Self Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Buddha said they were different. See Buddha quotes above.
Buddha was enlightened and not living in dualism.

So even at the highest levels of awareness and consciousness,
one still sees them as different! Buddha described them as different and he was enlightened.

Maybe the dualistic person is the one who sees them as the same. This is probably true as the only place up and down, right and wrong, hate and love, can be the same is in a conceptual thought which is not based on the actual, the what is, or reality. Such belief is not grounded in reality, the actual. It is based on conceptual thinking. Mental images, phantoms.

Why is it called dualism? Because one has become two through identification. One walks around believing their thoughts, their beliefs, their opinions are a part of them. There is no space between them and their thoughts, no distance, no separation, no questioning, or doubting. Thought can state anything, like up is down.... and consciousness can accept it and proclaim it as true. That is dualism.

Non-dualism or the enlightened sees things clearly as they are. It knows the difference between hate and love, anger and compassion, right and wrong. Morality is an inherent part of the unconditioned, the enlightened, the awake unattached clear consciousness. But it's sense of truth, of right and wrong, flows naturally out of it's own inherent nature. Right and wrong is no longer based on belief, opinions, or habitual conditioned thinking.

I guess people want think that inter-defining opposites are the same, but what we deal with in Buddhist contexts is basically suffering and liberation from suffering. That is, liberation as the cessation of suffering.


In this sense, there are two opposites the same, but only in the suffering context where the cause of suffering is 'craving'. Craving in Buddhist thought is the desire for it to be as you want it to be, and the desire for it not to be the way you don't want it to be, or IOW, the inability to let it be as it is.


In life there are unpleasant things like pain and very pleasant things like energy flows or other wonderful sensations. People generally are in avoidance of pain and in pursuit of pleasure, which is driven by adverse (hateful) and desirous reactivity respectively. 'Craving' covers both of these because there is no avoidance of pain which is not accompanied with a desire for pleasure. It is the same aversion/desire 'dynamic'.


This means that the opposite of hatred is not love - it is desire - and 'craving' refers to the reactive dynamic that simultaneously entails both these facets.

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by sky123

Love and hate are opposites and to an Enlightened mind ( Buddha) there are no opposites. So yes it is taught in Buddhism that they are the same, to a Buddha.

That is not taught in Buddhism. Only to those in delusion are they are the same. Only to those lost in their own thoughts.

Did Buddha have an enlightened mind? He still saw them as opposites!

Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.
Buddha - Dhammapada

"The instant we feel hate and anger we have already ceased striving for the truth.”
Buddha

Then yea is Thich Nhat Hanh enlightened? The Dalia Lama? They also state hate and love are different. In fact, they state hate prevents enlightenment, prevents love and compassion, prevents happiness.

I guess you are not reading my posts but just quickly repeating the same line you have memorized. I already showed all of these enlightened Buddha's saying flat out not only do they see hate and love as different, their teaching is one needs to get rid of hate and anger to find happiness.

I don't know where people are getting this fantasy that a Buddha, full of compassion, awake and alert, highly aware, suddenly is a bumbling fool that does not know the difference between love and hate.

There's only one place I think this fantasy can come from. Well besides just not paying attention to what one reads. It comes from the idea that if I am not thinking, not attached to my thoughts, all knowledge is gone. Here again, this is based on the idea I am thought and thinking. So you are concluding, hey if I am a Buddha, enlightened, free from thought, I don't know anything anymore. Everything is gone. Nope not true. The apple is there if you are thinking about it or not. You know what it tastes like if you are thinking about it or not. You know what it is without thought.

Thought is not you and has never been you. You are just as smart, just as aware, just as knowledgeable when thought is quiet. In fact you are aware of more, not less.

If you are sitting there trying to imagine what a Buddha knows or thinks, what their experience is like, who is doing this imagining? What part of you imagines things? Your thoughts. That's where this takes place. So thought is imagining what life is like without thought. How can thought imagine life without thought? Everything it comes up with is a thought. It's can't stop itself. If it does manage to stop itself, it's not imagining anymore is it? It is no longer involved.

