Buddhas initial realization of enlightenment

[tomschwarz]

Hello dear illusory eminations of clear light,

I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.... bitte um, pros, cons, reflections, etc.. his holiness the dalai lama explained the buddhas initial realization prior to the first turning of the wheel of dharma (teaching on the 4 noble truths) 1:45:00
https://youtu.be/JMMsStPN7wg

...as soon as he became enlightened he said, i have discovered this dharma which is nectar like, which is profound, unfabricated, peaceful, uncompounded, and clear light, if i were to teach this to others no one would understand me, and therefore i will remain silent in the forest...

[muni]

Hello,

How many fabrications are there needful in order ‘unfabricated to be’ I often wondered. Without devotion and faith there seems to come no end on the fabrications.
Devotion-faith in nature, without, what dharma has any power on its own?

If Buddha had said what is not fabricated is liberating, he certainly would have received many suspicious reactions and ideations. As how to trust in such? He could not help so much by that and gave several useful explanations as pointers, like the Four Noble Truths. Then later Buddhism was spreading and many many more explanations/fabrications where spoken and written down to help. While the unfabricated can never be explained.

Guru Rinpoche said as well we cannot be enlightened by fabricated-explained-compounded dharmas. Unfabricated Peaceful Dharma ( that what is been pointed, and so not the pointings) is awakening to enlightenment.
Guru Rinpoche helped for example an old lady. She needed something directly to use as long as her breath was present. She was not suitable vessel for knowing different fabrications as guidance or as pointing to awaken.

It depends what is needful, that an enlightened manifestation compassionately offers.

This is my limited understanding.

[tomschwarz]

Yes Muni, unfabricated is the antidote for all suffering, no increase no decrease. Of course what we are talking about is dependent origination a.k.a. emptiness a.k.a. the absolute truth. Interesting that all three turnings of tge wheel focused on emptiness of all things.

Then suffering its more than fabrication, fabrication relates to it, but suffering is the attachment to fabrication, desire for it, anger about it, and fundemental ignorance of its nature... no? Yes?

[muni]

Hello Tom,

I can only answer based on own deluded experiences. When the focus is on the fabricated compounded dharma (phenomenal), the unfabricated remains hidden. The focus or clinging to the realness of compounded things, which are solid by thoughts. The dreamlike seems an interaction with thoughts and a then so experienced outside world. Then aversion, attachment, fear, hope and so suffering arises unfortunately as result.

Yes, there is no fabrication which will harm or prevent awakening but the clinging to it does.

[White Lotus]

Dharmas are the only reality. All dharmas are 1 uncompounded being beyond emptiness and yet including it. all becomes real. This reality cannot be grasped. Words don't reach it. It is seen and heard. Tasted and touched. Felt and known, without words. No longer empty it is 1.

[White Lotus]

Muni, why do you think we need to go beyond the phenomenal? To me the phenomenal is the secret.

[muni]

Not that, dear, but stop clinging to phenomena as being real things existing on themselves, as external existing things, apart from "us”.

Perhaps I can say fabrications are temporary having their use but continuing discursive thought activity, in this way it is a problem, not leading to practice for recognizing unfabricated nature?

[Nicholas Weeks]

Just thinking about

if I were to teach this to others no one would understand me, and therefore I will remain silent in the forest...

Even (or especially) today, who understands Buddha as he understood - close to zero I suggest.

So why did he finally agree to teach after the great Deva asked him to consider those with 'little dust in their eyes'? Surely Buddha knew already that fact of some humans or devas being much wiser than the rest of us. So maybe another reason...

I will guess that it is his great compassion in action. Whoever asks for the buddhadharma makes very good karma. If Buddha just started teaching with no requests from anyone, that would be good, but far more benefit would come to those who request.

Maybe that is behind the tradition of a guru not teaching without a request or three.

[muni]

Even (or especially) today, who understands Buddha as he understood - close to zero I suggest.

Maybe because we cannot stop the belief in being an independent one with its particular characteristics and others as well independent ones with particular characteristics? I the solid fool and the other the solid wise. We believe what we think we are and from that what others are. This is contradicting the Buddha’s meaning of (undescridable) dependence-emptiness.

