Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:19 am

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:A wise man recognizing reality is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, and so he escapes the suffering.
This week I had a dream where I could fly and jumped from great heights. It has been a while since I had those dreams but flying was easier and faster than ever before. Now in these dreams I know I can fly because I realized somewhat that it's a dream and normal rules do not apply. It never fails so I can escape gravity or other circumstance.

So how do you act "as if something is real" and how do you act "as if it is illusion". How could I see the difference? How could you see the difference?

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Dennis Mahar » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:46 am

Alex,

pouncing tiger

cover tracks

Zen!

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:01 am

Lucky haha I have only ever flown rarely.

Well it's a tricky sentence because technically illusions are what's real. You can see that waking state is also illusion by recognizing that nothing isn't illusion, that it is of the same 'stuff' as a dream, existing only in what is seen.

In this world it is considered impossible to see without the presence of light, I see clear as day light and fuck girls while I'm sleeping, see how those two contradict each other?

It is only labeling, discriminating, getting caught in particular manifestations and false knowledge that clouds the mind from seeing clearly what's right in front of it, from believing that there is somehow more to these experiences, that they are more real, simply because you are "here" now, and every time you think about your life and self another imaginative shallow image is going to float by your mind stabilizing your belief in the reality of what appears to be your "self", convincing you that your body is more than that imagined body which was flying, cause your seeing it now.

Some of the things which make illusion clear can literally be "seen" upon close inspection: Depth and distance are the most obvious illusory aspects, akin to looking at a painting and seeing distances where there are none, movement itself is tricking the mind into thinking it's form is actually going somewhere, at the time it considers the body as it's true self, in reality all that is occurring is a change of those "pixels" that make up sight, or that "screen" of sensation flowing onward. There has been no body or movement, only "surroundings" altering, these surroundings being made up of feelings and sensations such as in a sleeping state.

The next most illusory aspect that can be observed, only with a mind clear of pre-conceived concepts, is that of reality/sensory experiences altering based on your mood and thoughts. Now I'm not implying that you have any free will or control over these, just that thoughts and emotion, even without action, influence the direction of events. Similar to the way fear manifests into murderers and lust manifests into girls in a dream. All that exists is a continuum of thought effecting sensual experiences which effect thought and so forth.

After those two observable aspects which you might be able to pick up on, there is always wakefulness. With enough of it, and enough lengthy observation, eventually you see into the illusion, meaning it is clear to you in the same way it is clear you are dreaming when you become lucid in a dream, there isn't doubt in the mind nor do you need explanation, you are just aware of it.

If one were to leave behind completely the past, and all the past associations they have made for what is occurring, and to just look around without bias, asking, "what is this?", you see that it is like a miraculous vision, both complex and convincing, it is when you look back on it that you see how dream-like it really was, that your memories are nothing but new experiences, shallow fragmented imaginations of the mind, all thought is deceptive, it makes one believe the thoughts are rational because we associate our self to it, trusting our own thoughts ya know, when in reality they are as real and contain as much explanation as a thought you might have while sleeping, nothing but fleeting illusions.

Just realize that your mind believes what's happening in the dream is real at the time, not because it is similar to what is real because you are imagining things you've seen, but simply because reality is made up of imaginative/dream-like experience. You think Diebert is more real because you are feeding his illusions, but if he died, it would be exactly like dying in a dream.

I can't really say how I can be so sure besides that I have seen it with my eyes, when being wakeful it is like being lucid in a dream, and time after time I've witnessed reality forming on my thoughts.

Remember, all thought is elusive, deceptive, it distracts the mind from what is, clouds it with past assumptions.

A good way to see how shallow your knowledge is, just really and honestly think about anything, a plant growing, fire, anything, realize you don't know what that is, what your seeing there, that all you know is that your seeing, and when you try to rationalize the processes, conceptualize them, the best you will get is a little image of a plant in your mind growing, or a few words lol, and then your mind automatically accepts it, it goes, "Yep that's familiar! hence it's rational", when in reality, the plant hasn't grown, the plant doesn't even exist, only imaginative/illusory/transient sensation exists.

