Pointing Out through Appearances

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Astus
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Re: Pointing Out through Appearances

Post by Astus »

pothigai wrote:What do you mean by 'consciousness' or 'mind'? They seem to have a meaning equivalent to 'experience' or 'appearance' in this context.
By consciousness/mind I simply meant the faculty of being conscious. It is inseparable from experience, as experience is necessarily an instance of consciousness. Similarly, whatever can be called an appearance is an experience. But for the sake of communication experience/consciousness can be divided to subject (mind) and object (mental event). In Mahamudra this is called "spontaneous presence" and "co-emergence", the unity of emptiness and awareness/appearances.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: Pointing Out through Appearances

Post by Virgo »

Malcolm wrote:
Wayfarer wrote:Quite right! Actually I picked up a copy of a really interesting but dense book by Jay Garfield, Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation, which has a lot of these ideas. It's starting to come together for me. I don't see any major contradiction between some of those 'idealist' elements in Western philosophy and the mind-only approach, except the latter is firmly grounded in meditation and not just conceptual analysis. But it does help to join the dots, so to speak. Which in one of the reasons I am very grateful to Dharmawheel Forum and its learned contributors.

:namaste:
Jay is in the same philosophy department as my father [Smith College].
I like that college because the residential neighborhood accross from it reminds of a place near where I grew up called Forest Hills Gardens.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-york ... -city.html
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Virgo
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Re: Pointing Out through Appearances

Post by Virgo »

The Hills baby! The hills baby!

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Re: Pointing Out through Appearances

Post by steve_bakr »

Lazy_eye wrote:I'm wondering how this works on an interpersonal level. I mean, yes, ultimately it's all concepts and fabrications, but practically speaking there are other people and it seems important to interact on a human level. How do we cultivate the "mind-only" perspective while not losing sight of other people's needs, concerns, presence and humanity?

A. Why do you never listen? It's like talking to the wall. Can't we ever have a conversation?
B. She's just a fabrication, just a fabrication, just a fabrication...


To draw an analogy, it could be argued that the corporate world practices a sort of pseudo-sunyata, in which people are just fabrications that come and go. In a sense a large corporation is free of attachment -- at least to its personnel. They are just "human resources," I.e. a concept. I realize the analogy is faulty as the underlying goals are different (profitability vs. liberation); still, I wonder if there's a danger here.
Thus the importance of ethical behavior. I am reading a book about the union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen. The first quarter of the book was about ethical behavior. A person should not be taught these truths whose ethics are not well grounded first.
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Grigoris
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Re: Pointing Out through Appearances

Post by Grigoris »

Astus wrote:One usual source of suffering is interpreting others' actions as being personally addressed towards oneself. Instead of that one should recognise how one's own reactions, feelings and thoughts originate not from others but one's own mind. Thus the reason to be moved - conceptually and emotionally - by others is cut off, that way eliminating afflictions. It also prevents falling for stereotypes, assumptions and categorisations that one readily projects on people. Ultimately it shows the futility of relying on expectations and opens up one's mind to changing situations, at the same time giving insight into how people's minds function, where their suffering comes from, and hence compassion towards them becomes natural. So, it is not really that there is something in particular to do, but one should fully understand the meaning of the teaching in one's experience, then the effects manifest.
Well, I can think of occasions where my actions were deliberately hurtful and gave rise to feelings of hurt in the object of my behaviour.
So this idea that the "meaning" of all actions is just what we interpret them to be, seems to not stand true.
"My religion is not deceiving myself."
Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."
The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde
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Astus
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Re: Pointing Out through Appearances

Post by Astus »

Sherab Dorje wrote:Well, I can think of occasions where my actions were deliberately hurtful and gave rise to feelings of hurt in the object of my behaviour. So this idea that the "meaning" of all actions is just what we interpret them to be, seems to not stand true.
The situation you describe follows conventional causal relations, and there is no denial of that. However, there is also the possibility to hear angry words and not be offended.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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