In texts many examples are to find about we and others who are so and so fools, to encourage practice. But if we take these literary, aren’t we continuing holding on the view/belief of independent fools or independent whatever existences and ( habitual) rejecting the Buddha’s many teachings, which are pointing to dependence-emptiness, helping to free from dualistic view?

If we have no faith in the Lama/Guru/Compassionate Nature, then we are just fools following in the footsteps of fools.
All of us can practice in accordance with the possibilities, by that maybe getting a chance to free us from ideas to be this or that, give it perhaps a try.

With respect.

[White Lotus]

All phenomena have become real. Before they were empty. Its now words that are seen as empty. Not phenomena. Form/being is now real, but it can't be grasped by words. It can be grasped by the eye. Focus is real, not dreamlike any longer. Only words are dreamlike. Words and being are separate. Being can only be grasped by the five sensory vijnanas. Everything is amazingly real and crisply clear except words. Before everything was seen as neither real nor illusion. Now it is real. I grasp reality now. Before now grasping anything was impossible.

[White Lotus]

Dear Muni, you say that we should not grasp at phenomena. It is impossible for most people to grasp anything: arisen states of mind being impermanent. For most advanced practitioners things are not yet real. Reality crystallizes as the mind matures. I can now say that i have entered reality. I'm back to where i started from, but some things have changed. Especially now i see that words (as empty) support reality, but don't reach it. True reality is not empty. It is real. It is without emptiness, but utilizes it as words. It has all become1. This is not philosophy on its own but is mostly informed by prajna: Direct seeing. I could be wrong to emphasise being over emptiness, but am compelled by my own experience.

[muni]

Then suffering its more than fabrication, fabrication relates to it, but suffering is the attachment to fabrication, desire for it, anger about it, and fundemental ignorance of its nature... no? Yes?

I appreciate your writings White Lotus. Even I do not understand everything, apologizes. I take these words here above from Tomschwarz because the desire or attachment to fabrications, is by ignorance and it is in a state of ignorance we crave and grasp to fabrications, to constructions, apprehensions, phenomena.

Grasping fabrications, then there remains subject-object. It are apprehender and apprehensions. Clinging to the apprehended dharma destroys its’ precious function, it becomes nothing other than another form of attachment instead of freeing from attachment and so suffering.

But to reject fabrications or apprehension would be stupid as well. As they are tool to understand what is beyond the limitations of the thinking mind about this or that. And to stop craving and grasping, not to be conditioned by the same habit and grasp them.

Subhuti, the five aggregates belong to causes and conditions. If they belong to causes and conditions, they do not belong to oneself or to others. If they do not belong to oneself or to others, they have no owner. If they have no owner, there is no one who grasp them. If there is no grasping, there is no contention, and noncontention is the practice of religious devotees. Just as a hand moving in empty space touches no object and meets no obstacle, so the Bodhisattvas who practice the equality of emptiness transcend the mundane world.

May I ask you, can you say what are phenomena for you? Or is there nothing to say?

[White Lotus]

Phenomena are empty when they are seen as empty. Phenomena are real when seen as real. Different people see phenomena differently. For me phenomenon/form is real. I used to see phenomena as neither real nor illusory. Now wherever i look i see just reality. Phenomena are real without emptiness. Phenomena are ultimate? I can talk like this because i have gone through sunyata sunyata. Emptiness cannot stay without revealing or having 1 at its centre. When you become completely empty the real shows itself as real. As 1. Buddha is non dual 1. All things are not only dependent on each other: they are one infinite reality. There is independent uniqueness in each animal and flower. But each animal 'is' its neighbour. A Multiple 1.

[White Lotus]

Phenomena are reality.

[tomschwarz]

But to reject fabrications or apprehension would be stupid as well. As they are tool to understand what is beyond the limitations of the thinking mind about this or that. And to stop craving and grasping, not to be conditioned by the same habit and grasp them.

This muni, relates to a wonderful, magical Buddhist experience. One can calm one's mind, and become generally familiar with it, to the point that it is basically peaceful, supported by/as a result of the three practice areas of Buddhism.

