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Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2022 20:25:51 GMT -5
Pardon the text wall quite from "Be As You Are," by Godman. It sheds some light on the discussion. "Q: How can one function in the world in such a state? (sahaja) A: One who accustoms himself naturally to meditation and enjoys the bliss of meditation will not lose his samadhi state whatever external work he does, whatever thoughts may come to him. That is sahaja nirvikalpa. Sahaja nirvikalpa is nasa [total destruction of the mind] whereas kevala nirvikalpa is laya[temporary abeyance of the mind]. Those who are in the laya samadhi state will have to bring the mind back under control from time to time. If the mind is destroyed, as it is in sahaja samadhi, it will never sprout again. Whatever is done by such people is just incidental, they will never slide down from their high state. Those that are in the kevala nirvikalpa state are not realized, they are still seekers. Those who are in the sahaja nirvikalpa state are like a light in a windless place, or the ocean without waves; that is, there is no movement in them. They cannot find anything which is different from themselves. For those who do not reach that state, everything appears to be different from themselves. Q: Is the experience of kevala nirvikalpa the same as that of sahaja, although one comes down from it to the relative world? A: There is neither coming down nor going up – he who goes up and down is not real. In kevala nirvikalpa there is the mental bucket still in existence under the water, and it can be pulled out at any moment. Sahaja is like the river that has linked up with the ocean from which there is no return. Why do you ask all these questions? Go on practising till you have the experience yourself." Yes to the bolded; a roller coaster and the one who rides a roller coaster are both cognitive illusions. Rollercoaster realization is missing. It is realized. It's not easy to see or notice otherwise half of the world might have known this truth, you see everybody gets angry, sad, irritated but still they don't have the clue that life is rollercoaster so they apply the responsibility on other people and they enter into angry mode. The one who knows the rollercoaster knows that situation will change according to the side of the rollercoaster. |
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Post by Reefs on Dec 14, 2022 22:38:08 GMT -5
Gopal can clarify. I've never took him to mean just an emotional rollercoaster. I have to agree with you to some extent here. Life has it's ups and downs and not all of that is only a product of our reaction to what comes and goes. Saying any more beyond that though .. well ..  .. I'm about to start a thread on Hyakujo's Fox ...Please do, because that's a beauty of a koan! |
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Post by Reefs on Dec 14, 2022 22:42:27 GMT -5
In essence, the rollercoaster experience is the result of lazy focusing, i.e. creating by default, or merely reacting to life instead of creating your life. If that is realized, that's an important realization. But the conclusion that the rollercoaster experience is what life is, that's nonsense with a bit of taste of sour grapes on top. . But the other case I'm going to include in that thread is #19. The biggest buried lede in the history of literature.  Gopal is not entirely wrong. There is always contrast in duality. However, if we talk about our predominant state of being, I instead of a static up and down wave pattern, where you have to go down after you went up, I see it more as a spiral, that is either trending upwards or downwards. So you would also have your ups and downs but they become so minute that it becomes almost unnoticeable and the upward (or downward) trending baseline remains regardless. And that baseline is what counts in terms of overall experience. And that baseline does not have to go up and down all the time. That baseline can remain on the lower half or the upper half of the scale or keep steadily rising or falling. As Abe always say, there's no end to how good it can get (or how bad it can get). |
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Post by andrew on Dec 15, 2022 6:37:55 GMT -5
Yes, agree. I'd perhaps say 'duality' exists as an abstract calculation (e.g up and down, left and right) I think that's what you call 'imagination'. Relatively speaking, I am okay to say that 'qualities' exist (or appear) such as light, heat, sound etc, but these exist (or appear) as contrast, rather than as duality. These qualities don't stand in opposition to each other, hence why they are not separate from each other. When we were young, our parents pointed to various aspects of reality and encouraged us to distinguish what we saw as separate objects and to distinguish words that could symbolize the image distinctions and idea distinctions. They pointed and said, "that's a tree." Or, "I'm your mother." Or "your name is John Doe." We were also conditioned to imagine qualities, relationships, states of being, etc. In short, we were conditioned to imagine the same things that our parents, peers, and teachers imagined--a meta-reality (or consensus