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  #21  
Old 12-02-2019, 12:16 PM
sky sky is online now
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Three kinds of desire.

There are three categories of Craving/Tanha in Buddhism, Kama tanha, Bhava tanha and Vibhava tanha, There not totally separate forms of desire but different aspects of it.



The Buddha once said: There are these three kinds of craving.


1: The Craving for Sensing...
2: The Craving for Becoming...
3: The Craving for Non-Becoming…
These are the three kinds of craving.
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  #22  
Old 12-02-2019, 04:27 PM
Rain95 Rain95 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gem
It's an English translation of the Pali "cetana", but it has a range of contextual meanings, and I'm just using volition to mean the urge to make an experience other than it is.

What you say is true in one sense, but also we can say in another sense that the urge to make an experience other than it is, is at the heart of right practice. It defines the path or action that leads to enlightenment.

If the "experience" we are referring to is a consciousness recognizing it is not the "noise in the head," the ever running thought stream that creates conflicts, emotions, fear, hate and anger and all the rest, then the urge or volition or intent or "will" to make this experience something other than it is, is a good thing.

One can make an experience other than it is by dropping the desire to make it other than what it is (if that desire is present)

So the volition of a seeing aware consciousness can lead to liberation, the volition of a thought dominated consciousness can continue or increase the experience of conflict and duality.
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  #23  
Old 13-02-2019, 08:30 AM
Gem Gem is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain95
What you say is true in one sense, but also we can say in another sense that the urge to make an experience other than it is, is at the heart of right practice. It defines the path or action that leads to enlightenment.

If the "experience" we are referring to is a consciousness recognizing it is not the "noise in the head," the ever running thought stream that creates conflicts, emotions, fear, hate and anger and all the rest, then the urge or volition or intent or "will" to make this experience something other than it is, is a good thing.


That will set up an aversion/resistance paradigm. Mindfulness is objective and if you produce a lot of negativity, the meditation will make you conscious of it. When you know it only generates misery for you, there is no way you will consciously and willingly continue doing that.


At first you don't realise - as Christ put it, 'They know not what they do'. After you meditate for a while you realsie 'OMG, this is what I've been doing all this time'. Once seen, it can no longer pass you unawares. It will still come up as you are habitualised in such reactions, but you will catch it every time, like, 'Oh I'm doing that thing again'. You do not want misery, so you do not consciously and willingly continue to generate it. This is not the willful changing of anything. It is the cessation of it.


To illustrate this: you sit to meditate in the mindful fashion, and you proceed to 'body awareness'. As you feel through your body, you notice you have a tense muscle in your leg. You don't try to change it. You simply stop doing that tensing. The relaxation of it is not an effort to make it otherwise; it the cessation of volition that creates that tension.


As you move attention away to other parts of the body, you lose awareness of the leg, but when you come back to pay attention to the leg, you realise it has tensed up again. The tension still occurs because it's habitualised, but you keep noticing, 'oh there's that leg tension again', and each time you notice you cease doing that tensing. You are only tensing it because you know not what you do.


Quote:
One can make an experience other than it is by dropping the desire to make it other than what it is (if that desire is present)




Yes. In Taoism it is said, "Free from desire you see the mystery. Full of desire you see the manifestations".

If you are just aware and have no desire for 'something else', there's no volition. The awareness without 'tanha' is 'pure awareness' (which is relevant to the 'purification' I mentioned earlier).


The subtle issue with meditation is there is an intent to observe breath or observe body or observe mind or whatever, but there is no volition to make it other than it happens to be.



Change is inevitable, so you are aware, anica-anica.


Quote:
So the volition of a seeing aware consciousness can lead to liberation, the volition of a thought dominated consciousness can continue or increase the experience of conflict and duality.




Yes.



Intentional observation is another way of saying paying full attention, and you see it 'as it is. This is different to the will of volitionally making it 'as you want it to be'. It's a subtle difference, but also a big difference



These can't go together. You can't have volition and also no volition. You have to cease the volition 'as you want it to be' to see it 'as it is'. Yet there is deliberate intent to 'see it as is', but not a volition to stop the volition.
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  #24  
Old 15-02-2019, 05:29 PM
Rain95 Rain95 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gem
Intentional observation is another way of saying paying full attention, and you see it 'as it is.

A better word than "see" is perhaps ..........???

