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Post by justlikeyou on Jan 9, 2018 9:40:44 GMT -5
Sure, pain is a friend, but more like a warning light on the dash. Not a warm, fuzzy friend at all, but rather one that tells you the cold, hard facts of Life. And in terms of mental anguish, indulging in resistant thoughts toward the presence of pain WILL produce greater and extended mental anguish/suffering. The quicker it is allowed/accepted the quicker it passes. But not all pain is transient, some pain recurs, and there really is such a thing as unbearable pain. If someone hears that they should allow the pain, and they take it to heart, they're going to start to try allowing it. Do you see the potential for a person to arrive at a bind in this scenario? That may be true in general L, but the response was directed to zazeniac specific statement "I want to get rid of the pain. I see that...I've experienced this many times before. It doesn't seem to get any easier." Perhaps the distinction between pain (unavoidable sometimes) and mental anguish/suffering (an option) could have been made a bit better.
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Post by ouroboros on Jan 9, 2018 15:41:59 GMT -5
Yes, it's a recognition of the quality of the piece, obviously I value balance, in a broad sense it's harmonious and peaceful, and when verbal expression is balanced what you tend to find is, whist something of value has been expressed, often there's not much to (have to) say in response, even when just chewing stuff over in our own mind, i.e contemplating. Perhaps we could take it an indication that balance is more conducive to the cessation of becoming, as opposed to extremes, which tend to lend themselves more to cyclical becoming. If we were to accept that then it's worth considering just how broadly the principle could be applied. I heartily agree with your appraisal of those three fine chaps. Becoming never ceases, but it can be seen for what it is. In the broadest sense it's among the trickiest subjects of all, but total unbinding (paranibbana) is liberation from the 'realm' of becoming, (which broadly. is a certain state of being). Don't get me started on "will the last one out, please turn the lights off" ...
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Post by zin on Jan 9, 2018 16:04:31 GMT -5
TMT. Those moment points are totally arbitrary. In one context this is true if those moments are taken in isolation as disjointed points, but in terms of what a CC reveals, the pathos I was referring to is in recognition of the movement as a totality, and there's no theory involved in this, just a lingering after effect. In the relative context, the ordering of the moment points isn't arbitrary. The scientists can quantify what they think of as the duration since the Big Bang. What 'ordering'? .. (I mean, asking psychologically)
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Post by ouroboros on Jan 9, 2018 16:15:18 GMT -5
Ok, well, I think you'll like this. The Fourier series is a pure math construct. It has many practical, physical applications, but it's only tangentially related to quantum mechanics. The bottom line is that any function of one variable that repeats can be represented by an infinite summation of sine waves. Like, for example, the temperature over time at a given place: it might be unpredictable in the short term, but because of the inevitable rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons, it's repetitive, so it can be represented as a combination of different cycles of various duration and amplitude. Compare this with what you wrote about periodic patterns within periodic patterns. The potential mind-stopper here might be subtle, but is profound if you pause on it: any repeating function can be represented this way. It sounds very samsara-like - patterns within patterns, subject to repetition (so pseudo-cyclical). You've even used some of the same analogies I tend to employ to point to samsara, i.e. the cyclical nature of celestial bodies, and seasonality. To broaden the paradigm even further, a couple of other ones I like to use are the cyclical nature of language (i.e how definitions & wotnot cycle around), and the 'curvature' of time/space as detailed by General Relativity. All ultimately examples of the cyclical nature of experience. It's true the Tibetans in particular take the past lives issue seriously, and it ties in with the kamma thing again, where certain fine 'material' which forms the basis of the courser mind-body expression, actually transcends lifetimes. That doesn't mean the courser mind-body expression isn't periodic and subject to dissolution though. Death is as real as it gets in Buddhism, but it's only considered an end per se, where liberation from the round of rebirth is realised (in the purest sense of the phrase), and that's the actually considered to be the ultimate goal. It may seem like an elaborate ruse to avoid personal death, but as far as Buddhism is concerned, it's just a recognition of the actuality of the situation as it is. It's said that upon enlightenment the Buddha remembered all his previous lives, and to be clear, rebirth in Buddhism is intended quite literally. It's just the path it all takes and the implications of that are most often misconstrued. Ok, I think have an idea where you're coming from here, and it seems we have different ideas about the path 'avoidance' might take. Tbh, I kinda regretted that post to pilgrim straight after posting, I considered that getting too far into all that could be somewhat intrusive, and bad form, and that makes getting into this tricky. But I'll give it a try, and bear with me. You think the rebirth paradigm is somehow a mechanism for avoiding facing up to personal death. On the other