paradigm) that soon took precedence over reality, itself. Language enabled us to symbolically communicate with each other about those abstractions. The path of ND is a path that reverses this trajectory until we can discern the difference between reality as it is and our ideas, images, and symbols that represent the unspeakable, unthinkable, and undivided field of being that is our true nature. Whether we point to that field of being with a word like "THIS" or "The Infinite" or "the kingdom of God" makes no difference. Jesus reportedly said via the Gospel of Thomas, "The kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, but men do not see it." Yes. Obviously there are many ways of talking about this, and I understand what you are saying well enough. I would say that we were conditioned to place too much emphasis, or reliance, or trust in the calculating/measuring aspect of the mind, and that caused...to use your words...a kind of 'meta-reality'. As to how and why this conditioning happens, well that's a very big question, and I like some of SDP's insights on this subject. But in the end, I'd say it boils down to a mixture of false understanding, emotional wounds, and physiological self-preservation. |
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Post by andrew on Dec 15, 2022 6:44:59 GMT -5
TMT! Stop thinking/imagining, and look. If the mind is silent, what do the eyes see? I guarantee that the eyes do NOT see a roller coaster, polarities, nothingness, somethingness, levels, vibrations, thingness, or anything else imaginable. The word "THIS" is only a pointer. It points to an infinite unified field of being. It does not negate polarity; it points beyond polarity and all other such concepts. I will give an example. In elementary school looking at a map of the world, I could always see South America fitting into Africa like two puzzle pieces. I never mentioned it to anyone. It took some guy, don't recall his name, to devise the idea of continental drift, and we eventually came to know that South America and Africa actually did once fit together. The actuality came before the theory, but the theory discovered the actuality. That came from just looking... The idea did not negate the fact. There are some so-called distinctions which are imaginary and some which are not. Phrenology used to be called a science, the bumps on your head were supposed to correspond to your character. That was definitely imaginary. It seems if we take things the way you say we should, the imaginary is part of the whole. Is that not what Gopal's OP is about? Is this not what the whole climate debate is about? It seems that if man didn't exist, the planet would be doing fine, we wouldn't have the pollution we do. If man didn't exist we wouldn't have tons of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, which are just a fancy way to boil water, that's going to last for thousands of years, and we have to keep very good bookkeeping on all that, or somebody is going to dig it up in 50,000 years, and die. So it seems man has gone against the flow. If we took things to be as they were before modern man existed, say 100,000 years ago, I could agree with you. Alan Watts said that nature is always squiggly, no straight lines. I completely agree. But man has made *straight lines*, building buildings and laying out city grids. So you either have to say houses and buildings are imaginary, or qualify your statements. I'd say man's ~imagination~ has screwed up the planet. It seems all the problems we have in the world, poverty, famine, murder, terrorism, war, come from man's imagination, corrupt ideas in disagreement with the natural. ZD's use of the word 'imagination' is a little unconventional, but going with your definition, I agree that imagination can be very destructive, but it can also be a wonderful thing. Ultimately, every thing in front of me, including this laptop and the fire, came from someone's imagination. Imagination is part of our creative capacity, can be good or bad. |
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Post by andrew on Dec 15, 2022 6:48:43 GMT -5
There are times when the most relative flow is found in acceptance of resistance. Tolle, ''Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.'' Sometimes the present moment includes resistance, maybe even anger. If anger arises, then that's what is, in that moment. Yes, ideally, our relative flow is aligned to absolute flow (and that's very lovely) but that's not the way life consistently happens for most of us. If someone tries to take your baby away, are you just going to let them? I will get angry, yes. But If anger arises, then that indicates that I have lost the ability to watch the movie. I am resisting. But you are creating the story, if the story pisses you off, then something wrong. Arising anger clearly tells you that you are out of alignment with your nature. I am not talking about trying to be not to get angry when you feel anger. Okay. I understand. It seems to me that what you are really interested is in 'perfect creation'...a 'perfect experience'. What you want is the 'golden age'. I'm going to project a concern onto you....sometimes the way you talk, it sounds like you try to control your happiness/joy level, because you have a fear that if you get too happy, then you will inevitably be unhappy. This is not good in my view. In my view, you don't want to be limiting your happiness! Be as happy as you spontaneously feel in any moment! Be ecstatically joyful of your babies! You won't necessarily then be unhappy afterwards....you may be unhappy, but it won't be BECAUSE you were very joyful. |
