Could Nothingness Be Another Dimension In And Of Itself?

[godnotgod]

Any nothing to do with the large pile of jumble-sale leftovers in your mind...sure.

I see them as various diamonds all reflecting One Light. You see them as being in conflict with one another, but the conflict is only in your own mind, my dear. Alas, you still suffer from 'this' vs. 'that'.

Say! Did you know that the Buddha had no preferences?

 

[godnotgod]

It certainly does, and Buddhist teachings generally contradict your pseudo-Hindu bodge-up beliefs, so stop being dishonest and pretending otherwise.

Show me where it hurts, dearie.

So reconcile the Buddha's Supreme Enlightenment with the Heart Sutra, sweetheart. Go ahead.

 

[`mud]

And look at what worship brings us !
~
'mud

 

[godnotgod]

Good night sweetie. Pleasant Cosmic Conscious dreams and Golden Slumbers!

 

[godnotgod]

And look at what worship brings us !
~
'mud

LOOK, MUD! THE MOON!

 

[`mud]

And all CAPS to boot.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
~
'mud

 

[Runewolf1973]

No. There is no 'other'. What you think of as 'Something' is the same thing as 'Nothing'. There is no duality of 'Something' over here, and 'Nothing' over there. They are one and the same. Nothingness is not a 'dimension' of something else. A rather poor metaphor might be a light bulb and its source. When the light is 'off', the potential for light is still there, and manifested when the switch is flipped. 'Off' and 'On' are just two phases of the same, singular Reality. Likewise, when the Universe is in the 'Off' phase, the potential for a Universe is always there. And isnt't that precisely what Quantum Physics is telling us? That what we used to call the 'material' world is nothing but pure potential? And what do the mystics tell us? That these On/Off phases go on endlessly, with each manifestation different than any other, like each snowflake is completely unique. The On/Off phases can be seen as the cosmic game of Hide and Seek. But this would be turning the sterile black and white view of scientific materialism into full blown HD TV in full living color! (or is that 'colour', LOL!)

There I go again, being patronising and preachy, or is that 'peachy'? ha ha ha...

(you know, if you decide to really take a look at that MOON, you will also feel quite peachy, without the guilt, of course! Holy Hagen-Daz!)

Not gonna lie, that makes sense actually. I always viewed the universe as potential. It being like a sort of on/off phase makes sense too.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

So reconcile the Buddha's Supreme Enlightenment with the Heart Sutra, sweetheart. Go ahead.

You still haven't got it, have you? The Buddha's enlightenment was an insight into emptiness ( sunyata ). The Heart Sutra is all about emptiness, it explains that consciousness and the other aggregates have the characteristic of emptiness, in other words they are always dependently arising and have no inherent existence. This simply isn't compatible with the notion of "cosmic consciousness" which is much more like a Hindu belief.

This is basic stuff, you really need to start being honest and stop misrepresenting stuff to promote your personal agenda.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Did you know that the Buddha had no preferences?

Random cliche #625. Did you get your knowledge of Buddhist teachings from the side of a corn-flake packet....or was it from the side of a snake-oil bottle?

 

[YmirGF]

You still misunderstand:

Thank my lucky stars that you are here to help correct my thinking. I feel so blessed.

I have no problem with your experiences in the foreground. I am only saying that they are out of context to the background when the background is ignored, and which background envelops them totally.

The highlighted text in red reflects an impossibility: Oneness, which is Everything, contains everything that you can conceive yourself to be. Your 'personality' is temporal and finite; Oneness if infinite and eternal. Now go figure.

Thank you much for clarifying that. It's almost like I never actually thought about what I was writing. This is precisely what I meant when I spoke of "pat answers". I thought that someone who has used the "it's beyond logic/beyond reason/beyond mind" shtick might just appreciate what I was trying to articulate.

Again, you describe an impossible condition: Oneness, The Absolute, is Everything to which there is nothing that can be compared. There is no 'other'. That is why it can be called 'The Absolute'.