hand, I've talked about subtle movement that transcends lifetimes, and which 'bubbles up', or 'filters down' to form individuation, yet that in the end even that has to go, and that those relatively prevailing patterns don't actually somehow negate the process of death. In fact, and somewhat to the contrary, the process of continual rebirth & redeath (at every level) literally continues in perpetuity until liberation, and this is actually considered to be an unfavourable state of being in Buddhism, and really the entire teaching is ultimately geared toward the cessation (or liberation from) that particular state/cycle. To elaborate, although a degree of continuity is imputed by the notion of rebirth, which I'm guessing is where you're getting the escapism idea from, what we might call subsequent rebirths are considered under the 'not the same, yet not another' umbrella. So although one 'lifetime' being conditioned by another is in one sense a continuous stream in a linear fashion, it is yet one which is subject to the 'blooms' that are birth, growth, withering, and death, accretively, and when impermanence and not-self are factored in, the situation sits in contrast to the Western conception of a soul, or atta, which tends to impute a misguided degree of abidingness, and once-removedness. So never is the process static, it continuously unfolds, and so the 'are you the same person today as you were yesterday' metaphor applies. As an analogy, we could say the present winter is conditioned by previous winters, and future winters will be conditioned by past and present winters, yet more broadly winter bleeds seamlessly from fall, and into spring, and yet more broadly still, the cycle of the seasons is merely a condition which arises within an even greater cycle, commonly conceived of as the universe as a whole. Yet at the macro-experiential level it can be said that winter actually appears, and as with spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is birth, growth, withering, and death, ... as a pattern within in the greater form of cyclical conditionality in its entirety. So it's a middle way, which as I say, is merely intended to acknowledge and describe (point to) the actuality of the situation, whilst ultimately neither being solely affirmative, or dismissive. Regarding liberation, the path this takes is total unbinding, which is realisation in its truest, and most profound sense, and this is where it gets interesting. By its truest sense I mean firstly that there's an actualisation (transformative) component to it. So in much the same way realisation is talked about here on the forum, it's about undermining, and by extension extinguishing the causes upon which a particular state of being arises. The real difference is that where here on the forum that cessation tends only to extend to a level of delusion that results in existential angst, and/or, acute psychological distress (designated suffering), in Buddhism it goes much deeper - as previously detailed, and therefore extends beyond any functional division placed between 'what-is' (the territory), and mapping. It's perhaps worth saying here that total unbinding doesn't equate to nothingness, just to be clear. Going back to my comment to pilgrim, I'll go so far as to say, I'm of the opinion that a scenario can arise, whereupon certain particularly profound experiences may sail closer to my notion of unbinding than perhaps is consciously realised, and due to what I'll call 'a depth of attachment' running much deeper than is generally given credit for, (and this ties in with Ish's recent post), situations can arise where unconscious self-preservative measures arise, which can play out in a variety of different ways. All a bit cryptic I know, but the nett result of which ties in with other stuff I've talked about over the past month or so, (for example, identity poker, subtle mind-anchors etc). Anyway, the thing about such outcomes are, they're actually quite literally sources of becoming, which means they form the crux of the perpetuation of rebirth at every level, and again, ultimately this all has to do with the nature of, and production of kamma, which is currently still beyond my technical expertise to really do justice to, hehe. (Sorry bout the 'wall')
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Post by ouroboros on Jan 9, 2018 16:35:43 GMT -5
Yeah, hopefully that's all as clear as mud.
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Post by lolly on Jan 10, 2018 5:15:30 GMT -5
It's a question of definitions again. I don't think Tzu will find a lot of agreement with Seth. Yes, absent context, "experience is all there is" can be a duck/bunny. But conceptual precision can only go so far. As you used to point out so bluntly, if someone is confused about the ineffable then conceptual clarity isn't possible. In this instance, there is a pointer at issue: that the experiencer and experience are not two. And the one who doesn't experience has big ears and a beak - and carrots are a private issue.
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Post by laughter on Jan 10, 2018 12:34:01 GMT -5
In one context this is true if those moments are taken in isolation as disjointed points, but in terms of what a CC reveals, the pathos I was referring to is in recognition of the movement as a totality, and there's no theory involved in this, just a lingering after effect. In the relative context, the ordering of the moment points isn't arbitrary. The scientists can quantify what they think of as the duration since the Big Bang. What 'ordering'? .. (I mean, asking psychologically) Just ticks and tocks on the clocks and the boxes on the calendar. Just plain 'ole time, in the most ordinary sense. Just one thing moving relative to another. Just change.
