as the crow barks
Theravadin or 'The School of the Elders' Buddhists are naive realists much like oursleves, but reject the idea of an ultimate particle of either space or time as logically untenable (which it is)...
The basic idea within Mahayana or 'Universalist' Buddhism is that the universe in its entirety is simply the projection of awareness...
I say 'simply', but certainly don't mean - and nor do they - that the universe and its appearance to us is anything vaguely resembling "simple"...
The contention (if — after my brief study of it — I have any understanding of it at all) is more or less the following: The only thing we can be utterly sure of is that there seems to be a world of experience. It appears to have extention as regards what we conceive of and experience as direction and as what we conceive of and experience as duration. Both of these are infinitely divisible on the one hand - are made up of, in other words, less and less tangible elements ad infinitessimum - and, on the other, form parts of larger wholes ad infinitum. There is no part of either that is its essence and both are given to constant and thoroughgoing change. It is, in fact, simply the interplay of an infinity of mutually defining and shaping 'causes' and 'conditions'.
This is technically termed 'emptiness', which is to say that things are empty of being what they appear to be *in any essential way*.
This does not mean that they are empty of their seeming reality — water is water, and fire is fire — to each and all of us, but that they are empty of *ultimately* being what they seem — of an ultimate, demonstrable *essence*... When one pushes the logic to its ultimate, it is discovered that they cannot exist in any way other than as our own assumptions about them.
An often used analogy is the experience of a drop of water, which, to a being tormented in some self-created hell may very well be perceived as yet another source of excruciating agony and to a so-called 'famished spirit' would be either something forbidden or foul. To an animal it could be home — even an entire universe! — the difference between life and death, and to a human anything from a nuisance to a lifesaver too. To a titanic spirit it would be a weapon and to someone in the divine realms, the elixir of life.None of has has the same experience of anything but the general outlines of the world of appearances. My comfortable little office may be your untidy boxroom, and what my wife regards as music, may please on some days and irritate on others. If things were what they were, pleasing things would always please and unpleasant things would always be unpleasant, but we know this is not the case.
Ultimately our experiences of "reality" have no more substance to them than our experiences in dreams. The only substantiality they have is the fact that we know we are experiencing them, and experiencing them in such and such a manner... beyond that, anything we claim is mere wishful thinking.
Things neither exist in the way we think they do, nor don't exist in the manner of a total void... They are simply the coming together of causes and conditions, themselves the manifestations of other causes and conditions ad infinitum. The eternal dragondance of space dancing space into space.
As regards the idea that consciousness arises from matter (the 'ghost in the machine' idea that is the currentscientific and medical paradigm), if this were the case, we should be able to experience this, if not in ourselves, then at least in others, but it has never been proven to be the case... It certainly seems to be true that certain areas of the central nervous system are excited by various types of sensory and other experience and input, but this may simply be the way we read it to ourselves because ultimately all we know is that we know this.
The second teaching given by Gautama, the sage of the Shakyas, was on what is variously translated as 'interdependent origination', 'conditioned coproduction', 'mutually conditioning causation/origination/causality' and a bunch of other tooth-busters...
The basic idea within Mahayana or 'Universalist' Buddhism is that the universe in its entirety is simply the projection of awareness...
I say 'simply', but certainly don't mean - and nor do they - that the universe and its appearance to us is anything vaguely resembling "simple"...
The contention (if — after my brief study of it — I have any understanding of it at all) is more or less the following: The only thing we can be utterly sure of is that there seems to be a world of experience. It appears to have extention as regards what we conceive of and experience as direction and as what we conceive of and experience as duration. Both of these are infinitely divisible on the one hand - are made up of, in other words, less and less tangible elements ad infinitessimum - and, on the other, form parts of larger wholes ad infinitum. There is no part of either that is its essence and both are given to constant and thoroughgoing change. It is, in fact, simply the interplay of an infinity of mutually defining and shaping 'causes' and 'conditions'.
This is technically termed 'emptiness', which is to say that things are empty of being what they appear to be *in any essential way*.
This does not mean that they are empty of their seeming reality — water is water, and fire is fire — to each and all of us, but that they are empty of *ultimately* being what they seem — of an ultimate, demonstrable *essence*... When one pushes the logic to its ultimate, it is discovered that they cannot exist in any way other than as our own assumptions about them.
An often used analogy is the experience of a drop of water, which, to a being tormented in some self-created hell may very well be perceived as yet another source of excruciating agony and to a so-called 'famished spirit' would be either something forbidden or foul. To an animal it could be home — even an entire universe! — the difference between life and death, and to a human anything from a nuisance to a lifesaver too. To a titanic spirit it would be a weapon and to someone in the divine realms, the elixir of life.None of has has the same experience of anything but the general outlines of the world of appearances. My comfortable little office may be your untidy boxroom, and what my wife regards as music, may please on some days and irritate on others. If things were what they were, pleasing things would always please and unpleasant things would always be unpleasant, but we know this is not the case.
Ultimately our experiences of "reality" have no more substance to them than our experiences in dreams. The only substantiality they have is the fact that we know we are experiencing them, and experiencing them in such and such a manner... beyond that, anything we claim is mere wishful thinking.
Things neither exist in the way we think they do, nor don't exist in the manner of a total void... They are simply the coming together of causes and conditions, themselves the manifestations of other causes and conditions ad infinitum. The eternal dragondance of space dancing space into space.
