how do things end?

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Kaccāni
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Kaccāni »

vinegar wrote: In other words, first you discriminate what the word refers to, then you can conceptualize in dependence on having discriminated it.
This recognition all happens distorted by your prior knowledge, similarity and association recognition, and the like. You cannot ignore that which is already conditioned into you. You're proposing a thought utopia for encountering some fictive thing that resembles no similar to anything that you ever encountered and there is nothing really comparable to it, in no property whatsoever. That's just not how the human mind is bootstrapped from birth. Ignoring that in the process, doing as if all that wasn't there, you can argue pretty much everything. But it's purely fictional, philosophical, and dependent on how you shape the conditions, you can pretty much argue any point.

To cut samsaric roots, that discussion is totally irrelevant.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by vinegar »

Kaccāni wrote:You cannot ignore that which is already conditioned into you.
That's pretty much what perfect samadhi is, undoing learned behavior and even some you were born with
Johnny Dangerous wrote:but since it's imaginary anyway..
Maybe you find this interesting kun-brtags
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

vinegar wrote:
Kaccāni wrote:You cannot ignore that which is already conditioned into you.
That's pretty much what perfect samadhi is, undoing learned behavior and even some you were born with
Johnny Dangerous wrote:but since it's imaginary anyway..
Maybe you find this interesting kun-brtags

I've peaked at this before, for the purposes of our conversation..I think that the cup mentioned earlier is an imaginary object:
phenomena characterized as totally conceptional (kun-brtags-pa’i mtshan-nyid, Skt. parikalpita-lakshana, imaginary objects
It's interesting that the only "thoroughly established phenomena" in this presentation appear to be types of voidness, I don't remember if that's unique to the Gelug presentation or not.
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Malcolm
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Malcolm »

vinegar wrote:
Malcolm wrote:apart from a cup that has broken and a cup that has not broken, there is no breaking cup (at present).
At the time of the cup there is no broken cup..

But only a thing can be broken. Unmade things can't be broken.. there is no such thing. Meaning it's not correct to say "there is no breaking cup (at present)", don't you think?
You need to read Nāgārjuna's analysis of motion...
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Re: how do things end?

Post by DGA »

vinegar wrote:
DGA wrote:valid basis?
The thing the mental label is established in relation to

It is impossible fpr mental labeling to occur without a valid basis
Ultimately, there is no thing to which a mental label is attached.

There is no such thing as a "valid basis."

The apparent labels and apparent phenomena to which they are attached are entirely illusory. They don't exist. Can you disprove this assertion?
Lukeinaz
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Lukeinaz »

Vinegar,What point you are trying to make?

You seem unhappy with ultimate analysis.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by muni »

That's pretty much what perfect samadhi is, undoing learned behavior...
And so the identification with what we think we are, what is us learned we are. When that fades in what is called *perfect samadhi*. This is another way to see how "solid" things 'end'. Since by dependent origination we see as well that things are also dependent on our mind, our habitual labeling I-mind.
Maybe this is then actually not "ignoring". Since the I-mind is ignoring, rejecting, accepting, analysing...

:namaste:
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Tsongkhapafan
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Tsongkhapafan »

There is an appearance of cup and an appearance of breaking, like in a dream. Nothing more.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Wayfarer »

I'm always curious to know, in these discussions, the answer to this question: how could 'everything be unreal'?

Because what is unreal can only be defined in terms of what is real. So if nothing is real, nothing is unreal, either.

I'm not trying to be smart, it's a serious question.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by DGA »

Wayfarer wrote:I'm always curious to know, in these discussions, the answer to this question: how could 'everything be unreal'?

Because what is unreal can only be defined in terms of what is real. So if nothing is real, nothing is unreal, either.

I'm not trying to be smart, it's a serious question.
It's a shorthand way of saying that the category "reality" is a set of false assumptions about experiences. There is no quality of "reality" to any of this.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

DGA wrote:
Wayfarer wrote:I'm always curious to know, in these discussions, the answer to this question: how could 'everything be unreal'?

Because what is unreal can only be defined in terms of what is real. So if nothing is real, nothing is unreal, either.

I'm not trying to be smart, it's a serious question.
It's a shorthand way of saying that the category "reality" is a set of false assumptions about experiences. There is no quality of "reality" to any of this.
It might also be very helpful to examine what you mean when you say "real" or "reality". I do not have in mind an exercise in semantics, of course. "Reality" is such a singularly strange abstract noun...
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Re: how do things end?