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Post by laughter on Jan 10, 2018 12:45:57 GMT -5
Ok, well, I think you'll like this. The Fourier series is a pure math construct. It has many practical, physical applications, but it's only tangentially related to quantum mechanics. The bottom line is that any function of one variable that repeats can be represented by an infinite summation of sine waves. Like, for example, the temperature over time at a given place: it might be unpredictable in the short term, but because of the inevitable rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons, it's repetitive, so it can be represented as a combination of different cycles of various duration and amplitude. Compare this with what you wrote about periodic patterns within periodic patterns. The potential mind-stopper here might be subtle, but is profound if you pause on it: any repeating function can be represented this way. It sounds very samsara-like - patterns within patterns, subject to repetition (so pseudo-cyclical). You've even used some of the same analogies I tend to employ to point to samsara, i.e. the cyclical nature of celestial bodies, and seasonality. To broaden the paradigm even further, a couple of other ones I like to use are the cyclical nature of language (i.e how definitions & wotnot cycle around), and the 'curvature' of time/space as detailed by General Relativity. All ultimately examples of the cyclical nature of experience. It's true the Tibetans in particular take the past lives issue seriously, and it ties in with the kamma thing again, where certain fine 'material' which forms the basis of the courser mind-body expression, actually transcends lifetimes. That doesn't mean the courser mind-body expression isn't periodic and subject to dissolution though. Death is as real as it gets in Buddhism, but it's only considered an end per se, where liberation from the round of rebirth is realised (in the purest sense of the phrase), and that's the actually considered to be the ultimate goal. It may seem like an elaborate ruse to avoid personal death, but as far as Buddhism is concerned, it's just a recognition of the actuality of the situation as it is. It's said that upon enlightenment the Buddha remembered all his previous lives, and to be clear, rebirth in Buddhism is intended quite literally. It's just the path it all takes and the implications of that are most often misconstrued. Ok, I think have an idea where you're coming from here, and it seems we have different ideas about the path 'avoidance' might take. Tbh, I kinda regretted that post to pilgrim straight after posting, I considered that getting too far into all that could be somewhat intrusive, and bad form, and that makes getting into this tricky. But I'll give it a try, and bear with me. You think the rebirth paradigm is somehow a mechanism for avoiding facing up to personal death. On the other hand, I've talked about subtle movement that transcends lifetimes, and which 'bubbles up', or 'filters down' to form individuation, yet that in the end even that has to go, and that those relatively prevailing patterns don't actually somehow negate the process of death. In fact, and somewhat to the contrary, the process of continual rebirth & redeath (at every level) literally continues in perpetuity until liberation, and this is actually considered to be an unfavourable state of being in Buddhism, and really the entire teaching is ultimately geared toward the cessation (or liberation from) that particular state/cycle. To elaborate, although a degree of continuity is imputed by the notion of rebirth, which I'm guessing is where you're getting the escapism idea from, what we might call subsequent rebirths are considered under the 'not the same, yet not another' umbrella. So although one 'lifetime' being conditioned by another is in one sense a continuous stream in a linear fashion, it is yet one which is subject to the 'blooms' that are birth, growth, withering, and death, accretively, and when impermanence and not-self are factored in, the situation sits in contrast to the Western conception of a soul, or atta, which tends to impute a misguided degree of abidingness, and once-removedness. So never is the process static, it continuously unfolds, and so the 'are you the same person today as you were yesterday' metaphor applies. As an analogy, we could say the present winter is conditioned by previous winters, and future winters will be conditioned by past and present winters, yet more broadly winter bleeds seamlessly from fall, and into spring, and yet more broadly still, the cycle of the seasons is merely a condition which arises within an even greater cycle, commonly conceived of as the universe as a whole. Yet at the macro-experiential level it can be said that winter actually appears, and as with spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is birth, growth, withering, and death, ... as a pattern within in the greater form of cyclical conditionality in its entirety. So it's a middle way, which as I say, is merely intended to acknowledge and describe (point to) the actuality of the situation, whilst ultimately neither being solely affirmative, or dismissive. Regarding liberation, the path this takes is total unbinding, which is realisation in its truest, and most profound sense, and this is where it gets interesting. By its truest sense I mean firstly that there's an actualisation (transformative) component to it. So in much the same way realisation is talked about here on the forum, it's about undermining, and by extension extinguishing the causes upon which a particular state of being arises. The real difference is that where here on the forum that cessation tends only to