Only thought can come up with the idea that "you" disappear if it does. Oh watch out everything is the same when we are enlightened! Hate and love become the same! Everything is everything! That's what life is like without thought? Nope. Thought is giving itself too much credit. Life is better without it. More full, more rich, more to experience. More is known, not less. After all, you are trading a reflection of reality for the real thing. Trading a thought about something for the actual thing. Trading living in a conceptual world for living in the actual one.

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by Gem

I guess people want to think that inter-defining opposites are the same, ...

Yea that could be another source of the belief everything is the same to a Buddha.

I get the feeling it could also be not grasping what the "not focusing on thought as self" is like. Thought still "owns" their consciousness. They get a few moments of enlightenment or freedom, then come out of it and thought is in charge again. Thought then defines the experience. Conceptualizes it.

So they think about not thinking. Thought seeks it again, does this practice or that one. Thoughts bonds as self are not broken easily. They intellectualize and conceptualize the experience of not focusing on thoughts as they arise.

I don't know how one does the final letting go. The "smaller" letting go's - even if one does, one will lose it again. It takes time and effort and interest to spend more time detached and less time focusing on thought, interpreting now and experiencing now though a filter of what I am thinking. Projecting reactionary thought as myself. Having no space there.

The answer to what it is like can never be verbal. As soon as you put a word to it, a symbol, it is not what it is anymore. It can't be expressed verbally, conceptually. Maybe that's where people get this idea everything is the same in this state. Here again, this is thinking thought contains the reality, words contain the reality, concepts contain the reality and again this is not true. It's the opposite. Nothing disappears when concepts do. What the symbols were referring to remain. The concepts, the interpretations, the thought, were never the things they were based on. Never the things they represented. But our thoughts think, oh without the concept, obviously everything becomes the same... as if concepts are what make the differences. Concepts are actually what makes everything the same, they turn everything into a mental image.

[django]

Is Buddhism non-dual? It depends on which Buddhist tradition you follow...

Dhamma and Non-duality by Bhikku Bodhi

The Mahayana schools, despite their great differences, concur in upholding a thesis that, from the Theravada point of view, borders on the outrageous. This is the claim that there is no ultimate difference between samsara and Nirvana, defilement and purity, ignorance and enlightenment. For the Mahayana, the enlightenment which the Buddhist path is designed to awaken consists precisely in the realization of this non-dualistic perspective. The validity of conventional dualities is denied because the ultimate nature of all phenomena is emptiness, the lack of any substantial or intrinsic reality, and hence in their emptiness all the diverse, apparently opposed phenomena posited by mainstream Buddhist doctrine finally coincide: "All dharmas have one nature, which is no-nature."

...The teaching of the Buddha as found in the Pali canon does not endorse a philosophy of non-dualism of any variety, nor, I would add, can a non-dualistic perspective be found lying implicit within the Buddha's discourses. At the same time, however, I would not maintain that the Pali Suttas propose dualism, the positing of duality as a metaphysical hypothesis aimed at intellectual assent. I would characterize the Buddha's intent in the Canon as primarily pragmatic rather than speculative, though I would also qualify this by saying that this pragmatism does not operate in a philosophical void but finds its grounding in the nature of actuality as the Buddha penetrated it in his enlightenment. In contrast to the non-dualistic systems, the Buddha's approach does not aim at the discovery of a unifying principle behind or beneath our experience of the world. Instead it takes the concrete fact of living experience, with all its buzzing confusion of contrasts and tensions, as its starting point and framework, within which it attempts to diagnose the central problem at the core of human existence and to offer a way to its solution. Hence the polestar of the Buddhist path is not a final unity but the extinction of suffering, which brings the resolution of the existential dilemma at its most fundamental level.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/...-essay_27.html

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yea that could be another source of the belief everything is the same to a Buddha.

