The Two Truths

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by sky123

'From a Buddhist perspective yes, only through the Buddhist traditions can one achieve Buddha Nature.'

That is not true, from a Buddhist perspective you don't achieve Buddha Nature, we all have Buddha Nature , you achieve Buddhahood through watering the seeds already planted ( Buddha Nature or whatever you call it according to your beliefs )

We all have Buddha Nature but it is obscured.

When it becomes unobscured you can say one realizes what always was or they achieved it because it was a realization or state of being previously unrealized.

The watering of the seeds is doing the practices that clear away the dirt to allow more and more of your true nature to shine through.

[jonesboy]

Here is the Theravada point of view on becoming a Buddhist.

In practice, the Buddha taught the Noble Eightfold Path to his followers according to a "gradual" system of training, beginning with the development of sila, or virtue (right speech, right action, and right livelihood, which are summarized in practical form by the five precepts), followed by the development of samadhi, or concentration and mental cultivation (right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration), culminating in the development of panna, or wisdom (right view and right resolve). The practice of dana (generosity) serves as a support at every step along the path, as it helps foster the development of a compassionate heart and counters the heart's habitual tendencies towards craving.

Progress along the path does not follow a simple linear trajectory. Rather, development of each aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path encourages the refinement and strengthening of the others, leading the practitioner ever forward in an upward spiral of spiritual maturity that culminates in Awakening.

Seen from another point of view, the long journey on the path to Awakening begins in earnest with the first tentative stirrings of right view, the first flickerings of wisdom by which one recognizes both the validity of the first Noble Truth and the inevitability of the law of kamma (Sanskrit: karma), the universal law of cause and effect. Once one begins to see that harmful actions inevitably bring about harmful results, and wholesome actions ultimately bring about wholesome results, the desire naturally grows to live a skilful, morally upright life, to take seriously the practice of sila. The confidence built from this preliminary understanding inclines the follower to put one's trust more deeply in the teachings.

The follower becomes a "Buddhist" upon expressing an inner resolve to "take refuge" in the Triple Gem: the Buddha (both the historical Buddha and one's own innate potential for Awakening), the Dhamma (both the teachings of the historical Buddha and the ultimate Truth towards which they point), and the Sangha (both the monastic community that has protected the teachings and put them into practice since the Buddha's day, and all those who have achieved at least some degree of Awakening). With one's feet thus firmly planted on the ground by taking refuge, and with the help of an admirable friend (kalyanamitta) to help show the way, one can set out along the Path, confident that one is indeed following in the footsteps left by the Buddha himself.

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/...hats-thera.htm

[sky]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

Sky we are all here to learn and to help each other.

It is ok to make a mistake.

It is also ok to admit it.

Buddha would be pleased to see you admitting the ' error of your ways'
Mybe studying some Suttras would help you

[sky]

[quote=jonesboy]We all have Buddha Nature but it is obscured.

When it becomes unobscured you can say one realizes what always was or they achieved it because it was a realization or state of being previously unrealized.

The watering of the seeds is doing the practices that clear away the dirt to allow more and more of your true nature to shine through.[/QUOTE

It's only obscured if you forget to put your glasses on

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by sky123

Buddha would be pleased to see you admitting the ' error of your ways'
Mybe studying some Suttras would help you

If you remember it was I that tried to have everyone go over a sutra so that we could have some common understanding.

I believe it was you who has said many times that various sutras were stupid and it was silly for anyone to believe that stuff.

I am really not sure why you keep saying this when i post from sutras all the time.

Originally Posted by sky123

Hello then Buddha sky.

[Bohdiyana]

I wonder sometimes if most people really understand the end game of enlightenment. I don't think the average person can imagine or comprehend what total liberation means. Total freedom from one's conditioning. Yes the "stuff" we have learned or believe, our conditioning, is still with us in a sense, it exists in the brains physical memory, however, ones attention is never on it anymore so it will never rise to be a part of one's experience. It never becomes phenomenal anymore meaning if has no effect. It has no more recognition as "something." It is no longer important and no longer produces an effect.