extend to a level of delusion that results in existential angst, and/or, acute psychological distress (designated suffering), in Buddhism it goes much deeper - as previously detailed, and therefore extends beyond any functional division placed between 'what-is' (the territory), and mapping. It's perhaps worth saying here that total unbinding doesn't equate to nothingness, just to be clear. Going back to my comment to pilgrim, I'll go so far as to say, I'm of the opinion that a scenario can arise, whereupon certain particularly profound experiences may sail closer to my notion of unbinding than perhaps is consciously realised, and due to what I'll call 'a depth of attachment' running much deeper than is generally given credit for, (and this ties in with Ish's recent post), situations can arise where unconscious self-preservative measures arise, which can play out in a variety of different ways. All a bit cryptic I know, but the nett result of which ties in with other stuff I've talked about over the past month or so, (for example, identity poker, subtle mind-anchors etc). Anyway, the thing about such outcomes are, they're actually quite literally sources of becoming, which means they form the crux of the perpetuation of rebirth at every level, and again, ultimately this all has to do with the nature of, and production of kamma, which is currently still beyond my technical expertise to really do justice to, hehe. (Sorry bout the 'wall') Yes, samsara is the bottom line. Every culture has a way of describing it, and some cultures are big tents on issues like rebirth -- from what I can tell there's a broad diversity of takes on the topic among Buddhists generally. The similarity between your descriptions and the Fourier series is one of those delightful confluences that pierce the superficialities of cultural conditioning. But what we awake to is confounding of any and all of those descriptions. Some models of the light show lead into a deeper trance -- just because knowledge is relative doesn't mean that it's all of the same relative value. But that value is always ultimately contextual. Some facets of the show have the potential to illuminate the exit signs, but that possibility depends on the angle of one's eye relative to the light.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jan 10, 2018 14:00:04 GMT -5
Ok, well, I think you'll like this. The Fourier series is a pure math construct. It has many practical, physical applications, but it's only tangentially related to quantum mechanics. The bottom line is that any function of one variable that repeats can be represented by an infinite summation of sine waves. Like, for example, the temperature over time at a given place: it might be unpredictable in the short term, but because of the inevitable rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the seasons, it's repetitive, so it can be represented as a combination of different cycles of various duration and amplitude. Compare this with what you wrote about periodic patterns within periodic patterns. The potential mind-stopper here might be subtle, but is profound if you pause on it: any repeating function can be represented this way. It sounds very samsara-like - patterns within patterns, subject to repetition (so pseudo-cyclical). You've even used some of the same analogies I tend to employ to point to samsara, i.e. the cyclical nature of celestial bodies, and seasonality. To broaden the paradigm even further, a couple of other ones I like to use are the cyclical nature of language (i.e how definitions & wotnot cycle around), and the 'curvature' of time/space as detailed by General Relativity. All ultimately examples of the cyclical nature of experience. It's true the Tibetans in particular take the past lives issue seriously, and it ties in with the kamma thing again, where certain fine 'material' which forms the basis of the courser mind-body expression, actually transcends lifetimes. That doesn't mean the courser mind-body expression isn't periodic and subject to dissolution though. Death is as real as it gets in Buddhism, but it's only considered an end per se, where liberation from the round of rebirth is realised (in the purest sense of the phrase), and that's the actually considered to be the ultimate goal. It may seem like an elaborate ruse to avoid personal death, but as far as Buddhism is concerned, it's just a recognition of the actuality of the situation as it is. It's said that upon enlightenment the Buddha remembered all his previous lives, and to be clear, rebirth in Buddhism is intended quite literally. It's just the path it all takes and the implications of that are most often misconstrued. Ok, I think have an idea where you're coming from here, and it seems we have different ideas about the path 'avoidance' might take. Tbh, I kinda regretted that post to pilgrim straight after posting, I considered that getting too far into all that could be somewhat intrusive, and bad form, and that makes getting into this tricky. But I'll give it a try, and bear with me. You think the rebirth paradigm is somehow a mechanism for avoiding facing up to personal death. On the other hand, I've talked about subtle movement that transcends lifetimes, and which 'bubbles up', or 'filters down' to form individuation, yet that in the end even that has to go, and that those relatively prevailing patterns don't actually somehow negate the process of death. In fact, and somewhat to the contrary, the process of continual rebirth & redeath (at every level) literally continues in perpetuity until liberation, and this is actually considered to be an unfavourable state of being in Buddhism, and really the entire teaching is ultimately geared toward the cessation (or liberation from) that particular state/cycle. To elaborate, although a degree of continuity is imputed by the notion of rebirth, which I'm guessing is where you're getting the escapism idea from, what we might call subsequent rebirths are considered under the 'not the same, yet not another' umbrella. So although one 'lifetime' being conditioned by another is in one sense a continuous stream in a linear fashion, it is yet one which is subject to the 'blooms' that are birth, growth, withering, and death, accretively, and when impermanence and not-self are factored in, the situation sits in contrast to the Western conception of a soul, or atta, which tends to impute a misguided degree of abidingness, and once-removedness. So never is the process static, it continuously unfolds, and so the 'are you the same person today as you were yesterday' metaphor applies. As an analogy, we could say the present winter is conditioned by previous winters, and future winters will be conditioned by past and present winters, yet more broadly winter bleeds seamlessly from fall, and into spring, and yet more broadly still, the cycle of the seasons is merely a condition which arises within an even greater cycle, commonly conceived of as the universe as a whole. Yet at the macro-experiential level it can be said that winter actually appears, and as with spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is birth, growth, withering, and death, ... as a pattern within in the greater form of cyclical conditionality in its entirety. So it's a middle way, which as I say, is merely intended to acknowledge and describe (point to) the actuality of the situation, whilst ultimately neither being solely affirmative, or dismissive. Regarding liberation, the path this takes is total unbinding, which is realisation in its truest, and most profound sense, and this is where it gets interesting. By its truest sense I mean firstly that there's an actualisation (transformative) component to it. So in much the same way realisation is talked about here on the forum, it's about undermining, and by extension extinguishing the causes upon which a particular state of being arises. The real difference is that where here on the forum that cessation tends only to extend to a level of delusion that results in existential angst, and/or, acute psychological distress (designated suffering), in Buddhism it goes much deeper - as previously detailed, and therefore extends beyond any functional division placed between 'what-is' (the territory), and mapping. It's perhaps worth saying here that total unbinding doesn't equate to nothingness, just to be clear. Going back to my comment to pilgrim, I'll go so far as to say, I'm of the opinion that a scenario can arise, whereupon certain particularly profound experiences may sail closer to my notion of unbinding than perhaps is consciously realised, and due to what I'll call 'a depth of attachment' running much deeper than is generally given credit for, (and this ties in with Ish's recent post), situations can arise where unconscious self-preservative measures arise, which can play out in a variety of different ways. All a bit cryptic I know, but the nett result of which ties in with other stuff I've talked about over the past month or so, (for example, identity poker, subtle mind-anchors etc). Anyway, the thing about such outcomes are, they're actually quite literally sources of becoming, which means they form the crux of the perpetuation of rebirth at every level, and again, ultimately this all has to do with the nature of, and production of kamma, which is currently still beyond my technical expertise to really do justice to, hehe. (Sorry bout the 'wall') All this is pretty subtle (that's why it's difficult to find agreement on the subject) but I'd say quite accurate. It's not easy to decipher, but decipher is the correct word, as all that info is not very explicitly written (the meaning of subtle) in-one-place. No time to comment further, back later.
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Post by ouroboros on Jan 11, 2018 9:45:12 GMT -5
It sounds very samsara-like - patterns within patterns, subject to repetition (so pseudo-cyclical). You've even used some of the same analogies I tend to employ to point to samsara, i.e. the cyclical nature of celestial bodies, and seasonality. To broaden the paradigm even further, a couple of other ones I like to use are the cyclical nature of language (i.e how definitions & wotnot cycle around), and the 'curvature' of time/space as detailed by General Relativity. All ultimately examples of the cyclical nature of experience. It's true the Tibetans in particular take the past lives issue seriously, and it ties in with the kamma thing again, where certain fine 'material' which forms the basis of the courser mind-body expression, actually transcends lifetimes. That doesn't mean the courser mind-body expression isn't periodic and subject to dissolution though. Death is as real as it gets in Buddhism, but it's only considered an end per se, where liberation from the round of rebirth is realised (in the purest sense of the phrase), and that's the actually considered to be the ultimate goal. It may seem like an elaborate ruse to avoid personal death, but as far as Buddhism is concerned, it's just a recognition of the actuality of the situation as it is. It's said that upon enlightenment the Buddha remembered all his previous lives, and to be clear, rebirth in Buddhism is intended quite literally. It's just the path it all takes and the implications of that are most often misconstrued. Ok, I think have an idea where you're coming from here, and it seems we have different ideas about the path 'avoidance' might take. Tbh, I