Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2014 14:09:10 GMT -5
This is actually quite profound, and is really the crux of my disagreements with E and zd (and others). I don't doubt anyone's experience, I only say there may be further explanation or different explanation. And we have already discussed (in the past on other threads) the purpose of all this, the Cosmos going back 13.7 billion years, 100 billion stars in 100 billion galaxies, the formation of evolving life, and then the formation of consciousness, you and me, from a nondual standpoint, all this is an illusion. Nonduality has no explanation.
I will try to put succinctly Tzu's point. If the illusion is seen through, if self is seen to be an illusion, for such a one, don't they still find their way home every day.
Why not both? Oneness and individuality.
For the beginning seeker mountains are mountains. After a CC experience or deep realization, the seeker discovers the unity that underlies appearances. At that point mountains are NOT mountains because there is no separation anywhere, and this can be directly experienced and realized. This insight, alone, can be life-changing. The seeker then sometimes becomes attached to emptiness/unity/oneness, etc. and that's the whole point of the cigarette-man koan. Quite often the seeker lives for several days or weeks in a blissed-out altered state, but sooner or later s/he comes back to "normal." Also, quite commonly, the seeker who has experienced oneness wants to regain that state of oneness after it appears to be lost, not realizing that s/he is ALWAYS in a state of oneness no matter what is happening and no matter what one thinks about his/her past experiences. This is because the seeker still imagines that s/he is a person who has had an experience or realization. S/he has not yet realized that his/her REAL self is the cosmos. IOW, the seeker doesn't yet FEEL unified with the cosmos or doesn't yet UNDERSTAND what's going on.
With further seeking come additional realizations, and with luck the realization occurs that can be summarized as "Oh! I am the entire cosmos momentarily manifesting as a human being named 'John/Jane Doe.' The thought structure that supported a sense of John Doe-ness collapses, and the body/mind finally sees and understands what's going on. At this point mountains once again become mountains, and there is freedom from both the idea of oneness or the idea of separateness. This realization, which Zen people call "satori," ends the spiritual search for most people. However, further deepening is possible, and there is no end to what we might call "the path of Self-discovery."
The seeker who goes far enough becomes free of the mind and what we might call "hard-core self-referentiality," and his/her psychological state cannot then be imagined; it can only be lived and experienced directly. This is why all sages say, "Go see for yourself; no one can give this to you." All a sage can do is repeat, "Attention, attention, attention; look, notice, contemplate, ATA, meditate, be. The cosmos is not what you think it is."
The cosmos cannot be understood with the intellect, but if one goes far enough, that ceases to be important. One becomes psychologically at one with "what is," and allows the mind to function freely. It is like discovering that God has taken care of everything, and all one has to do is live life however it happens to unfold. One realizes that s/he has always been here and will always be here, and that there is nowhere else but here. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "I am before Abraham was." One loses all fear of death because it is seen and known that who one IS is infinite. The human body is like a rental car, but the driver of every rental car is the same One.
The Hindu myth about life being a form of hide and seek played by God is as good a myth as any for pointing to kinda sorta what's going on.
So, to summarize, unity and separateness are two sides of the same coin, but sages point to how life can be lived free from either perspective and free from all of the other ideas that dominate most people's thinking. Some of us, like E. and myself, primarily write about oneness because that's the side of the coin most people are unfamiliar with. Tzu writes about separateness because he appears to think that people need to be saved from the oneness perspective--ha ha. The truth is beyond either perspective, but it can only be lived.
This reminded me of one of my fave Vipassana teachers and Buddhist scholar Thanissaro Bhikku who has published a small essay on the Buddha's approach to questions.
No-self or Not-self? by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (I added emphasis here and there)
One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences the results of kamma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn't fit well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — you won't find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers.
The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should.
These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.
So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.
To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not "Is there a self? What is my self?" but rather "Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?" These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging — the residual sense of self-identification — that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that's left is limitless freedom.
In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there's the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what's experiencing it, or whether or not it's a self?
The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should.
These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.
So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.
To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not "Is there a self? What is my self?" but rather "Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?" These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging — the residual sense of self-identification — that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that's left is limitless freedom.
In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there's the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what's experiencing it, or whether or not it's a self?
I see most here looking at no-self as an antidote for minds tripping over themselves (suffering as a result of looking at the world from the lens/perspective of being a separate single person/self) and not as a doctrine, which is what Tzu is cautioning on (and is not wrong, IMO). Both approaches have their place.