GENIUS FORUMS

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:Bo, I see you constantly using argumentative posturings and logical fallacies in things you say.

Apparently, according to David, anyways, there's a rule that says you can't accuse someone of something without providing proof that they are actually guilty of what you're accusing them of. Or something like that. :) Proof, in this case would be a list of the logical fallacies that Bo has committed. Say what the fallacies are, please.

I'm lazy at the moment, but I'll start it with this: argumentum ad nauseum (saying "you're wrong you're wrong you're wrong" over and over as though repetition will change everyone's mind), argumentum ad hominem (mocking David's claims to enlightenment, his understanding, his reading comprehension... basically, a bunch of things which attack David rather than his argument itself), appeal to authority (mentioning buddhist scriptures without proving that they correctly describe enlightenment, and without showing any understanding himself... talking about enlightenment as though he knows, while not himself being enlightened and hence NOT knowing), and circular reasoning (assuming David is wrong before proving it).

Kow, I'm very distrusting of what people say they are doing, as opposed to what they are really doing.

For instance, when someone says "I'm not making arguments," I see, "I'm making arguments, but they are so poor that I'm gonna cover it up by saying that I'm not arguing. People will believe me simply because my arguments are so bad that they won't look like arguments at all."

Yes, I see a lot in a very short amount of space. Seriously... how could someone actively engage people in a philosophy forum and NOT be arguing? I can only imagine that they'd simply not recognize an argument when they say one... which reminds me of a saying, "when you don't learn metaphysics, you make metaphysical mistakes." (Or, in this case: when you don't learn how to argue, you speak in fallacies.)

David,

It should be obvious that the Totality can never come into being or disappear.

How do we know it couldn't disappear?

There is only such a gap if one's thoughts and experiences are limited, and thus artificially curtailed. The thoughts of the perfectly-enlightened individual are perfectly integrated with his experience. Every thought he has emanates out of a consciousness which is fully aware of the nature of Reality. He doesn't have to cast his thought aside in order to experience "pure being".

This is a very interesting idea, but I am not through with the question yet. It is all well and good to speak of this ideal enlightened person. What you are saying here is that they are fully integrated as to intellectual and experiential. But for those climbing the mountain, there is an awful lot of anecdotal data which says there are these two arms. Look at what Pye wrote - he intellectually entertained the idea of unity but after a year of deep meditation he had some kind of experience of it which was different, and deeper.

Now, for me, I had this experience over 10 years ago which was like an awakening. It was strongly experiential and yet later, months later, new thoughts began welling up in me. One day I stood outside and recalled the Christian notion that God created the world "ex-nihilo" and I thought to myself, (eyes closed and envisioning reality in a 3D kind of way) "God did not create the world from nothing, but from himself, there is no other possibility, all there is, is one thing, God is everything."

Now I call that an intellectual realization and I don't know if I have ever known it experientially.

Already you are defeating yourself here, because the very division you make between "pure being" and "thought" is itself a product of thought. It is a dualistic illusion created by the conceptualizing mind, and can never be anything more than that.

That which is never born and cannot die would be pure being. Knowing I am that is an experience of pure being. What does it have to do with thoughts? Perhaps the problem is in your definition of thoughts. You say thoughts are synonymous with being conscious. Perhaps what people mean by no thoughts arising are the linguistic ones. You refer to any state of awareness as a thought state.

It's not that I make a distinction between pure being and thought. I am pure being and I have thoughts. But to experience my true being I might require that thoughts stop. You can't really experience something that you are unaware of. Most people are not aware that they are true being and it is difficult for them to grasp that as an experience. It might take a boost to get a person to be aware of pure being, and then once they've got it, thoughts could perhaps coexist with it. I have to teach my patients to hear the small grinding noise of the morphine pump. Otherwise they miss it. Once I tell them what to listen for, and make them quiet and tell them just when, they can hear it.

Is pure being in the realm of duality? I think pure being is before the division into the equal and opposite forces that are the engine of this universe. It is easy for us to experience the many but difficult to experience the One.

You will only value the intellect to the degree that you value truth.

