I hope nobody will bother wasting time and effort to reply to
Herzog's insanity here. Please remember off topic posts will be
removed, and keep posts practical, constructive and within the
range of reason. I will be restricting pointless arguments. No
point wasting time on people who are not interested in learning or
practicing Buddhism and making bad karma by expressing all sorts of
negativities about dharma.
-------------
To Sgforumposter:
Yes, pretty long (can't blame you for that because I also have that
habit of writing long posts) and I also don't know where to begin.
Anyway I am curious, do you have a particular inclination towards a
particular tradition of Buddhism or are you a non-sectarian?
As to your post: I am not disagreeing that when we practice bare
attention, vipassana, we are not engaging with contents, mental
perception or formations or volition -- just bare sensate reality.
In fact I have reiterated this a few times in my previous posts.
However not engaging in the contents and stories of thought, the
'me' story, does not mean we become disassociated with our senses
-- instead we experience all sensations intensely with full
clarity, without subject and object division. We sense bare
sensations, which is all the manifestation of pure awareness
without subject-object division, and not get involved with
attachment to the contents of our thoughts.
There is just pure seeing which is not other than scenery, pure
hearing not other than sounds, and all these are the manifestation
of awareness without a seer, hearer, observer. Is eyes and ears
involved? Of course, without eyes and ears there cannot be the
manifestation -- the manifestation are dependently originated along
with causes and conditions in which eyes and ears are part of them.
However neither the 'eyes' or the 'ears' are the 'hearer' or 'seer'
-- they are just a condition for a non-dual manifestation without
seer-seen division.
Which also brings me to your question, where does the sense of
self arise? In Buddhism the Buddha never taught anything about a
locality, you'll never read a passage saying 'the Dharmas arise
from where', nor an Ultimate Source where-in all dharmas are
occuring, instead he only taught empty appearances that are
dependently originated manifestations along with causes and
conditions. And contrary to the usual misunderstanding, this is not
really the exclusive teaching of Mahayana, Prajnaparamita, or
Madhyamika teachings -- for example check out Phena Sutta in Pali
Canon (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.095.than.html).
Ajahn Amaro was also very clear that apart from Anatta (No
'Who'), other aspects such as 'No Where' (non locality), 'No When',
etc are also very important. All these are discussed in Stage Six
of
Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Experience on Spiritual
Enlightenment
An analogy: when we look at a red flower, that redness appears
to be truly 'out there' existing in an outer location with inherent
existence. However a dog wouldn't agree, because to the dog he only
sees a black flower, while other animals and realms can see
something totally different in shape and colour. If you look with
quantum eyesight you'll see mostly empty space, where's the form?
So seeing this, all the apparent characteristics of the 'red'
'flower' is merely an illusion-like appearance that is dependently
originated, there is no substance located 'out there' nor is there
an inherent redness located 'in here' -- merely a dependently
originated mirage.
Similarly if you look at a thought, and observe where does it
arise, where does thought arise, how does it arise, you will
realise that though vividly appearing there is no substance or
locality to thought -- it's nature is empty. Similarly the sense of
self is just made of sensations (such as being bounded to a
location within the head) and thoughts that dependently originate
-- nothing inherent, nothing locatable, no 'where', no 'when', no
'who'. Empty yet vivid.
When we realise emptiness, we will realise that all our notions
of things being located 'out there', 'in here', or any where, is
simply a manifestation of our deeply rooted views of inherent
existence. It is the manifestation of our karmic
propensities/conditioning that can only be de-constructed through
insights into the two emptinesses (of self and phenomena).
At an earlier phase like the I AMness you're experiencing now,
Awareness is mistaken as an Ultimate Source that is like a vast
container in which manifestation pops in and out of it, and the
vast container-like Awareness remains unaffected, unchanged.
Further insights are required to see that there is no
Source/Manifestation dichotomy: All manifestations themselves are
Source, and there is no other Source or Witnessing background to
sink back to. There is no 'sense of self' or 'thoughts arising and
subsiding within Awareness' because all thoughts, all phenomena
themselves are none other than Awareness.