Yes, that does seem a bit of a stretch.

I get the feeling it could also be not grasping what the "not focusing on thought as self" is like. Thought still "owns" their consciousness. They get a few moments of enlightenment or freedom, then come out of it and thought is in charge again. Thought then defines the experience. Conceptualizes it.

Maybe, but the 'essence' makes no sense and there's no way mind can grasp it as knowledge.

So they think about not thinking. Thought seeks it again, does this practice or that one. Thoughts bonds as self are not broken easily. They intellectualize and conceptualize the experience of not focusing on thoughts as they arise.

Personally I care nothing for all the high spiritual stuff and would only suggest the presence of mind with the real-lived-experience as it spontaneously unfolds.

I don't know how one does the final letting go. The "smaller" letting go's - even if one does, one will lose it again. It takes time and effort and interest to spend more time detached and less time focusing on thought, interpreting now and experiencing now though a filter of what I am thinking. Projecting reactionary thought as myself. Having no space there.

I think it is best to be present with this experience just as it is without any secondary notions whatsoever.

The answer to what it is like can never be verbal. As soon as you put a word to it, a symbol, it is not what it is anymore. It can't be expressed verbally, conceptually. Maybe that's where people get this idea everything is the same in this state. Here again, this is thinking thought contains the reality, words contain the reality, concepts contain the reality and again this is not true. It's the opposite. Nothing disappears when concepts do. What the symbols were referring to remain. The concepts, the interpretations, the thought, were never the things they were based on. Never the things they represented. But our thoughts think, oh without the concept, obviously everything becomes the same... as if concepts are what make the differences. Concepts are actually what makes everything the same, they turn everything into a mental image.

Yes. It's just stuff people say. There is no truth in it. The truth is 'already here' but has no duration in time, so the most basic principle is the presence of awareness of being. This cannot be memorised or known about. It 'just is' in the instant...

[Gem]

Originally Posted by django

Is Buddhism non-dual? It depends on which Buddhist tradition you follow...

The passage you quoted is very consistent with the Buddhist teachings I am familiar with, but I want to say something about following traditions.


It is fine to pick a 'brand' of Buddhism for the sangha or social aspects, as the community is of great benefit, but it also carries the risk of 'drinking the kool aid'. I don't mean to depreciate such sects, because I am associated with a school also, but these institutions do have cultish aspects, so it is important to retain one's own freedom of thought and not fall into the comfort of dull docility, blind faith and conformity. It is important to be very discerning when it comes to the Buddhist discourse. Even the discourse stresses that importance.

[sky]

Originally Posted by Rain95

That is not taught in Buddhism. Only to those in delusion are they are the same. Only to those lost in their own thoughts.

Did Buddha have an enlightened mind? He still saw them as opposites!

Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.
Buddha - Dhammapada

"The instant we feel hate and anger we have already ceased striving for the truth.”
Buddha

Then yea is Thich Nhat Hanh enlightened? The Dalia Lama? They also state hate and love are different. In fact, they state hate prevents enlightenment, prevents love and compassion, prevents happiness.

I guess you are not reading my posts but just quickly repeating the same line you have memorized. I already showed all of these enlightened Buddha's saying flat out not only do they see hate and love as different, their teaching is one needs to get rid of hate and anger to find happiness.

I don't know where people are getting this fantasy that a Buddha, full of compassion, awake and alert, highly aware, suddenly is a bumbling fool that does not know the difference between love and hate.

There's only one place I think this fantasy can come from. Well besides just not paying attention to what one reads. It comes from the idea that if I am not thinking, not attached to my thoughts, all knowledge is gone. Here again, this is based on the idea I am thought and thinking. So you are concluding, hey if I am a Buddha, enlightened, free from thought, I don't know anything anymore. Everything is gone. Nope not true. The apple is there if you are thinking about it or not. You know what it tastes like if you are thinking about it or not. You know what it is without thought.