I value the intellect extremely highly. But I think it exists within something more primal. Many people value the intellect highly, and have no ability to realize truth. Truth itself must be valued. Back to the question of concepts versus direct experience. Two people can figure the same thing out, one via thinking, and one via experience. I thought my way to unity, but someone else has an experience of unity, they perceive it. That which is perceived is known and not doubted, albeit it may be poorly understood. Now the intellect goes to work!

You speak of the enlightened as an integrated being, but before such a time, the experiential can lead and the intellect follow, or the intellect lead and the experiential follow.

Again, what you are talking about here is the mystical experience/altered state, which is an immeasurably lesser attainment than true enlightenment.

I am going to call the mystical the experiential, because that's what it is. And you have stated that both intellectual understanding and experience is necessary. Dan mentioned 'the threshold between intellect and realisation 'that Naturyl is afraid to open'. Why afraid? It is only an experience that we can fear.

The intellect is not threatened by the experiential!

Far better to encourage people to switch their minds off.

I certainly didn't get the impression from The Three Pillars of Zen that they were trying to switch off the mind or disable the mind. But they do try to cut off its usual mode which is deeply rutted and force the thing up and out of the rut.

Hmmm...it seems Hakuin agrees with you and then again it does not. You say koans are meant to be solved. Sure - but not in the usual way our minds solve things. What about solving an intellectual question could cause a person to

suddenly merge with the basic root of life and everything ceases to exist,

Or if it does, then it is a breakthrough into an ability to think in a different way, one so profound that it finally brings the intellect and experiential together at the apex of the mountain, and creates an integrated being.

I have decided that insight and experience are the knife and the whetstone of enlightenment.

Now this:

As Hakuin points out, the student shouldn't even think about trying to empty his mind. It is completely the wrong way to go about it. Rather, he should gather together every fibre of his intellectual powers and apply them as hard as he can towards resolving the core riddle of existence. Only then, when he has finally broken through into enlightenment, will he be able to understand what it means to be without concepts.

Sounds a lot like what we discussed the other day, that people try to chase the results of enlightenment, to copy the symptoms by force, rather than getting the breakthrough first.

David, I think you missed Bo's point. It isn't that laughter can't be understood by thinking, but if you have never laughed or seen laughter, no thinking will let you know it. You've got to experience it. Did you read Dune? We should revive the word grok.

Bo wrote:

DQ: Any teaching that seeks to disable the mind is an evil teaching, and has nothing to do with the path to enlightenment.

Bo: What was said does not mean it disables the mind, it does not disable the intellect, it does not switch the mind off.

Are you disagreeing with kowtaaia (and modern Buddhists generally) that the absence of thought is a necessary requirement for the experience of enlightenment?

You still haven't figured out the one about anatta yet, right? You are not your thoughts? Yet that's all you are right now? Who is it that claims to enlightened? The basics of Buddhism?

Okay, let's look at what you wrote about these things:

Here's the basics:

One of the cornerstones of the Buddhist teaching is anatta, annica and dukkha.

The Buddha taught that all conditoned things are subject to cessation.

Understood.

He taught that the path to the Deathless/Unconditioned is through heedfulness.

If by "heedfulness" you mean keeping the mind focused on truth, then fine, understood.

The anatta principle is based on the premise that the Five Aggregates are not-self. The Five Aggregates are form, perception, consciousness, sensation and mental aggregates (thoughts).

Yes, all of them lack inherent existence. Understood.

You are led by your thoughts, owned by your thoughts, you ARE your thoughts and yet you go on arguing and thinking you have some great enlightenment when you can't even see that you just owned by these thoughts (in some corners of the world called delusion). You are right in that thoughts in themself are not a problem, but being owned by them, being them (they are your identity by the way), believing every word of them - well, that's another matter.

Well, now you're starting to depart from strict Buddhist teaching and engage in your own philosophizing and interpretation here. Yes, I agree that I am not my thoughts, or indeed any form at all. Fundamentally, I am formless, selfless, identity-less, beginningless and endless.

Moreover, the thoughts that I have aren't ultimately mine, but rather gifts or loans from Nature. Just as my life is a temporary loan from Nature, so too are my thoughts.

At the same time, I realize that thoughts can be either true or false (or uncertain). I realize that it is important to know how to distinguish between true and false thoughts, and to know how to promote true thoughts in the world. Indeed, this is what the Buddha did in setting up the sangha and creating his body of teachings.