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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:14 am

Seeker, if nothing isn't illusion, then the word 'illusion" is already meaningless. Do you understand this simple truth? Instead you dismiss your own thoughts and concepts as elusive while everyone still has to listen to them here anyway. What you utter is nothing but drunkenness on the self and the power of perception. Navel-gazing in many ways. You'll grow out of it if you won't perish first.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:34 pm

You are being all defensive, the only thing you've pointed out is in choosing one of the many words used "illusion", illusion still has meaning even without comparison, I used many, many synonyms on purpose. You have heard what I mean exactly, if you haven't you must have some serious issues, every single person that can read at least knows what I'm spouting, your just deflecting, never actually saying anything about it just trolling with a grudge.

"what you utter is nothing but drunkenness on the self and the power of perception."

And you haven't yet realized that every single person has the exact same shallow dream-like experiences as you, these experiences being the sour of all that we know.

Also, the power of perception is the only power you have to gain any knowledge, so what are you even talking about? Only through observation of what is can you learn anything.

I'm not sure if you know, but, in the words of the Buddha, the "enlightened one", this realization of the dream-like and illusory nature of reality is a fact of ultimate reality, this is only relevant because you are on an enlightenment forum, to quote specifically,

"..the Truth of Noble Wisdom that is beyond the reasoning knowledge of the philosophers as well as being beyond the understanding of ordinary disciples and masters; and which is realisable only within the inmost consciousness; for your sakes, I too, would discourse on the same Truth. All that is seen in the world is devoid of effort and action because all things in the world are like a dream, or like an image miraculously projected. This is not comprehended by the philosophers and the ignorant, but those who thus see things see them truthfully."

Why are you ignoring this fact about ultimate reality completely? This isn't just because the enlightened one said it, but because it's pretty clear, the world is like a dream, a vision, existing only in what is seen, the body and the world illusions, < btw, all those words were quotes from him too, not hiding behind quotes, just repeating the important one's till maybe you stop taking them as a metaphor, or as vague, or out of context, and start realizing he's saying exactly what he means.

Otherwise if your not, what are you finding wrong? Point it out, ever considered maybe you haven't had this realization yet, and if you have, why do you seem to be so unaware of it?

Que Diebert's Anger:

^Think about why.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Dennis Mahar » Fri Dec 14, 2012 5:19 pm

Otherwise if your not, what are you finding wrong? Point it out, ever considered maybe you haven't had this realization yet, and if you have, why do you seem to be so unaware of it?
you wipe everything out= nihilism
then you bring it back and give it inherent existence=God as base and cause.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Fri Dec 14, 2012 5:56 pm

God is a word, I'm referring to consciousness, the source of universal experience, hence divine, the beginning and the end of all that is known. All you are doing is labeling constantly. When you realize that all known experience of consciousness for us amounts to relatively the same as what your seeing right now. Everyone ever to live has experienced the same deep ignorance you have now, all knowing is a pretense. If you be wakeful of your thoughts, without bias, you will see what is occurring clearly. Until you view them non-judgmentally you will never understand what is so clear here:
It's impossible to see without the presence of light for the human eye, yet, when closed, when in the dark, one can see as bright as day light. See how those two facts contradict each other? The reason is because the light is arising from you, the universe, aka sensation and feeling, are imaginative experiences of consciousness, all thought, all knowledge, no more real than what is experienced in a dream, you are only not seeing that because your "here" now.

Consider it, are you aware that thought wills sensual experience into being? Even without action being taken, just play some music in your head on demand, till you realize all your experiences are subject to you and arising from you. (yes, no control, collective thoughts affecting experience, don't ask me, a fact of consciousness)

Give a real answer, in which your position on ultimate reality is clear, and don't just label your way to a fancy answer, actually speak for once ,or don't reply, cause you've rarely ever said a thing, and have you not realized your a bigger troll then I am? In all instances.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Dennis Mahar » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:27 pm

You are reifying consciousness or giving it absolute existence.

if consciousness existed from its own side then transformation would clearly be impossible,
and yet you argue for a transformed viewpoint.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Alex T. Jacob » Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:43 pm

"..the Truth of Noble Wisdom that is beyond the reasoning knowledge of the philosophers as well as being beyond the understanding of ordinary disciples and masters; and which is realisable only within the inmost consciousness; for your sakes, I too, would discourse on the same Truth. All that is seen in the world is devoid of effort and action because all things in the world are like a dream, or like an image miraculously projected. This is not comprehended by the philosophers and the ignorant, but those who thus see things see them truthfully."
What Scripture is this? For such an axial quote it would be helpful to know the source.