All these discussions about belief and how important it is, that question itself is gone. Things like beliefs no longer have any experiential or phenomenal reality. They no longer are a part of one's attention or experience or awareness, unless they arise and one's attention briefly notices them there and they are then gone as the attention puts no importance on them. So, they are never fed by one's energy so they don't ever become "something" one may experience. They never produce an effect.

Imagine dropping every idea you have, every belief, every opinion. One way to imagine what liberation is like is to imagine you are somebody else. Imagine you somehow are no longer you and are some person who lived 10,000 years ago and as this person you never learned a single thing, never opened a book, never read one thing, never even learned a language. Now walk around and see what experience would be like for you as this person. Look at the sky, at buildings, at nature, at other people, all while maintaining the view you would have if you were not you anymore. If you were somebody else. All your beliefs and opinions and ideas and thoughts are dropped. If one can imagine in that way, you get a taste for what liberation is like.

The goal is total freedom from ones own mind. That's what liberation is. In the present moment, being free and in the wonder and expansiveness of pure being. I wonder how many people are ready for that, to let go of all the beliefs and opinions they think are important and define them. The inner voice that is like our best friend. Telling us what we are and need. Telling us what we think. How many people are willing to let that go for liberation? Really nothing is keeping us from enlightenment or liberation except ourselves. We are not ready to give up what is required.

[Bohdiyana]

I realized I have some major conceptual word usage mistakes in my previous post as nothing needs to be gotten rid of or dropped or really dealt with in anyway because it's not that something like manifested/projected belief or ego needs to be gotten rid of, it's that I just need to stop creating it as a part of now.

So it's not that I need to get rid of ego or to be free of it, I just need to stop creating it. I can never get to a conflict free state through conflict. So any kind of resistance to anything only keeps division and conflict going. So some kind of resistance to something I think is keeping me from liberation or enlightenment is really just more delusion and ego trickery because I am the creator of anything that blocks full liberation in the current moment.

There is nothing to do in other words, just something to stop doing. Or perhaps said better, I just have to gracefully accept what is already here and perfect in every way.

[Ground]

Originally Posted by Bohdiyana

So it's not that I need to get rid of ego or to be free of it, I just need to stop creating it. ...

Even that ('to stop creating it') is not what you need to do. Why? Because what you call 'creating' may be called 'imputing' and since what exists exists only through imputation all that exists is empty of inherent existence and thus empty of truth. Who would worry about an ego that is empty of inherent existence and thus empty of truth?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Bohdiyana

I realized I have some major conceptual word usage mistakes in my previous post as nothing needs to be gotten rid of or dropped or really dealt with in anyway because it's not that something like manifested/projected belief or ego needs to be gotten rid of, it's that I just need to stop creating it as a part of now.

Yes, as Buddha said, it is a cessation (of dukkha).

It is explained best in a philosophy on 'vedana', " In the anuloma-paticcasamuppada, he says "vedana-paccaya tanha'' (with the base of sensation, craving and aversion arise). Vedana (sensation) is the cause of tanha (reaction=aversion/craving), which gives rise to dukkha (suffering). In order to remove the cause of dukkha or tanha; therefore, one must not allow vedana to connect with tanha; " (http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk212b.htm)

So it's not that I need to get rid of ego or to be free of it, I just need to stop creating it.

Yes - don't it feed it. It lives on tanha.

I can never get to a conflict free state through conflict. So any kind of resistance to anything only keeps division and conflict going.

Totally.

So some kind of resistance to something I think is keeping me from liberation or enlightenment is really just more delusion and ego trickery because I am the creator of anything that blocks full liberation in the current moment.

There is nothing to do in other words, just something to stop doing. Or perhaps said better, I just have to gracefully accept what is already here and perfect in every way.

Indeed. Saddu Saddu.

[JOHN44]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

Everything that the enlightened one spoke of leads back to the understanding of the two levels of truth. (This doesn't mean there is no third truth, for example the Four Noble Truths and so on, so you can have sub-divisions.) Since you have two levels of reality, you have to have something being sub-divided, or categorized in two categories.

So you can ask yourself, "What is being sub-divided?" and the answer is knowables or objects of knowledge (Tibetan: she-ja). Here, a knowable is simply something that is existing. To exist means to be knowable, and to be knowable means to exist.