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Post by andrew on Dec 15, 2022 6:56:52 GMT -5
The rollercoaster G is talking about is specifically an emotional rollercoaster, which I would say is more a product of human dysfunction and false belief, than it is a universal polarity. We do experience what seems like polarity because there's a measuring and objectifying aspect to the mind, and this aspect can only think in terms of 'presences'. It cannot grok an absence...it objectifies it. Because of this, we experience light and dark as polarity, but in reality, there is no darkness, there is only relative absence of light, cold is a relative absence of heat, quietness is a relative absence of sound etc. So I would say the reality of existence is 'relative contrast', not 'absolute poles'. Or as you said.... vibrational. Unhappiness would be a relative absence of wellbeing. In essence, the rollercoaster experience is the result of lazy focusing, i.e. creating by default, or merely reacting to life instead of creating your life. If that is realized, that's an important realization. But the conclusion that the rollercoaster experience is what life is, that's nonsense with a bit of taste of sour grapes on top. yep. The emotional rollercoaster happens for most people because when the good feelings ebb, a bit of fear creeps in, and this fear is ultimately a lack consciousness, a false belief, and relates to the fact that most folks strongly associate happiness with external world conditions. So I also agree that in our world, there is some degree of up and down, but to say that an up CAUSES a down is a misunderstanding of how our conditioned beliefs and fears work. (I noted you mentioned a spiral a bit later, which I quite like....it sort of fits better with the idea of vibrational reality). |
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Post by andrew on Dec 15, 2022 7:04:02 GMT -5
Again, this is just imagination. It did not arise as a result of simple looking; it came from the intellect imagining lines of demarcation, boundaries, patterns, etc. If a Zen student posted this, A ZM might hold up a map of the world and ask, "What is this?" or "What do you see?" If the student so much as opened his/her mouth, the ZM would ring his bell and suggest more meditation. ND is beyond ideation or words symbolizing ideational abstractions. It points beyond anything that can be imagined. Floating is only possible when you realize roller-coaster. When you know you are in the down side of the rollercoaster, It will protect you from going too deep in unhappiness, so you remain calm. But when you do not know it's the down side of the roller-coaster, you would automatically enter into deep side of the roller-coaster. So when you are on the 'down side', is your way of handling that (or protecting yourself), 'to know that you are on the down side of the rollercoaster'? It keeps you calm rather than getting stressed and anxious about the unhappiness? Sort of a form of stoicism. |
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Post by andrew on Dec 15, 2022 7:17:28 GMT -5
"Don't resist evil," another misleading statement from a nondualist. Does it mean we let let pedo progressives steal our babies? Is it an antidote to Gopal's roller coaster? Will it cure Laffy's ambiphilia? I ponder these and many other existential notions while sipping my morning coffee and mourning poor Sree's silence. Preparing a new sree-merick, a requiem. Should it more properly say "don't resist reefs?" I surely disagree with " Don't resist evil". Identify it, its source, and get rid of it! The deeper interpretation is: I agree with that. But equally, for me, 'don't resist evil', means accepting that it's within me too (it's all within me), rather than rejecting it and trying to split it. There's a balance though, because 'accepting it' doesn't mean giving it attention and 'activating' it! I like Abraham's idea, 'to be selective' Do you believe that ALL that you perceive in the world (as evil) is your creation? Or do you believe there's an 'entangled' relationship between you and an 'other'? For example, do you believe that you entirely create the Joe Biden that you perceive? i.e do you believe that Biden has no beliefs/consciousness of his own, and he is just an expression of an aspect of you? Or do you believe that Biden has his own terrible beliefs, and his own consciousness, and that his consciousness is entangled with your consciousness to some extent? (Let's see if any Dems are triggered ) |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Dec 15, 2022 8:45:07 GMT -5