I also realize that the Buddha presented these teachings with firm authority, yet he wasn't "owned" by them. He didn't have any personal attachment to them, yet he never backed down from any of them. He wasn't afraid to argue his teachings with the doubters when it was called for, yet he was completely unfettered by them.

So you see, it is perfectly possible for a person to passionately promote the truth without being "owned" by it. The Buddha was able to do it was, as was Jesus, Socrates, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Hakuin, and so on. To me, it is a sign of wisdom.

The annica principle is that of impermanence. All things arise, abide and cease. To that end things are empty of inherent existence. This does not mean nothing exists or that things don't matter.

True, things have an existence in the sense that they appear to our minds and senses - just as a mirage can appear to our minds and senses. Things exist in an illusory sense, but not in a fundamental sense.

As for things "mattering", that is dependent upon our own goals and values in life. Things only matter to the degree that we think they matter.

And to that end also, this 'me' you are obsessed with is also just an everchanging entity. There is no 'David Quinn', but it does not mean that there is no you, who is reading this now. Yet you are obsessed with and owned by this ravishing identity you are in love with, David Quinn, the great enlightened.

The only thing I am in love with is the truth. David Quinn is nothing, a mirage, of no more consequence than a speck of dust.

The kensho you love and talk about is not a matter a Roshi would bat an eye lid over - it is not an infrequent occurrence and it is just one small step, a part of a much wider framework.

I do not believe you. If these Roshi's truly understood their own nature, they would not be conducting themselves in the way that they do. They wouldn't be wasting their time giving low-quality product (i.e. rituals, chants, cliched teachings, generic meditation techniques, etc) to low-calibre individuals. They wouldn't be encouraging people to participate in, and help foster, the culture of mindlessness which our entire planet is currently immersed in.

The dukkha principle is to look at and pay attention to your own mind. Dogen Zenji said to study Buddhism is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand dhammas.

That's certainly a good teaching, but it's understood by very few. The main problem is, most Buddhists don't have any understanding of the self. They do not know how to distinguish between the self and not-self, or between ego and spirit. Their understanding of human psychology and egotism is very shallow.

This is why they are so quick to believe, for example, that when their guru sits up on the podium in his splendid robes and implies to people in a roundabout way that he is just an ordinary person, he is being humble and egoless.

Yet it is clear that you are completely fixated by yourself.

Indeed, I am fixated on my larger self, the Infinite.

In the Buddhist teaching, again there is the BASICS of the relative and ultimate. You talk about profound and ultimate and all this, without understanding the relationship between the two, or the wonderful interplay that these two represent. It is neither one or the other.

I reject your second-hand, scripted, conventional perspective on things. Reading your posts is like reading an encyclopedia entry on Buddhism.

But this doesn't mean that I don't have a good understanding of the relationship between the relative and the ultimate. My understanding is likely to be very different from yours, but that alone doesn't make it invalid.

BASICS of Awakening

Dhamma lead to dispassion and to being unfettered — for the standard test for a genuine experience of Awakening is that it arises from dispassion and cuts the fetters of the mind.

"There are these ten fetters... Self-identity views, uncertainty, grasping at precepts and practices, sensual desire, and ill will. These are the five lower fetters. And which are the five higher fetters? Passion for form, passion for what is formless, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. These are the five higher fetters."

If you try to say to anyone that you are without these fetters, well perhaps even you might feel suspicious of such a thought?

I don't say I'm perfect, not by any means. But perfect non-attachment is certainly my primary goal on life, as a consequence of understanding the emptiness of all things.

But I wonder you how much you believe in the above passage on fetters. For example, you have spent a good deal of time on this forum defending conventional Buddhist theory and practice. Would you say this is a case of being afflicted by "self-identity views", "grasping at precepts and practices", and "passion for form"? If not, why not?

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kowtaaia wrote:

DQ: This is a major problem with Kow's idea that enlightenment is essentially a state of no-thought. He will always lose his enlightenment the moment he has a thought. It is a fragile, limited attainment.

K: To bad he never said or implied that!

You have said a number of times that non-duality can manifest (the meaning of this is still unclear) when the self and its thoughts are absent. The non-dual may "visit", as you once put it - again, the meaning of this is not clear.

