On External world. Some interesting quotes

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tiltbillings
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Re: On External world. Some interesting quotes

Post by tiltbillings »

Alex123 wrote:
To what extent and how far does the above go? Isn't it a standart Buddhist philosophy that the world as a whole doesn't really exist as it is made of many parts (dhammas, aggregates, elements, spheres, etc)?
One needs to be careful to not read the Abhidhamma into the suttas, easpecially the later Abhidhamma notions. Dhammas, aggregates, elements, spheres, etc are ways of talking about experience. They are not ways of talking about "external reality."
Recall that from the perspective of the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali, the ‘All’ {SN IV 15} is composed entirely of phassa, contact between sense base and sense object. We can only directly know phenomena within this ‘world of experience’, so from the Theravadin perspective, we cannot know whether there really exists a ‘brain’ or a ‘body’ apart from moments of intellectual consciousness, of seeing (the image of a brain), and so on. The discourses of the Pali describe an individual world of experience as composed of various mental and physical factors, nama and rupa. These two are not the separate, independent worlds that Rene Descartes envisioned.

"…the Buddha spoke of the human person as a psychophysical personality (namarupa). Yet the psychic and the physical were never discussed in isolation, nor were they viewed as self-subsistent entities. For him, there was neither a ‘material-stuff’ nor a ‘mental-stuff’, because both are results of reductive analyses that go beyond experience."53

The physical and mental aspects of human experience are continually arising together, intimately dependent on one another.

53 Kalupahana 1976: 73, refers to D.15{II,62}, where the Buddha speaks of both
physicality and mentality mutually dependent forms of contact (phassa).
Physicality is described as contact with resistance (pat.ighasamphassa),
mentality as contact with concepts (adhivacanasamphassa).


STRONG ROOTS by Jake Davis, page 190-1. http://www.dharma.org/bcbs/Pages/docume ... gRoots.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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Alex123
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Re: On External world. Some interesting quotes

Post by Alex123 »

Some interesting things are said in DN15
(1) If there is no description (appearance (ākāra), feature (liṅga), sign (nimitta), & indicators (uddesa)) of nāma group, no designation-contact (adhivacanasamphasso) with regard to the rūpa group would be discerned (paññāyethā).

(2) If there is no description (ākāra, liṅga, nimitta,uddesa) of rūpa group, no resistance-contact (paṭighasamphasso) with regard to the nāma group would be discerned.

(3) If there is no description (ākāra, liṅga, nimitta,uddesa) of nāma group and rūpa group, no designation-contact with regard to the rūpa group and no resistance-contact with regard to the nāma group would be discerned.

(4) If there is no description (ākāra, liṅga, nimitta,uddesa) of nāma-rūpa, no contact would be discerned.
So I guess the experience of form is always the "percieved" form. Rūpa is always known as part of nāma, nāma-rūpa.

And also, in description of ayatanas or 18 dhatu, Rūpa is an object of the eye. So the form could also mean, visible form.

Due to eye and form, eye-consciousness arises. Cakkhuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ MN148









Some Pali
ākāra = manner; condition; state; appearance.
liṅga = sign; mark; attribute; feature; the generative organ; the gender (in
grammar).
Nimitta = sign; omen; portent; cause.
Uddesa= 1. indication; 2. propounding; 3. recitation.
Adhivacanasamphasso= a term; designation. + contact
paṭighasamphasso = (anger; repulsion; collision.) + contact
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