GENIUS FORUMS

"Virtuous man, because the nature of Absolute Reality is pure, ones body is pure. Because one's body is pure a multitude of bodies are pure, likewise sentient beings in all ten directions are completely enlightened and pure."


We must remember that the words spoken above come from a completely enlightened being, not an ordinary person. However , if you see into your self-nature, then you percieve what the Buddha percieved and absolute reality is manifest. You perceive that everything in the universe has been, is, and will always be pure and clean.
When this is understood directly, it is called enlightenment. An Enlightened person sees everything as Buddha-Nature.

If we discriminate between pure & impure, clean & dirty, good & bad, less & more, we are using our mind of vexation [duality]. We always compare and judge. We are repelled by the smell of sweaty socks, yet entranced by the aroma of incense & purfume [or food] :) Odors are a natural phenomena that exist and nothing more. It is we who have preferences among them.


To an Enlightened person, all sentient beings are Buddhas and all places are Buddha Lands. Flowers, mountains, garbage, shit....none is different from the Buddha.

Does this mean that an Enlightened person loses the ability to make worldly judgements ? No. An Enlightened person would not eat his own excretement or purposely injest poison. Enlightened Beings are not fools.

They know good from bad.

Pure and clean refer to the MIND, not to external phenomena.

Upon attaining Complete Enlightenment, nothing is left, including the Mind.

If anything, even a single self-created thought is in the mind, attachment remains.


[Quoted from the book: Complete Enlightenment by Ch'an Master Sheng-yen]

http://books.google.com/books?id=tafWnR ... it&f=false

[scroll down to page 136]

So....I brought this up because of the discussion surrounding the subject of evil vs good. An Enightened person clearly sees the differnce, yet knows the State of Absolute Reality is Pure.

But if the state of absolute reality is pure...then isn't everything also pure ? [the state of "conventional" reality].
In essence....there is only ONE reality. No ?

Yet it is important to know both, as we are living in it, and must play by the rules of that reality [conventional].
So there is good and evil in conventional reality....and we must know the diffence living in this world.

In other words..we must use rationality and logic in this world of good and evil.

The world condemns those who rape, torcher, and murder. The world condemns the atrocities committed by the Nazis'.
No one in their right mind is capable of committing henious crimes against humanity or animals.
Therefore, it is an act of insanity, a sick delusional mind that is capable of committing these acts....which would be considered evil by worldly standards...and actually
also insane by Enlightenments standards...as ALL is ONE....why would you intensionally commit acts of violence against yourself ?
[You wouldn't].

Kunga wrote:....why would you intensionally commit acts of violence against yourself ?[You wouldn't].

Ignorance is the fundamental act of violence against truth. By violating truth, one violates principle. By violating principle, one violates mind. By violating mind, one violates us all.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:

Kunga wrote:....why would you intensionally commit acts of violence against yourself ?[You wouldn't].

Ignorance is the fundamental act of violence against truth. By violating truth, one violates principle. By violating principle, one violates mind. By violating mind, one violates us all.

Yes...evil IS ignorance.

without comparative means, nothing has meaning. pursuit of enlightenment is akin to the pursuit of happiness--usually the pursuit itself is indeed a subtle, yet vastly integral, obstacle.

enlightenment seems to be dependent on abandoning human nature, abandoning what makes us the beings we are. it is merely a subjective title.

Actually, enlightenment is dependent upon our abandoning who we think that we are, and surrendering to our true nature – as authentic human beings. An erroneous metaphysical view of the phenomenal world is all that keeps us from our goal. Once this "wrong view" is fully overcome, there is nothing else that needs to be done.

First there is a mountain,
Then there is no mountain,
Then there is

first you see with your eyes crossed
then you see with one eye
then you still see with your third eye

lol

Or, in a great many cases, your brown eye.

Jehu wrote:Actually, enlightenment is dependent upon our abandoning who we think that we are, and surrendering to our true nature – as authentic human beings. An erroneous metaphysical view of the phenomenal world is all that keeps us from our goal. Once this "wrong view" is fully overcome, there is nothing else that needs to be done.

Jehu! Back! And under 5000 words!

I admit to liking the sound of what Jehu wrote. I admit that it resonates even with a more pragmatic, if even 'lusty' Whitmanesque American sense of authenticity. Still, I am thrown off by the reference to metaphysical rearrangement as being the thing needing to be done (realized) and that thereafter 'nothing more to be done'.