David is confusing (the manifestation of) the non-dual with enlightenment. Although there is no enlightenment without that manifestation, the manifestation ends when thought again arises. Enlightenment doesn't mean an ongoing state of non-duality.

Well, here is an opportunity to flesh out your writing a bit and explain clearly what you do mean by enlightenment. Please, no glib statements about my ignorance and lack of character, and the like. Just give us a sincere explanation of what you actually think is true.

For example, what does the phrase "ongoing state of non-duality" mean? I can't make any sense of this. It is just as unclear as the idea of non-duality visiting or manifesting in some way.

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Trevor,

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Hopefully, you understand that you were asked for proof because of a concern that David would ban you for being a troll. :) Suffice to say though, all of the fallacies you mentioned, are used on a regular basis, by almost everyone on this forum. This forum has some of the poorest quality of debating, ever seen on the internet. If you recall, the use of ad-hominems was called into question, right off the bat.

David Quinn wrote: kowtaaia wrote:

DQ: This is a major problem with Kow's idea that enlightenment is essentially a state of no-thought. He will always lose his enlightenment the moment he has a thought. It is a fragile, limited attainment.

K: To bad he never said or implied that!

You have said a number of times that non-duality can manifest (the meaning of this is still unclear) when the self and its thoughts are absent. The non-dual may "visit", as you once put it - again, the meaning of this is not clear.

Please provide a reference of kow ever saying: "the self and its thoughts". Instead of looking at what is being pointed to; you interpret from ignorance and disagree with your own misunderstanding.

Proof you ask? What you said!

David Quinn wrote:

David is confusing (the manifestation of) the non-dual with enlightenment. Although there is no enlightenment without that manifestation, the manifestation ends when thought again arises. Enlightenment doesn't mean an ongoing state of non-duality.

Well, here is an opportunity to flesh out your writing a bit and explain clearly what you do mean by enlightenment. Please, no glib statements about my ignorance and lack of character, and the like. Just give us a sincere explanation of what you actually think is true.

It's not necessary to be verbose. Enlightenment means no illusions.

David Quinn wrote: For example, what does the phrase "ongoing state of non-duality" mean? I can't make any sense of this. It is just as unclear as the idea of non-duality visiting or manifesting in some way.

This really doesn't need explaining. kow maintains that nonduality, the manifestation is the absence of thought. If one is the other, what the fuck don't you understand about "ongoing". You have dictionaries in Australia, don't you?

Perhaps it was missed, but there didn't seem to be any acknowledgement that your saying this:

"This is a major problem with Kow's idea that enlightenment is essentially a state of no-thought."

in light of the fact that kow maintains this:

"David is confusing (the manifestation of) the non-dual with enlightenment. Although there is no enlightenment without that manifestation, the manifestation ends when thought again arises. Enlightenment doesn't mean an ongoing state of non-duality."

was a false statement.

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(I guess two "he's" regarding Pye in this thread warrant the correction to "she's" for the didn't-knows.)


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Pye,

kowtaaia was a 'she' here, for the longest time. There are worse assumptions, madam. :)

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kowtaaia: kowtaaia was a 'she' here, for the longest time.

:) yeah, I caught that.

too bad "worse" attaches itself to any of this . . . .


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kow,

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Hopefully, you understand that you were asked for proof because of a concern that David would ban you for being a troll. :) Suffice to say though, all of the fallacies you mentioned, are used on a regular basis, by almost everyone on this forum. This forum has some of the poorest quality of debating, ever seen on the internet.

Thanks for the laugh. :)

kowtaaia,

I'll give you one more chance. You're going to have to choose whether you are here on this forum to participate in proper discussion, to edify and help people in a sincere manner, and possibly even to learn - or whether you are going to continue playing games with us like a troll. I'm not going to put up with the game-playing anymore.

I'm sure there are many intelligent people here who would be interested to know your thoughts on these issues. You could do them the courtesy of explaining your views more clearly, instead of treating them like disposable toys.

DQ: This is a major problem with Kow's idea that enlightenment is essentially a state of no-thought. He will always lose his enlightenment the moment he has a thought. It is a fragile, limited attainment.

K: To bad he never said or implied that!