kinda regretted that post to pilgrim straight after posting, I considered that getting too far into all that could be somewhat intrusive, and bad form, and that makes getting into this tricky. But I'll give it a try, and bear with me. You think the rebirth paradigm is somehow a mechanism for avoiding facing up to personal death. On the other hand, I've talked about subtle movement that transcends lifetimes, and which 'bubbles up', or 'filters down' to form individuation, yet that in the end even that has to go, and that those relatively prevailing patterns don't actually somehow negate the process of death. In fact, and somewhat to the contrary, the process of continual rebirth & redeath (at every level) literally continues in perpetuity until liberation, and this is actually considered to be an unfavourable state of being in Buddhism, and really the entire teaching is ultimately geared toward the cessation (or liberation from) that particular state/cycle. To elaborate, although a degree of continuity is imputed by the notion of rebirth, which I'm guessing is where you're getting the escapism idea from, what we might call subsequent rebirths are considered under the 'not the same, yet not another' umbrella. So although one 'lifetime' being conditioned by another is in one sense a continuous stream in a linear fashion, it is yet one which is subject to the 'blooms' that are birth, growth, withering, and death, accretively, and when impermanence and not-self are factored in, the situation sits in contrast to the Western conception of a soul, or atta, which tends to impute a misguided degree of abidingness, and once-removedness. So never is the process static, it continuously unfolds, and so the 'are you the same person today as you were yesterday' metaphor applies. As an analogy, we could say the present winter is conditioned by previous winters, and future winters will be conditioned by past and present winters, yet more broadly winter bleeds seamlessly from fall, and into spring, and yet more broadly still, the cycle of the seasons is merely a condition which arises within an even greater cycle, commonly conceived of as the universe as a whole. Yet at the macro-experiential level it can be said that winter actually appears, and as with spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is birth, growth, withering, and death, ... as a pattern within in the greater form of cyclical conditionality in its entirety. So it's a middle way, which as I say, is merely intended to acknowledge and describe (point to) the actuality of the situation, whilst ultimately neither being solely affirmative, or dismissive. Regarding liberation, the path this takes is total unbinding, which is realisation in its truest, and most profound sense, and this is where it gets interesting. By its truest sense I mean firstly that there's an actualisation (transformative) component to it. So in much the same way realisation is talked about here on the forum, it's about undermining, and by extension extinguishing the causes upon which a particular state of being arises. The real difference is that where here on the forum that cessation tends only to extend to a level of delusion that results in existential angst, and/or, acute psychological distress (designated suffering), in Buddhism it goes much deeper - as previously detailed, and therefore extends beyond any functional division placed between 'what-is' (the territory), and mapping. It's perhaps worth saying here that total unbinding doesn't equate to nothingness, just to be clear. Going back to my comment to pilgrim, I'll go so far as to say, I'm of the opinion that a scenario can arise, whereupon certain particularly profound experiences may sail closer to my notion of unbinding than perhaps is consciously realised, and due to what I'll call 'a depth of attachment' running much deeper than is generally given credit for, (and this ties in with Ish's recent post), situations can arise where unconscious self-preservative measures arise, which can play out in a variety of different ways. All a bit cryptic I know, but the nett result of which ties in with other stuff I've talked about over the past month or so, (for example, identity poker, subtle mind-anchors etc). Anyway, the thing about such outcomes are, they're actually quite literally sources of becoming, which means they form the crux of the perpetuation of rebirth at every level, and again, ultimately this all has to do with the nature of, and production of kamma, which is currently still beyond my technical expertise to really do justice to, hehe. (Sorry bout the 'wall') Yes, samsara is the bottom line. Every culture has a way of describing it, and some cultures are big tents on issues like rebirth -- from what I can tell there's a broad diversity of takes on the topic among Buddhists generally. The similarity between your descriptions and the Fourier series is one of those delightful confluences that pierce the superficialities of cultural conditioning. But what we awake to is confounding of any and all of those descriptions. Some models of the light show lead into a deeper trance -- just because knowledge is relative doesn't mean that it's all of the same relative value. But that value is always ultimately contextual. Some facets of the show have the potential to illuminate the exit signs, but that possibility depends on the angle of one's eye relative to the light. Yes, there is a broad diversity of takes among Buddhists, as you say. Many modern Buddhists struggle to relate to the notion of rebirth at all, and question its relevance to what they call everyday practice, which for them would be the eightfold path, which really just means living consciously and considerately.