There is no possible word there is there? All involve "me doing"..... a conceptual me.... me seeing..... me experiencing..... all of which are conceptual overlays...

a thought about whatever now is...if a thought is here, now is conceptual and not as it is.....

what is now? nothing and everything....it is this, all of this....

what is it if I don't make it about something else? if I don't create the content with mind, what is the content?

what am I if I am awake and not associating with mind? what is left?

breaking through that wall is rare, but it shows us our destiny if you get glimpses of it. the next step in our evolution
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  #25  
Old 16-02-2019, 12:29 AM
Gem Gem is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain95
A better word than "see" is perhaps ..........???


Sure 'see' in the generic sense: 'this' is how it is.


Quote:
There is no possible word there is there? All involve "me doing"..... a conceptual me.... me seeing..... me experiencing..... all of which are conceptual overlays...


In the meditation process which leads from the physical level to the subtle level, a meditator can see that any phenomena is 'not-me'.


Quote:
a thought about whatever now is...if a thought is here, now is conceptual and not as it is.....


It would just be a fact that thoughts are happening. 'As it is' isn't mysterious and mystical. It's just the truth of what 'this' is like for you right now. Meditators will have many thoughts, and at such times, it is true that there are thoughts.


Quote:
what is now? nothing and everything....it is this, all of this....

what is it if I don't make it about something else? if I don't create the content with mind, what is the content?


What we call 'contents' are called 'sankara' in buddhism. Sankara is generated by volition and you can imagine them as potentials which have to manifest as conscious experience when the conditions for it to manifest all come together. The meditation is the cessation of volition, so you cease to generate new sankaras. With the cessation of volition -'Just watch' - the old sankara or contents continue to manifest in conscious experience and pass away. In this way, no new contents are being added and the old contents are continuing to manifest and expire. They call this 'emptying the storehouse', and it is the process of purification.


Quote:
what am I if I am awake and not associating with mind? what is left?


The sankara of past voltion still have to rise into conscious and pass away, but if you are not identified with mind (not-I) there is no reactivity of avoiding resisting and craving clinging, so you are no longer disturbed by the remaining contents (have equanimity), and hence do not generate any new ones.


Quote:
breaking through that wall is rare, but it shows us our destiny if you get glimpses of it. the next step in our evolution




Yes. In a sense it's destiny. The old sankara potentials have to manifest to conscious experience. It's kamma, baby.
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  #26  
Old 16-02-2019, 01:41 AM
JustBe JustBe is offline
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Yes. In a sense it's destiny. The old sankara potentials have to manifest to conscious experience. It's kamma, baby.

Can you elaborate further on this? Thankyou.
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  #27  
Old 16-02-2019, 05:23 AM
Gem Gem is online now
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Originally Posted by JustBe
Can you elaborate further on this? Thankyou.




It's hard to stop my head from going full into Buddhist philosophy on this one, but better to say it as I think it in the way it seems to work for me. The main point is Buddha's statement that volition is kamma. In this way, your volition as it is now is your kamma, which is generating both immediate manifestations and also potential for future manifestations.

Manifestation just means what arises as your conscious experience, but because all your experience is sensory: sight, sound, smell, taste, felt sensation and thought perception, which all work through the nervous system, everything in experience unites at the level of felt sensation.

This is important because 'craving' (which I'm calling reaction) arises from the unity which is feeling and not from disparate senses such as sight, smell and sound. For example, an addicted person craves a cigarette, but the reality is, some sensations manifest in the body, which are the withdrawl sensations, and the person reacts with strong aversions to those feelings, while also strongly desiring the sensations which come from breathing cigarette smoke. In fact, that person does not crave a cigarette at all. They are reacting with aversion to some sensations while desiring other sensations - and the cigarette is merely a means to avoid the former and get the latter. In this way, the reaction (or the volition) arises from felt sensations, and not the other disparate senses.

This illustrates how a person can't be still because their life is avoiding the discomforts and chasing the pleasures of physical sensation, which keeps them running from 'this' and chasing 'that', which is their 'volition'. Hence, the teaching says, from feeling volition arises.

Remembering the volition is kamma - volition is 'cause' of ones manifest conscious experience. In the kamma paradigm of cause and effect, volition is cause and the manifest is effect. Because the volition is not an effect, the manifest experience does not determine your volition. However, people are generally conditioned and habitualised to react adversely to uncomfortable feelings and react with strong clinging and desire to pleasant feelings, and are unconsciously running from the former and chasing the latter continuously, and being bound in this is 'suffering'. 'Suffering' is by definition being stuck in this Kammic cycle by the bonds of desire and aversion, which are the two sides of 'tanha' ('craving'). 'Liberation' is liberation from the kammic cycle via the cessation of tanha, which is the cessation of volition, which is the cessation of kamma/cause, which is the cessation of suffering.

