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Post by sharon on Feb 21, 2011 4:15:32 GMT -5
I have no need of plausibles ~ there are 4 'If's in your statements. Take out at least one of the 'If''s and see what happens ...
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Post by frankshank on Feb 21, 2011 8:27:44 GMT -5
Thanks for that Enigma. The differences are becoming clearer now. The following webpage provides a breakdown of the key differences along with the Parsons and Waite letters. There is a traditional leaning but it's helpful I think: www.nonduality.com/hl3182.htmWhat interests me most is the issue of freewill. In the traditional version they believe there is limited choice. Anyone have an opinion regarding this?
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Post by zendancer on Feb 21, 2011 10:28:55 GMT -5
Frank: The truth is beyond choice or no-choice, but your question illustrates one of the issues involved in the debate between traditional Advaita and neo-Advaita. Any time we attempt to say or write anything about the non-dual, we have to use words, and whatever is stated must be both true and false at the same time. This is why teachers say contradictory things that, from their perspective, are not contradictory; they understand that the truth is beyond language and that language can only point to it.
Tony Parsons has stated somewhere that there is no holy or unholy. Those words capture the flavor of what he wants to convey. For me, the exact opposite of those words has a more appropriate flavor, but when I listen to his CD's and an interview with him, I understand that we're pointing to the same thing. Ramesh preferred "no-choice" in his teaching, but Gangagi prefers "choice." Same underlying reality.
When you asked, do we have a choice? my inclination was to reply, "No choice whatsoever," because that captures the flavor of my own experiences, but it is more accurate to state that the truth is beyond either set of ideas. The problem with being verbally accurate is that nothing whatsoever is said. This is one of the reasons that Zen uses koans as a teaching technique; they bypass language (in favor of a physical explication) or use language in a different way than usual.
E. did a good job of explaining the Parsons/Waite controversy. Like E. I never got to the end of the original Waite article. I got the gist of it, and it was okay as far as it went, but I concluded that it was based upon a misunderstanding of levels.
Waite complained about teachers, like Gangaji, who use silent staring as a technique when responding to questioners, but he ignores the fact that the Buddha often did this and Ramana did this exclusively for almost seven years. Silence can be an extraordinarily effective response when used appropriately.
I think Michael was the only one who complained about money and neo-Advaita, but this issue is too inconsequential to address. I don't think Tolle considers himself a "neo-Advaita" teacher, but he is probably the only teacher of non-duality who has acquired any significant wealth from his teaching, and that is only because he wrote some best-selling books on the subject.
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Post by enigma on Feb 21, 2011 10:55:50 GMT -5
To say we have no choice does not mean to say what we do makes no difference (as the article says). it just means that we don't have a choice about what we do. The one who sees the implication that it doesn't matter what we do is still assuming we can choose. (that since we have no choice, we can do whatever we want, which of course we can't given that we have no choice)
Ultimately, it's niether true nor false that we have choice. The whole notion is based on an erroneous assumption of personhood. It would be like me believing I'm the tree in my backyard and asking whether I do or do not have free will to grow leaves when I want to. The question is absurd. It should be understood, however, that the teacher is not operating under the same misconception and is not talking to a volitional mind but rather to what I call the Intelligence which drives the mind, which is seen as the same identical Intelligence that 'he' knows himself to be. We could say Satsang is Self talking to Self about Self.
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Post by frankshank on Feb 21, 2011 10:57:16 GMT -5
ZD: The beyond choice or no choice thing has been mentioned before and it's a dead end for me really. I don't get it. I know it's been stated previously that the mind will never get it, but that's what my mind will continue to do. I also don't get how things can't be described using words either and the contradictions don't help. I realise everything has its opposite in duality and that is reflected in stated opinions. I think the only thing 'I' can do now is try to experience this, although I'd prefer to just dip my toes to be honest. I started to meditate casually again a couple of weeks ago, shortly before Porto recommmended it in a previous post actually. Hopefully it will do the trick. I'm not convinced that it's a grace thing.
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ichc
New Member
Posts: 39
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Post by ichc on Feb 21, 2011 11:08:40 GMT -5
The beyond choice or no choice thing has been mentioned before and it's a dead end for me really. I don't get it. When you look out into the world do you see choice or no-choice? Both choice and no choice are ideas that appear to you when you reflect. There's nothing solid or real about them!
