A love letter

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Pam Seeback
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A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dear duality, your saviour of comfort gives me the sweetness of joy. I need and cherish this your tender flowing touch, for in the deep where your sweet touch come to life, my unflinching conscience knows of thought's eternal hunger for life and death and of its blindness of being made of this hungry thing.

Dear duality, your saviour of comfort gives me the structure of reason. I need and cherish this your ordered touch, for in the deep where your structured words come to life, my unflinching conscience knows of thought's eternal hunger for life and death and of its blindness of being made of this hungry thing.

Dear duality, dear hunger and its saviors, you are not an easy Friend, but you are the true Friend. After all, was it not truth I wanted when I came seeking its name?
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Cahoot
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Re: A love letter

Post by Cahoot »

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow, " he mused, "I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

The moon has its Friend, the inky sky, the sun of day, the roundness of its being, these are some of the things of the moon that lived only inside my sight, outer and inner, until now. Now they are yours too, even if you say what a crazy girl for talking about the Friend of the moon.
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Jehu
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Re: A love letter

Post by Jehu »

Transcendent Lovers

One that is never alone,
Two that are never apart,
Alternating to and fro,
Apprehending and accumulating,
Never abating.

One that is real,
One that is merely apparent,
Flowing in and out,
Initiating and completing,
Never regressing.

One that is timeless,
One that is time itself,
Arising and progressing,
Declining and dissolving,
Never duplicating.

One that is immutable,
One that is forever changing,
This into that,
Lovingly uniting and transcending ,
Never ceasing - to Be.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: A love letter

Post by Dennis Mahar »

yummy.
nirvana
environment.
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Kunga
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Re: A love letter

Post by Kunga »

o
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dennis Mahar wrote:yummy.
nirvana
environment.
Your environment is a circumstance of rape, either of you or someone else. Still yummy?
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Kunga
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Re: A love letter

Post by Kunga »

movingalways wrote: you or someone else

Thought cannot reach this state of truth,
here feelings are of no avail.
In this true world of Emptiness
both self and other are no more.
To enter this true empty world,
immediately affirm "not-two."
In this "not-two" all is the same,
with nothing separate or outside.

Xinxin Ming
Dennis Mahar
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Re: A love letter

Post by Dennis Mahar »

penetrating quote K.

Pam,
in order to suffer a meaning category has to be set up.
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Kunga wrote:
movingalways wrote: you or someone else

Thought cannot reach this state of truth,
here feelings are of no avail.
In this true world of Emptiness
both self and other are no more.
To enter this true empty world,
immediately affirm "not-two."
In this "not-two" all is the same,
with nothing separate or outside.

Xinxin Ming
Kunga, the quote by Ming speaks of the first part of the journey toward enlightenment, of coming to an emotional standstill in one's mind wherein not-two is realized and where it must be affirmed. Names are dropped as are their good and evil interpretations. What is also realized here is the second part of the journey which is that in order for consciousness to move, it must realize and affirm its movement nature, that of contrast. No contrast, no sense-of-two, no movement. It is here that names are picked up again, as is their good and evil interpretations. Imagine your life without names. Imagine your life without your moral nature, your reasoning nature, your feeling nature.

When I used the term "someone else" with Dennis in relation to my question about being raped, it was necessary, for even though all beings are one of their existence, they are not one in their worldview. A rapist and a non-rapist are both because of Life, but one forms effects that are very much different than the other. Causality because of contrast has consequences, the law of karma "will not be mocked."

I'll ask you the same question as Dennis using your parameters. If you encountered the scenario wherein your daughter was being raped by a neighbor, would you sit and meditate on them being "not two", go into a state of bliss, or would you acknowledge his view of contrast to be evil and act to stop both the rape and rapist?
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dennis Mahar wrote:penetrating quote K.

Pam,
in order to suffer a meaning category has to be set up.
Rape is a word for a reason as is bliss a word for a reason. They name present activities of contrast of consciousness. Are you denying that to force one's penis into another's vagina or rectum without their consent does not cause suffering? That if a 250 lb. man brutally assaults a ten year old girl that deep suffering will not be the effect?