The meditation we now call 'mindfulness' is fundamentally the cessation of volition, which is the cessation the reaction calld 'craving' (tanha). This is done deliberately, like, 'I will be here and know the truth of my breathing sensation'. But the meditator soon starts to notice, a small itch arises, a huge reaction to that itch, sore back, oh so unbearable. Thus they learn the first truth: there is suffering. At the early stage they haven't realised yet the second truth: there is a 'cause' of suffering, but it doesn't take long to realise you generate so much suffering through your mindless reactivity - that volition is the cause, and even where your manifest experience is determined and fated, your volition in this moment is not - and you need not suffer. This brings the third truth: there is an end to suffering. However, they have not yet realised the fourth truth: the way to end suffering.

The meditation is 'the way'. It begins on the gross, hard, solid level which a person is conscious of, but there are subtle levels of sensation which the mind is not sensitive enough to perceive, so one has to practice acute perception to hone the mind into a very sensitive, keenly perceptive instrument. You start to become conscious at subtler and subtler levels - 'feeling within feeling' - along with the reactions of volition that you generate to these newly found subtle sensations. This is the path from the gross, hard and solid to the subtle, fluid and dynamic (energetic?); and resolving the 'contents' or 'sankara' that have been hidden deep inside.

That's all I can think of. I know I missed out a lot, but perhaps that's for another time.
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  #28  
Old 16-02-2019, 07:44 AM
happy soul happy soul is offline
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I enjoyed reading this (the most recent post) Gem.

I feel that I myself have a strong desire for pleasure and aversion to suffering, and your post actually helps me see that more clearly.

For me personally, my greatest craving is for LOVE.

Is that different from other craving (for pleasure)?

Does Buddhism treat the desire for love or approval in the same way it treats the craving for pleasure?

Can the same approach be used? Does the Eightfold Path help with that?

Thanks.
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  #29  
Old 16-02-2019, 08:50 AM
happy soul happy soul is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain95

So the volition of a seeing aware consciousness can lead to liberation, the volition of a thought dominated consciousness can continue or increase the experience of conflict and duality.


In order to shift from a thought dominated consciousness to awareness dominated consciousness, one may have to cease identifying with thought, with the contents of consciousness.

That happens when one realizes they are consciousness itself, not the contents of consciousness.

In a book I recently read called 'Being Aware of Being Aware,' the author uses the metaphor of a movie. The screen is like awareness, which is what we are. The projection onto the screen is the contents of awareness - thoughts, feelings, sensations, images, self-concepts, beliefs, etc.

He said people think they are the movie, but in reality they are the screen.

If one thinks they're the movie, they won't be able to let it go.
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  #30  
Old 16-02-2019, 11:35 PM
Gem Gem is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by happy soul
I enjoyed reading this (the most recent post) Gem.

I feel that I myself have a strong desire for pleasure and aversion to suffering, and your post actually helps me see that more clearly.


Well, no one wants pain, and everyone wants pleasure, but the truth is life experience has both.


Quote:
For me personally, my greatest craving is for LOVE.

Is that different from other craving (for pleasure)?

Does Buddhism treat the desire for love or approval in the same way it treats the craving for pleasure?


The craving for pleasure (which is also the aversion to pain) is mainly on the level of solid physical sensation, which is the level a meditator starts. The path starts at the hard physical and goes to subtler and subtlest, and the emotional aspect of 'worthiness' (worth loving) is usually rooted deeper in the subtler aspects.

A meditator can resolve the physical desires and aversions to everyday sensations pretty quickly with consistent practice, which requires diligence and all of your attention. It is not a 'spiritual thing'. It is serious and true-to-life - I mean, it is the truth of your life, after all.

When a person becomes quiet with their body sensation and can sit undisturbed by discomfort, the mind has reached a good balance of equanimity and become stable and strong, and is prepared for the more difficult emotional contents to arise.

Because the meditator has practiced equanimity and become strong and stable in mindful balance, they are not easily disturbed anymore and can remain still during quite extreme experiences, so the old 'contents' which led to shame and unworthy feelings start to come up in their own time at their own rate like 'emotional storms', but you remain still and unaffected, just knowing, this is a storm which is now passing.

Th practice itself always remains the same: Be perfectly still in yourself no matter what happens. It is the same approach for a first time meditator or a 60 year adept: conscious awareness with equanimity.



Quote:
Can the same approach be used? Does the Eightfold Path help with that?


Thanks.




The 8path is about what is 'right', so mindfulness incorporates 'right observation' (see it 'as it is'), and 'right concentration' (awareness with equanimity).
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Last edited by Gem : 17-02-2019 at 02:21 AM.
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