🟧 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Where we gather to focus on a single discourse or thematic collection from the Sutta Piṭaka (new selection every two weeks)
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mjaviem
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by mjaviem »

Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 5:53 pm... An empty experience.
Which shouldn't be even called experience at all...
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammā Sambuddhassa
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by Ceisiwr »

mjaviem wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:00 pm
Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 5:53 pm... An empty experience.
Which shouldn't be even called experience at all...
I don’t see why. There is ignorance based contact and wisdom based contact. The first kind is contact in terms of dependent origination. Even in a system like Madhyamaka it’s not denied that sense experience happens. What changes is how it’s understood. In order to experience something in a detached way there must be an experience to speak of.
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by mjaviem »

Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:58 pm I don’t see why. There is ignorance based contact and wisdom based contact. The first kind is contact in terms of dependent origination. Even in a system like Madhyamaka it’s not denied that sense experience happens. What changes is how it’s understood. In order to experience something in a detached way there must be an experience to speak of.
Detached experience = No experience. You don't have an experience when you don't own anything. You just don't have it, you don't "have" anything at all. But I don't want to go off-topic here. We are talking about being bound to the aggregates like to a post or pillar.
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammā Sambuddhassa
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by Ceisiwr »

mjaviem wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 7:19 pm
Detached experience = No experience. You don't have an experience when you don't own anything. You just don't have it, you don't "have" anything at all. But I don't want to go off-topic here. We are talking about being bound to the aggregates like to a post or pillar.
There will be an experience of phenomena that can’t be said to exist, do not exist, both exist and do not exist, neither exist nor not-exist. If there is wisdom contact, then there is an experience.
“Therefore the well-learned noble disciple, having given up ignorance regarding these six sense organs and wisdom arises and: the experience of existence, the experience of non existence, the experience of existence and non existence, the experience that I am superior, the experience that I am equal, the experience that I am inferior, the experience that I know, the experience that I see, the experience that I know like this and the experience that I see like this, do not arise. The ignorant contact which had arisen before is destroyed and thereafter wise contact and experience arise.”
https://suttacentral.net/sa45/en/smith? ... ight=false

I’d be wary of clinging to emptiness, making into some kind of absolute.
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by Coëmgenu »

mjaviem wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:00 pm
Ceisiwr wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 5:53 pm... An empty experience.
Which shouldn't be even called experience at all...
By this logic, would you also say that anattasaññā shouldn't be an experience at all? After all, anattā is a mere absence. Anattasaññā would be an experience of that absence, i.e. an "experience of that emptiness."
What is the Uncreated?
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by Pulsar »

mjaviem wrote
Detached experience = No experience.
You don't have an experience when you don't own anything. You just don't have it, you don't "have" anything at all. But I don't want to go off-topic here. We are talking about being bound to the aggregates like to a post or pillar.
Good idea.
With love :candle:
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by Pulsar »

Sam Vera responded, as to Which samyutta? SN 22.100 belongs,
it is from the khandhasamyutta, which deals with the khandhas. There doesn't seem to be a claim within that section to the effect that everything therein is restricted to the activity of consciousness.
Now I can ask you "can there be aggregates without consciousness?" but you subscribe to the notion that the rupa aggregate is not part of consciousness.
I will bring another example from the Fire Sermon later, to show the impossibility of that notion, how unreal and impractical it is to think of Rupa in relation to DO as a physical thing.
Rupas are derived from physical things,
  • and manifest in our minds incessantly as mental events, as a recollection of a taste or touch as examples

It leads to suffering, when our thoughts bump into those. and pursue them.
Suttas cannot be taken in isolation, when they relate to dependent origination. 
  • Khanda Vagga, The Book of aggregates is a continuation of the exposition opened up by the Book of Causation, this time breaking down the experience to the five aggregates.
I find it v. useful to discuss suttas from Linked discourses. Thanks SDC.  Here we are closest to the Buddha.The principles stated in the different vaggas are linked to each other, and cannot be treated in isolation. Nidana samyutta is intimately linked with Khanda Samyutta. They all fall under Linked Discourses.
The drawback or obstacle I was referring to is misinterpretation of Dhamma at its point of origination ie Nama-rupa: sinceYou are of the notion that rupa is physical.
Without an understanding of the point of origin, one can still lead an ethical life with the help of Dhamma. but not find an end to suffering.
As for the rubbing of the two sticks, the metaphor used in SN 12.62?
Did not the Buddha say in the Fire Sermon
"The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning"
If Buddha presented form aggregate as a physical thing, in this very early sermon would he have spoken those words? 
  • "form is burning"
Would not the fire worshippers stare in dismay and object "No Venerable Sir, our physical forms are not burning" Since they did not object, it appears that they understood the form aggregate to be a mental event, and rightly so.
With love :candle:
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by Sam Vara »

Pulsar wrote: Fri Mar 25, 2022 10:57 am Sam Vera responded, as to Which samyutta? SN 22.100 belongs,
it is from the khandhasamyutta, which deals with the khandhas. There doesn't seem to be a claim within that section to the effect that everything therein is restricted to the activity of consciousness.
Now I can ask you "can there be aggregates without consciousness?" but you subscribe to the notion that the rupa aggregate is not part of consciousness.
No, I don't. That's something that you have made up. I have never expressed an opinion on whether the "rūpa aggregate is part of consciousness". I took issue with your rhetorical point:
SN 22.100 wrote:
... So too, when the uninstructed worldling produces anything, it is only form that he produces; only feeling that he produces; only perception that he produces; only volitional formations that he produces; only consciousness that he produces....
Does not the above quote place rupa in the same produced category as, vedana, sanna etc. as a mental event?
I have expressed no opinion on whether rūpa is a "mental event" the same as vedanā, saññā, etc., but pointed out that the quote from SN 22.100 does not in itself support that claim. There may be other sutta passages which do support the opinion that rūpa is a mental event, but the passage you quote is not one of them.