For example, I could have the idea of antlers on a rabbit—it could come up in my mind. I could fabricate this awareness, and in that sense rabbit's antlers are something known but they certainly don't exist. [The problem] here is that when you equate things that exist and things that are known, they are known by [a valid] awareness but not by [just any] awareness. In other words I could get out of this difficulty by saying that, true, rabbit's antlers are known by [a particular person's] awareness, but this doesn't necessarily mean that they are known by awareness!

Ultimate truth, paramarthasatya, if you take the [Sanskrit] word apart is this: artha refers to that which is known; parama refers to that which knows its object, that is, the mind of a high spiritual being; satya means truth. It is truth because that which is known is true for that which knows its object, the mind of the high spiritual being, therefore, ultimate truth, an ultimate thing that is true.

So what about this other truth, the conventional, surface level of truth: how does one come to understand this second of the two truths if the ultimate reality is understood in this way? This is samvrtisatya. Samvrti is total covering up, and covering here means ordinary awareness covering that which is real. Here again satya is truth, but truth for an ordinary awareness. In other words, all the things that are true for ordinary minds like our own that are taken as real by them—are conventional truths, therefore, truth for an ordinary covering mind.

In the scholastic tradition we say that anything that is known will always be included in one of these two levels of reality. Anything not covered by these two levels is beyond the sphere of what is knowable. There is a deep logic here—that these two categories, the two truths, are an exhaustive description of all that there is.

Here is how it works. Truth and lie go together, don't they? If a person makes a statement that mirrors reality, then that statement is true. However, a statement not mirroring reality is a lie.

The ultimate level of reality is mirrored in the mind of awareness that knows it, in a way that is not lying. This necessarily brings out the situation that all conventional truths are lying to the awareness that knows them, about the way they appear. Similarly, ordinary things appearing to ordinary awareness must be said to be lying to that ordinary awareness. You are, by removing that truth, positively showing the truth of the awareness of the ultimate. That ultimate, appearing to an awareness that knows it is not lying to that awareness, is the suchness of things—the ultimate reality of things.

So you have one being necessitated by another in a see-saw-like fashion, and from that account you can extrapolate out to show that it is a statement that is exhaustive of all knowables, of all that exists.

In Buddhist systems of ideas, there are many interpretations of what exactly these two levels of truth are. They are set forth as the four Buddhist schools of philosophy.

In the most profound school, the Middle Way Consequentialist school, just what is emptiness or the ultimate? It is this: that in fact nobody or nothing, anywhere, has anything that inherently makes it what it is. Nothing has its own personal mark. Everything exists simply through language, through ideas.

The absence of something, the total absence, the total not-being, non-existence of anything that is not there through the power of language and thought is shunyata, emptiness, the ultimate truth.
Means of carrying forth greater days to get the most of the time combined from the oldest of tomorrow's to the Ancient energy of the yesterday's that gave forth no means of carrying forth greater days. If you are within Its truth of the age of their given Life to represent what is yet unknown for the knowledge is within the Ancient Passing of the Ancestral age of Buda. Also where do you think his means of carrying forth greater days of the given measure of all whom treasure the Wisdom within the passings of time given forth by him. Seemslike I'm repeating myself in time so is it welcome if you see that your the automatic pilot lm the passings of days before the start of the given measure of your known tomorrow give truth, the means of your known unknowns is for the knowledge of Unmeasurable unknowns, it is the givens forth to the knowledgeable truth of the unknown wisdom unobtainable to you, so you seek to give forth your insight as facts why I don't why should you require any recognitions Humility is a Truth given by the Grand Binder. Do you know why they spread his bones ofover time.to events in your passing of time given within the text of the Ancestral Legacy of your known choices it is to breathe their truth to give forth measurement of the sacred forces in accordance to my obligations for it is the misfortune of the truth that is their Age would not have given forth such destruction to the Ancient energy of the age of their given Creation within the Ancient Passing given forth to the Agelessness Of Time.



Thier are not even sure you know it runs out of the age of their given wisdoms
http://www.lamayeshe.com/article/two-truths

You speak of forgetting a passings given forth by buda was a response to the Ancient division put forth many of you will need to be within such depth of insight.