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Post by enigma on Feb 21, 2011 11:25:00 GMT -5
The idea that it's beyond 'choice and no choice' points to what I was saying about the issue being misconceived. We could say You are the intelligence which forms thought, which is not to say You can choose what thought forms, but it also doesn't mean You are a victim of Your own creation. The paradigm is different and playing musical volitional chairs simply doesn't apply.
Words 'by definition' bifurcate. That is, their function is to separate by defining. When one is always referring to that which cannot be separated in any way, using a tool that does nothing BUT separate is seriously problematic. One can talk in the context of human interaction and talk about choosing to meditate, and in the next breath talk in the largest context about no choice. The contradiction is the result of the contextual, free floating, self referencing nature of conceptualization.
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Post by therealfake on Feb 21, 2011 12:47:42 GMT -5
I have no need of plausibles ~ there are 4 'If's in your statements. Take out at least one of the 'If''s and see what happens ... I'm not really interested in the conceptual relevance of each statement, but that which is 'aware' of each statement. Is it the 'awareness', that bestows truth to one concept over the other? Or is the truth the 'awareness', the one that observes all true and all false concepts? I guess, what I'm wondering, is your take on the 'awareness'?
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Post by sharon on Feb 21, 2011 15:23:52 GMT -5
This sounds like you have a concept of a 'that which is 'aware' ... yeah?
No
This is your mind trying to make a base where there isn't one. Please trust me when I tell you that you don't have to use other people's concepts. Your own deeply original language will be heard just fine and replied to from where you are ...
It really doesn't matter what my thoughts, take, rattle, is on anything and you know that.
You have already declared on a different thread that know you have to turn this inwards now. This is about what you know for certain, past all conditioning ... what have you always, known ... ?
This is a living reality. Be as real as you can possibly bear and then some ...
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Post by frankshank on Feb 21, 2011 15:55:13 GMT -5
E & ichc: I get it. I've got it before, now I think about it, but it slipped my mind. I struggle to think of myself as a tree at the moment, although I figured the standing still part out a while ago!
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Post by mamza on Feb 21, 2011 16:39:55 GMT -5
Sometimes I like to stare at the wall for a really long time. Does that count as not-knowing? I'd say very few thoughts tend to appear after an hour or two... they're just burnt out.
After a while I get up and wonder what sitting there had to do with anything regarding the truth. Then I realise it had nothing to do with it at all. After that I stare some more and forget there was ever a reason to stare in the first place. It's just fun. Kinda makes me feel like a zombie.
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Post by ivory on Feb 21, 2011 21:14:24 GMT -5
I may have found a clue though. In an earlier post I suspected that the main implication of "conceptual not-knowing" is the cessation of the spiritual search because the search is seen as an idiotic activity. What I overlooked is an obvious implication that is at least as relevant. I don't think you're too far off the mark here. Although, like ZD said, I don't think it's about seeing the search as idiotic. If seeking does stop I think it would happen by its own accord and not as a conscious decision. What I see happening in myself is that attention is naturally shifting toward the actual (as you stated below) as opposed to a cessation of seeking (or maybe they are one in the same, I don't really know what seeking means). In the same way that the seeing of the spiritual search as idiotic results in the cessation of the search, the seeing of the believing in false concepts as idiotic equally has to result in the cessation of the belief in concepts, which in effect implies the turning of attention away from beliefs and therefore toward the actual. You can call them beliefs if you like. But I think it's more accurate to say that you're turning your attention away from the mind all together simply because the mind doesn't know anything. Why listen to something that doesn't know? I dusted off an old Tolle audio recording today and coincidentally he actually had some really cool stuff to say on the subject... Now the strange thing is from the point of view of the mind it looks as if you knew less about yourself than before. And it's true. It is a voluntary embracing and saying yes to the state of not knowing anything anymore. That's why it's so frightening to the little ego. An embracing of not knowing, there's vast power in that not knowing. Whatever you need to know at any moment, which is always this moment, will arise out of what looks like the state of ignorance to the mind. Whatever you need to know, or need to do to know at any moment, arises out of this state of not knowing. So to become comfortable, happy with not knowing, it's fine not to know and then you stay with the not-knowing which is the stillness. … Attentive alertness. You're not walking there with a little me and it's problems, you're walking as a field of awareness that looks at the universe and its beauty not needing to impose mental noise on anything, interpret ...Cool.
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frustratedwanter
Full Member
Apparently I posted something in 2020. I don't think that's what I'm looking for but what ta hey?
Posts: 150
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Post by frustratedwanter on Feb 23, 2011 17:34:59 GMT -5
My head hurts.
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