Re: The nature of consciousness
Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2016 10:15 pm
All stress, suffering and ignorance are found to be the same underlying contradiction. It's opposition to reality -- not an opposition caused by forces raising to oppose, to offset one thing against another, the struggle of intertwining forces -- but an opposition without roots whatsoever. Upon examination only a mirage is to be found, nothing actually being there, nothing actually doing anything, nothing actually accomplishing anything.Pam wrote:The desire for and subsequent search for permanence, the end of change/contradiction, is the root cause of stress. Usually the initial ignorance is to seek permanence in objects or form, then to seek permanence in the subject (me, I am, etc.), the perceived (formless) interpreter of form. Consciousness burns to fulfil its illogical dream of permanence. To use a Buddhist term, nirvana ("to blow out") is the end of this burning of the delusion of the thirst for permanence.Diebert: There's ultimately no such thing as "permanence". The only possible constancy is the absoluteness of existence, the eternity of Tao. But however that cannot be thought without contradiction arising. And all life is that contradiction. As long as that's understand, it doesn't have to become ignorance.
But then the following question might occur: is the mirage not caused as well? Isn't it real and changing too? Why call it illusion then as opposed to a reality? Not even delusion is ultimately uncaused. And yet it would oppose Tao, oppose the way and contradict wisdom while perpetuating suffering.
Wisdom then rises in opposition to ignorance like ignorance only can exist in direct opposition to wisdom. There's no existence of either outside this.
Only desire invokes the actuality of anything, including the briefest glimpse of constancy, including anything that's assigned beginning and ending. Including everything we accepted that it would be temporary and fleeting. It's the desire creating this in the first place. And acceptance of impermancy of things does not dissolve the suffering. It could even cloak our ignorance about the deeper nature of what is being regarded in the first place.Where spiritual delusion comes in is when one believes the subject actually is or actually can become constant/permanent.
The forces of desire, instilled by nature, leave in their wake the object, a winding coil, a deeply held breath. The forces of release, instilled by grace, leave us with unwinding, some deep release of breath, some realization.A personal note: it helps me enormously as I go through my day viewing consciousness in terms of release. That way, clinging to view (subject as absolute) is avoided.