there is no coming and going. This "AMness" is “God”.
It should be understood that while the Buddhists have never denied this transpersonal intelligence, life giving presence/vitality, and luminous clarity/consciousness/awareness, nevertheless our views of inherent existence should be purified through anatta and emptiness otherwise there will not be the releasing of 'I', of centricity or locality.
When anatta and emptiness is directly realized and actualized, we do not attach to an image of ultimate reality, for that transpersonal Presence/Intelligence/Luminosity has no seat of abidance but is all-pervading filling all spaces and forms. That ultimate truth of emptiness is what purifies our false perception of reality. Not implying that it denies reality.
Thusness also wrote in 2009:
I like the comment by Namdrol. He brings out the "viewless" aspect of Dependent Origination. Like Namdrol, I see Dependent Origination as a viewless view that neutralizes all our misconceptions that arise out of the deeply rooted tendency of seeing things 'inherently and dualistically' and eventually gets itself dissolved in the end process. However it must also be understood that "freeing from views" by realizing dependent origination is no ordinary way of negation and is different from the Advaita Vedanta way of negation -- "neti neti". It does not deny the conventional; contrary there is the full acknowledgement and total embracement of the conventional. This is very difficult to express. Experientially when one truly sees dependent origination, one sees the essence-less, attribute-less, trait-less, center-less and connectedness and at the same time, sees the full vividness and luminous presence of appearances. In other words, “Emptiness” is 'the wisdom' to see the Absolute in the Relative without the need to 'abstract' the Absolute from the Relative and seeing Reality as one seamless functioning. In fact any attempt to separate is due to our lack of understanding of dependent origination. This is the explicit message I wish to convey through my post to Gozen. -
Originally posted by Dawnfirstlight:
Are you in control of your body? You can't. You can't stop it from growing old, falling sick and dying.Anything that you are not in control are not yours. The "I" I'm referring to is just referring to our body. There's more to it. There are many experts here who can explain better than me.
There are things beyond the ability of man to control, one of it is aging and death. But there are some things we can do to age well and to delay death, e.g. eat well, exercise and don't be a reckless driver. And there are bodily functions that I can control, like whether to continue typing on the keyboard now or just turn on the TV. In any case, I think the issue of "self" is not about just being identified as the body. If it is, then the self exists because the body exists physically. The Bible speaks of the person as a whole, comprising of body and soul/spirt. Though the body can be separated from the soul/spirit at death, it was not meant to be so originally. God created man as a complete being of body and soul/spirit.
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Originally posted by Weychin:
Using pronouns and words are just a platform to convey ideas. Using "I"is iust a convenient way of relating objective and subjective in a conventional way. I am going to puke, I am puking now, I just puked! "I" is simply like a finger pointing to an occurence, after which one moves on!
Words are not just a platform to convey ideas, they are also the means by which we communicate truths, real truths. If words cannot communicate truth, then it also means they cannot communicate ultimate truths, and any distinction between so-called conventional and ultimate truths becomes incoherent and meaningless. Language is more than just a convenient way of relating objective and subjective, it really communicates what is has happened, is happening, or perhaps what will happen. You said "I" is a finger pointing to an occurrence, but what occurred? And who is the "one" that moves on? Again I hope you see the problem with denying the existence of self. I know it may seem that I am actually challenging a central tenet of Buddhism, but I hope I am not causing offense to you or any Buddhist here, anymore than I would be offended that atheists challenge me on the existence of God issue.
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Originally posted by Weychin:
Good rebuttal! Similiar to what Buddha asked Ananda of where the mind resides in Shurangama Sutra! Stumped me more than twenty years to grasp l, so not easy to grasp! So assuming "I" exist, independent of the aggregates, not a construct, so where do "I" of BroInChrist resides ?
If I may borrow the words used here before, I would deem this question to be those that are to be set aside and categorised under idle speculation. Why? Because it assumes wrongly that self is nothing but matter. It is not. It is like trying to ask which part of you is jealous when you see your girlfriend talking to another guy. The person consists of both the material and the immaterial. If the person is dead you call it a corpse, the word implying the loss of something inherent that makes a living person alive. It is the same question like asking who caused God? But by definition an eternal God has no beginning and thus begs no cause. So the question is mistaken and meaningless to begin with, unless one assumes a wrong view of God as one that has a beginning. But that's not the view of the God spoken of in the Bible.
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Originally posted by Jui:
Unfortunately, apart from asking you to try and experience it for yourself, I do not yet know how to explain the whole experience/experiencer relationship that I wrote earlier to make sense. If you're interested, the first thing you can try to ask yourself is who or what exactly is being referred to when you say "I exist". The key here (in fact, the first step) is to know about this core of existence that is often referred to as the "soul".
For the other points, I'm afraid I'm not actually qualified to talk about the buddhist position since I'm actually quite bad at understanding scripture. So what I'm writing from here on is likely to be not what the guys in this forum would accept as the "correct" view:
Let's look at things two ways. The first way is at the thing outside of experience i.e. "objective reality". Does the Sun exist? Sure. But the Sun itself is made up of a bunch of matter. It's dependent on these stuff to exist. Just like a car is reliant on all its parts existing to be given a label called a "car". So, conventionally, they exist. But the way they exist is through dependence on other factors so that we can affix labels on them.
The second way is to look at experience ("subjective reality") itself. Does the sun exist? Yes I experience it as existing, thanks to my senses. If for some reason I experience sunlight as utterly cold then my experience of the sun is totally different to yours. In this sense, yes it's like the blind men and elephant analogy.
But the fact is, there's no way to experience "objective reality". Experience is all we have. Some buddhists who lean towards the earlier theravada teachings believe that the Buddha actually had no interest in "objective reality", because there's no way to get to experience it anyway. The problems we have are just inside our world of experience.
It is interesting the number of times the word "yourself" was used yet it's reality is denied. To me it's a worldview which is always inconsistent with itself. Think of the following statement
I AM TELLING YOU THAT THERE IS NO YOU OR ME
If the statement is true, it is self-refuting and is false.
Re the point about the sun and the car. I would say that the problem is in trying to deconstruct things or to engage in some kind of reductionism as a worldview. Yes, a car is the sum of it parts and taken apart I do not have a car. So I won't call the unassembled parts a car, any more than I would call a bagful of alphabet letters a novel. We should call things as they are and not deconstruct for the sake of deconstructing. The unassembled parts of a car in a workshop is just as real as a completed car in the carpark.
Even the three blind men and the elephant? Yes the blind men are wrong, but someone was right, the narrator! The elephant has an objective reality, we need to align ourselves to objective reality, not deny that it exists. This is why truth is discovered, not invented. I believe we have a word for invented truths, lies.