But in any case, if you wonder why you don't get the immediate agreements you seek, the answer is both simple and complex: neither Dennis nor Diebert (nor David nor 'the forum') is a Buddhist. To the degree that they employ Buddhist doctrines in their discourse they use them only as a buttress to their own, purely spurious, absolutely personal and tendentious philosophical-religious positions. But you would certainly have to be included in this. All asserting of positions is an act of the asserting will and is more about assertion than revelation of any 'truth'. Also, ideas are put forward not so much to convince another but to convince oneself! My own view? When people get all wrapped up in these bizarre metaphysical doctrines, these abstractions, they take a step away from the possibility of conversation about life and life's possibilities. One step at a time they get more and more abstract, more and more disconnected, until they are like captives in a labyrinth that traps them!

The strange doctrines of the East, taken up by Occidentalists, do a freaky number on our perceptive structures. It is like a fever infection of the brain!

Also, to say 'dream-like' is not to say, as you seem to say, that it IS, literally, a dream.
I can't go on. I'll go on.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Dennis Mahar » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:00 pm

All asserting of positions is an act of the asserting will and is more about assertion than revelation of any 'truth'. Also, ideas are put forward not so much to convince another but to convince oneself! My own view? When people get all wrapped up in these bizarre metaphysical doctrines, these abstractions, they take a step away from the possibility of conversation about life and life's possibilities. One step at a time they get more and more abstract, more and more disconnected, until they are like captives in a labyrinth that traps them!
You just fell into your own trap.
Idiot.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:33 pm

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:... illusion still has meaning even without comparison, I used many, many synonyms on purpose.
Let me put is this way. Our waking life is made from the same stuff as dreams, as you say. But why not see it from the reverse angle: dreams are made from the same stuff as waking life. Our life can appear like a stage with props but a movie stage is certainly made of bit and pieces of normal life which are then by misdirection sown together as a somewhat believable whole.

What's the difference between actual war footage and a Hollywood war movie? How many seconds does it take to know the difference? It's both just moving pictures. And yet even a child senses immediately the difference. It knows "make believe". Then again, it's possible to fake footage and it's possible to think actual footage is staged. And yet, and yet there's a difference when it connects to your own bubble, when you can connect to what you see in more ways than fake can supply.
every single person has the exact same shallow dream-like experiences as you, these experiences being the sour of all that we know.
But not everyone is drunk on them or its perceived source.
this realization of the dream-like and illusory nature of reality is a fact of ultimate reality, this is only relevant because you are on an enlightenment forum, to quote specifically,
Yes, so it would be rather strange if you were here defending a reality of inherently existing objects, which you obviously don't. But there's something more expected from you, first of all more attention.

For some reason you think you need to be preaching and explaining to the choir. It's only evidence of a very young age and a weak mind that you think it's expected from you to make your point over and over again in an environment which doesn't even disagree on what looks like your main thesis. But somehow you feel compelled to argue, misread, ramble for something which isn't even part of a dispute. This means you are just playing the role which you somehow think is expected. It just means you are highly emotional and hardly capable to work with the ideas and experiences you have stumbled upon. And because I know this and you do not, I can only ask you to listen more carefully, find more calmness and clarity before life itself will put you through the mangler like no one else can.
Que Diebert's Anger:

^Think about why.
Think about why you think it has something to do with anger. Every time reality goes against you, is that also because the world must be angry? And I am the reality you deny!

