Lankavatara Sutra Study

[Jeremy Bong]

Originally Posted by Baile

Here is an example: One morning I got out of bed and felt electric. I looked in the mirror and saw that I was to glowing with a white light around me that was growing larger and larger. I then felt myself lift off the ground, and then I flew out the window. And for a few minutes or so I flew over the rooftops of my neighbourhood before returning back to my bedroom.

Now all that was very real. It happened; it was not an illusion.

The illusion or Maya would be if I then started a religion, claiming that Electric Glow Aliens were grabbing us from our homes and lifting us up into the sky.

That's not illusion, do you still remember that I wanted to show you last time to bring your spirit or you up the sky? That's the energy sphere I said to you. It wouldn't hurt you it has its senses, it just wanted to show you what I said is truth. Its energy is getting stronger so can bring you up.

Anywhere sorry man I didn't dissolve it ,and you did experience the flying mechanism of the energy sphere. Not bad,you can fly now, at least once.... There are many proof I can show you .

I can create a small energy sphere on my hand then I can feel it's soft and elastic. This is creation and life is created from these sort of energy.

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by Baile

I am saying the same thing in my own way. Or something quite similar. The error in any philosophy is that teaches a specific set of tenets and beliefs. That is the Maya I speak of. Whereas that which is real and meaningful arises from the objective world, from that which one personally experiences.

The Buddha is saying that to is Maya

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

The question is asking why do people discriminate or judge?

This question is the heart of the Lankavatara sutra...

From the beginning of Chapter 1.

"In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise? O Thou most Wise!"

The second part of the post we can see that the Buddha is already separating himself from Hinduism and the various other religions by saying there is no creator. That there is no soul made up of things, no such thing as time.

Any thoughts?

I Figured it was. Thanks for putting something into your own words more straight to the point with the question you posed in this post, helps someone like myself who likes things more direct.

Why do people like to judge or discriminate?


Fear and control
A mindset conditioned by "right and wrong"
Not wanting to know true worth
A world of perception showing affect
Wanting to be our own authority
Seeing others as our competition
Hmm what else?
Feeling threatened for your own existence
Maintaining a tight reign on ones reality

There is probably more.

As for the last bit, it is what it is. Humans are the one's creating everything perceived, seen, felt, created as humans do. The natural/no mind world of creation just is. A living breathing alive world reflecting itself as it is. Experiences show us in part the creation we create through our humanness, but once you have let go of all that in yourself, what is left is really just what is. Emptiness no longer attaching to the external world, rather aware it is experiencing itself aware. :)

Time/soul/creator are human/mind construct. In the present moment, life is happening. I am aware.

"In this world who's nature is like a dream" - dreams within dreams within dreams..dreaming itself into being ...

We could ask. Which dream am I in?

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Baile

Here is an example: One morning I got out of bed and felt electric. I looked in the mirror and saw that I was to glowing with a white light around me that was growing larger and larger. I then felt myself lift off the ground, and then I flew out the window. And for a few minutes or so I flew over the rooftops of my neighbourhood before returning back to my bedroom.

Now all that was very real. It happened; it was not an illusion.

The illusion or Maya would be if I then started a religion, claiming that Electric Glow Aliens were grabbing us from our homes and lifting us up into the sky.

The illusion would be if your mind holds onto what is a changing temporary nature of experience and reality that is you experiencing yourself..

Your experience is the creator experiencing itself and creating from that.

Real is real until it no longer is real..

And the self is the one creating real and unreal.

I looked in the mirror one day and I was glowing green, like fluorescent green, "glow in the dark green".

My son looked at me and asked why I was this colour.

I didn't know.

I am not glowing green now, just aware of the creation that was moving me through a symbolic real and unreal movement of awareness and change that is ongoing. I listened deeper with ongoing integration in myself to let go of it and let it move and create more in myself. I no longer requires me to make it real. Because life has shown me the reality of myself and what has become real from that. The deeper nature of creation opening me to know more, see more and be aware of life deeper than just the experience itself. Becoming to being the essence of all that. Unreal creation becoming real creation...

Getting more "real" the illusion is a constant break down of self that believes itself to be something through experience. Yet there is always more showing you yourself and life as life itself.

Emptiness taught me-I am ? (an open book, clean state, from moment to moment, dependent upon how much I have let go of from what was/is in my own mind as real because I experienced it as such. The story ends when I end it, the new page opens when I open it new)

Emptiness taught me - I am nothing at all what I think I am. (and my imagination can be used as it was intended without conditioned responses of itself, more open aware of itself imagining )

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

Maybe Chapter 2 will add some insight. Lots going on in my his chapter so I will break it in to pieces as we go.

Chapter II

False-Imaginations and Knowledge of Appearances

Then Mahamati the Bodhisattva-Mahasattva spoke to the Blessed One, saying: You speak of the erroneous views of the philosophers, will you please tell us of them, that we may be on our guard against them?

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.

On the contrary my teaching is based upon recognition that the objective world, like a vision, is a manifestation of the mind itself; it teaches the cessation of ignorance, desire, deed and causality; it teaches the cessation of suffering that arises from the discriminations of the triple world.

.....As long as these scholars remain on their philosophical ground their demonstration must conform to logic and their textbooks, and the memory habit of erroneous intellection will ever cling to them. To make the matter worse, the simple-minded ones, poisoned by this erroneous view, will declare this incorrect way of thinking taught by the ignorant, to be the same as that presented by the All-knowing One.

