An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Malcolm
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Malcolm »

Queequeg wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:04 am Good luck finding the empty nature of dharmas, though.
When you don't find it, you have found it.
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Queequeg
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

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Malcolm wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:14 pm
Queequeg wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:04 am Good luck finding the empty nature of dharmas, though.
When you don't find it, you have found it.
I've been searching for years... I must be getting close.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
Malcolm
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Malcolm »

Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:21 pm
Malcolm wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:14 pm
Queequeg wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:04 am Good luck finding the empty nature of dharmas, though.
When you don't find it, you have found it.
I've been searching for years... I must be getting close.
If you are still searching, you haven't found it.
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Queequeg
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Queequeg »

Malcolm wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:22 pm
Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:21 pm
Malcolm wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:14 pm

When you don't find it, you have found it.
I've been searching for years... I must be getting close.
If you are still searching, you haven't found it.
As I appropriate the Dad jokes, I find myself saying to my son when he loses a toy - "It'll be in the last place you look." He gives me the same puzzled look I probably gave to my Dad. In this case, though, "It'll be in the last place you don't look."
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Caoimhghín
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Caoimhghín »

Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:29 pm
Malcolm wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:22 pm
Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:21 pm I've been searching for years... I must be getting close.
If you are still searching, you haven't found it.
As I appropriate the Dad jokes, I find myself saying to my son when he loses a toy - "It'll be in the last place you look." He gives me the same puzzled look I probably gave to my Dad. In this case, though, "It'll be in the last place you don't look."
Or its in and not in every single place you look and everywhere you don't look so there's no point looking because you simply can't not look directly at it but you also never, never, ever, see it.

:meditate: :spy:
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
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Queequeg
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Queequeg »

Coëmgenu wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:35 pm
Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:29 pm As I appropriate the Dad jokes, I find myself saying to my son when he loses a toy - "It'll be in the last place you look." He gives me the same puzzled look I probably gave to my Dad. In this case, though, "It'll be in the last place you don't look."
Or its in and not in every single place you look and everywhere you don't look so there's no point looking because you simply can't not look directly at it but you also never, never, ever, see it.

:meditate: :spy:
Sometimes, I can't believe that the Chase Rescue Bot was sitting there on the coffee table, meanwhile my son has turned his room and the living room upside down trying to find it.

In those cases, I take my father's advice for headaches - dunk my head in a bucket of water three times and pull it out twice.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Caoimhghín
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Caoimhghín »

Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:37 pm meanwhile my son has turned his room and the living room upside down trying to find it
#yesallmen?

My mother's eternal joke is that I'll never be able to find anything in the house without a wife!
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
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Queequeg
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Queequeg »

Coëmgenu wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:47 pm
Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:37 pm meanwhile my son has turned his room and the living room upside down trying to find it
#yesallmen?

My mother's eternal joke is that I'll never be able to find anything in the house without a wife!
oof. Is that a pointed double entendre?
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Caoimhghín
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Caoimhghín »

Just making a cheap riff on the joke that men need women to find things for them primarily.

Now after having read your comment, it seems it can be read in a weird emasculating way. Not my intention, though.
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
thecowisflying
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by thecowisflying »

Coëmgenu wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:44 pm In case anyone is interested in such trivium.

Ven Zhìyǐ's Chinese is worlds different from the Chinese of the Buddhist sūtrāṇi (sutras). This is because, his Chinese is what I would call "properly Chinese Chinese" rather than "Indo-Chinese hybrid Chinese or native Chinese imitating the Indo-Chinese style". As such, it is much more difficult to read!
Please, teach me how to read indo-Chinese, I started reading Xuan Zang's translation of the Yogacara-bhumi and it is making my brain hurt. I'm struggling to finish one last section before moving onto something else. The other work I recently got, Zong Jing Lu, is so much easier to read.
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Caoimhghín »

thecowisflying wrote: Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:44 am
Coëmgenu wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:44 pm In case anyone is interested in such trivium.

Ven Zhìyǐ's Chinese is worlds different from the Chinese of the Buddhist sūtrāṇi (sutras). This is because, his Chinese is what I would call "properly Chinese Chinese" rather than "Indo-Chinese hybrid Chinese or native Chinese imitating the Indo-Chinese style". As such, it is much more difficult to read!
Please, teach me how to read indo-Chinese, I started reading Xuan Zang's translation of the Yogacara-bhumi and it is making my brain hurt. I'm struggling to finish one last section before moving onto something else. The other work I recently got, Zong Jing Lu, is so much easier to read.
Indo-Chinese is just my eccentric name for sūtra layer Chinese. The older stuff is easier to read than the newer stuff.

