GENIUS FORUMS

STORMING HEAVEN

I suspend myself by these hooks, and the pain becomes so unbearable I leave my body. If people knew the true price of spirituality, there'd be more atheists—DR BLOCKHEAD

(:

Dennis Mahar wrote:Jesus Pam,
suffering is a boon for you,
a Thing of Joy,
you get around all the places and tell all about suffering, how to fix it, that it will end.
You get to feel like Mother Theresa.
Wearing the halo.
Get up in the morning with a zip and a zest,
a wonderfulness,
The game plan is down pat.
Zipedee-doo-da Zipedee-de-ay, my oh my what a wonderful day.

What would you do without suffering?
It's your ticket to ride.
Blissfull.

Nirvana is a radical shift in perspective.

Dennis, your story of Pam is your story of Pam. It has nothing to do with Pam's understanding of Pam. It is because you offer your story of Pam instead of reasoning with the understandings of Pam that I am convinced that our understandings of Nirvana are not the same. My understanding of your understanding of Nirvana (correct me if I am wrong) is that it is the mental-affective realm of 'anything goes' as long as the anything goes emotes the wonder and bliss of emptiness and impermanence realization.

If I am on track, how do you reason the Buddha's presentation of joy, rapture, tranquility and happiness as being not the attainment of Nirvana, but rather, as supporting conditions for the attainment of Nirvana, supporting conditions that precede the higher/later supporting conditions of disenchantment and dispassion, higher/later supporting conditions I do not see present in "Zipedee-doo-da Zipedee-de-ay, my oh my what a wonderful day."

Nirvana/Samsara
Bondage/Feedom.

They're not things.
They're perceptions.
They're empty.

Your day-in-day-out 'magnum opus' Pam is concretising them.
It looks like you are 'in rehearsal' for a starring role in a Grand ol' Oprey.

Dennis Mahar wrote:Nirvana/Samsara, Bondage/Feedom.

They're not things. They're perceptions. They're empty.

Well, more "like a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping".

They are purposeful, like your writing is too. Without purpose present you wouldn't be writing. We are made out of purpose and a blunt "emptiness" does not address these kind of delicate truths adequately.

You and the Universe are indistinguishable ultimately.
Both empty.
Blunt enough?

Dennis, what do you think would be the outcome of wisdom development if the Buddha or Nagarjuna or Jesus taught of emptiness as you teach of emptiness, via punchlines and sound bytes?

Dennis Mahar wrote:You and the Universe are indistinguishable ultimately. Both empty. Blunt enough?

The blunt dumbness of nihilism indeed, ignoring all the awesome mindful distinction that causality brings: all your purpose in writing included.

You make emptiness nihilism.
That's your shit not mine.
Get over it.

What did Neitzsche answer Schopenhaeur's declaration that 'life has no redeeming feature'?
His crafted response was 'we are Literary Philosophers, let's make Earth our Meaning'
Existential Thinking, Contextual Thinking.
Just like the Buddha who didn't want to pull God out of his ass for explication.

Buddha taught Emptiness/Bliss and said he was a wayshower preparing the way for a coming Buddha, Maitraya, where the condition 'men and women living harmoniously in fine houses together' would be the order of the day.

Buddha pulled the men aside particularly because they are the fuckwits.
Women, generally, always/already disposed to Bodhichitta (nurturers).

Buddha pulled the men aside particularly because they are the fuckwits.
Women, generally, always/already disposed to Bodhichitta (nurturers).

You've obviously never been reincarnated as a man, who distraught male and female women run to to solve the more difficult problems causing them emotional distress.

If the vast majority of men weren't such outstanding fuckwits there wouldn't be such emotional distress experienced in human being.
Clearly, realised men are of the nurturing persuasion.
Bodhichitta.

This ceases, that ceases,
this arises, that arises

the Buddha's explication concerned a curriculum of education for existence.
Existential thinking.
He offered a possibility.
You don't have to believe it.