Still, at least in a literary-existential sense, this proposal of Jehu was undertaken by the SF beats: Gary Snyder for example, certainly Ginsberg and Kerouac in their somewhat deranged way. Certainly many people have tried to live their lives in accord with this ideal.

Talking Ass wrote:I admit to liking the sound of what Jehu wrote. I admit that it resonates even with a more pragmatic, if even 'lusty' Whitmanesque American sense of authenticity. Still, I am thrown off by the reference to metaphysical rearrangement as being the thing needing to be done (realized) and that thereafter 'nothing more to be done'.

It is a far more extensive process than simply engaging in a "metaphysical rearrangement". Such a phrase makes the matter sound like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. It goes so much deeper than that.

Surely you are old enough to realize that everything is a matter of perception. Even politicians and advertisers understand this truth, albeit on a more shallow and professional level, and use it cynically for their own gain. But the principle also extends deep into the philosophical and spiritual realms. Alter your perception on things and everything else begins to change - your values, beliefs and responses.

Since you like stories, I will give you one to illustrate this point. It is a common story, you've probably heard it before, but it is a good one:

• Once there was a lion cub lost in the forest and found by a goat herder who brought him up with his goats. The cub grew up to bleat like a goat and eat grass. One day a lion passed by and saw this strange phenomenon. The goats ran away leaving behind cub. The lion asked the cub what he was doing with a bunch of goats. The cub answered, “What do you mean? I am a goat.” The lion took him to river and let him see that the cub was no goat but a lion and gave him a piece of meat to eat. The cub gagged on it but once he got a taste of it, he gave his first lion roar. We are all lions behaving like goats, not knowing our true nature.

The phrase you use, Alex - "and thereafter nothing more to be done" - is obviously false. Spiritually speaking, the all-important change in perception actually marks the start of a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done. The deluded cub in the story above has to unlearn the habits that he deludedly cultivated under his previously mistaken perception. Likewise, the spiritual man has to unlean the bad habits of a lifetime that he cultivated under his own mistaken perception of himself.

-

It is not the belief that we are goats that must be overturned, in favour of the equally erroneous belief that we are lions. This is not the enlightened view. It is the belief that the phenomenal world exists in the manner that it appears to the senses that must be overturned, in favour of that view which comes to be perceived only by the light of reason.

"Just because consciousness is expanded is no guarantee of genuine human liberation. Even alleged cosmic consciousness can be basically superficial when measured by human extremity. Horizons opened by Oriental disciplines or planetary vision, however welcome and instructive, can still be parochial. Initiation into archetypal mysteries, subliminal labyrinths, or the kaleidoscopic phantasmata induced by soma or the mu hroom may similarly by-pass the radical human problem, which has to do with our waking life in the sunlight and our choices and relations."

---Amos Niven Wilder

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I think the above offers at least a counter-point to both declarations.

He also writes: "It is a question of reality and of how reality is located, and of how full human reality is not truncated or forfeited."

I tend to believe that we have actually lost our nerve in substantial ways, and so Eastern modalities are puffed up with a significance that mystifies rather than illuminates. Under that influence, my impression is that one loses one's sense of the genuinely important and shows oneself willing to trade it in 'for a mess of pottage'.

Jehu wrote: "It is the belief that the phenomenal world exists in the manner [in which] it appears to the senses that must be overturned, in favour of that view which comes to be perceived only by the light of reason."

Still, this is a compelling statement. But it is not clear what in fact it means, nor where it leads. (I substituted 'in which' for 'that' as it seemed to bring out the sense more. I hope this is still what you meant.)

Jehu wrote:It is not the belief that we are goats that must be overturned, in favour of the equally erroneous belief that we are lions. This is not the enlightened view.

The lion story is a metaphor, with the lion representing our true nature. You do know what a metaphor is?

It is the belief that the phenomenal world exists in the manner that it appears to the senses that must be overturned, in favour of that view which comes to be perceived only by the light of reason.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. It is the world that appears to the ignorant mind that needs to be overturned. The senses have nothing to do with the matter.

The enlightened person still perceives the world through the senses just as he did before. The difference is that he no longer projects false conceptions onto what he experiences and thus no longer lives in a fantasy of his own making. He no longer wastes his life pursuing mirages and being pursued by them.

-

Talking Ass wrote: I tend to believe that we have actually lost our nerve in substantial ways,

Talking Ass wrote: mystifies rather than illuminates.

Talking Ass wrote: oneself willing to trade it in 'for a mess of pottage'.