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Post by ouroboros on Jan 11, 2018 9:49:26 GMT -5
It sounds very samsara-like - patterns within patterns, subject to repetition (so pseudo-cyclical). You've even used some of the same analogies I tend to employ to point to samsara, i.e. the cyclical nature of celestial bodies, and seasonality. To broaden the paradigm even further, a couple of other ones I like to use are the cyclical nature of language (i.e how definitions & wotnot cycle around), and the 'curvature' of time/space as detailed by General Relativity. All ultimately examples of the cyclical nature of experience. It's true the Tibetans in particular take the past lives issue seriously, and it ties in with the kamma thing again, where certain fine 'material' which forms the basis of the courser mind-body expression, actually transcends lifetimes. That doesn't mean the courser mind-body expression isn't periodic and subject to dissolution though. Death is as real as it gets in Buddhism, but it's only considered an end per se, where liberation from the round of rebirth is realised (in the purest sense of the phrase), and that's the actually considered to be the ultimate goal. It may seem like an elaborate ruse to avoid personal death, but as far as Buddhism is concerned, it's just a recognition of the actuality of the situation as it is. It's said that upon enlightenment the Buddha remembered all his previous lives, and to be clear, rebirth in Buddhism is intended quite literally. It's just the path it all takes and the implications of that are most often misconstrued. Ok, I think have an idea where you're coming from here, and it seems we have different ideas about the path 'avoidance' might take. Tbh, I kinda regretted that post to pilgrim straight after posting, I considered that getting too far into all that could be somewhat intrusive, and bad form, and that makes getting into this tricky. But I'll give it a try, and bear with me. You think the rebirth paradigm is somehow a mechanism for avoiding facing up to personal death. On the other hand, I've talked about subtle movement that transcends lifetimes, and which 'bubbles up', or 'filters down' to form individuation, yet that in the end even that has to go, and that those relatively prevailing patterns don't actually somehow negate the process of death. In fact, and somewhat to the contrary, the process of continual rebirth & redeath (at every level) literally continues in perpetuity until liberation, and this is actually considered to be an unfavourable state of being in Buddhism, and really the entire teaching is ultimately geared toward the cessation (or liberation from) that particular state/cycle. To elaborate, although a degree of continuity is imputed by the notion of rebirth, which I'm guessing is where you're getting the escapism idea from, what we might call subsequent rebirths are considered under the 'not the same, yet not another' umbrella. So although one 'lifetime' being conditioned by another is in one sense a continuous stream in a linear fashion, it is yet one which is subject to the 'blooms' that are birth, growth, withering, and death, accretively, and when impermanence and not-self are factored in, the situation sits in contrast to the Western conception of a soul, or atta, which tends to impute a misguided degree of abidingness, and once-removedness. So never is the process static, it continuously unfolds, and so the 'are you the same person today as you were yesterday' metaphor applies. As an analogy, we could say the present winter is conditioned by previous winters, and future winters will be conditioned by past and present winters, yet more broadly winter bleeds seamlessly from fall, and into spring, and yet more broadly still, the cycle of the seasons is merely a condition which arises within an even greater cycle, commonly conceived of as the universe as a whole. Yet at the macro-experiential level it can be said that winter actually appears, and as with spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is birth, growth, withering, and death, ... as a pattern within in the greater form of cyclical conditionality in its entirety. So it's a middle way, which as I say, is merely intended to acknowledge and describe (point to) the actuality of the situation, whilst ultimately neither being solely affirmative, or dismissive. Regarding liberation, the path this takes is total unbinding, which is realisation in its truest, and most profound sense, and this is where it gets interesting. By its truest sense I mean firstly that there's an actualisation (transformative) component to it. So in much the same way realisation is talked about here on the forum, it's about undermining, and by extension extinguishing the causes upon which a particular state of being arises. The real difference is that where here on the forum that cessation tends only to extend to a level of delusion that results in existential angst, and/or, acute psychological distress (designated suffering), in Buddhism it goes much deeper - as previously detailed, and therefore extends beyond any functional division placed between 'what-is' (the territory), and mapping. It's perhaps worth saying here that total unbinding doesn't equate to nothingness, just to be clear. Going back to my comment to pilgrim, I'll go so far as to say, I'm of the opinion that a scenario can arise, whereupon certain particularly profound experiences may sail closer to my notion of unbinding than perhaps is consciously realised, and due to what I'll call 'a depth of attachment' running much deeper than is generally given credit for, (and this ties in with Ish's recent post), situations