Thought is not you and has never been you. You are just as smart, just as aware, just as knowledgeable when thought is quiet. In fact you are aware of more, not less.

If you are sitting there trying to imagine what a Buddha knows or thinks, what their experience is like, who is doing this imagining? What part of you imagines things? Your thoughts. That's where this takes place. So thought is imagining what life is like without thought. How can thought imagine life without thought? Everything it comes up with is a thought. It's can't stop itself. If it does manage to stop itself, it's not imagining anymore is it? It is no longer involved.

Only thought can come up with the idea that "you" disappear if it does. Oh watch out everything is the same when we are enlightened! Hate and love become the same! Everything is everything! That's what life is like without thought? Nope. Thought is giving itself too much credit. Life is better without it. More full, more rich, more to experience. More is known, not less. After all, you are trading a reflection of reality for the real thing. Trading a thought about something for the actual thing. Trading living in a conceptual world for living in the actual one.

Of course Buddha saw them as opposites while he was teaching.

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by django

Is Buddhism non-dual? It depends on which Buddhist tradition you follow...

I would agree Theravada does not teach about non duality. Nor does it teach about Buddhahood or the Nature of Mind or Primordial State.

Why?

Because it doesn't believe one can achieve it in this lifetime. It doesn't even believe one can become an Arhat without being a monk.

I personally find it very limiting.

The Buddha did achieve it in his lifetime as have others, so you go to the traditions that teach the methods and sutras from such beings that have achieved it.

[quote]The Blessed One replied, saying: Mahamati, the error in these erroneous teachings that are generally held by the philosophers lies in this: they do not recognize that the objective world rises from the mind itself; they do not understand that the whole mind-system also arises from the mind itself; but depending upon these manifestations of the mind as being real they go on discriminating them, like the simple-minded ones that they are, cherishing the dualism of this and that, of being and non-being, ignorant to the fact that there is but one common Essence.[/QUOTE]

Mahamati, since the ignorant and simple-minded, not knowing that the world is only something seen of the mind itself, cling to the multitudinous-ness of external objects, cling to the notions of beings and non-being, oneness and otherness, both-ness and non-both-ness, existence and non-existence eternity and non-eternity, and think that they have a self-nature of their own, and all of which rises from the discriminations of the mind and is perpetuated by habit-energy, and from which they are given over to false imagination. It is all like a mirage in which springs of water are seen as if they were real. They are imagined by animals who, made thirsty by the heat of the season, run after them. Animals not knowing that the springs are merely hallucinations of their own minds, do not realize that there are no such springs. In the same way, Mahamati, the ignorant and simple-minded, their minds burning with the fires of greed, anger and folly, finding delight in a world of multitudinous forms, their thoughts obsessed with ideas of birth, growth and destruction, not well understanding what is meant by existence and non-existence, and being impressed by erroneous discriminations and speculations since beginning-less time, fall into the habit of grasping this and that and thereby becoming attached to them.

[jonesboy]

Let's get into some more detail show we and I hope everyone reads the following.

Mahamati asked the Blessed One: Pray tell us about the causation of all things whereby I and other Bodhisattvas may see into the nature of causation and may no more discriminate it as to the gradual or simultaneous rising of all things?

The Blessed One replied: There are two factors of causation by reason of which all things come into seeming existence: external and internal factors. The external factors are a lump of clay, a stick, a wheel, a thread, water, a worker, his labor, and the combination of these produces a jar. As with a jar which is made from a lump of clay, or a piece of cloth made from thread, or matting made from fragrant grass, or a sprout growing out of a seed, or fresh butter made from sour milk by a man churning it; so it is with all things which appear one after another in continuous succession. As regards the inner factors of causation, they are of such kinds as ignorance, desire, purpose, all of which enter into the idea of causation. Born of these two factors there is the manifestation of personality and the individual things that make up its environment, but they are not individual and distinctive things: they are only so discriminated by the ignorant.