I wish you could grasp this, as it is at least the third time I have told you.
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by SDC »

:reading:


Now that these sessions are two weeks long, I thought it useful to recalibrate for this second week. Does anyone have any thoughts about this particular passage from SN 22.100:
Tasmātiha, bhikkhave, abhikkhaṇaṁ sakaṁ cittaṁ paccavekkhitabbaṁ: ‘dīgharattamidaṁ cittaṁ saṅkiliṭṭhaṁ rāgena dosena mohenā’ti. Cittasaṅkilesā, bhikkhave, sattā saṅkilissanti; cittavodānā sattā visujjhanti.

“Therefore, bhikkhus, one should often reflect upon one’s own mind thus: ‘For a long time this mind has been defiled by lust, hatred, and delusion.’ Through the defilements of the mind beings are defiled; with the cleansing of the mind beings are purified.
Now let’s all bear in mind the foremost point of view from this sutta:
Bhikkhus, this saṁsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
Would it be correct to consider this reference to the mind as one that transcends many births? Not that the mind has moved through different births, but in that once the aggregates manifest, the mind that is available there relates to past minds specifically from the point of view of partaking in that enduring defilement; that beginningless ignorance?

Some good context for this question may be available in: Iti 99, SN 22.79, and of course my favorite:
Thag 19.1 wrote:
I’ve done your bidding everywhere, mind!
For many births, I’ve done nothing to upset you,
yet this self-made chain is your show of gratitude!
For a long time I’ve transmigrated in the suffering you’ve created.

Only you, mind, make a brahmin;
you make an aristocrat or a royal hermit.
Sometimes we become traders or workers;
and life as a god is also on account of you.

You alone make us demons;
because of you we’re born in hell.
Then sometimes we become animals,
and life as a ghost is also on account of you.

Come what may, you won’t betray me again,
dazzling me with your ever-changing display!
You play with me like I’m mad—
but how have I ever failed you, mind?

In the past my mind wandered
how it wished, where it liked, as it pleased.
Now I’ll carefully guide it,
as a trainer with a hook guides a rutting elephant.

The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.

Things have changed, mind!
Nothing could make me return to your control!
I’ve gone forth in the teaching of the great hermit,
those like me don’t come to ruin.

Thoughts?
“Life is swept along, short is the life span; no shelters exist for one who has reached old age. Seeing clearly this danger in death, a seeker of peace should drop the world’s bait.” SN 1.3
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Re: 📍 “Like a dog bound to a post or pillar”, SN 22.100 (In session until 4/3/22)

Post by mjaviem »

SDC wrote: Sun Mar 27, 2022 2:49 pm :reading:


Now that these sessions are two weeks long, I thought it useful to recalibrate for this second week. Does anyone have any thoughts about this particular passage from SN 22.100:
Tasmātiha, bhikkhave, abhikkhaṇaṁ sakaṁ cittaṁ paccavekkhitabbaṁ: ‘dīgharattamidaṁ cittaṁ saṅkiliṭṭhaṁ rāgena dosena mohenā’ti. Cittasaṅkilesā, bhikkhave, sattā saṅkilissanti; cittavodānā sattā visujjhanti.

“Therefore, bhikkhus, one should often reflect upon one’s own mind thus: ‘For a long time this mind has been defiled by lust, hatred, and delusion.’ Through the defilements of the mind beings are defiled; with the cleansing of the mind beings are purified.
...
This is how beings are defiled and how they are purified:
SN 22.60 wrote: ...
“But, venerable sir, what is the cause and condition for the defilement of beings? How is it that beings are defiled with cause and condition?”

“If, Mahali, this form were exclusively suffering, immersed in suffering, steeped in suffering, and if it were not also steeped in pleasure, beings would not become enamoured with it. But because form is pleasurable, immersed in pleasure, steeped in pleasure, and is not steeped only in suffering, beings become enamoured with it. By being enamoured with it, they are captivated by it, and by being captivated by it they are defiled. This, Mahali, is a cause and condition for the defilement of beings; it is thus that beings are defiled with cause and condition. “If, Mahali, this feeling were exclusively suffering … If this perception … these volitional formations … … this consciousness were exclusively suffering …

...

“But, venerable sir, what is the cause and condition for the purification of beings? How is it that beings are purified with cause and condition?”

...

“If, Mahali, this form were exclusively pleasurable, immersed in pleasure, steeped in pleasure, and if it were not also steeped in suffering, beings would not experience revulsion towards it. But because form is suffering, immersed in suffering, steeped in suffering, and is not steeped only in pleasure, beings experience revulsion towards it. Experiencing revulsion, they become dispassionate, and through dispassion they are purified. This, Mahali, is a cause and condition for the purification of beings; it is thus that beings are purified with cause and condition. “If, Mahali, this feeling were exclusively pleasurable … If this perception … these volitional formations … this consciousness were exclusively pleasurable …

...
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammā Sambuddhassa
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