I will give an example. In elementary school looking at a map of the world, I could always see South America fitting into Africa like two puzzle pieces. I never mentioned it to anyone. It took some guy, don't recall his name, to devise the idea of continental drift, and we eventually came to know that South America and Africa actually did once fit together. The actuality came before the theory, but the theory discovered the actuality. That came from just looking... The idea did not negate the fact. There are some so-called distinctions which are imaginary and some which are not. Phrenology used to be called a science, the bumps on your head were supposed to correspond to your character. That was definitely imaginary. It seems if we take things the way you say we should, the imaginary is part of the whole. Is that not what Gopal's OP is about? Is this not what the whole climate debate is about? It seems that if man didn't exist, the planet would be doing fine, we wouldn't have the pollution we do. If man didn't exist we wouldn't have tons of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, which are just a fancy way to boil water, that's going to last for thousands of years, and we have to keep very good bookkeeping on all that, or somebody is going to dig it up in 50,000 years, and die. So it seems man has gone against the flow. If we took things to be as they were before modern man existed, say 100,000 years ago, I could agree with you. Alan Watts said that nature is always squiggly, no straight lines. I completely agree. But man has made *straight lines*, building buildings and laying out city grids. So you either have to say houses and buildings are imaginary, or qualify your statements. I'd say man's ~imagination~ has screwed up the planet. It seems all the problems we have in the world, poverty, famine, murder, terrorism, war, come from man's imagination, corrupt ideas in disagreement with the natural. ZD's use of the word 'imagination' is a little unconventional, but going with your definition, I agree that imagination can be very destructive, but it can also be a wonderful thing. Ultimately, every thing in front of me, including this laptop and the fire, came from someone's imagination. Imagination is part of our creative capacity, can be good or bad. Yes, there are two definitions of imagination. One, I just saw a unicorn cross my yard. Second, "Imagination is more important than knowledge". Einstein (I guess there is a 3rd definition, I just saw a horse cross my yard, really, here's a picture). "At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact, I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research". from an interview in 1929 |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 15, 2022 9:17:51 GMT -5
I will give an example. In elementary school looking at a map of the world, I could always see South America fitting into Africa like two puzzle pieces. I never mentioned it to anyone. It took some guy, don't recall his name, to devise the idea of continental drift, and we eventually came to know that South America and Africa actually did once fit together. The actuality came before the theory, but the theory discovered the actuality. That came from just looking... The idea did not negate the fact. There are some so-called distinctions which are imaginary and some which are not. Phrenology used to be called a science, the bumps on your head were supposed to correspond to your character. That was definitely imaginary. It seems if we take things the way you say we should, the imaginary is part of the whole. Is that not what Gopal's OP is about? Is this not what the whole climate debate is about? It seems that if man didn't exist, the planet would be doing fine, we wouldn't have the pollution we do. If man didn't exist we wouldn't have tons of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, which are just a fancy way to boil water, that's going to last for thousands of years, and we have to keep very good bookkeeping on all that, or somebody is going to dig it up in 50,000 years, and die. So it seems man has gone against the flow. If we took things to be as they were before modern man existed, say 100,000 years ago, I could agree with you. Alan Watts said that nature is always squiggly, no straight lines. I completely agree. But man has made *straight lines*, building buildings and laying out city grids. So you either have to say houses and buildings are imaginary, or qualify your statements. I'd say man's ~imagination~ has screwed up the planet. It seems all the problems we have in the world, poverty, famine, murder, terrorism, war, come from man's imagination, corrupt ideas in disagreement with the natural. ZD's use of the word 'imagination' is a little unconventional, but going with your definition, I agree that imagination can be very destructive, but it can also be a wonderful thing. Ultimately, every thing in front of me, including this laptop and the fire, came from someone's imagination. Imagination is part of our creative capacity, can be good or bad. I often use the word "imagination," because I think of the intellect as the "image making" or "image creation" function of mind, but words like "cognition," "distinction," "thought," "reflection," "differentiation," and "discrimination," point to the same function. The intellect not only allows humans to imaginatively cut the world up into abstract parts, and to represent those