Suffering Revisited

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Buddha taught dependent arising/bliss

Buddha taught life is suffering, and the path to the cessation of existence which is not fully realized while living (life), hence why there was a designation specified directly for an enlightened being which remained in the world only to teach until his final freedom.

At his death he explained no new existence would await him for he had no craving for existence. How does that fit in with your story exactly.

Not that the writings of anyone change the fact that suffering and pain don't disappear because they are empty, how would you know anyway? Are you typing from a torture chamber, starving, experiencing extreme unending pain from a brain tumor, or are you living well in Australia?

How about if you can even mouth the word "bliss" with a hot poker in your mouth, we will all believe you that suffering isn't suffering cause its empty, and we will inform the buddhists that Buddha meant exactly the opposite of what he said :)

Though I expect you would be in extreme agony and unbearable pain, the opposites of bliss.

[Kelly Jones]

DM: the direct experience of emptiness discovers a complete absence, groundlessness, nothingness.
You have not thought thru' causality.

KJ: So you think language and concepts have to be got rid of, before one can directly experience emptiness, do you?

DM: an end to philosophy obviously.

job done.

Try to give a straight, clear answer. Is your answer, "yes" or "no"?


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[Dennis Mahar]

Language and concepts are empty of inherent existence.
they are dependent arising.
consciousness is dependently arising.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

There you go again, anything becomes too straight forward and you have to ignore it as if you never read anything.

[Leyla Shen]

an end to philosophy obviously.

job done.

Well, if you mean an end to grasping philosophical insight as anything other than philosophical insight which leads to the end of philosophising by means of realising itself, it's an objective I share with you.

If, on the other hand, what you mean by this is the cessation of reason and philosophical insight altogether, I think that would indeed constitute a living death.

[Kelly Jones]

Dennis, your evasive answers, hiding behind your constantly-repeated mantras, don't fool anyone. You are constantly on the repeat mode with these mantras, using them like a Roman foot soldier his shield in a phalanx. And, just like the phalanx soldier when attacked, the only time you put the shield aside is to launch your own invectives. That's when we see the real Dennis: the one who is saying what he really believes.

It's obvious that you believe words and concepts are some kind of obstruction to enlightenment, which is why you continue, day after day, post after post, Chinese-water-torturing people here with your dripping mantra. For one thing, it makes for deeply unhelpful and obstructive behaviour when people are discussing the in's and out's of the great matter; it's actually spiritless behaviour, because it does nothing to liberate the mind and alert it to its free-flowing, true nature. It is like trying to shoe-horn all the manifold and infinite varieties of human psychology into a little box, trying to cure all ills with one mass-produced pill. Enlightenment doesn't work that way. It's not about holding onto mantras.

For another thing, can't you see your inability to use words and concepts freely shows a blocked mind?

You're a bit retarded, frankly.


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[Diebert van Rhijn]

It's more the problematic conviction that "carelessness is bliss". Detachment from meaning is not liberation, no end of ignorance. Their mistake lies in missing what is being thrown up by them in opposition to accomplish such "feat". A shadow monster of self, free to roam and plunder: troll.

[Dennis Mahar]

Language and concepts are empty

Dont have to string out justifiers
No monkey tricks.

Bud diagnosed suffering
recommended treatment
TAUGHT blss/dependent arising

[Cahoot]

Trolls. Lol.

To offer an empirical view of what’s understood of the apriori offerings:

“So you think language and concepts have to be got rid of, before one can directly experience emptiness, do you?”

No more than they have to be got rid of in a dream. Even though language and concepts do appear in a dream, they spontaneously dissolve in the dream because ego identity, which attaches to and claims to be cause of the thought or concept via apprehension of the same, is much weaker when it arises in a dream, and just as the ego experiences itself as permanent, the thoughts and concepts ego claims to be the cause of, are experienced as permanent. In a dream, when perceived phenomena are not attached to the ego identity, continuity of meaning caused by ego attachment to language and concepts detaches. Impermanence experienced.

The same direct experience of emptiness can happen in the waking dream of life and it can happen to the extent that ego loses control and disappears, and cannot be found. If the need for that conceptual anchor to phenomena still exists, you want to find ego. You can’t, and this is where you face fear because in addition to all its limitations, ego is an enormous comfort in life. If you knew beforehand what its like to lose it, you wouldn’t want to. Though ego eventually returns to the position it has occupied for a lifetime, its dominant status is diminished, its nature now apparent so that the wisdom of the body strengthens underdeveloped ways to navigate the waking dream.

