asunthatneversets wrote:You'll have to define 'all subjective awareness' and 'narrower object-consciousness' for me I'm not sure what you mean by those two terms.
By 'narrower object consciousness', I mean "
I am aware
of this
thing" (really subject-object consciousness of course, although 'I' quickly turns out to be another mentally-constructed object). By 'all subjective awareness', I mean the same thing alongside all other conceivable awareness - just 'aware'. There may be a problem here in defining potentiality along with its necessary conditions - Does "potential" for something like awareness necessarily imply some kind of mystic substrate (which as such is ruled out as adharma), or can potential just be 'there' as a basic characteristic of reality, a bit like how we take it to be during sleep?
asunthatneversets wrote:undefineable wrote:asunthatneversets wrote:There is no awareness as a container (or field of potentiality) that things arise in.
Maybe so, but that's how it might look from a broad-brush perspective, particularly on a certain level.
Yes that would be a multi-faceted notion if explored in its entirety.
I wonder if the 'container' metaphor might be more helpful, psychologically, to the broad mass of people who aren't likely to find the inclination to meditate their way past it
asunthatneversets wrote:undefineable wrote:asunthatneversets wrote: You also have to be careful with the whole neither existent nor nonexistent thing as well, because some individuals will interpret that vague border as a license to promulgate an awareness-anchored view.
Awareness isn't an autonomous and free standing quality and therefore it isn't something which can be found apart from that which it relies on... it's only a viable designation when it's in relation to a wide array of other co-emergent designations. This is the type of thing you'd have to do some investigative work with though. By going through the process of discovering all the ways in which awareness is dependent, all the qualities, characteristics, aspects, things etc. that it depends on. Both in the sense of other qualities and also constituent characteristics that would define 'awareness' as what you take it to be. And when you've exhausted that search you will wind up not being able to locate awareness but will only find what it depends on. From there you'll then have to turn the investigation to whatever seems to remain (whatever awareness was dependent on) and find the emptiness of those qualities as well.
It's turtles all the way down!
Although I can't pin down what it would be, the suggestion that what I wrote is creating a circular argument must be governed by a certain presupposition, I don't see an issue, you'll have to elaborate and clarify for me what you're getting at.
I wasn't trying to imply this, but I take your point - I do find it hard to see how a fully-contingent awareness could be aware of every level of its own contingency without somehow short-circuiting itself, particularly given what you go on to say about Primordial Wisdom being non-contingent while presumably taking place within (contingent!) awareness. Maybe this is just another 'fact of life' that only makes sense after serious practice-?
asunthatneversets wrote:undefineable wrote:In the case that there's no aspects of mind apart from ordinary objects, then why do Buddhist teachings promise an enlightenment that's supposedly unqualified, uncharacterised, non-emergent, non-dependent, and -most importantly- a [/i]liberation[/i] of the mind (i.e. an enlightenment that's necessarily incompatible with mind if indeed it can't operate on that level)? Further, why was the Buddha unable to answer the question of whether he'd exist after death if (by his insight) he'd been liberated from all things mind-(and body-)related? And, if everything in reality is without any reality apart from references to other things - which themselves are also without any reality whatsoever, then in what way is such a 'heavy' emptiness still empty of itself?
This presupposes 'mind' and 'ordinary objects' as viable qualities. Primordial wisdom [skt. jñāna, tib. ye shes] is unqualified, non-emergent, non-dependent etc., however it is still completely and utterly empty and not established in any way.
So Primordial wisdom *is* in a sense that other things *aren't* (since they're made up of the pre-arisen conditions of other things), but at the same time it's not 'established', and takes place in a context that's not a viable quality? As I suspected, this is beyond me and probably most 'beginners' in meditation, which is a pity, as notions like active compassion and full enlightenment for all make mahayana a more attractive approach than Therevada for many temperaments.
asunthatneversets wrote:The mind cannot be liberated, but through recognition that the mind is unborn, liberation is achieved.
I suppose I see it as the mind's liberation from itself in a sense.
asunthatneversets wrote:The Buddha's condition is dharmakāya [tib. chos sku], which is emptiness free of the four extremes [existence, non-existence, both and neither]. It's not that everything in reality is without reality apart from references to other things, that would be a guise for svabhāva. Everything in reality is in truth unborn
Thanks for clearing that up
I suppose a lack of any reality would either constitute a kind of negative 'own-being' in itself, or else the necessary 'cross-references' would would end up forming that svabhava