How is it you accept the condition/category of "yummy" but not the condition/category of "not yummy?" Is the latter not just as valid as the former?
Dennis Mahar
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Re: A love letter

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I'm saying suffering is functionally dependent on a meaning category as is bliss.
dependent arising.
I'm not getting into good/bad, right/wrong.
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dennis Mahar wrote:I'm saying suffering is functionally dependent on a meaning category as is bliss.
dependent arising.
I'm not getting into good/bad, right/wrong.
So you suffer, as do I. No matter how hard we try to deny it, escape it, believe ourselves detached or transcended, we are subject to our interpretations, such is the way of being a thinking, conscious being.

It is not true that suffering is dependent on meaning categories. The mentally ill suffer but are unable to assign meaning categories to their suffering. Both killer whales and domestic house cats are known to torture their terrified prey before killing it, obviously for pleasure's sake, not for necessity's sake, as they abandon the body after the killing. There is certainly no meaning category being assigned to these acts of terror.

It was you who uses the suffering categories of "yummy" and "bliss" which are expressions of pleasure, of something good. Why are you afraid to acknowledge the reason you use them, "not yummy" and "not bliss?"
Dennis Mahar
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Re: A love letter

Post by Dennis Mahar »

To rest in a meaning category.
to wear that costume
is to cultivate the cyclical suffering of 'victim,persecutor,rescuer'.
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Dennis Mahar wrote:To rest in a meaning category.
to wear that costume
is to cultivate the cyclical suffering of 'victim,persecutor,rescuer'.
In the natural realm, are you denying the existence of hunger and of its release in eating? The existence of a full bladder and its release in the whiz? And in the moral realm, the existence of grief and its release in faith, hope and love? I could go on, but my point has been made. There is no wearing of a costume here, there is no resting in a meaning category, no victim, no persecutor, no rescuer, only wisdom of how consciousness works.

Is bliss not an example of suffering's release? Could compassion exist without knowledge of suffering and its release?
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Kunga
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Re: A love letter

Post by Kunga »

MA....I hear ya, I don't have time now to respond fully to your reply....but I'll get back later...meanwhile here's this :

http://ouroborosponderosa.files.wordpre ... -print.pdf
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: A love letter

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:To rest in a meaning category. To wear that costume is to cultivate the cyclical suffering of 'victim,persecutor,rescuer'.
If anyone wants to exist in some past, present or future, in any meaningful way, that "cyclical" will be part of that. No matter which names you give it! What you call victim I can call the present moment, the "ever innocent". What you call persecutor I can call the past, all knowledge, all law, all causality pestering us. What you call rescuer, I can call all vision, all future, all liberation, all justification, beyond the horizon of the moment.

As Pam puts to you: "wisdom of how consciousness works". Nothing about having or not having costumes or meanings to dress up: without those there would actually nothing to talk about -- speak no evil! -- and even your own words would imply further costumes under costumes, like some onion.

To try to exist somehow in a "now" means just as well that one remains victim in more than one way, one of circumstance, of time, spinning around that dark unsettled eternally generating unknown space where one now tries to reside. But such "bliss", while real enough, also means death: the issue of cultivating or not cultivating anything does not arise with this non-place. Until the next breath we take of course!
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

When I read The Way according to Xin Xin, what I saw was the realm of distinctions speaking of a realm of no-distinctions. Delusion. Let's look at just one example wherein Ming says that the non-dual is one with the trusting mind. Do you not see the contradiction present in this statement?