Dennis, I cannot speak for Buddhist schools that appeared after Theravada, but in the Pali Canon, I can find no reference to the coming of the Metteyya as being one who comes "where the condition 'men and women living harmoniously in fine houses together' would be the order of the day." The only reference to the Metteyya in the Pali Canon is in one sutta only, the Cakkavattisihanada, where he is mentioned only twice:

"And in that time of the people with an eighty thousand-year life-span, there will arise in the world a Blessed Lord, an Arahant fully-enlightened Buddha named Metteyya, endowed with wisdom and conduct, a Well-Farer, Knower of the worlds, incomparable Trainer of men to be tamed, Teacher of gods and humans, enlightened and blessed, just as I am now. He will thoroughly know by his own super-knowledge, and proclaim, this universe with its devas and maras and Brahmas, its ascetics and Brahmins, and this generation with its princes and people, just as I do now. He will teach the Dhamma, lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle, lovely in its ending, in the spirit and in the letter, and proclaim, just as I do now, the holy life in its fullness and purity. He will be attended by a company of thousands of monks, just as I am attended by a company of hundreds.

"Then King Sankha will re-erect the palace once built by King Maha-Panada and, having lived in it, will give it up and present it to the ascetics and Brahmins, the beggars, the wayfarers, the destitute. Then, shaving off hair and beard, he will don yellow robes and go forth from the household life into homelessness under the supreme Buddha Metteyya. Having gone forth, he will remain alone, in seclusion, ardent, eager and resolute, and before long he will have attained in this very life, by his own super-knowledge and resolution, that unequaled goal of the holy life, for the sake of which young men of good family go forth from the household life into homelessness, and will abide therein."

As you can see, according to the Pali Canon, it is not so men and women can live in fine houses that the Metteyya comes, rather, it is just the opposite.

You don't understand the metaphor I used.

Houses of Language,
Conceptual Towers,

the Buddha's explication concerned a curriculum of education for existence.
Existential thinking.
He offered a possibility.
You don't have to believe it.

You mean, some people believe certain things as if their very existence depended upon it?

Buddha pulled the men aside particularly because they are the fuckwits.
Women, generally, always/already disposed to Bodhichitta (nurturers).

If the vast majority of men weren't such outstanding fuckwits there wouldn't be such emotional distress experienced in human being.

I'm talking about a possibility that isn't a survival option.

A way of being generating peace.

A paranoid self gets out of the machinery.

Dennis Mahar wrote:I'm talking about a possibility that isn't a survival option.

Everything that anybody does at a given point of time is a "survival option", since they couldn't do it if they weren't surviving at that point of time.

Leyla Shen wrote:STORMING HEAVEN

I suspend myself by these hooks, and the pain becomes so unbearable I leave my body. If people knew the true price of spirituality, there'd be more atheists—DR BLOCKHEAD

(:

Why Leyla? Why did you earrape an innocent, unsuspecting stranger like me?

Everything that anybody does at a given point of time is a "survival option", since they couldn't do it if they weren't surviving at that point of time.

Survival options out of a set of assessments, range of options giving rise to a winning formula construction by a self-centred, paranoid, grasping, greedy type look a lot different from Bodhichitta.

Depends on your 'in order to for the sake of'.

Who are you Being.

Dennis Mahar wrote:Survival options out of a set of assessments, range of options giving rise to a winning formula construction by a self-centred, paranoid, grasping, greedy type look a lot different from Bodhichitta.

Even a Buddha assesses his environment and comes up with winning formulas. If he didn't he wouldn't have attained Buddhahood. The difference is not in the absence of survival but in the type, i.e, wisdom or foolishness.

I heard the story as he tried numerous 'winning formulas', got sick of it, sat under a tree and grokked it.

There's no historical evidence for his existence.

84,000 teachings.

looks like the work of a committee.

Dennis Mahar wrote:I heard the story as he tried numerous 'winning formulas', got sick of it, sat under a tree and grokked it.

In other words, he finally found a genuine winning formula, after trying out numerous failing formulas. Only losers believe that winning formulae are easy to come by.

movingalways wrote:This reminds me of the Nibbana Sutta where the Buddha addresses the afflictions of the monks who enter the four immaterial realms so as to become unbound from mental fermentations, but as their kamma dictates, they continue to experience bindings to their mental fermentations. The key word here is 'affliction.' Stubbing a toe = physical pain, not getting what one wants = ego pain, knowing that this is an illusion while at the same time striving to break free of the illusion that is this = affliction of psyche/conscience. And yes, sometimes one does indeed long for the simple days of ebb-and-flow, P & E pain.

Affliction as poison or "unwholesome root"? The ego as illusion in both of your cases remains the "center" of upset that can occur by circumstance. Is it really important if the causes are serious, silly, mental, iron clad, deadly or heavenly? Not if we are dealing with roots. And yes, sometimes one indeed longs back for the longing itself: the notion of self-propelling, self-confirming and desire-desiring as creator, as world-builder.

