If experience is impermanent, it can't be clung to. Like a sand castle. We keep trying to grab it because it looks so discrete and stable, and it just collapses and dissolves in our hand. We thought it was a castle, but it's just shifting sand. It's deceptive in that way. All is unreal in that way. ...

SteRo wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 4:37 pmthe impermanent being like illusion.

Bingo. It's arising and passing is like a mirage.

I found this in AN 10:46 today: “Kāmā hi, bhante, aniccā tucchā musā mosadhammā”ti.” If we accept that Kāmā is better translated as “5 senses” rather than the Abhidhamma definition of “sensual pleasures” we get this: “Because the 5 senses, sir, are impermanent, hollow, false, and deceptive.” If thi...

If we follow the few suttas that textual criticism has identified as likely to be the unedited words of the historical Buddha, we get the picture that the Buddha did not leave his embodiment, the world of direct perceptions. He only spoke of the 5 skandhas. He never answered philosophical questions....

And even direct experience is inherently subjective. I agree, even if logically an object is needed for a subject and one can't exist without the other. But experience doesn't always fit neatly into logic. If there was never this personal quality of knowing or mindful awareness present, renouncing ...

@zan All Yogacara was saying is summed up in the Wynne quote above. For some reason in that society and time period it was fashionable to write and debate in long-winded philosophical treatises to come around to that point. Today it is fashionable to debate on the internet. The cycle never ends. If ...

"all is imaginary/illusory/mind/etc.," The Pali canon supports it. Wynne comes to the conclusion that: The ultimate truth to which Gotama has awakened is that our world of experience belongs in the mind: "I declare that the world, its arising, cessation and the way thereto occurs in this very fatho...

Though it's ironic that one unconditioned thing (Atman), is effectively replaced with another unconditioned thing (Nibbana). Yep. Reification of identity is just like what happens when one is told to think of space. The actual experience of feeling space instead of thinking about it can be communic...

"Any kind of consciousness whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near must, with right understanding how it is, be regarded thus: 'This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my self...

Two likely reasons why Buddhists were and still are more partial to annihilation: 1. The big emphasis on selfless altruism makes any admission of a self paradoxical. 2. They were competing with Brahminic movements that positively asserted a self. Like pegembara said, it's really about freedom from t...

Thoughts? Logically speaking, to be conscious is to be conscious of something. Take away the contents and you no longer have consciousness. It's a bit different in experience. It's worth asking how the notion of a self ever came up in human history. If there is nothing transcendent in us, the notio...

This debate is an old one, and I suspect because no self is the purview of the contemplative or intellectual, while luminous mind or knowingness is the purview of the meditator (see Wynne for details on the contemplative/meditative divide in early Buddhism). Indeed, "awareness" is an irritant to the...

He certainly was a-dhammic. What he said was not in line with the Dhamma...there is no point pretending that what he taught and what the Buddha taught are one in the same. Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around... Kevatta (Kevaddha) Sutta "Luminous, monks, is the mind. And ...

Where do water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing? Where are long & short, coarse & fine, fair & foul, name & form brought to an end? "'And the answer to that is: Consciousness without feature,[1] without end, luminous all around: Here water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing. Here long & short...

Myths help relax, in between the sights of the Beloved Founder. For those who are unable to find those glimpses, it is all redaction and Myth. Greek Myths are enchanting, every myth has a truth behind it, from which it was born. Some see Zeus as a mythological god, and are content to rest with that...