2 Questions for Matthieu Ricard, Tibetan monk

I have read two of Matthieu Ricard's books- The Monk and The Philosopher and The Quantum and The Lotus. For those who do not know, Matthieu is a molecular biologist turned Tibetan Buddhist monk. He has lived in Tibet and studied under the many great masters for over 40 years.

I have a few questions after reading these books. I would love to write to him with these questions but i can't find any address anywhere.

1.) Ricard is extremely adamant about the reader becoming aware of the "illusion of the self." He is adamant to the point of redundancy. He says it over and over and in every possible way. The is no "I", there is no "me", there is no "you", there is no "self".

And yet, he is also very adamant there what does exist is a individual stream-of-consciousness. He seems to imply that this stream of consciousness belongs to something by the very use of his terms. "You have an individual stream-of-consciousness", he states during one of his dialogues.

Wait a minute, what/who has a stream-of-consciousness? In Matthieu's opinion, you do.

Hold on, he has posited ad nauseum that there is no you. How can "you" have something when there is, in fact, no "you"? How can a nonexistent "you" be in possession of anything.

It's clear that the mere mention of a "self" is anathema to Ricard. He spends hundreds of pages trying to refute the notion, sometimes somewhat forcefully, yet always states that each person has an individual stream-of-consciousness. Each person's consciousness, in his words, is a continuity of conscious experience from life to life.

And even if you are the individual stream-of-consciousness itself (being it rather than possessing it), wouldn't we still just be quibbly over superficial labels and concepts. Couldn't one, for the sake of convenience, give a name to that individual stream of consciousness such as "self" and even refer to it as "you", "me", or "I"?

Couldn't I refer to your infinite individual stream-of-consciousness as "you" and couldn't I use the term "self" as a term-- not for one's body, personality, or conditioned/temporal identity (ego)-- but for that individual stream-of-consciousness.


2.) In The Quantum and The Lotus, he speaks about the notion of a beginning as being absurd and illogical. He posits nothing, unequivocally nothing, exists that is uncaused. Everything exists due to the laws of cause and effect and interdependence. He states that all phenomena, all universal laws, all processes, all events and indeed EVERYTHING is contingent. Events, conditioned by the laws of cause-and-effect, stretch back for infinity. Once again, he states the NOTHING is uncaused.

My questions is, if everything is the result of a cause and nothing causeless truly exists, then what about the greater "process" itself? The process of the unfolding of events, phenomena, etc? If events have been unfolding for eternity without beginning, then this process of unfolding events is, by definition, uncaused.

Cause-and-effect events are sequential and could be thought of as dominoes, one tipping over into the other, bifurcating, branching out, creating webs, etc. Nonetheless, it is all a sequence, i.e., a continuous and connected series. Sequence inevitably implies movement and process.

This great movement or process of the unfolding of cause-and-effect events/phenomena could indeed by thought of as an event or phenomenon itself. Indeed, it is an event that contains all events and a phenomenon within which all phenomena occur (or the greater unconditioned phenomenon of the appearing and disappearing of conditioned phenomena) and it is itself uncaused.

[Samana]

Hi Life,

I highly recommend that you read this :


http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Bo...nd_Rebirth.pdf


Kind wishes,

Samana

[skyblue]

People that talk about stuff like "the illusion of the self", "no self", "emptiness"
are usually people that have a limited repertoire in the explanation department.
When you meditate you go through a process that is designed to get you to see what is going on without the normal filters that we use on a daily basis.
Your opinion is a filter, your upbringing is a filter, your ego is a filter, your environment is a filter and your mind is a filter, to name a few.
Meditation attempts to get you to a place where the filters aren't there and you get to see what is going on without any distortion, so to speak.
A lot of the high level concepts in meditation can't be understood using any of these filters. Language is very inadequate at the best of times in conveying what some of these experiences are like.
It's like; say you saw a ufo one night and you had an amazing experience with this unexplained object.
Now several years later you are talking with one of your friends and you try to relate the drama of the experience to them.
Unless you are an amazing storyteller most people are going to be bored with the story. There are a lot of situations like that.
You have to be there to get the full impact of the situation.
Talking about how reality works is fun, but you won't learn much.
You can go a long way with this understanding; everything can be explained with movement.
Every experience you can have will always involve some type of movement. You will see something, you will hear something,
you will feel something. You will see your mind move, your awareness can move. Everything can be explained with movement.
Now, how would you explain something where there is no movement?
How would you explain an experience where you didn't know what happened?
If there is no self and everything is emptiness, who or what is going to explain something to you?

