Lao Tzu named it. He called it the Tao.RobertGreenSky wrote:That is the gobbledygook! Nagarjuna and Laozi held otherwise and we've quoted the material again and again. We've quoted Laozi that the Dao [itself!] is beyond naming (= being beyond thinking).I'm sorry, but this is all gobbledy-gook. A person is either rational or he isn't. ... It is important to grasp that no one can ever move beyond the limits of reason. Not even the Tao itself is beyond the limits of reason ...
He even talked about it intelligently which shows that it isn't beyond the realm of thought.
Robert, you really need to back away from the scripts that have captured your mind and learn to look at what is actually happening in front of you.
When presented with direct information from two sources that Nagarjuna disputed A = A you simply ignored it. Agree with Nagarjuna's position on A = A or disagree with it, either way you lose.
Nagarjuna didn't dispute A=A. If you think he did, then you have no understanding of him at all. He was, in fact, strictly logical in all of his teachings - indeed, logical to the point of dryness. He was perhaps a bit too much like Spock.
Understanding the emptiness of all things, and living in its light, doesn't require us to reject A=A, just as it doesn't require us to reject concepts and goals. You're barking up the wrong tree here. Seriously.
I wholeheartedly agree with him, but it doesn't mean what you want it to mean. Halting the concept-forming activities of the mind means learning how to stop making any movements towards enlightenment in the knowledge that nothing really exists. This is a very difficult process because our egos instinctively want to think of enlightenment as a place of security, or bliss, or insight, or some other kind of heaven that exists somewhere else, somewhere away from what is actually happening in the current moment. It takes a supreme act of faith, combined with the intellectual work of nipping deluded thought-processes in the bud, to 100% convince oneself of the truth - namely, that what is currently happening in the moment is in fact nirvana.We read from Huang Po and from your own webpage: If you would spend all your time - walking, standing, sitting or lying down - learning to halt the concept-forming activities of your own mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining your goal. (- Huang Po)
Now given Huang Po said learn to halt the concept-forming activities of your mind, do you agree with Huang Po or do you disagree with him?
This is what is really meant by "samsara". It refers to a particular hell experienced by the advanced student as he chases mirages of enlightenment that have been whipped up subconsciously by his ego - or in Huang Po's language, that have been formed conceptually by the mind. The advanced student's natural propensity to seek enlightenment, formed by months and years of desiring the ultimate truth, causes his ego to turn it into a search for heaven, and as soon as he experiences a heaven of some kind, he instinctively thinks that he has experienced enlightenment, or at least that he is nearing its proximity. And then when the heaven dissipates and he is suddenly floundering back in the normal world again and the hells of dissatisfaction are gripping him, his ego is caused to want to seek heaven once more. And so he goes round and round the wheel of samsara - entering into nirvana, then leaving it again, then looking about for it once more - all the while not knowing how to get off it. And in his samsaric state, he doesn't realize that it is all an illusion.
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