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Originally Posted by Rain95
Yea different Buddhist schools or sects are into their own thing. Like there is the Zen saying, "Not two, not one." Meaning even non-dualism is a view, a thought, a mental position. So drop that too.
So in this Zen teaching, proclaiming light and dark are the same thing is as bad as proclaiming they are different. The point being why proclaim anything at all? The point being stop focusing on the mental world, your beliefs and thoughts. Be in the here and now without interpretation.
Whoever wrote the Lankavatara Sutra, and I don't know if was one writer or many as having hundreds of translators was not uncommon in those days, but this one passage seems to state the same understanding as the Zen quote:
So in this Lankavatara Sutra quote, the writer is saying all of these terms and concepts, emptiness, no-birth, and no self-nature are from false imagination. Here again, many Buddhist teachers say to abandon all teachings, the true and the false, meaning live it, realize it, stop philosophizing, be here and now empty of all mental images about now.
If one is living simply in the now, where is all this stuff about everything being the same? About light being dark? It doesn't exist and if it does exist, one does not pay attention to it or make it phenomenal.
That's the thing, how do we "know" something? There are two ways. We can know something conceptually, mentally, or we can know it as a lived experienced thing. So a Zen monk can walk into a cafe and have somebody who hates monks in the cafe yell at him. So the monk experiences hate. Then the cafe owner who loves the monk asks the hater to leave and hugs the monk. Now the Zen monk is experiencing love. The Zen monk returns to the monastery and his Master asks, What happened in town? The Zen monk says nothing much. I walked, looked, listened, felt, drank, hugged, walked. The Zen monk is not really naming anything, thinking about anything, he is just being present in each moment as it is without any interpretation or expectation or desire. Each moment is what it is.
Did this monk experience hate and love? Yes. they both were expressed in the cafe by others towards him. They exist, they are reality. Did the monk know what they were.... see here what do we mean by "know?" Did he experience love and hate? Yes. Was he aware he was experiencing them? Yes. Did he prefer one to the other? Yes and if he felt he was in physical danger, he would react. Leave the cafe, run away, or if he was skilled in martial arts, he would put the hater on the floor and subdue him. But yea, thinking about it much, no reason to. The monk prefers inner silence to inner talking and thinking. He knew what they were as experience, what they were conceptually did not matter. The experience is not held onto conceptually. When one moment is over, and one is in the next, nothing is carried over, past into present. Each moment is brand new, fresh. Nothing from the past is present.
This is where the teaching comes from everything is the same. Is it moment to moment experience. One does not interpret mentally what something should be or is. However, one "knows" as a living intelligent alert and awake being what is happening at all times. One also acts and reacts fully from this knowing, from the inherent qualities of love and compassion. If this monk saw a child in danger, he would instantly act to help the child. The monk is alive and lives fully. The monk loves his family, his friends, his fellow monks. He is kind and helpful towards them. He fully knows the difference between love and hate, dark and shade and on and on. The "sameness" refers to his state of being at all moments. Detached, free within and without, without conflict within or without, not troubled or tortured by thoughts within or life without. Fully present and aware of here now as it is, not with how thought makes it. These inherent qualities of the monk are experienced within and without, and that is the "sameness" that is talked about. Continuing presence and awakeness. The same unconditioned awareness or essence that resides in all as potential experience.
Maybe someone saw the monk experience hate and love and so they asked him, "Is love and hate the same of different?" The monk may answer, "I am awake." Fully present in the now. The only reality is now. The thought and thinking, the interpreting, conceptualizing, giving some kind of reality to a thought or idea....not done. The monk sees a person asking him a bunch of words with nothing in the present to link them to.
Also from the Lankavatara Sutra
Nothing to bind or connect the question to. The person is asking the monk to focus on thought and thinking, on memory, The monk has no interest in doing this. He has found a better way to live moment to moment.
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