can arise where unconscious self-preservative measures arise, which can play out in a variety of different ways. All a bit cryptic I know, but the nett result of which ties in with other stuff I've talked about over the past month or so, (for example, identity poker, subtle mind-anchors etc). Anyway, the thing about such outcomes are, they're actually quite literally sources of becoming, which means they form the crux of the perpetuation of rebirth at every level, and again, ultimately this all has to do with the nature of, and production of kamma, which is currently still beyond my technical expertise to really do justice to, hehe. (Sorry bout the 'wall') All this is pretty subtle (that's why it's difficult to find agreement on the subject) but I'd say quite accurate. It's not easy to decipher, but decipher is the correct word, as all that info is not very explicitly written (the meaning of subtle) in-one-place. No time to comment further, back later. It does all get increasingly subtle, and really I'm just talking broadly about a couple of the pieces there, which fit together with a number of others to form a seamless picture. A picture which in certain circumstances comes together and can be 'traversed'. Obviously there are voluminous texts dedicated to that picture, but in the end the subtleties of it can only be directly known, realised, although perhaps to varying degrees of refinement.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jan 11, 2018 11:36:06 GMT -5
All this is pretty subtle (that's why it's difficult to find agreement on the subject) but I'd say quite accurate. It's not easy to decipher, but decipher is the correct word, as all that info is not very explicitly written (the meaning of subtle) in-one-place. No time to comment further, back later. It does all get increasingly subtle, and really I'm just talking broadly about a couple of the pieces there, which fit together with a number of others to form a seamless picture. A picture which in certain circumstances comes together and can be 'traversed'. Obviously there are voluminous texts dedicated to that picture, but in the end the subtleties of it can only be directly known, realised, although perhaps to varying degrees of refinement. Yes. The pertinent question is, what (re)incarnates? An analogy. Do you (does anyone) have early memories, say from age 6, 5, 4 or even younger? In what sense are you the-same-person, then and now? There is something that is continuous from then to now, but atst there is much more that is not continuous. So what carries over from one incarnation to another? The person we consider ourselves to be (speaking for most people) does not carry over, it dies, this is the experience of the Bardo in Tibetan Buddhism. Does that mean we should have no concern for a ~future self~?...as this future self will be FAIAP be ~somebody else~. Everybody, in some sense, answers this question, their whole life is an answer to the question. Samkaras and vasanas carry-over from one life to another, they form a kind of foundation for subsequent lives, IOW karma does carry over. But also, an undeveloped field of potential also carries over, you could say a kind of spiritual DNA. www.indiadivine.org/content/topic/1058023-difference-between-samkaras-and-vasanas/So, if anyone holds the view that there-is- only an undifferentiated Whole, and nothing else, that's an incomplete picture. www.nevernotpresent.com/satsangs/vasanas-samskaras-and-karma/
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Post by laughter on Jan 11, 2018 11:55:34 GMT -5
Yes, samsara is the bottom line. Every culture has a way of describing it, and some cultures are big tents on issues like rebirth -- from what I can tell there's a broad diversity of takes on the topic among Buddhists generally. The similarity between your descriptions and the Fourier series is one of those delightful confluences that pierce the superficialities of cultural conditioning. But what we awake to is confounding of any and all of those descriptions. Some models of the light show lead into a deeper trance -- just because knowledge is relative doesn't mean that it's all of the same relative value. But that value is always ultimately contextual. Some facets of the show have the potential to illuminate the exit signs, but that possibility depends on the angle of one's eye relative to the light. Yes, there is a broad diversity of takes among Buddhists, as you say. Many modern Buddhists struggle to relate to the notion of rebirth at all, and question its relevance to what they call everyday practice, which for them would be the eightfold path, which really just means living consciously and considerately. And there's alot to be said for that. All the different cultures converge on this as well. For instance, the secular humanists have their therapists, Catholics have Lent, and everyone with a TV has access to football season.
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Post by zin on Jan 11, 2018 19:26:56 GMT -5
What 'ordering'? .. (I mean, asking psychologically) Just ticks and tocks on the clocks and the boxes on the calendar. Just plain 'ole time, in the most ordinary sense. Just one thing moving relative to another. Just change. I posted too many pics today! But still, here's an answer : )
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Post by laughter on Jan 12, 2018 11:37:09 GMT -5
Just ticks and tocks on the clocks and the boxes on the calendar. Just plain 'ole time, in the most ordinary sense. Just one thing moving relative to another. Just change. I posted too many pics today! But still, here's an answer : ) o.k.
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