abstractions with symbols, it also allows humans to manipulate those symbols in the "mind's eye", and we use words like "calculation," "evaluation," "addition," "subtraction," etc. to point to that functionality. What a rock IS is NOT imaginary, but the image/idea/symbol "rock" is totally imaginary. The distinction "rock" was internalized in the subconscious when we were young, so we know what it is in two completely different ways (gnosis and episteme) and do not have to think any thoughts about it to know what we know. The problem for most adults is that they can't stop thinking/imagining/talking to themselves in their heads long enough to realize the difference between the actuality of what a rock IS and the idea/image/symbol "rock." Of course, the fundamental problem is imagining that there is a separate entity that observes reality. This is why there are at least two major existential realizations necessary for attaining freedom--(1) seeing through the illusion of separate things and (2) seeing through the illusion of a separate observer of things. People who have had those two major realizations and who have become detached from the consensus paradigm do not lose the ability to imagine, but they live in a world of suchness, or being, rather than an imagined meta-reality created, projected, and continually reinforced by mind talk. We use the term "SR" for people who penetrate the illusion of selfhood and discover the Self, but the term "TR" (THIS realization) may be a better pointer. After TR life becomes simple and straight forward. The idea that there is a SVP who rides a roller coaster of emotions or a roller coaster of any other kind no longer has any meaning. THIS unfolds however it unfolds and there is nothing (no thing) separate from that unfolding. As long as there is the idea that one is a SVP, life will seem to oscillate between highs and lows. |
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Post by zazeniac on Dec 15, 2022 9:30:13 GMT -5
Gopal's mechanism for coping with life's ups and downs, the roller coaster, is akin to my grandmother's, the old adage, "this too shall pass."
Different than the Mongol horses eating the crops adage where the very notion of "up" and "down" comes into question.
If I'm ruminating about it, I prefer the latter. Interpreting the value or detriment of events is a dubious endeavor. Some Buddhists I've read lately, say suffering (down) is the harbinger of Peace.
But I'm avidly opposed to rumination. It's the cause of seesaws and roller coasters.
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Post by zendancer on Dec 15, 2022 9:39:00 GMT -5
Yes to the bolded; a roller coaster and the one who rides a roller coaster are both cognitive illusions. Rollercoaster realization is missing. It is realized. It's not easy to see or notice otherwise half of the world might have known this truth, you see everybody gets angry, sad, irritated but still they don't have the clue that life is rollercoaster so they apply the responsibility on other people and they enter into angry mode. The one who knows the rollercoaster knows that situation will change according to the side of the rollercoaster. TR realization supersedes ideation. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 15, 2022 9:46:41 GMT -5
ZD's use of the word 'imagination' is a little unconventional, but going with your definition, I agree that imagination can be very destructive, but it can also be a wonderful thing. Ultimately, every thing in front of me, including this laptop and the fire, came from someone's imagination. Imagination is part of our creative capacity, can be good or bad. Yes, there are two definitions of imagination. One, I just saw a unicorn cross my yard. Second, "Imagination is more important than knowledge". Einstein (I guess there is a 3rd definition, I just saw a horse cross my yard, really, here's a picture). "At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact, I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research". from an interview in 1929 Yes, most cultures laud imagination, but it's both a blessing and a curse. People understand that a blue unicorn is imaginary, but they don't realize that every other distinction they make is equally imaginary. This is why Niz told a seeker, "You are the Ultimate but you imagine clouds and trees." Whether it is lines of longitude and latitude, blue unicorns, or hand, wrist, arm, rock, tree, cloud, up, down, high, low, or SVP, all distinctions are imaginary. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 15, 2022 9:47:21 GMT -5
Gopal's mechanism for coping with life's ups and downs, the roller coaster, is akin to my grandmother's, the old adage, "this too shall pass." Different than the Mongol horses eating the crops adage where the very notion of "up" and "down" comes into question. If I'm ruminating about it, I prefer the latter. Interpreting the value or detriment of events is a dubious endeavor. Some Buddhists I've read lately, say suffering (down) is the harbinger of Peace. But I'm avidly opposed to rumination. It's the cause of seesaws and roller coasters. Exactly! |
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.. I'm about to start a thread on Hyakujo's Fox ...