I came across this Zen teaching with embedded Buddhist story which I don't know if it's authentic but the fragment contains some striking imagery.

• Whenever the practitioner’s mind and thoughts turn to desiring, she immediately gives rise to awareness of the presence of that mind. [...]
  
  The Buddha often said that many people confuse desire with happiness. In the Magandiya Sutra (Majjhima Nikaya 75), a man who is forced to live in the forest because he has leprosy, suffering from severe itching and stinging. He dug a hole, filled it with dry branches and logs, and set them on fire. When the fire became red-hot charcoal, he stood at the edge of the hole and stretched his arms and legs out over it to catch the heat. When he did this, his suffering was relieved. On days when he could not make a charcoal fire to warm himself, his itching was unbearable. Miraculously, some years later, he was cured of the disease and went back to live in the village. One day he went into the forest and saw a number of lepers dragging their bodies to warm themselves by a charcoal fire, and he felt tremendous pity for them. The charcoal was extremely hot, he couldn’t go near it. If someone had dragged him to the hole to warm his body over the charcoal, his suffering would have been great. That which in former times had brought him happiness and relief was now a source of agony. The Buddha said, “Desire is also just a hole of burning charcoal in the forest. Only those who are sick look on desire as happiness.”
  
  (Transformation and Healing -- Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh)

Dennis Mahar wrote:You make emptiness nihilism. That's your shit not mine. Get over it.

Na, they are your nihilistic tendencies which do all that and others did notice. It's a form of violence. You are violating reason, writing, sentence structures, any full dialog of the present and the past just to annihilate. Your blunt suggestions of destruction will create all kinds of mirror violations. You should take heed!

Yes, you discovered some great truths about psychology, the mind and meaning. But instead of overcoming these, you have succumbed to the temptations, caught up in the tempting self-annihilation that a limited interpretation of these philosophies facilitate. Dennis the usurper, the destroyer, the equalizer! Packaged as gentle gentile, your errors are becoming more obvious each and every posts. Your philosophy does not hold, all the contradictions breaking down, the absurdity of your fake position exposed. Dennis showing up in the conversation each and every time, not taking responsibility and engaging in pure annihilation. Dennis-in-a-rut! For some top heavy egos your story of annihilation might appeal and create some effects but here on this forum it's exposed as the shamble it cannot do else but turn out to be: some intermediate understanding hastily promoted as end station, a safe nest, a black hole for any deeper understanding.

Na, they are your nihilistic tendencies which do all that and others did notice. It's a form of violence. You are violating reason, writing, sentence structures, any full dialog of the present and the past just to annihilate. Your blunt suggestions of destruction will create all kinds of mirror violations. You should take heed!

Yes, you discovered some great truths about psychology, the mind and meaning. But instead of overcoming these, you have succumbed to the temptations, caught up in the tempting self-annihilation that a limited interpretation of these philosophies facilitate. Dennis the usurper, the destroyer, the equalizer! Packaged as gentle gentile, your errors are becoming more obvious each and every posts. Your philosophy does not hold, all the contradictions breaking down, the absurdity of your fake position exposed. Dennis showing up in the conversation each and every time, not taking responsibility and engaging in pure annihilation. Dennis-in-a-rut! For some top heavy egos your story of annihilation might appeal and create some effects but here on this forum it's exposed as the shamble it cannot do else but turn out to be: some intermediate understanding hastily promoted as end station, a safe nest, a black hole for any deeper understanding.

Is Alex helping you write your Scripts now?
(:

Dennis Mahar wrote:You don't understand the metaphor I used.

Houses of Language,
Conceptual Towers,

How does the sound byte "house of languages, conceptual towers" help me to understand the metaphor you used? You gave me five words clumped together, no exposition, no reasoning, no context.

'Grokking' wisdom is the beginning step, or as you call it, beginner's mind. I learned this the hard way. The problem with not realizing that 'grokking' wisdom is not the arrival but the beginning is that one remains running on the spot, like the hippies of the sixties who proclaimed "love is all you need." Why mantra psychology doesn't work is that it can't give the listener the living truth of why, and without the living truth of why, one is using thought to soothe and comfort rather than to understand and know.

I sense your intentions are loving, but the hippies were wrong. :-)