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Alex T. Jacob » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:43 pm

Dennis wrote: You just fell into your own trap.
I do recognize that, given the acute binary, black/white, reductive style of your thinking and your whole approach and presence on this forum, that it would be very, very difficult for you to grasp the subtleties in my (above) statement. It is a peculiar, 'mercurial' problem but a statement about it is also 'hermeneutic' and requires some mental alchemy. What you will now do is to latch on to your reductive interpretation, something as blunt as an old sledge hammer, of what I am saying ('you've fallen into your own trap!') and then INSIST on your interpretation, not once, not twice, but again and again and again. This is exactly what you do. It is also, largely, all that you do. All of this is revealed in your first ten posts. And it is doubtful it will ever change! Or is there a ray of hope?
I can't go on. I'll go on.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Dennis Mahar » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:49 pm

complete idiot.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Pam Seeback » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:22 pm

Seeker, wisdom has revealed to you that everything is a dream, or a dream within a dream, the truth of impermanence and emptiness. One day, while you're dreaming your dream of Genius Forum, typing a dream post in response to one of the dream posters your dream girlfriend dream whacks your dream head with a dream frying pan, lifting her dream arm in dream preparation for a second dream blow to your dream blood-soaked head. What will you do?

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:39 pm

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Let me put is this way. Our waking life is made from the same stuff as dreams, as you say. But why not see it from the reverse angle: dreams are made from the same stuff as waking life.
See, liking this, philosophical discussion haha, yes there are really only a few ways to look at it: dreams are only imaginations of the mind and are waking state-like, (the world being what's real, existing independent of experience, the rest being only dreams) or, waking-state is only an imagination of the mind and is dream-like (Neither existing independent of consciousness, all of it being dreams/imaginative instead of only sleep state)

But, it is definitely the latter, that waking state is dream-like, this is the claim, and that both are only imaginations of the mind, neither being "more real". In a dream there isn't even a room behind the door before you look, this is the same point being made for waking state.

Both being "made of" the same sense perception, clearly, but the claim is basically that... in the same way dreams fade when not seen, our world too is illusory and is not existing when not seen (when you aren't looking, that dream room isn't there, only what's seen exists and only so far as it's seen, imaginative world)

This goes as far as to say the body, and the idea of a brain, is as real and tangible as if you were imagining you were doctor octopus, that the moment your eyes are closed, body no longer exists, and when it is seen, it exists only as an image, in what's seen, not as a real and physical thing, instead as sensations only.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote: For some reason you think you need to be preaching and explaining to the choir. It's only evidence of a very young age and a weak mind that you think it's expected from you to make your point over and over again in an environment which doesn't even disagree on what looks like your main thesis. But somehow you feel compelled to argue, misread, ramble for something which isn't even part of a dispute.
And yes, exactly I don't think we actually are disagreeing anywhere obvious, yet you still have mad rants on my use of the world illusion and the such? If we were smarter we wouldn't be on this forum, and that's a fact haha, philosophy is the only subject you could talk about forever, and be unsure on. Also the only one that when you are sure, you can't talk about any more, at least not with any kind of extra progression.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:49 pm

movingalways wrote:Seeker, wisdom has revealed to you that everything is a dream, or a dream within a dream, the truth of impermanence and emptiness. One day, while you're dreaming your dream of Genius Forum, typing a dream post in response to one of the dream posters your dream girlfriend dream whacks your dream head with a dream frying pan, lifting her dream arm in dream preparation for a second dream blow to your dream blood-soaked head. What will you do?
Block it because it hurts, then proceed to tell her she shouldn't worry or get angry, because it's only a dream. < Truthful response, lol, all that we see or seem. My proposition to you moving, is that the implications of this are huge, most importantly on knowledge, going as far to say that relatively all knowledge and thought is deceptive, illusory, and based on delusion.


Alex,

"What Scripture is this? For such an axial quote it would be helpful to know the source."

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bb/bb08.htm

Read it, you will enjoy it, and you don't need to be a Buddhist to know this, also, on your comment: "It is like a fever infection of the brain!", it is funny that you said this, a common eastern philosophy is that knowledge itself, and presuming to know, is like a fever infection of the mind, one you have to clear first before being able to recognize your own deep ignorance...the mystery get's once again revealed, especially hard to do when one is still heavily caught in desires, money, latina's, so forth.

"Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations."

If you do still experience these kinds of desire every day, lust, fear of future, etc, maybe the manifestations are still being focused on?