It is not without a good measure of mirth that I read your response here. You now seek to tell us what is impossible? After all you have written and implored us to go beyond our tiny little reason bound minds into the "big mind". Odd that you would fixate on this. What you could not know is that I consider Oneness to be a local phenomena. It is not an existent reality unto itself, but rather a state of consciousness wherein the individual realizes its connection to its source - the entity. The reason why so many people talk about Oneness as IF it were some kind of universal constant is that the experience will be largely the same for each and every person experiencing it. They are experiencing the universal view of self. Due to limitations of language there are only so many ways TO express it, so I'm willing to cut folks slack on this...

C'mon now! Use your head! If my answers were 'pat' everyone here would understand them, but you all throw down red flags because what I am pointing cannot be grasped by the rational mind, which IS used to pat answers.

We often do not see our forests for all the trees we grow.

What I point to, if you were to really take a look, would upturn all that you hold dear which provides you 'security'. In fact, in the world of spirituality, we call this new vision 'The Wisdom of Insecurity'. You're just making sh*t up again, mouse. Cut it out! You just show that you haven't paid attention to what I'm really saying.

What is strange is that I expect others to have different viewpoints and perspectives. Again, for the dim-witted, I expect that. You seem to be fixated on the idea that what you are espousing is a bedrock reality that, upon experiencing it, we would echo your sentiments.

The concepts of Emptiness and Nothingness frighten most people, or they dismiss them as sheer nonsense simply because they demand pat answers, ones the rational mind can deal with and make predictable and safe for consumption.

Yes, that's probably why Buddha was so unsuccessful.... no, wait... that doesn't sound right....

Since Papoon has posted here, I now have an even better picture of what and who you are: an aristocratic elitist, pretending to be amused by the arguments of others, in the sense that they are nothing more than toys for you to play with. You don't fool me any longer, mouse, so get over yourself.

No cigar!

Pretending to be amused? No, I am genuinely amused. Get it right, at least.

 

[godnotgod]

You still haven't got it, have you? The Buddha's enlightenment was an insight into emptiness ( sunyata ). The Heart Sutra is all about emptiness, it explains that consciousness and the other aggregates have the characteristic of emptiness, in other words they are always dependently arising and have no inherent existence. This simply isn't compatible with the notion of "cosmic consciousness" which is much more like a Hindu belief.

This is basic stuff, you really need to start being honest and stop misrepresenting stuff to promote your personal agenda.

No, my dear: it is YOU who haven't got it.

Man, with ordinary consciousness, cannot see what the Buddha saw. That is why he can be called a Buddha. The 'insight' to which you refer is via the enlightened mind. IOW, the Buddha was using a kind of insight that the ordinary man does not possess. The ordinary man's consciousness is unawakened, that of limited, self-view. The awakened consciousness of a Buddha is unimited, universal view. The Buddha was merely pointing out that all phenomena are empty of self-nature. A rock is without consciousness, but it is consciousness which manifests itself as 'rock'. Another way to say this is:

"Form is emptiness;
emptiness is form."

...which is the very heart of the 'Heart Sutra'
*****

"In the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara represents the idea of universal wisdom that teaches us how to comprehend our true nature which transcends the Five Aggregates."

http://www.darkzen.org/teachings/heart_sutra.htm

Transcendence of the Five Aggregates is to see via Universal Consciousness. The Buddha must have transcended the Five Aggregates in order to have the necessary insight to examine them the way he did in the Heart Sutra. Othewise, he would still have remained unenlightened. Enlightenment is Universal Consciousness.

You're not considering the kind of awareness the Buddha possessed when he spoke of the Five Aggregates.

"The experienced, realized distinction between "me" and "not me" starts to wear thin, and the local consciousness breaks free into the universal field...

