GENIUS FORUMS

Dan Rowden wrote:Your attitude is bemusing. If you post and spout opinions then you should expect to be asked questions. How do think you can learn if you are not challenged to think?

I'm sorry you are bemused.

Jamesh wrote:Matt said What's not dualistic about it? All words are dualistic by logical necessity.

Thats just how words are formed. But concepts themselves can be communicated in a non dualistic fashion - the intent of the communication can be non-dualistic. David for example states many things in a non-dualistic fashion, and has to be pressed to admit that the opposite is also equally valid.

Well, anything you say has a context. Even absolute truths depend on being placed in the proper context. Words have to be defined and understood, they refute particular delusions, etc.

Take "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form".
It is partly a dualistic sentence, but conceptually as a total statement it is not. And that is why it is so pathetic, that is why people have so much trouble with this stuff.

We automatically rationally know it is bullshit, although emptiness is a form of form, form is not emptiness. It is simply irrational to think form does not have qualities. One can only make form into emptiness by defining even more form - by qualifying what emptiness means.

One could as easily say "Form is Fullness, and Fullness is form", and this would be as true as the previous statement. Half true.

A true dualistic statment would be "Form is both empty and full, real and not real".

From this point one can begin to correctly look at individual acpects to determine how and why the whole concept is true.

What I'm saying won't make much sense to you, probably should not have used that phrase as an example, but I couldn't be bothered to think of an another one.

I think what "form is emptiness" means is that it has no inherent existence. If you look at something and form a concept of it, where did that concept come from? Did it come from the object? Did it come from your mind? Did it come from your eye? It comes from everywhere, you can't isolate it in a specific thing. That's what "emptiness" means in this sutra.

Nagarjuna said "Since the intrinsic being of all entities does not exist in their causes and conditions, either together or separately, or in any way at all, they are empty."

This sentence is not rational. To me the intrinsic being of all entities, of all partially defined things IS their causes and conditions, or in my terms, their causal nature and relativities. They are certainly NOT empty.

Those who express statements of truth non-dualistically are essentially religious. They are folks who emotionally only accept one side of an situtation, because it suits their ego, and then deem that to be all that the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I think he was writing that in response to a particular view or philosophy and I think it needs to be understood in that context. Sages don't just pull things out of thin air and say them. They say things with a certain audience in mind.

Well, anything you say has a context. Even absolute truths depend on being placed in the proper context. Words have to be defined and understood, they refute particular delusions, etc.

I don’t accept this excuse. I think when speaking of absolute truths one should set the context.

Here is an example. Jesus Christ. If he had of worded things better, more specifically, then his followers would not have had as much opportunity to corrupt them to suit their own ego's. The same goes for the Buddha. Because they didn’t say things properly subsequent followers misinterpret them and we now have people who believe in heaven and reincarnation.

I think what "form is emptiness" means is that it has no inherent existence. If you look at something and form a concept of it, where did that concept come from? Did it come from the object? Did it come from your mind? Did it come from your eye? It comes from everywhere, you can't isolate it in a specific thing. That's what "emptiness" means in this sutra.

Sure, but none of that actually equates to any form of emptiness. It just points to a partial lack of a self-causal nature. I used the word partial on purpose. More later.

Still I do accept that one should refer to the entire passage this quote came from.

I think he was writing that in response to a particular view or philosophy and I think it needs to be understood in that context. Sages don't just pull things out of thin air and say them. They say things with a certain audience in mind.

Why are you in the business of making excuses for sages. As far as I am concerned they should not be saying things with a particular audience in mind. In answering a question or whatever, they should just state the truth and if it requires more words then so be it.

Sages don't just pull things out of thin air and say them.

If they believe that Form is Emptiness - how could they not just "pull things out of thin air".

I wrote this for another thread, where someone was talking about the self - but I'll post it here instead.

The self is only delusional to the degree that it thinks non-dualistically. Lets look at its very existence for example.

Does the self exist - undoubtedly. YOU are here reading this.

Does the self not exist - undoubtedly. You do not exist to the point that you are separate from the totality. You do not have intrinsic permanence. You were not self caused, no part of you "fully" came about by your own making.