Causation may be divided into six elements: indifference-cause, dependence-cause, possibility-cause, agency-cause, objectivity-cause, manifesting-cause. Indifference-cause means that if there is no discrimination present, there is no power of combination present and so no combination takes place, or if present there is dissolution. Dependence-cause means that the elements must be present. Possibility-cause means that when a cause is to become effective there must be a suitable meeting of conditions both internal and external. Agency-cause means that there must be a principle vested with supreme authority like a sovereign king present and asserting itself. Objectivity-cause means that to be a part of the objective world the mind-system must be in existence and must be keeping up its continuous activity. Manifesting-cause means that as the discriminating faculty of the mind-system becomes busy individual marks will be revealed as forms are revealed by the light of a lamp.

All causes are thus seen to be the outcome of discrimination carried on by the ignorant and simple-minded, and there is, therefore, no such thing as gradual or simultaneous rising of existence. If such a thing as the gradual rising of existence is asserted, it can be disapproved by showing that there is no basic substance to hold the individual signs together which makes a gradual rising impossible. If simultaneous rising of existence is asserted, there would be no distinction between cause and effect and there will be nothing to characterize a cause as such. While a child is not yet born, the term father has no significance. Logicians argue that there is that which is born and that which gives birth by the mutual functioning of such causal factors as cause, substance, continuity, acceleration, etc., and so they conclude that there is a gradual rising of existence; but this gradual rising does not obtain except by reason of attachment to the notion of a self-nature.

When ideas of body, property and abode are seen, discriminated and cherished in what after all is nothing but what is conceived by the mind itself, an external world is perceived under the aspect of individuality and generality which, however, are not realities and, therefore, neither a gradual nor a simultaneous rising of things is possible. It is only when the mind-system comes into activity and discriminates the manifestations of mind that existence can be said to come into view. For these reasons, Mahamati, you must get rid of notions of graduation and simultaneity in the combination of causal activities.

[jonesboy]

Now finally to the answer of what everyone has been asking.

Maya, however, is not an unreality because it only has the appearance of reality; all things have the nature of Maya. It is not because all things are imagined and clung to because of the multitudinous-ness of individual signs that they are like Maya; it is because they are alike unreal and as quickly appearing and disappearing. Being attached to erroneous thoughts they confuse and contradict themselves and others. As they do not clearly grasp the fact that the world is no more than mind itself, they imagine and cling to causation, work, birth and individual signs, and their thoughts are characterized by error and false-imaginations. The teaching that all things are characterized by the self-nature of Maya and a dream is meant to make the ignorant and simple-minded cast aside the idea of self-nature in anything.

False-imagination teaches that such things as light and shade, long and short, black and white are different and are to be discriminated; but they are not independent of each other; they are only different aspects of the same thing, they are terms of relation and not of reality. Conditions of existence are not of a mutually exclusive character; in essence things are not two but one. Even Nirvana and Samsára’s world of life and death are aspects of the same thing, for there is no Nirvana except where is Samsára, and no Samsára except where is Nirvana. All duality is falsely imagined.

Mahamati, you, and all Bodhisattvas should discipline yourselves in the realization and patience acceptance of the truths of the emptiness, un-born-ness, no self-nature-ness, and the non-duality of all things. This teaching is found in all the sutras of all the Buddhas and is presented to meet the varied dispositions of all beings, but it is not the Truth itself. These teachings are only a finger pointing towards Noble Wisdom. They are like a mirage with its springs of water, which the deer take to be real and chase after. So with the teachings in all the sutras: They are intended for the consideration and guidance of the discriminating minds of all people, but they are not the Truth itself, which can only be self-realized within one’s deepest consciousness.

All from the Lankavatara Sutra.

http://buddhasutra.com/files/lankavatara_sutra.htm

Beautiful stuff.