A method of bringing about the direct experience of emptiness is to acclimate the body to the non-dual experience of the cessation of thought. This can be accomplished with formal seated meditation. An analogy to the non-dual state of the cessation of thought is the experience of physical balance in which the body learns to stay upright without the need of thought. As with ego losing dominance, in acclimating the body to the non-dual experience of no-thought, the natural impermanence of thought is realized non-conceptually, which makes the nature of thought apparent. As with siddhis that may or may not arise, integral to the experience of no-thought is non-attachment to thoughts as they appear.

This non-attachment lies outside the limitations of the conceptual mind, though the conceptual mind can engage in techniques that to lead up to the non-attachment. Lead up to in the sense that the discipline of attention that ends thought effectively transforms, for instance, the burning desire that first fueled dualistic, conceptual self-enquiry into a self-sustaining engine that outlasts the endurance of conceptual thought.

Certainly conceptual mind is necessary for transmission of information, and for fitting direct non-dual experience of emptiness into a hierarchical conceptual structure.

Emptiness can also be experienced dualistically via an intellectual apprehension of phenomena’s dependant nature whenever attention is moved to focus on this.

Of course there’s more. Insatiable dualism always wants more.

[Leyla Shen]

You C&P'ed that, didn't you?

[Cahoot]

Copied? No. Just reporting the news.

[Leyla Shen]

A method of bringing about the direct experience of emptiness is to acclimate the body to the non-dual experience of the cessation of thought. This can be accomplished with formal seated meditation. An analogy to the non-dual state of the cessation of thought is the experience of physical balance in which the body learns to stay upright without the need of thought.

Hell, animals do that all the time. What's "non-dual" about it?

[jupiviv]

No more than they have to be got rid of in a dream. Even though language and concepts do appear in a dream, they spontaneously dissolve in the dream because ego identity, which attaches to and claims to be cause of the thought or concept via apprehension of the same, is much weaker when it arises in a dream, and just as the ego experiences itself as permanent, the thoughts and concepts ego claims to be the cause of, are experienced as permanent. In a dream, when perceived phenomena are not attached to the ego identity, continuity of meaning caused by ego attachment to language and concepts detaches. Impermanence experienced.

My unbornness-channeling conduit is choked up with self particles. This leads me to think that this idea is wrong because, according to its own logic, its meaning is impermanent. I know it's hard for one such as you, but could you possibly muster up enough ego-wrong to produce a bad karma object code that makes it more perspicuous to a non-existent-but-illusory-appearance-generating body-mind construct like myself?

A method of bringing about the direct experience of emptiness is to acclimate the body to the non-dual experience of the cessation of thought. This can be accomplished with formal seated meditation.

So we can experience non-duality by using dualities to get rid of other dualities? Please explain how that works.

This non-attachment lies outside the limitations of the conceptual mind, though the conceptual mind can engage in techniques that to lead up to the non-attachment.

Wow, so our minds can transport us to a plane beyond this world of hurt if we perform some techniques?

I've never heard anything so outrageous and yet utterly amazing in my life!! What are these techniques?! Tell me more!

Certainly conceptual mind is necessary for transmission of information, and for fitting direct non-dual experience of emptiness into a hierarchical conceptual structure.

We need duality to directly experience something that cannot be directly experienced dualistically? May I be illuminated further?

Emptiness can also be experienced dualistically via an intellectual apprehension of phenomena’s dependant nature whenever attention is moved to focus on this.

So emptiness, which is beyond any attribute, can be experienced as the attribute of dependence in phenomena? This spirituality thing gets better and better!

Namahkar _/\_

[Pam Seeback]

Language and concepts are empty

Dont have to string out justifiers
No monkey tricks.

Bud diagnosed suffering
recommended treatment
TAUGHT blss/dependent arising

But Dennis, this is not what you give us, TAUGHT bliss. What you give us is the end result, the effect without the causal relationship, which is about as useful as a math teacher saying to his students "I had to learn calculus, but now that I know calculus, you will know calculus simply by being in my presence, aka, calculus by grokking."

What is your teaching plan of "bliss?" Inquiring minds that want to reason with you the ins and out of bliss want to know. :-)

[Cahoot]

Leyla and Elvis,

I know. It can be a mystery until it’s not.

None of what came through the fingers was faith-based, thus …

I do appreciate the insights and feedback.

:D

[jupiviv]

None of what came through the fingers was faith-based, thus …

I do appreciate the insights and feedback.

I apologise. I've let my illusory self-perpetuating reverse timelessness delude me into thinking that my word-bounded questions could be answered by something less non-inherently attention-ful than your appreciation. My eyes have yet to accustom themselves to the light of non-attached thinglessnessness, and thus are still unable to discern the pearls of appreciation that you have shot in the direction of my selfless essence-bundle.

[Cahoot]

Jupi don’t you see that you’re the little bigot you see?

And sadly, the topic has fallen in the triage of life.