The truth is in the middle. The reason I used the word "fully" above, is that your self does partly come about by your own making, though the making is just a physical thing, not as a self-determined creation. You interrelate with the universe as a whole structure, as a whole causal flow. The degree that you act as a whole structure is the degree that you are real.

Acting as a whole structure is different to the sum of individual parts. In terms of the perspective from that of absolutely divided parts, then yes the self does not exist, as there is no "one".

Causes are a two way affair, and at the level of parts, is always equal. It is not necessary equal at the level of the whole, however and this allows causal sets to grow or decline, depending on how synergistic or not your causal pattern is to that which surrounds it.

Eating is a good example. If you eat your body becomes larger. Sets of lower level causal patterns transform the food to become part of your total causal pattern.

The same applies to consciousness, if you eat from the tree of knowledge and keep your body in good shape, then you will become more conscious. There will be more in your brain that can find matches with what is outside it, so you become more conscious of reality.

Buddhists and people around here do not accept the existence of a "whole". It is more convenient to ignore this reality, as dualistic conceptions are more difficult than non-dualistic one's (look at the mind of any fundamentalist for example and you will see this). For any meaning or purpose one has, then one needs illusionary degrees of non-duality to prompt emotional responses into action. Values stem from non-dualistic thinking. Values are required in order to take action, in order to do things.

It is non-duality that makes things real. Realness comes with the degree something is emotionally valued, be it negatively or positively. A child thinks Santa is real because they cannot see the other side of the picture. A person thinks a creator God is real because they cannot see the nature of reality. An insane person thinks the demons in their head are real, because they cannot see how these demons came about (by a combination of rationally negative desires, and irrational guilt over these desires, Desires come about because one doesn't to feel existent enough, while guilt comes about because one feels too existent).

One's observation of the world should show them that everything is of a plus and minus nature. If one side gains another loses.

Whatever the blooming infinite might be is irrelevant to us, although it is interesting as a conundrum, it is otherwise useless. It is the domain of "faith" - belief without proof. We only need to know about the world of form, and all the QRS truths apply to form, except this concept of emptiness. We can only apply, to this infinite whatever, concepts that come from form. In other words the QRS know nothing about the infinite, no one does, they only know about form and its relationships.

Jamesh wrote:Well, anything you say has a context. Even absolute truths depend on being placed in the proper context. Words have to be defined and understood, they refute particular delusions, etc.

I don’t accept this excuse. I think when speaking of absolute truths one should set the context.

You can't prevent people from taking your words out of context no matter how careful you are.

Here is an example. Jesus Christ. If he had of worded things better, more specifically, then his followers would not have had as much opportunity to corrupt them to suit their own ego's. The same goes for the Buddha. Because they didn’t say things properly subsequent followers misinterpret them and we now have people who believe in heaven and reincarnation.

I don't know.

I think what "form is emptiness" means is that it has no inherent existence. If you look at something and form a concept of it, where did that concept come from? Did it come from the object? Did it come from your mind? Did it come from your eye? It comes from everywhere, you can't isolate it in a specific thing. That's what "emptiness" means in this sutra.

Sure, but none of that actually equates to any form of emptiness. It just points to a partial lack of a self-causal nature. I used the word partial on purpose. More later.

Okay.

Still I do accept that one should refer to the entire passage this quote came from.

I think most people on here know it came from the Heart Sutra.

I think he was writing that in response to a particular view or philosophy and I think it needs to be understood in that context. Sages don't just pull things out of thin air and say them. They say things with a certain audience in mind.

Why are you in the business of making excuses for sages. As far as I am concerned they should not be saying things with a particular audience in mind. In answering a question or whatever, they should just state the truth and if it requires more words then so be it.

I'm not making excuses for sages, I'm making a logical point about them. What you're proposing is totally unrealistic for anybody, including sages. It's utterly impossible to say a complete thing that everyone in human history will understand. It's absurd to even contemplate.

Sages don't just pull things out of thin air and say them.

If they believe that Form is Emptiness - how could they not just "pull things out of thin air".

I mean they say things in response to certain situations. There's always an occasion to communicate.

Dan Rowden wrote:If you post and spout opinions then you should expect to be asked questions.

Dan's right, Hades. If you compost and sprout onions you should expect to be asked about gardening.

Sorry, sorry, everyone, Spring is in the air today in Arizona!

Point still stands, though.