Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Merry Christmas to all!!
[b] quote:Originally posted by AndrewPKYap:
AEN should be excited with this because Buddhists too, believe in a
universal consciousness..... 
Not... really.
All manifestation are inseperable in one taste, but there is no
such thing as a One Absolute All Pervading Consciousness or Soul
behind manifestation. This belongs more to the Hindu concept.
Awareness/consciousness cannot be separated from conditions...
There is no 'One Absolute' behind everything... but rather every
conditioned arising, dependent arising is an absolute in itself!!
The chirping of the bird outside... is an arising of an absolute...
is itself pristine awareness...
Understanding this, thoughts is the universe, the
experiences arising in the 'field' of the individual being is the
universe... there is no 'universe' apart from that arising.. When
you eat an apple, it is the entire universe that eats the
apple.
The problem when nonduality is glimpsed but not the nature of
emptiness and dependent arising is that the practitioner will be
inclined to form concepts of a Monistic all pervading subtrate
behind all things... and make funny concepts like "you are me" and
"i am you" as if we share the same soul... In fact if nonduality is
seen very deeply, one would see that this is false..
You'll never see anything about a universal soul in Buddhism. Yet,
our true nature is all pervading and all manifestation have one
taste, the manifestation of our pristine awareness.
Just to emphasize that.. in Buddhism... we only have individual
mindstreams (Even though the mindstream is of the nature of Anatta
or 'not-self', and there is no self within nor apart from that
mindstream), but never any high concepts like 'universal
consciousness', 'universal soul' of that sort that belongs to
hinduism and new age. Sometimes things like telepathy or remote
viewing can occur, but it has to do with the nature of non-locality
and dependent origination, which is something different.
Just recalled, I posted this in dependent origination and middle way:
BTW quite recently, I have showed Thusness some of the quotations
from an E-Sangha administrator and dharma teacher, Loppon Namdrol.
Thusness commented (from these posts) that the writer is an
enlightened persons.
But in the end, one's rigpa is one's own rigpa, and not anyone
elses. And when it is totally realized, all sense of self and other
vanish anyway, so the identity issue will also vanish. But in terms
of experiencing rigpa, it is your own rigpa you are experiencing,
no one else's.
N
N
Because the rigpa you experience is your own, and it isn't
anyone else's; just as when you taste sweet, it is your own
experience, and no one else's.
Okay, the rigpa is one's own... but then doing guru yoga, aren't
we (in instant presence) one with the guru's
nature....indivisible... or is that somehow not the case?
PS-- thanks everyone for many wonderful posts above....
*
The knowledge is the same. It is like, for example, when two people
are looking at the same thing and both recognize it at the same
time, at that moment, though their experience is personal, it
concerns the same thing.
N
You should not focus on words like "primordial state" other than
to understand it refers to the union of dependent origination and
emptiness in a Dzogchen context.
------------------
more recently... by the same poster
QUOTE(Durkhrod Chogori @ Dec 9 2007, 07:50 PM)
Moreover we have the concept of Universal consciousness...
*
No, actually, we don't.
Oh yeah, and this comes from an interesting topic that
AndrewPKYap may want to read, its called the logic of rebirth
it's funny how similar clyde is to andrewpkyap in some
ways.
QUOTE(clyde @ Dec 21 2007, 12:34 PM)
Namdrol;
The starting point is not the assertion or denial of rebirth, but
whether the physical or mental is primary. I understand that
materialists hold that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the
body. I also understand that some Buddhists hold that the physical
is dependent on the mind. My view, and I believe it is shared by
some Buddhists, is that consciousness and body, the physical and
the mind are co-dependent occurrences, each arising in mutual
interdependence with the other.
*
Mind and matter are held to be mutually conditioning [rather than
mutually dependent] by all Buddhist schools. This has to be the
case, for example, in order for there to be a percept of a physical
object through a physical sense organ.
Even so, as I implied above, the consequence of an absolute mutual
dependence between a given body and a given mind still leads to a
physicalist assertion, i.e. without that specific body, that
specific mind is not possible. You might argue, it is also the case
that without that specific mind that specific body is also
impossible, but where as it is easy to see where the raw material
for a body can come from, it is not so easy to see where the raw
material out of which a coherent consciousness might arise from, it
is not arising from a neural net.
Even if you argue that they arise together i.e. using some emergent
property theory ala complexity, it is still a fundamentally
physicalist argument.
Notions of
universal consciousnesses are non-Buddhist beliefs entirely and can
be left out of this discussion.
N