At the first stage (of transformation) our personal will is surrendered to the divine. There is a realization that we are not in control of our lives, and everything we do is directed by divine (or universal) consciousness. When our local consciousness breaks free and begins to access the universal consciousness, that all begins to change. We have the potential to be "co-creators" with the divine. This is the beginning of what Riju is calling the "Buddha" stage. If you think about what "co-creates" I believe you will find that it is our egos. As long as we are in physical bodies, we have personalities or egos and, at this stage of development, it is now our own egos that assist with the manifestation of reality along with the divine or universal consciousness."

http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/archive/index.php?t-78568.html

This transformation of consciousness from localized self-view to that of universal view is exactly the same in Buddhism Hinduism, and any other practice. The names and techniques involved will vary from one discipline to another.

 

[godnotgod]

Random cliche #625. Did you get your knowledge of Buddhist teachings from the side of a corn-flake packet....or was it from the side of a snake-oil bottle?

'Twas a little birdie, as compared to your source, that stagnant backwater of static Hinayanist teachings.

 

[godnotgod]

Not gonna lie, that makes sense actually. I always viewed the universe as potential. It being like a sort of on/off phase makes sense too.

Everywhere we look, we see cycles in nature, including our own human lives. I see these visible cycles as signs of cyclical universes as well. Sir Roger Penrose has developed a theory of past existing universes drawn from the leftover background microwave radiation data. This is in full accordance with Buddhist and Hindu thought as well.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...erns-in-the-cosmic-microwave-background-.html

 

[godnotgod]

Pretending to be amused? No, I am genuinely amused. Get it right, at least.

You're just stuffing up your ego with more and more crap here, so much crap, in fact, that you can't see that is what you're actually doing.

 

[YmirGF]

You're just stuffing up your ego with more and more crap here, so much crap, in fact, that you can't see that is what you're actually doing.

And yet your contributions to this thread are not. How terribly amusing and fascinating.

 

[Willamena]

You still haven't got it, have you? The Buddha's enlightenment was an insight into emptiness ( sunyata ). The Heart Sutra is all about emptiness, it explains that consciousness and the other aggregates have the characteristic of emptiness, in other words they are always dependently arising and have no inherent existence. This simply isn't compatible with the notion of "cosmic consciousness" which is much more like a Hindu belief.

This is basic stuff, you really need to start being honest and stop misrepresenting stuff to promote your personal agenda.

Emptiness itself is empty.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Everywhere we look, we see cycles in nature, including our own human lives. I see these visible cycles as signs of cyclical universes as well. Sir Roger Penrose has developed a theory of past existing universes drawn from the leftover background microwave radiation data. This is in full accordance with Buddhist and Hindu thought as well.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...erns-in-the-cosmic-microwave-background-.html

Yes, I also view the Universe and everything as cyclical. That is also one reason why I believe in reincarnation. I believe it is another natural cycle...a coming and going...the ebb and flow of the universe

 

[godnotgod]

And yet your contributions to this thread are not. How terribly amusing and fascinating.

Yes, I would say you're fascinated; spellbound; transfixed; hypnotized, an altered state of consciousness from which you need to awaken.

 

[godnotgod]

Yes, I also view the Universe and everything as cyclical. That is also one reason why I believe in reincarnation. I believe it is another natural cycle...a coming and going...the ebb and flow of the universe

That view of reincarnation is not exactly compatible with the accepted view. Reincarnation is often referred to as 'the wheel' of endless births and deaths from which one wants to escape, not to remain in. The idea is that reincarnation occurs because past karma has not been worked out yet. Those who seek the enlightened state do not wish to remain on a karma-driven path, but instead wish to set foot onto the way-driven path, as outlined by the Buddha's Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path as a means of dealing with karma and suffering. The enlightened mind is not interested in coming and going; to the contrary, the enlightened wish to transcend all coming and going, ie: birth and death.

"All this world is filled with coming and going;
show me the path where there is no coming
and there is no going"

Zen source

The 'coming and going' you refer to as the ebb and flow of the universe is all illusory. In reality, there is no such coming and going. All coming and going is nothing but maya and leela. There is no such coming and going in the awakened state.

 

[godnotgod]

Emptiness itself is empty.

So would you say that True Emptiness is neither Emptiness, nor not-Emptiness?