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:55 pm

Also, am I really the clueless teen? Or is it everyone else constantly bickering and whining about their personal opinions of other people's personality traits, like little bitches? Stop it! Dennis is getting fired up, might be putting some puppies in danger.




:D

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Alex T. Jacob
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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Alex T. Jacob » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:58 pm

Movingalways intelligently asks: "Seeker, wisdom has revealed to you that everything is a dream, or a dream within a dream, the truth of impermanence and emptiness. One day, while you're dreaming your dream of Genius Forum, typing a dream post in response to one of the dream posters your dream girlfriend dream whacks your dream head with a dream frying pan, lifting her dream arm in dream preparation for a second dream blow to your dream blood-soaked head. What will you do?"
Well, if I were dreaming those dreams, I'd set it up that after the first blow and hopefully before the second, he hears the dream mailman whistling his dreamy little tune as he drops the mail through the mail slot. Running, dream-like, to the front door he sees there on the floor a letter from the Tahiti All-Expenses-Paid-Dream-Vacation-Of-A-Lifetime Sweepstakes, and when he opens it (pinching himself and exclaiming 'Am I dreaming this?!') he sees that he HAS WON! But, being an accomplished dreamer he has set it up thusly: Not just a week vacation, no, but a lifetime vacation with all the girls of the Swedish Nympho Bikini Modeling Team! (Who have coincidentally arrived, naked and giggling, tumbling out of the van, with someone who looks like Bob Barker to deliver a $20,000,000.00 check that comes with it). Nice dreaming work there Seeker! When he shows the letter to his irate First World girl-friend and when the Swedish Nymphos start rubbing him with tubs of warm butter (that wicked gf who was darkly scamming on what little bit of nothing he possesses, but still...it's the principal and the 'intention' of the thing), she gets that wounded-woman look on her waspy face...and goes for the knife drawer. But taking a dream-cue from Diebert...he shouts 'ha ha' and LOL deftly flies out the window and up, up, and away!
I can't go on. I'll go on.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:04 am

Yes, because recognizing that the world is an illusion of consciousness, has anything to do with how it works?

One day you will realize the importance of these facts: It's impossible to see without the presence of light, yet you can see clear as day light, while flying or having sex, with your eyes closed in pitch black. See how those two facts contradict each other? I'll repeat it until you realize the light, and the world, is coming from "you".

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Alex T. Jacob » Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:16 am

Seeker writes: "Read it, you will enjoy it, and you don't need to be a Buddhist to know this, also, on your comment: "It is like a fever infection of the brain!", it is funny that you said this, a common eastern philosophy is that knowledge itself, and presuming to know, is like a fever infection of the mind, one you have to clear first before being able to recognize your own deep ignorance...the mystery get's once again revealed, especially hard to do when one is still heavily caught in desires, money, latina's, so forth."
Oh it is pretty clever stuff. Though I think you are engaging in a 'deliberate misreading'. In that discourse whoever is speaking (it is certainly not the historical figure 'The Buddha' but rather the teaching of some particular Buddhist school...) is only saying that we relate to the external world and its events in the same way we relate to the imagined images and events in a dream. We are essentially 'dream-like'. The dream is occurring in us. And we can do something about that.

Have you explored the scriptural-like contributions of the Talking Ass? I think you are just about ripe to fully receive the magnitude of his doctrines. He used to freely post here until the gadflies and the imps and demons of this dark Buddhist hell-realm cruelly drove him away. He lives a dream-like existence in some rich pastureland, filled with sprouting iris, crocuses and soughing pines, just on the other side of a ridge and within earshot of the Pacific Ocean somewhere up in Northern California. All he does is wander around, often at night, communing with the objects of beauty of his pristine projection.
I can't go on. I'll go on.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by SeekerOfWisdom » Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:31 am

Nope, it's a Siddhartha Gautama quote, and,

"On the contrary my teaching is based upon the recognition that the objective world, like a vision, is a manifestation of the mind itself;"

"Since the ignorant and simple-minded, not knowing that the world is only something seen of the mind itself, cling to the multitudinousness of external objects, cling to the notions of being and nonbeing, oneness and otherness, bothness and not-bothness, existence and non-existence, eternity and non-eternity,and think that they have a self-nature of their own, all of which rises from the discriminations of the mind and is perpetuated by habit-energy, and from which they are given over to false imagination. It is all like a mirage in which springs of water are seen as if they were real. They are thus imagined by animals who, made thirsty by the heat of the season, run after them. Animals, not knowing that the springs are an hallucination of their own minds, do not realise that there are no such springs."