Post by DGA »

treehuggingoctopus wrote:
It might also be very helpful to examine what you mean when you say "real" or "reality". I do not have in mind an exercise in semantics, of course. "Reality" is such a singularly strange abstract noun...
Yes, for more reasons than one.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

DGA wrote:
treehuggingoctopus wrote:
It might also be very helpful to examine what you mean when you say "real" or "reality". I do not have in mind an exercise in semantics, of course. "Reality" is such a singularly strange abstract noun...
Yes, for more reasons than one.
True that. I was having in mind the fact that the quality "real" is unfindable as such, has no attributes and cannot be defined (and one does not need to be a yogi to realise all that); as many other abstract qualities (it sounds as if it were a contradiction in terms), it asks to be taken for granted. For an abstraction based on such a quality, "reality" holds a truly magnificent sway over our minds...

It does have an existential, experiential "meaning", though. That "meaning" is our grasping.
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Malcolm
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Malcolm »

treehuggingoctopus wrote: "Reality" is such a singularly strange abstract noun...
In fact it means the "the state of being [ity] pertaining to [al] things [res]."
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Re: how do things end?

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

Malcolm wrote:
treehuggingoctopus wrote: "Reality" is such a singularly strange abstract noun...
In fact it means the "the state of being [ity] pertaining to [al] things [res]."
Saying "the state of being pertaining to things" is just as singularly strange :smile:

What the hell is "being"?
(And what are "things"?)
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Re: how do things end?

Post by muni »

Based on the independent self there are independent things and maybe we can think when there is no independent self there is nothing as being nihilism.
These notions are indeed conceptual mind like all opposites and therefore good pointer that the inseparability or the union of conventional and absolute cannot be explained. Even it can be pointed and in that way explained, how to understand without 'practice' I don't know.
When the notions of real and unreal
Are absent from before the mind,
Then, there is no other possibility,
But to rest in total peace, beyond concepts.
Cup of tea? :smile: Drinking tea needs no concepts. Smiling neither. :smile:
Last edited by muni on Fri Aug 26, 2016 1:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Wayfarer »

I think the real point of the whole teaching of 'impermanence' is because we humans invest far too much reality in the external world. That is especially so in modern scientific and secular culture. There is a strong belief in that culture that ''what really exists' is the universe as science reveals it and that the human mind is only an incidental or accidental feature of this vast ancient material universe. So in that context, people believe that what is real is what is 'mind-independent' - 'reality is what continues to exist when you stop believing in it'.

That is however a false consciousness, to the extent that the reality which we have invested in it, is itself the result of a mind-construction. But people have such firm conviction in the reality of that construction, that impermanence and emptiness of things are taught as a way to shake beings out of that conviction and to take responsibility for their existence. (It is interesting how because they believe that 'life exists because of chance', then nobody is really responsible for how things are.)

From the Berzin page referenced above:
According to the Chittamatra (Mind-Only) school, the only way the existence or nonexistence of anything can be established is exclusively in terms of its relation to mind (sems). Mind, in Buddhism, refers to the mental activity of merely giving rise (shar-ba) to a cognitive object and, simultaneously, cognitively engaging (‘jug-pa) with it; and not to the instrument that does the cognizing. The former aspect of this activity is called “clarity” (gsal) and the latter “awareness” (rig). “Merely” (tsam) refers to the fact that this activity occurs without there being an independently existing, separate “me” that is actively making this activity happen, or passively observing it. ...

Mind-only, or “aspect-of-mind only” (rnam-par rig-pa tsam, Skt: prajnapti), then, does not mean that everything is a way of being aware of something (shes-pa), or that everything exists only in our minds and that no other beings actually exist. If that were the case, compassion for others would be pointless. Mind-only is not a solipsistic view of reality.
:namaste:

Whereas, modern culture has invested the 'external world' with a reality which it is convinced exists entirely independently of mind, and then tries to explain mind as something which is a product of that external reality! This is a confused state of being.
'Only practice with no gaining idea' ~ Suzuki Roshi
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Malcolm »

treehuggingoctopus wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
treehuggingoctopus wrote: "Reality" is such a singularly strange abstract noun...
In fact it means the "the state of being [ity] pertaining to [al] things [res]."
Saying "the state of being pertaining to things" is just as singularly strange :smile:

What the hell is "being"?
(And what are "things"?)

And what is "pertaining to."
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Re: how do things end?

Post by Lukeinaz »

From an ultimate view nothing can be said about reality. Right? From a conventional view reality defines how things exist.

So how do things exist before ultimate analysis?
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