DQ: You have said a number of times that non-duality can manifest (the meaning of this is still unclear) when the self and its thoughts are absent. The non-dual may "visit", as you once put it - again, the meaning of this is not clear.

K: Please provide a reference of kow ever saying: "the self and its thoughts". Instead of looking at what is being pointed to; you interpret from ignorance and disagree with your own misunderstanding.

You have said a number of times that the non-dual visits when "you" are not. You have also said that non-dual manifests as the absence of thought. I don't know why you are playing this game of pretending that you didn't say these things.

So please deal with my question above with sincerity, preferably with compelling, well-thought out reasons.

K: David is confusing (the manifestation of) the non-dual with enlightenment. Although there is no enlightenment without that manifestation, the manifestation ends when thought again arises. Enlightenment doesn't mean an ongoing state of non-duality.

DQ: Well, here is an opportunity to flesh out your writing a bit and explain clearly what you do mean by enlightenment. Please, no glib statements about my ignorance and lack of character, and the like. Just give us a sincere explanation of what you actually think is true.

K: It's not necessary to be verbose. Enlightenment means no illusions.

Too glib, too generic.

Why don't you explain, for example, what it means for non-duality to manifest or cease manifesting (as the meaning of this is still unclear), and also what it means for a person to continue being enlightened after non-duality ceases manifesting.

DQ: For example, what does the phrase "ongoing state of non-duality" mean? I can't make any sense of this. It is just as unclear as the idea of non-duality visiting or manifesting in some way.

k: This really doesn't need explaining. kow maintains that nonduality, the manifestation is the absence of thought.
If one is the other, what the fuck don't you understand about "ongoing".

It's because I don't know what you mean by "manifesting" in connection to non-duality. Whether it be a temporary manifestation or an on-going one, neither makes any sense.

It would be like a clay person living in a clay world talking about "clay manifesting" or "clay visiting". He doesn't seem to realize that the clay is already there all around him. It has already been manifesting since the very beginning. It is the essential nature of their world.

And not only would it be nonsensical for a clay person in a clay world to talk about clay manifesting, but it would be even more nonsensical for him to connect this clay manifestation with the absence of thought. Far from being enlightened, such a person would have to be classed as insane.

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kowtaaia wrote:Suffice to say though, all of the fallacies you mentioned, are used on a regular basis, by almost everyone on this forum. This forum has some of the poorest quality of debating, ever seen on the internet. If you recall, the use of ad-hominems was called into question, right off the bat.

And how I do love fitting in and do my best to accomodate :)

Iolaus wrote:

DQ: It should be obvious that the Totality can never come into being or disappear.

Iolaus : How do we know it couldn't disappear?

Because it is not a form. Only forms can appear or disappear.

DQ: There is only such a gap if one's thoughts and experiences are limited, and thus artificially curtailed. The thoughts of the perfectly-enlightened individual are perfectly integrated with his experience. Every thought he has emanates out of a consciousness which is fully aware of the nature of Reality. He doesn't have to cast his thought aside in order to experience "pure being".

Iolaus: This is a very interesting idea, but I am not through with the question yet. It is all well and good to speak of this ideal enlightened person. What you are saying here is that they are fully integrated as to intellectual and experiential. But for those climbing the mountain, there is an awful lot of anecdotal data which says there are these two arms. Look at what Pye wrote - he intellectually entertained the idea of unity but after a year of deep meditation he had some kind of experience of it which was different, and deeper.

I was talking about what really is the case at the summit, not about what people happen to believe or experience while climbing up there.

Now, for me, I had this experience over 10 years ago which was like an awakening. It was strongly experiential and yet later, months later, new thoughts began welling up in me. One day I stood outside and recalled the Christian notion that God created the world "ex-nihilo" and I thought to myself, (eyes closed and envisioning reality in a 3D kind of way) "God did not create the world from nothing, but from himself, there is no other possibility, all there is, is one thing, God is everything."

Now I call that an intellectual realization and I don't know if I have ever known it experientially.

Well, perhaps, if you follow through with this line of thinking and meditate on the various implications of your insight, you will come to better understand the Totality and its formless nature, and this will help bring you to the threshold of experiencing your true nature more directly.

DQ: Already you are defeating yourself here, because the very division you make between "pure being" and "thought" is itself a product of thought. It is a dualistic illusion created by the conceptualizing mind, and can never be anything more than that.