The Buddha criticized the view of Awareness as metaphysical
substratum and essence, and as Thanissaro Bhikkhu said in a
commentary on this sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.001.than.html:
Although at present we rarely think in the same terms as the
Samkhya philosophers, there has long been — and still is — a common
tendency to create a "Buddhist" metaphysics in which the experience
of emptiness, the Unconditioned, the Dharma-body, Buddha-nature,
rigpa, etc., is said to function as the ground of being from which
the "All" — the entirety of our sensory & mental experience —
is said to spring and to which we return when we meditate. Some
people think that these theories are the inventions of scholars
without any direct meditative experience, but actually they have
most often originated among meditators, who label (or in the words
of the discourse, "perceive") a particular meditative experience as
the ultimate goal, identify with it in a subtle way (as when we are
told that "we are the knowing"), and then view that level of
experience as the ground of being out of which all other experience
comes.
Any teaching that follows these lines would be subject to
the same criticism that the Buddha directed against the monks who
first heard this discourse.
And anyway, interesting fact, as Rob Burbea (very enlightened
teacher at Insight Meditation Society) said in the very good talk
Realizing the Nature of Mind:
One time the Buddha to a group of monks and he
basically told them not to see Awareness as The Source of all
things. So this sense of there being a vast awareness and
everything just appears out of that and disappears back into it,
beautiful as that is, he told them that’s actually not a skillful
way of viewing reality. And that is a very interesting sutta,
because it’s one of the only suttas where at the end it doesn’t say
the monks rejoiced in his words.
This group of monks didn’t want to hear that.
They were quite happy with that level of insight, lovely as it was,
and it said the monks did not rejoice in the Buddha’s words.
(laughter) And similarly, one runs into this as a teacher, I have
to say. This level is so attractive, it has so much of the flavor
of something ultimate, that often times people are unbudgeable
there.
Yes, I finally found the sutta he was talking about, it was the
one above. And indeed at the end of the sutta it's stated "That
is what the Blessed One said. Displeased, the monks did not delight
in the Blessed One's words."
Thusness also warned about holding onto an ultimate source or
ground of being at
Buddha Nature is NOT "I Am"
I would also appreciate if you point out what I said that you
thought was in disagreement with Satipatthana Sutta. Perhaps you
were misreading me. I was simply saying Satipatthana Sutta never
taught anything about a true self as an eternal observer.
However, I do have a problem with your term 'false self'.
As I and Thusness was telling djhampa (or you, since your
writing style and paragraphing is so similar to djhampa) -- there
is no false and true self. There is just five skandhas including
the mental factors which you are talking about, but nothing about
false self vs true self.
The Buddha in its exclusive Anatta teaching only found in Buddhism
was adamant in teaching that there is no self substance within nor
apart from the five skandhas (check out the Anatta Doctrine section
in http://www.kktanhp.com/Theravada%20Buddhism.htm).
There is no false self vs true self, what he meant is that there is
simply the five skandhas -- and everything including mental
perceptions and volition are simply the mental factors and
components of the five skandhas, it is not a 'false self' in
contrast with a 'true self'. All the five skandhas are anatta, not
self, but there is also no existing self beyond the skandhas. No
inherent self at all.
Also some Hindu non-dual traditions, especially Kashmir Shaivism
but also some of the Advaita teachers were pretty clear that
Brahman and the world are not separated much like the screen and
the contents are one/unified, nevertheless they are still reifying
the mirror-like awareness into a permanent substance (i.e. the
screen), an ultimate Subject that is one with all objects. Even
though non-duality of subject and object is experienced, this is
still not the same as Anatta because of the reification of
Consciousness as an ontological essence. So be careful of reifying
any substance even though subject-object are unified. Stage 4 is
the phase where we can't sync our dualistic view with direct
experience. This is the difference between Thusness Stage 4 and
Thuness Stage 5 in
Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Experience on Spiritual
Enlightenment
In the Pali suttas, Buddha never talk about non-duality of
subject and object, but it is already a 'given', it is implied.
There is no subject and object are one sort of teaching -- when
there is absolutely No Subject, there is no unification of Subject
with Objects either. In the suttas there is never was there a split
of subject and object from the beginning, there is always anatta
and phenomena self-liberates because it dependently orginates. The
phenomena itself is the mirror (awareness), there is no ultimate
mirror which is 'one' with contents.
If however you are talking from a Mahayana true self/buddha-nature
point of view, then to prevent falling into the extremes of
eternalism (which is the Hindu view that there is a transcendental
eternal substance or atman-Brahman apart from the impermanent five
skandhas), the Mahayana teachings and teachers state clearly that
Impermanence is Buddha-Nature (Zen Master Dogen, Zen Patriarch
Hui-Neng).
