Buddha Dharma
Dharma Practitioner
Well thank you. I appreciate the vote of confidence
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Anatta (An Essay by an individual Buddhist philosopher)
- Thread starter Buddha Dharma
- Start date
annihilating the sense of self can feel nice and make things easy socially, but for me there tends to be a tendency towards doormat philosophy - if there is no self to defend in terms of everyday bad vibes, then there is no negative feedback for other's selves when they get out of order.
"Whats that youre doing?"
"I'm defending my sense of emptiness."
"Whats that youre doing?"
"I'm defending my sense of emptiness."
Buddha Dharma
Dharma Practitioner
@LukeS Buddhism doesn't teach void emptiness, but it is often misunderstood as doing so. It teaches there is a subtle not-self consciousness at play in the background of all this. Buddha-nature is how Mahayana actually terms it.
In earlier literature that even Theravada wouldn't dispute, it is simply called emptiness, but it's clearly not voidness.
We know that because now extinct early schools like the Sarvastivadans held that Dharmas have a substantive nature. Mahayana and the Sarvastivadans only differed in emphasis on this subject, but not kind. We agree with the Sarvastivadans that Dharmas have a substantive nature, but don't carry it to the level of material Monism.
Theravada retains it's very iconoclast leanings from the early Sangha, but my Vajrayana roommate and I were actually discussing the real nature of Nirvana in Theravada last night. Theravada believes the Buddha is still conscious in Nirvana, but says very little more on what that means to avoid the kind of imagery fixation Mahayana engages in.
In earlier literature that even Theravada wouldn't dispute, it is simply called emptiness, but it's clearly not voidness.
We know that because now extinct early schools like the Sarvastivadans held that Dharmas have a substantive nature. Mahayana and the Sarvastivadans only differed in emphasis on this subject, but not kind. We agree with the Sarvastivadans that Dharmas have a substantive nature, but don't carry it to the level of material Monism.
Theravada retains it's very iconoclast leanings from the early Sangha, but my Vajrayana roommate and I were actually discussing the real nature of Nirvana in Theravada last night. Theravada believes the Buddha is still conscious in Nirvana, but says very little more on what that means to avoid the kind of imagery fixation Mahayana engages in.
Hey ty! I learned some emptiness from the NKY (New Kadampa Tradition) they taught some yagachara and also madhyamaka. I use the techniques sometimes, almost instinctively at times, although I am not under spiritual direction from Buddhism nor do I believe those techniques to have salvific value... as I am Muslim. The basic tech I use would be imagining space where the ego is meant to be as the "real self" it's partially an illusion as its composite, changing, dependent on memory and social construction, and selective attention etc., and also is a bit of a dream like mind dependent entity which - however real our suffering or happiness - always has the potential to be otherwise.
A issue I have with it, taught by Muslims, is if its used to bypass normal conscience then its wrong. Like, supressing a sense of self also supresses conscience, shame etc and other "normal" moral responses. I am not blaming, I know Buddhists have ethics.
A issue I have with it, taught by Muslims, is if its used to bypass normal conscience then its wrong. Like, supressing a sense of self also supresses conscience, shame etc and other "normal" moral responses. I am not blaming, I know Buddhists have ethics.
While meditation will help somewhat, as long as one is constrained by the normal way in which consciousness operates, one will be bound by suffering and Kamma. For normal consciousness always operates through grasping and clinging to things, attaching value (or devalue) to them and creating emotional attachment to them (love, hate, sorrow, repulsion etc.) And all this are the causes of suffering, necessarily. Only by the complete uprooting of this instinctive mode by which consciousness operates can one hope to gain the state of non-suffering, which is the objective of Buddhism.
With ignorance as a causal condition, there are formations of volitional impulses. With the volitional formations as a causal condition, there is the arising of consciousness. With consciousness as a condition, there is the arising of body and mind (nāma-rūpa). With body and mind as a condition, there is the arising of the six sense doors. (In Buddhist teaching, the mind is also one of the sense doors as well as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.) With the six sense doors as a condition, there is the arising of contact. With contact as a condition, there is the arising of feeling. With feeling as a condition, there is the arising of craving. With craving as a condition, there’s the arising of clinging. With clinging as a condition, there’s the arising of birth. And, with birth as a condition, there’s the arising of aging and death. That describes the links.
This process, when reversed, is also described as a process of release or freedom. With the abandonment of ignorance, there is the cessation of karmic formations. With the cessation of karmic formations, there is the falling away of consciousness, and so on.