Actually Alex, you are just completely misinterpreting what's being said, which is very clear, and is repeated over and over, "the world is but an illusion", or the world "exists only in what is seen of the mind itself", see how clear it is that this teaching is based on the fact that the world does not exist independent of consciousness.

It is true that this won't first be agreeable to anyone that hears it, it is often shrugged off as vague, it confronts almost all your knowledge, naming it as delusion, while at the same time ripping at the ego saying that your experiences are not arising from your body and brain, that you experience independent of them, that they exist only as a collection of transient sensations. Sensations which are experienced despite form.

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Pye » Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:53 am

Falling in love with one's mind is probably a pretty good place to start. The vigor with which it is taking shape in human youth - especially active shaping, like Seeker's - provides the heady sensation (pun intended) for which not only Seeker, but probably everyone else on this forum has had the experience. Seeker has found his conveyance; there's every promise in him that the conveyance will not always be mistaken for what it is traveling through, towards. After all, why declare a vehicle at all if you've no intention of it going anywhere . . . .

That said, Seeker, your dismissal of the physical/material/concrete (i.e. existence), is, in my estimation, the real and long-term hangover from which the collective "youth" of humanity still suffers. You cite reliance on, belief in, the physical as our oldest mistake, and I see this exactly the other way around. The buddha that you study, the Greek model of human rationality, any number of old thoughts from the evolution of human consciousness are still buttressing the really delusional idea that there is no world but in the mind. Such a thought is borne out of the flesh of human suffering; it rises from grounded earth (by fleeing from it). It is utterly incoherent the world is all dream and only exists in 'me' when world has to be assumed in order to say this. It's disingenuous, it's denial; and it's dangerous. But you would not be the first person to locate this vehicle only to stay stuck in it, looking at the interior rather than what it is traveling through. It's the beginning of the delusional dualism that has beset humanity ever since it fell in love with its evolving consciousness.

The earthly, the grounded understanding of what we are both embedded in and embodied by is evolved thinking. It pays attention to the vast interrelationships of all phenomena, and by the way, all phenomena is "physical," is manifest. That includes thoughts. Thoughts are things as surely as any other thing in the world. Is it all dependently originated? Sure. Is it impossible to exceed our own instrumentation when measuring the world? Sure. But if you stay there, parked in the garage, gunning your engine, you're going to succumb to noxious fumes . . . .

The historical rejection of the physical/material/concrete has been a long, long back-turning on where all the "wisdom" lies. It rises from the earth, from the fleshly, from the whole of all this dependently originated phenomena. The physical is the spiritual; the matter and the energy (the latter of which you overestimate) are one, in constant and dynamic exchange.

For some reason, I'm thinking of the Allman Brothers album Eat a Peach. Haven't thought about it in years.

Eat a peach, Seeker. Then pay attention to what it is telling you about the molten and interdependent nature of all existence. Peach makes bodymind; bodymind makes peach.



postscript: Alex, it's unfortunate the boys' club could only laugh with you over your biblical ugliness toward Dennis. But then, most of this thread and its opening thrust is shot through with biblical ugliness . . . .

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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Alex T. Jacob » Sat Dec 15, 2012 1:19 am

But you really must come out and say more about all that, Pye. It would make things so much more interesting. Do you think that the 'patriarchal' aspect of my views and my actions is really so fully ensconced in biblically-derived narratives? I do see why you would think that, naturally. According to your view, then, I would be 'biblical ugliness incarnate'?

Ooooh, exciting! Real villainy! ;-P

Respectfully, I note that when something more and more bothers you, you get more and more---what way to put it?---convoluted and turgid in the way you express it. Can you just make straight, simple and clear statements about what you think and feel?

The only one of the 'boys club' to laugh was Seeker, but only because he sees the 'absurd edge of the world' and laughs at it.