I would recommend looking through the Sarvāstivāda Saṃyuktāgama hosted at SuttaCentral. Use the metadata tool to find English translations of Pāli parallels. Then you can use the NTI (Nan Thien Institute) Buddhist Text Reader to easily display the characters sequentially.

After that, I would use Anki for memorization purposes.

For more on the pseudo-Indian structuring of the grammar in Chinese sūtras I would recommend this (http://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/forskning/net ... 10301.html) which I think I stole from the Pure Land subforums.

And there is this copy-paste from me:

Coëmgenu wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:13 pm I'm referring to things like this, this is from a very old (~200AD) Sarvāstivāda Saṃyuktāgama translation:

如內身身觀住
Iti ajjhattaṃ vā kāye kāyānupassī viharati
Evaṃ adhyātmaṃ kāye kāyānupaśyi viharaty

Iti 如 evam

ajjhattaṃ 內 adhyātmaṃ

vā (n/a)

kāye 身 kāye

kāya 身 kāya

anupassī 觀 anupaśyi

viharati 住 viharaty

It is literally Prākrit written with Chinese characters. And, like mentioned before, it is quite difficult to read. The grammatical differentiation between kāya & kāye, for instance, is absent. One could not really read this easily (compared to a "properly Chinese" text) without access to the original as well, or at least knowledge of it.

A lot of Buddhist Chinese looks to this as a stylistic ideal, but most well-established definitive translations of mainline East Asian Mahāyāna sūtrāṇi come from a latter period than this.
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
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Caoimhghín
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Re: An Account of the Tiāntāi Synthesis

Post by Caoimhghín »

Coëmgenu wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2017 10:45 pm
Queequeg wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2017 10:23 pm If I may say, I will invoke Zhiyi and point out you're privileging a particular understanding of mind based on the mind we believe sentient beings possess. Remember that Zhiyi can make any dharma the center... so, Mind is Rock. But, Rock is also Mind. Mind appears as Rock, and Rock appears as Mind.

[...]
I am completely lacking in any significant basis of critical exposure to the Yogācāra, only being familiar with it via intersectarian polemics from Tiāntāi (Ven Zhìyǐ had little laudation for Ven Vasubandhu, from the archived personal letter 四念處: "In [Ven] Vasubandhu's theory of consciousness-only, there is only the one consciousness, but it is divided into the discriminating and the undiscriminating forms of consciousness; the discriminating consciousness is what we usually call consciousness, whereas the undiscriminating consciousness is "consciousness appearing to be an object" (sì chén shí / 似塵識). All the physical objects in the universe- vases, clothing, carts, and carriages- are all this undiscriminating form of consciousness.... But since they are all one nature, we can equally say that there are two forms of matter, the discriminating and the undiscriminating.... It is in this sense that the mind and matter are non-dual. Since he [Ven Vasubandhu] is able to say there are these two different forms of consciousness, we can equally say that they are two different forms of matter.... In the Integrated Teaching we can also say that all things are matter only, or sound only, or scent only, or flavour only, or tactile sensation only, or consciousness only. In sum, every dharma inherently mutually possesses all the dharmāḥ comprising dharmadhātu."). That may well be conditioning some of my misunderstanding.
My misunderstanding above was altogether more manifest than I was aware, and in entirely different ways than I would have expected.

First correction is that 四念處 is not a personal letter, it is a recounted dialogue it seems, and I had always wondered why it was entitled "Four Mindfulness Bases".

Reviewing the text and the phrasing, I think I might understand a little better now what precisely Ven Zhìyǐ is objecting to in Ven Vasubandhu's Cittamātratā.

Ven Zhìyǐ refers to Ven Vasubandhu's twofold division of discriminating and undiscriminating mind, and following by saying other twofold divisions are similarly true. He refers sequentially to twofold matter, sound, scent, flavour, tactile sensation, and lastly mind. Then he affirms consummate interfusion of all dharmāḥ.

Perhaps this is fancy on my part, but matter/form/rūpa can also be kāya. Sound, scent, flavour, & tactile sensation can be identified as vedanāḥ. Mind/consciousness is unambiguously citta. Lastly, there are dharmāḥ addressed by Ven Zhìyǐ. He potentially outlines twofold division between all four mindfulness bases: kāya, vedanāḥ, citta, dharmāḥ. Perhaps Ven Zhìyǐ is looking at Ven Vasubandhu's teaching and seeing only one base addressed: mind.
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
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