Dependent Origination
Thus Buddhism is about breaking this cycle of normal consciousness so that suffering can end.
Amani_Bhava
Member
I find different Buddhist schools have very different views. Theravada is almost nihilist while Tibetan Mahayana allows for something to be there
"That combined subtle body, subtle mind, no beginning, no end" - first two minutes of the video
The endless anatta related speculation in Buddhism is nerve wracking. How can one proceed along a path if the major doctrine on which the religion is based changes with every teacher and every school.
I believe by anatta Buddha meant non- attachment to ego "I"-ness but he did not deny a soul or an essence. Puggalavada, an early school of Buddhism believed in soul
Hence, I assume that in the two hundred years following Buddha's demise, when the religion split into 18 different schools a significant part of the teachings were lost and that is the source of the confusion.
namaste
A_B
"That combined subtle body, subtle mind, no beginning, no end" - first two minutes of the video
The endless anatta related speculation in Buddhism is nerve wracking. How can one proceed along a path if the major doctrine on which the religion is based changes with every teacher and every school.
I believe by anatta Buddha meant non- attachment to ego "I"-ness but he did not deny a soul or an essence. Puggalavada, an early school of Buddhism believed in soul
Hence, I assume that in the two hundred years following Buddha's demise, when the religion split into 18 different schools a significant part of the teachings were lost and that is the source of the confusion.
namaste
A_B
Last edited:
Ostronomos
Well-Known Member
Formations (sankhāra)[/i]
Ignorance is the causal condition or climate which allows for the arising of certain kinds of sankhāras—volitional impulses or karmic formations. In a general sense we’re all formations; we’re all sankhāras. Everything that is born and created out of conditions is a formation. Dependent origination gets a little more specific: it talks about intentional actions as body formations, intentional speech as both body and mind formations, and thoughts or states of mind as mental formations. As such it is describing the organization or shaping of our thinking process in accordance with accumulated habits, preferences, opinions. Sankhāras lend a certain fuel to the spinning of the wheel. Within a given cycle, they interact and form more and more of themselves. There is also a constant interaction of the inner and outer, through which the whole cycle keeps getting perpetuated. Some of the formations arise spontaneously in the moment, and some are ways of seeing or ways of reacting that have been built up throughout our whole life. Due to their repetitive use, these sankhāras become somewhat locked or invested in our personality structures and stay close to the surface as more automatic or habitual ways of response. However, it is important to understand that each sankhāra is actually new in every moment. They arise through contact, through certain kinds of stimulation. We tend to think of them as habitual or ever-present because of how we grasp them as something solid. But in our encounter with them in the present moment they are not presented to us as history or as something that is there forever.
-From link.
I couldn't agree more with the spontaneous renewal and rebirth of sankhara. It inheres as a latent property within both mind and body and can be renewed each moment again. But doing so is not easy as we become attached to object-level reality. I requires the total and complete mindful awareness of something beyond space, time and object. Or at least the neti-neti detachment of said existent realm.
Ignorance is the causal condition or climate which allows for the arising of certain kinds of sankhāras—volitional impulses or karmic formations. In a general sense we’re all formations; we’re all sankhāras. Everything that is born and created out of conditions is a formation. Dependent origination gets a little more specific: it talks about intentional actions as body formations, intentional speech as both body and mind formations, and thoughts or states of mind as mental formations. As such it is describing the organization or shaping of our thinking process in accordance with accumulated habits, preferences, opinions. Sankhāras lend a certain fuel to the spinning of the wheel. Within a given cycle, they interact and form more and more of themselves. There is also a constant interaction of the inner and outer, through which the whole cycle keeps getting perpetuated. Some of the formations arise spontaneously in the moment, and some are ways of seeing or ways of reacting that have been built up throughout our whole life. Due to their repetitive use, these sankhāras become somewhat locked or invested in our personality structures and stay close to the surface as more automatic or habitual ways of response. However, it is important to understand that each sankhāra is actually new in every moment. They arise through contact, through certain kinds of stimulation. We tend to think of them as habitual or ever-present because of how we grasp them as something solid. But in our encounter with them in the present moment they are not presented to us as history or as something that is there forever.
-From link.
I couldn't agree more with the spontaneous renewal and rebirth of sankhara. It inheres as a latent property within both mind and body and can be renewed each moment again. But doing so is not easy as we become attached to object-level reality. I requires the total and complete mindful awareness of something beyond space, time and object. Or at least the neti-neti detachment of said existent realm.