This does not mean Buddha-Nature is impermanent in the sense that
it has a beginning and end -- it is eternal, but it is not a
permanent eternal but a changing eternality -- which means it is a
flow and continuum that never ceases like river flowing
ceaselessly. Being like the flow of water it is lacking in any
substantial permanent essence. There is no inherent self. And as
Mahayogi Shridhar S.J.B. Rana Rinpoche says:
Vedànta vis-à-vis Shentong
The Buddha said that he taught something that had been lost for a
long time. But the Vedas and the Vedic Bràhmaõa-s of the Buddha’s
time, whom the Buddha met, had been and are still teaching the
existence of true âtmà, and ‘eternal non-dual cognition’ as the
Ultimate Reality.
If we glance through the Jain literature, we again find that no
Jain scholar mentions that the Buddhists believed in an eternal /
permanent non-dual cognition as the ultimate reality. At least,
those Jain scholars after Asanga should have done so, if that was
how the Uttara Tantra had been interpreted in India.
If we analyze both the Hindu Sankaràcàrya’s and the Buddhist
Sàntarakùita’s refutation, we find that both agree with the view of
the Hindu Advaita Vedànta, which is that the ultimate reality
(âtmà) is an unchanging, eternal non-dual cognition and that the
Buddhists as a whole do not agree that the ultimate reality is an
eternal, unchanging non-dual cognition, but rather an changing
eternal non-dual cognition. These statements found in the 6th
century Hindu and the 9th century Buddhist (both were after the
Uttara Tantra and Asanga), show that the ultimate reality as an
unchanging, eternal non-dual cognition is a Hindu view and is
non-existent amongst the Buddhists of India. Not only was such a
view non-existent amongst Buddhists of India, but also it was
refuted as a wrong view by scholars like Sàntarakùita. He even
writes that if and when Buddhists use the word ‘eternal’ (nitya),
it means ‘pariõàmi nitya’, i.e., changing eternal, and not the
Hindu kind of eternal, which always remains unchanged.
Also sutras such as Shurangama Sutra is also very clear that the
Five Skandhas are all Buddha-Nature, there is no distinction
between the 'false self of skandhas' vs an eternal unchanging 'true
self'. This is the meaning of non-duality.
If your view is that Buddha-Nature is a permanent background
substance in which thoughts and phenomena arise from and subside
to, then unfortunately this is the eternalist Hindu view (and the
view of other monist contemplative traditions) and not the Buddha's
insight. In Buddhism we teach Anatta and Dependent Origination, not
an Ultimate God that is the source of all cosmic beings and worlds.
There is no denying of Awareness, but we must not experience
duality, we have to experience non-dual awareness. And even though
if we experiece non-dual awareness, we must not fall into the
subtle wrong views (like a universal cosmic consciousness) -- so
keep the experience, but refine the views, as Thusness, Rob Burbea,
and other teachers have said.
"Ananda, you have not yet understood that all the defiling
objects that appear, all the illusory, ephemeral phenomena, spring
up in the very spot where they also come to an end. Their phenomena aspects are
illusory and false, but their nature is in truth the bright
substance of wonderful enlightenment. Thus it is throughout, up to
the five skandhas and the six entrances, to the twelve places and
the eighteen realms; the union and mixture
of various causes and conditions account for their illusory and
false existence, and the separation and dispersion of the causes
and conditions result in their illusory and false extinction.
Who would have thought that
production and extinction, coming and going are fundamentally the
eternal wonderful light of the Tathagata, the unmoving,
all-pervading perfection, the wonderful nature of True Suchness! If
within the true and eternal nature one seeks coming and going,
confusion and enlightenment, or birth and death, one will never
find them."
.
.
"You still have not
realized that in the Treasury of the Tathagata, the nature of form
is true emptiness and the nature of emptiness is true form. That
fundamental purity pervades the Dharma Realm.
Beings’ minds absorb itaccording to their capacity to know.
Whatever manifests does so in compliance with karma. Ignorant of
that fact, people of the world are so deluded as to assign its
origin to causes and conditions or to spontaneity. These mistakes,
which arise from the discriminations and reasoning processes of the
mind, are nothing but the play of empty and meaningless words."