As regards the idea that consciousness arises from matter (the 'ghost in the machine' idea that is the currentscientific and medical paradigm), if this were the case, we should be able to experience this, if not in ourselves, then at least in others, but it has never been proven to be the case... It certainly seems to be true that certain areas of the central nervous system are excited by various types of sensory and other experience and input, but this may simply be the way we read it to ourselves because ultimately all we know is that we know this.
The second teaching given by Gautama, the sage of the Shakyas, was on what is variously translated as 'interdependent origination', 'conditioned coproduction', 'mutually conditioning causation/origination/causality' and a bunch of other tooth-busters...
Basically the idea is as follows (think in terms of namo- or even femto-seconds):
Gautama's suggestion was that one work backwards through these links and undo the knots involved. Easier said than done!
However, the point here is that the various worlds or realms of becoming are a certain level of ‘readout’ - a certain ‘focus-pull’ on what consciousness (which is far more vast than any given readout) actually is. Universes are the playful manifestation of awareness; not the other way round.
The existentialist Noel Jacquin considers conception to be the instant where - with the blending of the male and female generative energies which form the basis of 'body' - a "third element" is as it were "called in" and merges itself with them. This "third element" is, in his opinion, consciousness...
Somewhere along the line, this is not too far from Jungs idea of the centre of the circle being the Self and the circumference the self, of the famed "dewdrop slipping into the shining sea", except that its more like the sea restricting itself to being this and that and that other over there dewdrop. Consciousness - because it has no essential nature - is infinite.
The Dzogchenpas (who represent, as it were, the pinnacle of Tibetan thought on the matter) would say something like: consciousness is empty of essence, radiant by nature and all-encompassing in its compassionate energy.
Since I am a card-carrying ‘Boodhist’ and a Dzogchen hopeful (read 'wannabee') myself, this is, of course, the point of view to which I subscribe and which I have slowly been trying to clarifyfor myself over the 45-odd years since I first discovered it...
- Any situation consciousness enters (for example a life) is entered in a state of bewilderment. We don't know - Even when the situation seems almost identical with the just previous ituation, we don't actually know what is going to happen next and much of what is actually going is being ignored by us anyway as not important to our ends-in-view, which are, themselves, another way of skewing and obscuring what s actually present. This is the first link, technically called avidya in Sanskrit, ma rig pa in Tibetan, both of which basically mean non-awareness and bewildered ignorance.
- Consciousness immediately brings to the situation all previous thought-patterning and is learning literal billions of new ways of knowing in each instant as it enters. These patterns, which include ways of knowing and interpreting, tend to further shape the situation, leading us to believe that it is such-and-such a situation and not some other. Beliefs of all sorts are at full play here and it is here that we link out the present situation to all that has gone before it. This link is known as the link of the samskaras or 'du je kyi le, which means the activity of linking and of connectivity.
- With the establishment of continuity comes the type of awareness consciousness will be using. Assuming we *are* talking about entering a life - a new embodiment - the awareness now assumed will be in harmony with the type of embodiment being entered in terms of the connectivity established in the previous insant, and...
- this awareness will conceive of itself in terms of certain ideas as to what it is and what forms it has. These two links, vijñana (nam she ) and nama rupa (ming zug), 'consciousness' and 'name and form' respectively, determine
- the ayatana (kyem che), which is to say the sense organs and their corresponding consciousnesses.
- These in turn condition senory contact (some spiders, for example, actually see in infra red - we see only seven grades of light). This is the link of sparsha (reg pa) - literally 'contact/touch'
- Depending upon the contact comes feeling (vedana or ts'or wa) which is then interpreted as pleasant, unpleasant or indeterminate,
- feeling conditions hankering and attachment (trishna or se pa) - to the best of one's ability seeking out what is pleasant, avoiding what is unpleasant and ignoring what seems to be of no interest.
- Hankering establishes what one will grasp at as being the positive, negative and indeterminate poles of one's 'reality'. This is upadana (len pa) - 'grasping'.
- Reality establish is bhava (si pa), variously translated as 'existence' or 'becoming',
- into which one takes birth/enters (jati or kye wa, depending on whether you're following the Sanskrit or Tibetan terminology at this point) ;),
- in which you mature and then age, and out of which you then die (jaramarana/ga shi)
Gautama's suggestion was that one work backwards through these links and undo the knots involved. Easier said than done!
However, the point here is that the various worlds or realms of becoming are a certain level of ‘readout’ - a certain ‘focus-pull’ on what consciousness (which is far more vast than any given readout) actually is. Universes are the playful manifestation of awareness; not the other way round.
The existentialist Noel Jacquin considers conception to be the instant where - with the blending of the male and female generative energies which form the basis of 'body' - a "third element" is as it were "called in" and merges itself with them. This "third element" is, in his opinion, consciousness...
Somewhere along the line, this is not too far from Jungs idea of the centre of the circle being the Self and the circumference the self, of the famed "dewdrop slipping into the shining sea", except that its more like the sea restricting itself to being this and that and that other over there dewdrop. Consciousness - because it has no essential nature - is infinite.
The Dzogchenpas (who represent, as it were, the pinnacle of Tibetan thought on the matter) would say something like: consciousness is empty of essence, radiant by nature and all-encompassing in its compassionate energy.
Since I am a card-carrying ‘Boodhist’ and a Dzogchen hopeful (read 'wannabee') myself, this is, of course, the point of view to which I subscribe and which I have slowly been trying to clarifyfor myself over the 45-odd years since I first discovered it...
posted by cloudhand at 3:28 PM
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