And too, Dennis can be so damned annoying that he invites a bang on the head! He knows this and that is likely why he does it! Which makes it consensual masochism! ;-) Also rather biblical I assume...

I would also remind you of one small detail: that of Μῆτις, and this means a group of different things. One, I am playing within these ideas and not everything I write can be taken 'absolutely seriously', and also that I think that we are often befuddled by politically-correct ideas that are themselves inflictions of a kind of conceptual Μῆτις. Does that sound terribly underhanded on my part? It is only that I see things in this way more and more, and I see people attempting still---negotiating, struggling, arguing---to get the things they need within a bizarre context.
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Seeker wrote: Actually Alex, you are just completely misinterpreting what's being said, which is very clear, and is repeated over and over, "the world is but an illusion", or the world "exists only in what is seen of the mind itself", see how clear it is that this teaching is based on the fact that the world does not exist independent of consciousness.
I still think you are reading wrong. To say 'the world is but an illusion' requires all manner of supporting statements. It is not that 'the world' is not there, surrounding us, all this stuff, and that it is our projection of fake imagery into the air, but that it can be looked at in that way, and one's behavior modified in relation to that perceptual stance. Big difference.

Similarly, to say the world "exists only in what is seen of the mind itself", can be understood to mean more or less the same: it is the mind as a perceiving tool that 'sees', but being a tool or an object, and thus limited, imperfect and possibly flawed through-and-through, it might only point to the subjective flaw. And this seems to be the truth of Buddhism praxis: the proposition that there is some way to get free of all that.
I can't go on. I'll go on.

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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:16 am

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:In a dream there isn't even a room behind the door before you look, this is the same point being made for waking state.
But the dream only exist in your recollection the morning after. It's more like your memory constructing a story from the fragments left behind. Re-membering. People born blind do not dream visuals which hints at cause and effect again. It's true that in waking life we also recollect the past stream of impressions. But the amount of continuous and related information creates a model to function in, to persist in. Unlike a dream which disintegrates fairly quickly. And yet I've remembered in my dreams events from other related dreams, things I had forgotten. So it's one "mechanism" but it's attention and consistency, the amount of integration which defines realness. This I believe goes way further than your current ideas.
when you aren't looking, that dream room isn't there, only what's seen exists and only so far as it's seen, imaginative world
It's not important if it's still there in any metaphysical sense, what is important is if I'm fairly sure it's not going to fall on my head, or if there's a bomb or naked lady in there. These probabilities define actions. We are all propelled by these estimations. You bet on it every second. This is your reality and you keep doing it even in dream states although the body is paralyzed to keep it safe..
the moment your eyes are closed, body no longer exists, and when it is seen, it exists only as an image, in what's seen, not as a real and physical thing, instead as sensations only.
The question is not if it exists, the question is how you react when it's burning :-)
And yes, exactly I don't think we actually are disagreeing anywhere obvious
As I said before, you're just not going far enough with what you got. There lies the disagreement.

Pam Seeback
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Re: Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

Post by Pam Seeback » Sat Dec 15, 2012 4:23 am

movingalways wrote:
Seeker, wisdom has revealed to you that everything is a dream, or a dream within a dream, the truth of impermanence and emptiness. One day, while you're dreaming your dream of Genius Forum, typing a dream post in response to one of the dream posters your dream girlfriend dream whacks your dream head with a dream frying pan, lifting her dream arm in dream preparation for a second dream blow to your dream blood-soaked head. What will you do?

SeekerofWisdom: Block it because it hurts, then proceed to tell her she shouldn't worry or get angry, because it's only a dream. < Truthful response, lol, all that we see or seem. My proposition to you moving, is that the implications of this are huge, most importantly on knowledge, going as far to say that relatively all knowledge and thought is deceptive, illusory, and based on delusion.
Which is why a man of reason who does not love himself and/or laugh at himself is a fool. Also why those who say "love is all we need" without giving the reason why are also fools.

When we have this understanding of the why of reason and of love and joy and kindness, mental-emotional lust [suffering] disappears from our consciousness. Is this what you mean by the implications wisdom has on consciousness?

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