Suffering Revisited

[Dennis Mahar]

Inherent existence is the error of thinking.

[ardy]

The nutters and the pretenders are part of the territory and maybe the price you have to pay on this site to get the great interactions that happen from time to time.

Just ignore them and they will go away [unless you think you can help them in which case offer advice offline? if you feel up to it].

I don't think ignoring pretenders, of Dennis' kind, works at all. Spiritlessness is so widespread, that his kind actually appear plausible. He has to be tackled front-on, or else he infects others with his spiritlessness. Do-nothing Zen is a terrible disease. His words are just the kind of thing that world-weary newcomers will gravitate to, in the belief it's real Zen. And they'll have given their treasured minds to a thief.

The obvious nutters like Lox can be deleted when they become tiresome.

The totally illogical postings are amusing and brings some lightness to what can become an intellectual challenge to those of us not as smart as some of you.

If you want to have a clean out go ahead, but for me as a newcomer I am enjoying the forum and several of it's members very much.

Thanks for the feedback. We can certainly find better ways to create comical relief, than the low-grade mush or mindlessness from Kunga and Lox types, or the more subtle delusions of Dennis types.


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Kelly - "Do-nothing Zen is a terrible disease." One of the worst, and it is easy with the spiritual world full of magazine readers, Koan conclusion hunters and word droppers. They think 'why sit in meditation for hours when I am sure I can get there by doing little to nothing. Or worse 'I am already there'.

Just imagine how frustrating it must have been to be surrounded by people chanting Buddha's name and looking for the Western Heaven, when as a zen master you know that it is not the easiest route, or maybe not a route at all. Yet the people at your monastery are disappearing into this piece of simplicity.

Then there is the work Dogen did to rebuild what was a dying Zen culture in Japan. A single person makes a great difference.

People will always gravitate to what seems easiest, even though many times it ends up being the hardest route.

Nothing to get too upset about, just continue what you are doing, the end result is always closest when it seems furthest away.

The average person is the average person. Nothing you can do about that. Often feel that way myself as I made the jump off the spiritual road many years ago.

[Dennis Mahar]

When the emptiness of the object is seen clearly emptiness becomes a nonconceptual realisation.
we must not rely on a dualistic understanding but on nonconceptual wisdom.

The phenomenon constructed by the mind must be realised as nonsubstantial.

To empty the object is to refute its appearance as existing independently of your mind.
suffering is the belief that all phenomena have a real existence independent of the meaning making machine.

the perceiver and the perceived are not separate.