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

Any thoughts?

It speaks for itself. I think I touched upon this when I replied to Baile.

Clinging to experience or unreal/real things through the awakening of yourself to get "more real" will only keep alive that which you believe as being real.

Being in "no mind" awareness- I am aware of the changing temporary nature of all life as it is.

In this view I am experiencing myself as that, not holding or clinging to ideas about myself or others or experience. I am just experiencing myself and without my mind involved creating things to be, I move more connected, grounded more through my whole body awareness. My mind is open and flowing with what is, because it too is part of the awareness of life as a temporary changing experience..

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by naturesflow

It speaks for itself. I think I touched upon this when I replied to Baile.

Clinging to experience or unreal/real things through the awakening of yourself to get "more real" will only keep alive that which you believe as being real.

Being in "no mind" awareness- I am aware of the changing temporary nature of all life as it is.

In this view I am experiencing myself as that, not holding or clinging to ideas about myself or others or experience. I am just experiencing myself and without my mind involved creating things to be, I move more connected, grounded more through my whole body awareness. My mind is open and flowing with what is, because it too is part of the awareness of life as a temporary changing experience..

Here is what the Buddha had to say.

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.

Basically your body, emotions and the world all arise from the mind.

[RyanWind]

Originally Posted by naturesflow

Why do people like to judge or discriminate?


Fear and control
A mindset conditioned by "right and wrong"
Not wanting to know true worth
A world of perception showing affect
Wanting to be our own authority
Seeing others as our competition
Hmm what else?
Feeling threatened for your own existence
Maintaining a tight reign on ones reality

There is probably more.

Another reason people judge and discriminate is they want a watermelon that tastes good. So they thump the melons, study and judge the size and shape and color etc.

Buddha did some serious judging and discriminating according to a scripture found in the Pāli and other canons, in the Āyācana Sutta Samyutta Nikaya VI.1, Buddha debated whether or not he should teach the Dharma to others immediately after his awakening. Buddha was concerned that because humans were so overpowered by ignorance, greed and hatred, they could never recognize or understand the path, which is subtle, deep and hard to grasp. However, in the story, Brahmā Sahampati convinced him, arguing that at least some will understand it. The Buddha relented, and agreed to teach.

You think Buddha, who was said to be awakened, really thought most people were overpowered by ignorance, greed, and hatred? He had a pretty dim view of his fellow human beings and was doing some serious judging there. But then maybe you would conclude some stuff in the Pali canon was not really what Buddha said? Oh maybe you would say Buddha was not really awakened and was probably full of fear and control etc like you said above since he was judging and discriminating?

dis·crim·i·na·tion
dəˌskriməˈnāSH(ə)n/
noun
1.
the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
"victims of racial discrimination"
synonyms: prejudice, bias, bigotry, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, unfairness, inequity, favoritism, one-sidedness, partisanship; More
2.
recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.
"discrimination between right and wrong"

I guess naturesflow is talking about #1 definition as #2 kind of discrimination is very good.

Originally Posted by jonesboy

False-imaginations rise from the consideration of appearances; things are discriminated as to form, signs and shape; as to having color, warmth, humidity, motility or rigidity. False-imagination consists in becoming attached to these appearances and their names.

It's not really a false-imagination if you notice a watermelons skin is soft indicating a rotten melon.

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

Here is what the Buddha had to say.

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.

Makes sense to me.

[jonesboy]

This next question to the Buddha should help.

Mahamati said: Blessed One; to what kind of discrimination and to what kind of thoughts should the term, false-imagination, be applied?

The Blessed One replied: So long as people do no understand the true nature of the objective world, they fall into the dualistic view of things. They imagine the multiplicity of external objects to be real and become attached to them and are nourished by their habit-energy. Because of this system of mentation-mind and what belongs to it-is discriminated and is thought of as real; this leads to the assertion of an ego-soul and its belongings, and thus the mind-system goes on functioning. Depending upon and attaching itself to the dualistic habit of mind, they accept the views of the philosophers founded upon these erroneous distinctions, of being and non-being, existence, and non-existence, and there evolves what we call, false-imaginations. But Mahamati, discrimination does not evolve nor is it put away because, when all that is seen is truly recognized to be nothing but the manifestation of mind, how can discrimination as regards being and non-being evolve? It is for the sake of the ignorant who are addicted to the discriminations of the multiplicity of things, which are of their own mind, that it is said by me that discrimination takes its rise owing to attachment to the aspect of multiplicity, which is characteristic of objects.

....False-imaginations rise from the consideration of appearances; things are discriminated as to form, signs and shape; as to having color, warmth, humidity, motility or rigidity. False-imagination consists in becoming attached to these appearances and their names. By attachment to objects is meant, the getting attached to inner and outer things as if they were real. By attachment to names is meant, the recognition in these inner and outer things of the characteristic marks of individuation and generality, and to regard them as definitely belonging to the names of the objects.

[naturesflow]

Discernment was a wonderful awakening space to my own judgment in me, I forgot to mention that from the pulling up of those old thoughts arising to answer your question Jonesboy. I had to take myself back to that time and remember what things I was holding in my own mind when I judged the external world around me. This was when I had to build a deeper balanced awareness in myself around judgement so I wasn't trapped in the future and dragged back into it..more aware of myself able to let go, when it arises and discern and listen to the judgement around me wanting my attention in some way. Discernment becoming the truth of judgment leading itself naturally aware of itself.