...but then, like a ghost one may feel, "oh there is that thing that is left undone", or "i need to do these things or bad results will follow", etc... ...they might be called "karmic traces" in Buddhism. And then the practitioner 1) senses this foreign; abstract, stress/worry/desire/attachment energy, 2) analysis it conceptually and identifies what actual tasks/things that the feeling relates to, 3) uses wisdom practice, for example the suffering of change, to discount any promise of long lasting accomplishment that would result from some material building of one thing or another.

In this example, did the practitioner reject the karmic trace (of attachment to fabrication)? What exactly is rejecting that attachment versus accepting it?

.... ....i think what i do with those foreign ghost feelings is first accept that i still have them )))), some humility. But then i quickly dismantle those energy streams (attachment, desire, anger, etc...) using buddhist wisdom practice, meditation practice and ethics practice. So am i rejecting them? Yes. But not without accepting them first))) and defusing them with wisdom and ethics and meditation. How about you?

[Anonymous X]

Phenomena are reality.

Is there an ultimate reality? Isn't this all in your thinking? real-unreal, true-false, permanent-impermanent. Like you say, all words, yet you are attached to your own words as if they could explain all of this. Whatever you think, it is not that. Staying with analysis leads to more analysis. It is circular and goes nowhere. Thinking about thinking. It is not about becoming anything. There is nothing to become. It is a myth, a human archetype that the culture teaches you.

[muni]

But to reject fabrications or apprehension would be stupid as well. As they are tool to understand what is beyond the limitations of the thinking mind about this or that. And to stop craving and grasping, not to be conditioned by the same habit and grasp them.

This muni, relates to a wonderful, magical Buddhist experience. One can calm one's mind, and become generally familiar with it, to the point that it is basically peaceful, supported by/as a result of the three practice areas of Buddhism.

...but then, like a ghost one may feel, "oh there is that thing that is left undone", or "i need to do these things or bad results will follow", etc... ...they might be called "karmic traces" in Buddhism. And then the practitioner 1) senses this foreign; abstract, stress/worry/desire/attachment energy, 2) analysis it conceptually and identifies what actual tasks/things that the feeling relates to, 3) uses wisdom practice, for example the suffering of change, to discount any promise of long lasting accomplishment that would result from some material building of one thing or another.

In this example, did the practitioner reject the karmic trace (of attachment to fabrication)? What exactly is rejecting that attachment versus accepting it?

.... ....i think what i do with those foreign ghost feelings is first accept that i still have them )))), some humility. But then i quickly dismantle those energy streams (attachment, desire, anger, etc...) using buddhist wisdom practice, meditation practice and ethics practice. So am i rejecting them? Yes. But not without accepting them first))) and defusing them with wisdom and ethics and meditation. How about you?

Holding on fabrications is a problem and yes there is told, there is a moment they are not any longer serving, since there is nothing to add any longer. Since craving to apprehensions like without "we are" no Buddhist anymore, or no practitioners anymore, keeps an unknown form of suffering. The habitual mind seeks Dharma-truth by its thinking on conventional dharmas and is so conditioned by it instead of being offered medicine.

By not rejecting I mean, all what is helpful, should be used, must be used. But may it be used by wisdom's compassionate mind or may wisdom be revealed by it. I mean not: reject it by the grasping clinging mind, what is conditioned by its attachment-aversion.

Then I remember a saying: when one comes out the airport, takes to reach the hotel a taxi what is making a whole traject through the huge city, and finally comes back by the airport again. The hotel is just in front of it.

[White Lotus]

Its not about words, its about what the words point to. I am interested in 'seeing' and for the first time in years things look real. Satisfyingly so. Im not aware of any special attainment. This is quite ordinary.

[muni]

.... ....i think what i do with those foreign ghost feelings is first accept that i still have them )))), some humility. But then i quickly dismantle those energy streams (attachment, desire, anger, etc...)

I feel this helps in practice, to accept spots in own laundry instead of give it in hands of frustration. It somehow allows perseverance.

Its not about words, its about what the words point to.