Iolaus: That which is never born and cannot die would be pure being. Knowing I am that is an experience of pure being. What does it have to do with thoughts? Perhaps the problem is in your definition of thoughts. You say thoughts are synonymous with being conscious. Perhaps what people mean by no thoughts arising are the linguistic ones. You refer to any state of awareness as a thought state.

If there is any cognition at all - such as, "this must be nirvana", or, "look, there are no thoughts happening", or, "this is beyond conceptualizating", etc - then one is experiencing concepts and thoughts.

If, on the other hand, there isn't any cognition happening, then nothing at all is being apprehended or recognized, and the very foundations of consciousness disappear.

You're probably right that a lot of people mistakenly confine their notion of thought to the more visible, conventional, linguistic kinds of thoughts, while overlooking the more subtle, more mentally-direct kinds.

It's not that I make a distinction between pure being and thought. I am pure being and I have thoughts. But to experience my true being I might require that thoughts stop.

Okay then, nighty-night.

You can't really experience something that you are unaware of. Most people are not aware that they are true being and it is difficult for them to grasp that as an experience. It might take a boost to get a person to be aware of pure being, and then once they've got it, thoughts could perhaps coexist with it. I have to teach my patients to hear the small grinding noise of the morphine pump. Otherwise they miss it. Once I tell them what to listen for, and make them quiet and tell them just when, they can hear it.

Yes, enlightenment is very much like that. You become aware of a fundamental nature which is already present, and then, once you do realize it, you no longer have to participate in contrivances, such as engaging in certain kinds of philosophic reasonings, or eliminating thought altogether.

A person doesn't have to cease thinking in order to become aware of a background noise. He just needs to stop being distracted and have his mind directed towards it.

Is pure being in the realm of duality? I think pure being is before the division into the equal and opposite forces that are the engine of this universe. It is easy for us to experience the many but difficult to experience the One.

There is no such thing as non-duality in the sense you mean here. That is a mirage. The realm of non-duality is none other than duality itself. They are both the same thing. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. There is nothing Infinite apart from finite things.

You either find pure being in the dualistic forms around you, or not at all.

DQ: Again, what you are talking about here is the mystical experience/altered state, which is an immeasurably lesser attainment than true enlightenment.

Iolaus: I am going to call the mystical the experiential, because that's what it is.

You can call it what you want, but if the mystical experience doesn't cause a person to push on into genuine enlightenment, (and in most cases, for various reasons, it doesn't), then what is the good of it? Most people become even more fanatical and close-minded after having a mystical experience, which is the result of their lacking the intellectual skills and intuitive insight to properly assess it. An experience devoid of intellectual understanding is worthless, and often harmful. Just look at all the harm that religion does.


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David,

Anyone that cares to read back can see that you are rephrasing kow statements according to your limited understanding. eg."Visits" was used one time and explained to you, subsequently. The phrase " the non-dual visits when "you" are not." has never been used. The phrase "non-dual manifests as the absence of thought." has never been used. Kow has NEVER said "the self and its thoughts."

Please realize that many people have privately cautioned that David Quinn is the ban king when he's called on his bullshit.

If you want to continue this, then rescind your threat and restrictions. You've already lost your credibility.

edit: spelling and one too many words

(I guess two "he's" regarding Pye in this thread warrant the correction to "she's" for the didn't-knows.)

Yay, one for the team.

David, how many people have you ever banned?

Iolaus wrote:

(I guess two "he's" regarding Pye in this thread warrant the correction to "she's" for the didn't-knows.)

Yay, one for the team.

And that would be one point for the QRS contention that women are "herdly."

So David,

Here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is. Don't do your side stepping diversion dance. Just respond DIRECTLY to the requests.

Please provide a reference of kow ever saying: "the self and its thoughts".

...and explain why, in the light of this:

kowtaaia: "David is confusing (the manifestation of) the non-dual with enlightenment. Although there is no enlightenment without that manifestation, the manifestation ends when thought again arises. Enlightenment doesn't mean an ongoing state of non-duality."

your statement:

David: "This is a major problem with Kow's idea that enlightenment is essentially a state of no-thought."

is not a blatantly false statement.