The day you fall prey to these bogus notions of how to think about life, is the day you become vulnerable to the
clowns that want you believe this stuff.
You matter, and you have one of the best skill sets you need to figure stuff out, the ability to think critically.
For every person that has a clue what is going on, there are thousands of people claiming skills they don't possess.
There is so much misinformation out there today.
The only people I believed were the people that could show me what they were talking about.
Everyone is quick to come up with all kinds of really amazing stories about how amazing their understanding is.
How about a little demonstration? Can you prove what you say? If you can't, well, what is the point?

[Samana]

Originally Posted by skyblue

People that talk about stuff like "the illusion of the self", "no self", "emptiness"
are usually people that have a limited repertoire in the explanation department

.

It is misleading to say "no self".... the correct term is not-self (anatta)

When we practice meditation and the mind settles and becomes calm and clear, its empty of any thoughts of self. ( I, me, mine )

Additionally, we can see our ever changing thoughts and emotions, and our body functions objectively as being not-self (anatta) -but it doesn't mean that we don't exist in a conventional sense.

We can also see that there is no permanently existing 'self' in phenomena in general, because everything is impermanent and changing.

If one looks at a chair there's no permanent something called 'chair' because its been made up of wood from a tree and fabric which is made of fibres from different sources and eventually it will break up and become something else....and so forth.

Originally Posted by Samana

.
everything is impermanent and changing.

On one level this is true. On another this is not true.

Therefore, you cannot say that everything is impermanent and changing.

Is the process of unfolding events, itself, impermanent?

Events change, phenomena change, but does the greater process itself ever change?

[Samana]

Originally Posted by LIFE

Events change, phenomena change, but does the greater process itself ever change?

In one word - the answer is 'unconjecturable'.

[skyblue]

Events change, phenomena change, but does the greater process itself ever change?
Interesting question.
I am curious as to how you came up with a question like that?

Originally Posted by LIFE

Hold on, he has posited ad nauseum that there is no you. How can "you" have something when there is, in fact, no "you"? How can a nonexistent "you" be in possession of anything.

The "you" he refers to is a convenient shortcut to locate a process node in space and time. By 'process node' I mean an accumulation of some sorts, awareness, activity, etc.
It doesn't mean that that there is an object, "you", anywhere but only that there is something happening somewhere. This happening (accumulation) we call "you" in order to locate it and maybe explain its effect or characteristics.

[Samana]

but does the greater process itself ever change?

Perhaps you should define what you mean by "the greater process".

Originally Posted by Samana

Perhaps you should define what you mean by "the greater process".

The process of the unfolding of events and appearing of phenomena.

From the original post:

"My questions is, if everything is the result of a cause and nothing causeless truly exists, then what about the greater "process" itself? The process of the unfolding of events, phenomena, etc? If events have been unfolding for eternity without beginning, then this process of unfolding events is, by definition, uncaused.

Cause-and-effect events are sequential and could be thought of as dominoes, one tipping over into the other, bifurcating, branching out, creating webs, etc. Nonetheless, it is all a sequence, i.e., a continuous and connected series. Sequence inevitably implies movement and process.

This great movement or process of the unfolding of cause-and-effect events/phenomena could indeed by thought of as an event or phenomenon itself. Indeed, it is an event that contains all events and a phenomenon within which all phenomena occur (or the greater unconditioned phenomenon of the appearing and disappearing of conditioned phenomena) and it is itself uncaused.

One could even say that if this process/movement/flow is uncaused, as it clearly is, then it is eternally unchanged and therefore permanent.