[Kelly Jones]

Cahoot, the reason Jupiviv is right to tease you, is because the cessation of thought, or even trying to stop wanting to think, has absolutely nothing to do with the process of enlightenment. Any time you try to explain your theory, using ideas, thoughts and concepts, you look a right drongo. It's dialectical ineptness.

The reason you can't access anything about enlightenment through such a foolish method is because enlightenment is about what is ultimately true and real. That requires one first to understand what is ultimately true and real. Okay? All such understandings require thinking. The direct experience of Reality comes because of that understanding, not before or by avoiding such.

But go down that little black hole of ignorance if you wish. It's a very popular place, I'm told.

[Kelly Jones]

Language and concepts are empty

Yes, so you you keep saying. But you need to apply this understanding. You know the story about flowers raining on Subhutu, because he hadn't said anything about emptiness? Jump off the pole and live it.

Or can't you hold two thoughts in your head together at the same time?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

There's delusion in the idea of some "direct experience of emptiness". As it's nothing but the oppositional experience with the purpose (!) to remove all meaning and weight from all other experiences. This is the nihilistic element in such that needs to be understood. It's aggressive, it's diminishing. It's a form of violence against anything what might arise in opposition to the self: any contextual, relative reality, truth, reason, proportion, rhyme and logic. A phase the youthful thinker might find himself in sooner or later, tasting the rush of collapse, of power, of death. It's important for the lover of truth to let this pass, too, as its attraction is still a will; this glowing power to annihilate.

Some writings should not be seen as just in error but as abusive, as violence against itself as well against ordered thought or any potential quality of thought. There's a near black and white division with this: one strives for more reason, truth and clarifying, more light -- or one strives to obscure, delude, diminish or destroy those very things, not as goal but as consequence of self-orientation, sense-becoming and false belief on the background, operating.

[Dennis Mahar]

Yeah leyla,
The first postulate post 3317.

[Cahoot]

I see. The confusion of theory with knowing, places undue attention on the integrity and preservation of theory.

Terms like renunciation, compassion, equanimity, thought cessation are better understood as descriptions of inner workings that naturally come about, though they can also pertain to theory and practices designed for the naturally arising experience, as practices are designed to point one.

Someone is putting undue emphasis on thoughts. Looks like someone has a bit of an interest, if not attachment ... maybe even to the thought of enlightenment.

Relax. Abide in the natural state.

No, thinking this or thinking that isn’t a requirement.
Desire is though, until it’s not.

[Cahoot]

There's delusion in the idea of some "direct experience of emptiness". As it's nothing but the oppositional experience with the purpose (!) to remove all meaning and weight from all other experiences. This is the nihilistic element in such that needs to be understood. It's aggressive, it's diminishing. It's a form of violence against anything what might arise in opposition to the self: any contextual, relative reality, truth, reason, proportion, rhyme and logic. A phase the youthful thinker might find himself in sooner or later, tasting the rush of collapse, of power, of death. It's important for the lover of truth to let this pass, too, as its attraction is still a will; this glowing power to annihilate.

Some writings should not be seen as just in error but as abusive, as violence against itself as well against ordered thought or any potential quality of thought. There's a near black and white division with this: one strives for more reason, truth and clarifying, more light -- or one strives to obscure, delude, diminish or destroy those very things, not as goal but as consequence of self-orientation, sense-becoming and false belief on the background, operating.

Poor Deebs. Everything will be all right.

[Leyla Shen]

Yeah leyla,
The first postulate post 3317.

But what is being called "direct experience of emptiness" is erroneously assumed to be just about ridding the mind of incessantly arising, unresolved random thoughts which nag at a person endlessly and without resolution. This phenomenon is not "thinking" (discernment), which by definition is coherent and systematic; free -- logical. It's more like an unwanted side effect; a dis-ease.

I would agree a meditative discipline on the order of "emptying the mind/letting go" here is necessary, since thoughts that unproductively assail the mind are like cave walls between the person and abiding in truth; yes, literally a crippling disability. But that can be done in a matter of weeks (give or take) to a satisfactory result and does not alter the truth that both conditions are emptiness, their respective natures notwithstanding.

The focus at this forum assumes this has already been done and is concerned with the further discipline and application of right thinking, right judgment, right action.

It assumes the prerequisites are in place, or already mastered as a self-discipline.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Doesn't matter if thought is empty, impermanent, dream-like, or that we cling to such experiences because of egotism.

Dennis, or you cahoot, are still yet to answer how "bliss" fits in with "screaming in horrible pain" when someone puts a hot poker to you? Or do you control causality now and such things can't happen? :)

Dennis at least denies reality no matter how impossible it is to deny something so straight forward, just ignore it.