I'm not sure this topic is going anywhere (though I found Pye's post about subjectivity quite interesting) but it both pains & annoys me to see so much time & verbiage spent on people misunderstanding each other because of a failure to define terms.

I think a distinction needs to be made between what is conventionally called thought (linguistic) but what I think David means by thought (any experience of separation between 'me' & 'experience').

I am troubled by use of the word 'unity' applied to nonduality. Unity implies the coming-together of something that was once divided. As David was quoting: 'Form is emptiness; emptiness is form'. They are not separate, nor could ever be, nor could ever have been, since the essence of each is the other.
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Shardrol wrote:I'm not sure this topic is going anywhere (though I found Pye's post about subjectivity quite interesting) but it both pains & annoys me to see so much time & verbiage spent on people misunderstanding each other because of a failure to define terms.

Although David and kow both agree that non-duality is not an experience, the actual difficulty lies in Davids not understanding that non-duality is a realization (without, of course, an experiencer).

Shardrol wrote: I am troubled by use of the word 'unity' applied to nonduality.

It' a common misunderstanding. People mistake not-two as = ing one. :)

Shardrol,

Unity implies the coming-together of something that was once divided.

To me it implies the opposite. Unity is first.

The questions here are about whether a state of no thought can happen, what it means to realize nonduality, and the validity of the experiential. Can experience teach truth? David says at best its trivial, whereas others have said that the true teachings are nonverbal and experiential. I also don't think the Buddha garden scene has been adequately dealt with by saying that the Buddha didn't mean what he seemed to say.

Here's my summary again:

It is not in the senses or the mind, not in forms or mental objects.
It is a nonstate.
But what is the state of supreme enlightenment?
It is emptiness; it is the unconditioned.
What is the state of the unconditioned?
It is the state of the absence of thought.


David,

Because it is not a form. Only forms can appear or disappear.

That's just words. I can see why the totality cannot come into being, but I don't see why it couldn't all just fold up and disappear.

I was talking about what really is the case at the summit, not about what people happen to believe or experience while climbing up there.

yes, you were, but how people get there is important.

If there is any cognition at all - such as, "this must be nirvana", or, "look, there are no thoughts happening", or, "this is beyond conceptualizating", etc - then one is experiencing concepts and thoughts.

Yes, those are all thoughts. And I think thoughts work pretty well without words also. Animals do quite well, making decisions and so forth without language.

There is no such thing as non-duality in the sense you mean here.

Lao Tzu said there is.

The realm of non-duality is none other than duality itself. They are both the same thing. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. There is nothing Infinite apart from finite things.

All that exists around us requires the separation of some unnameable unity into dual systems, without which our reality would collapse. Without yin and yang, no world. But yet yin and yang are somehow one. And that's what I mean by pure being. By pure being, I mean the incomprehensible quality of God that we refer to as the uncaused.

You can call it what you want, but if the mystical experience doesn't cause a person to push on into genuine enlightenment, (and in most cases, for various reasons, it doesn't), then what is the good of it?

Part of the problem here is that there is such a huge amount of material, of data, about so many kinds of experiences, which are brought about by myriad causes, into individuals of varying capacities and intentions. But I am saying that kensho is a mystical experience. What I am talking about is an experience that involves more than 'learning about.' In the end, I don't think you can be enlightened without something experiential.

Most people become even more fanatical and close-minded after having a mystical experience,

That isn't the case at all. It must happen sometimes I suppose. Many, many people have been taken out of their fundamentalism or spritual deadness by a mystical experience. It is the lack of good mystical experiences that keep people in the churches and temples.

Iolaus wrote:

DQ: Most people become even more fanatical and close-minded after having a mystical experience,

That isn't the case at all. It must happen sometimes I suppose. Many, many people have been taken out of their fundamentalism or spritual deadness by a mystical experience. It is the lack of good mystical experiences that keep people in the churches and temples.

It seems to me that there is at least an initial reaction (more accuratly, over-reaction) of intoxication with new beliefs. The deeply spiritual move past this intoxication into the true realm, but some stay in the intoxicated state and some fall back into mundane realms.

Only intellectual realizations or (subject/object) experiences engender belief. The manifestation of truth only leaves innocence as its aftermath, when thought again arises.