Talking Ass wrote:this is a compelling statement. But it is not clear what in fact it means, nor where it leads.

Alex is still in his heaven....

-

David Quinn wrote:The lion story is a metaphor, with the lion representing our true nature. You do know what a metaphor is?

Indeed I do! I was merely trying to convey the idea that our true nature is such that it defies definition and therefore, cannot rightfully be named. Your metaphor gives the impression that we are simply mistaken as to the kind of thing that we are, whereas we are not any kind of thing at all.

David Quinn wrote:I don't know what you're trying to say here. It is the world that appears to the ignorant mind that needs to be overturned. The senses have nothing to do with the matter.

The enlightened person still perceives the world through the senses just as he did before. The difference is that he no longer projects false conceptions onto what he experiences and thus no longer lives in a fantasy of his own making. He no longer wastes his life pursuing mirages and being pursued by them.

More than this, the enlighten person continues on in the phenomenal world, but like a lucid dreamer, is no longer perturbed by their phenomenal experiences, for they know that they (and all phenomena) are devoid of any intrinsic reality.

Dan Rowden wrote:Or, in a great many cases, your brown eye.

Is that a brown finger pointing to a moon ?

Only in the northern hemisphere where everything's upside down.

More than this, the enlighten person continues on in the phenomenal world, but like a lucid dreamer, is no longer perturbed by their phenomenal experiences, for they know that they (and all phenomena) are devoid of any intrinsic reality.

There's a possibility here for the creation of an app people could download into their iphones as a helpfinder to get unlost from their projections.

The 'no intrinsic reality' realization just doesn't seem that USEFUL to me. If we were taught, and if we all 'realized', that 'nothing has intrinsic reality', nothing would.make any difference, neither life nor death.

It is possible and attractive in some way to reason things through and to see things in that way. Anyone who thinks about non-intrinsic-ness does this. It is.not even that hard of a thought. But what is the use of it? In any case, one is still in the body, alive within the non-intrinsic. So what? You don't regard anything as having 'intrinsic.existence'.

What then does one do?

fix suffering.
geddit?

Talking Ass wrote:The 'no intrinsic reality' realization just doesn't seem that USEFUL to me. If we were taught, and if we all 'realized', that 'nothing has intrinsic reality', nothing would.make any difference, neither life nor death.

It is possible and attractive in some way to reason things through and to see things in that way. Anyone who thinks about non-intrinsic-ness does this. It is.not even that hard of a thought. But what is the use of it? In any case, one is still in the body, alive within the non-intrinsic. So what? You don't regard anything as having 'intrinsic.existence'.

What then does one do?

An enlightened person simply acts in accordance with their proper function, for each thing (being) has a appropriate mode of activity whereby it fulfils its purpose. Such a person does not concern themselves with what they should or shouldn’t do, they simply do whatever is appropriate in the given situation. Because they have fully realized their true nature, they are fearless and beyond any sort of worldly enticement. Therefore, nothing can deter them from their intended purpose – to alleviate the mental suffering (distress & despair) of other sentient beings. The ignorant, on the other hand, are like frightened children who, after awaking from a bad dream, are convinced that what they merely dreamed was real, and so can find no peace in this phenomenal world.

After all, we are here because we are of the very nature of being, and have no choice in the matter. Still, there is no need for anyone to suffer.

But if 'we' have no driving or directing ideas and ideals, just to do what needs doing might just as well be nothing. To say 'my purpose is the relieve suffering in others by teaching them that there is nothing inherent about this existence' muat take a place relationally with those goals and aspirations that 'we' hold.as valuable. We have to first of all define them, and then we have to pursue them. I think this is the problem I have with [whatever this doctrine is]. To be a Buddhiat in the West would.be to adopt a strategy for living within a.structure and modality that was not at all originated in the East and is not Buddhism nor Buddhist. What would a Buddhist define as a goal or an object? Social justice? Good.government? Medical advancement? But all those things and so much more are tied to definitions.of.value and also.goals which are pwculiar to the West. Should not one strive to be a Western practitioner of Buddhist principals if one is going to be anything at all?

Finally, to say 'there.should.be no suffering' is a form.of irreal dreaming. It stands to reason that suffering can be modified or minimized (or not exacerbated perhaps), but a more powerful position is in the way one relates.to.or.deals.with suffering.

Talking Ass wrote:To be a Buddhist

This is basically all one needs to do doesn't matter if your in the West or East:

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html