To realize just how deep goes the truth of distinction, consider the Tibetan cosmology of the Clear Light. How is one made conscious of something that is clear if it is without distinction? How is one made conscious of light if it is without darkness?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: A love letter

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote: Let's look at just one example wherein Ming says that the non-dual is one with the trusting mind. Do you not see the contradiction present in this statement?
There's indeed contradiction there. But on a psychological level the statement has some truth in it. When approaching the timeless, there's the act of surrender, simply because there's no space for being, in time, in deliberation. Being "one with the universe" implies therefore complete trust towards its every aspect. But the whole notion, in a more human sense, functions more as ideal to brush against. It's not a way out of trouble because the universe, the very thing one is asked to trust, is full of trouble!
Dennis Mahar
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Re: A love letter

Post by Dennis Mahar »

The perfect wisdom is these phenomena do not exist from their own side, do not run under their own steam, lack inherent existence.
You cannot refute that final characteristic of phenomena.
they are emptiness.

what are you protecting?
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Kunga
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Re: A love letter

Post by Kunga »

Pam...

Thought cannot reach this state of truth,
here feelings are of no avail.
In this true world of Emptiness
both self and other are no more.
To enter this true empty world,
immediately affirm "not-two."
In this "not-two" all is the same,
with nothing separate or outside.

Xinxin Ming



After I read this quote, there was no need to analyize it .
It's message is clear : Everything is equal in this chain of interdependent causality....
It's all linked together...one continuous thread running through the necklace ....
The pearls and diamonds were once sand and coal....
The rapist was my grandfather...


I'm exhausted...
Thus, the striptease of my mind...
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Everything is equal in that everything exists, however, every sentient being values some things and not others. Even the blissful value bliss, and in doing so, distinguish it from that which they do not value, that which is not bliss. Which means that what Ming says about form is correct in the abstract but not in the actual.
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
movingalways wrote: Let's look at just one example wherein Ming says that the non-dual is one with the trusting mind. Do you not see the contradiction present in this statement?
There's indeed contradiction there. But on a psychological level the statement has some truth in it. When approaching the timeless, there's the act of surrender, simply because there's no space for being, in time, in deliberation. Being "one with the universe" implies therefore complete trust towards its every aspect. But the whole notion, in a more human sense, functions more as ideal to brush against. It's not a way out of trouble because the universe, the very thing one is asked to trust, is full of trouble!
Yes, God is good AND evil. Trusting in the universe does not mean one won't experience the full spectrum of what the universe has to give, pleasure and pain alike. As a matter of fact, when one surrenders to whatever the universe has to give - dare I say it here on Genius - they come to know the 360 degree face of love.
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Kunga
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Re: A love letter

Post by Kunga »

movingalways wrote:Everything is equal in that everything exists,
I see the opposite of this. Everything is equal, because nothing exists (nothing exists INDEPENDENTLY/INHERENTLY
As everything is DEPENDENT on other things in order for it's (appearance) as "existing" .

A Tree didn't just POP into existence on it's own...it needed a seed, soil, water, air, sunlight in order for it to appear .
Pam Seeback
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Re: A love letter

Post by Pam Seeback »

Kunga wrote:
movingalways wrote:Everything is equal in that everything exists,
I see the opposite of this. Everything is equal, because nothing exists (nothing exists INDEPENDENTLY/INHERENTLY
As everything is DEPENDENT on other things in order for it's (appearance) as "existing" .

A Tree didn't just POP into existence on it's own...it needed a seed, soil, water, air, sunlight in order for it to appear .
Very true, a tree needs all these things to be a tree and considering all of these things does indeed open the mind up to the dependent nature of things, to looking at the world through the eyes and heart of a poet or an artist, but knowing that a tree is the universe in disguise does not alter the fact that we experience tree in its tree form.

Imagine for a moment what it would be like if we weren't able to distinguish the trunk of the tree from the leaves of the tree or the soil of the tree or the air of the tree or the water of the tree or the bird in the tree - there would be no golden autumn leaves to admire, no birdsong to lift our heart, no way to get paper upon which to paint or write, no way to warm ourselves over a crackling fire, no way obtain the wood we need for furniture and houses, these are but just a few of the qualities of 'form of tree' that would not be available to us if we were always and ever thinking of its dependent nature.

I love to behold Van Gogh's "Starry Night", it makes me dance and sing inside, but I know that if I were suddenly transported to that world so that it became my 24/7 reality I would go mad. The truth is that if the 'boundaries' of things suddenly fell away so would our consciousness. Luckily, our consciousness is programmed to survive.
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