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Prickly Pete posted:I've been slowly getting back into sutta study over the past few weeks. During my last round of reading I was interested in the idea of emptiness, and how it differs in Theravada and Mahayana. Bhikkhu Bodhi released a very timely sutta study video about the Mahāsuññata Sutta, which is (I think) the main treatment of emptiness in the Pali texts. Hey Pete ! The best translation of the heart sutra is Red Pine's (http://www.amazon.com/The-Heart-Sutra-Red-Pine/dp/1593760825). Yeah, the guy's called "Red Pine". The translation is really good and the commentaries are spot on. The Thich Nhat Han book on the heart sutra is beautiful and is a good introduction, but it sort of misses the point about emptiness because it links it to the inderpendance of things, which is not really a view based on emptiness. If you're interested in emptiness, you should really listen to the series of talks about Nagarjuna by John Dunne. The podcasts are available for free at Upaya Zen Center's website. It's called "Revealing Nagarjuna", and it really goes into things in detail. Available here : http://www.upaya.org/2013/08/revealing-nagarjuna-series-all-12-parts/. You can also read Nagarjuna's work while listening to John Dunne's podcasts, it is great, even if Nagarjuna is a really hard read (philosophically and emotionnally - it literally obliterates your logical mind, using logic, which is sometimes quite uncomfortable). But no one explains emptiness better than Nagarjuna in my little experience. Not that anyone can understand it, though, ahah ! I think it's best to read and listen to this stuff while having a regular daily practice and knowing how to put your mind at rest, because it really is quite an intense thinking / reading experience. At least for me it was, i spent a few days questioning everything and zazen helped a lot to just let this mess sort itself. But i'm a kind of an obsessive thinker, so maybe if you're more relax you will just have a good time. I did, but it was hard at the same time. The thing to remember is that Nagarjuna's work on emptiness is really made to create confusion and to shake your view of the world and make you taste what emptiness is, so be "prepared". Ugrok fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 28, 2014 23:43
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Paramemetic posted:I disagree with this, and I think the essence of Nagarjuna, especially in one of his most important works, the Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way, teaches that interdependent origination and emptiness are very much interrelated. It is because of Two Truths doctrine that we can have the arising of phenomenon which are real on a sort of basic level, but ultimately empty. Things arising but devoid of nature provide the dual truth of appearance and emptiness, and this is an important thing. Hello ! Precisely, yes. I agree with what you say about Nagarjuna. But in Thich Nhat Han's view, it is not quite like that. In his book about the heart sutra, it's only about "things" being interrelated. Like the whole story about the piece of paper containing the rain and the clouds and the whole world. In Nagarjuna's view of emptiness (or rather, in what i falsely understood of it before banging my head against the walls), "things" are not relevant anymore. Nor are relationships between things. The interdependent origination he talks about is not linked to categories of stuff that we can name and discriminate, and at the same time it does not disqualify the way we conventionally name and discriminate. I found that in Thich Nhat Han's book, the whole part about emptiness and the view that things do not have inherent existence was skipped or looked over, which gives a really "light" view of emptiness and interdependance. In Nagarjuna, interdependance is not "independent things that are linked together", while TNH's book gives this impression. But still i love TNH's book, it's really great. Ugrok fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 17:45
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Hello ! When you change, the world changes. When the world changes, you change. You don't have to strive for anything. Just practice, just sitting.
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Dec 2, 2014 15:45
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Hello ! Well, in zen buddhism at least (others will certainly offer you another perspective), all these questions are not really important. There is no hierarchy between mental states or perceptions, nothing to reject, and nothing to look for. There is no "world underneath" your conceptions. Your conceptions ARE the "world underneath" as much as anything else. So there is no need to try to change how you see the world. To put it in your words, the lense through which you see the world, and the world itself, are not distinct things. So theres no need to try to change the lense. The lense is not the problem. A lot of human problems stop when you understand that looking for a solution IS your problem. When you really understand that you don't have to perceive the world a certain way, or be a certain way, when this stuff is of no more interest to you, then paradoxically, you stop being attached to any way, and you find yours, which is total freedom. To realize this you have to practice. Practice is not about exploring the world or knowing yourself or whatever. It's just about practicing. This is why i think it is a mistake for people who take lsd to run after incredible meditative experiences. The fact that their drug experiences appear to them as completeley mind boggling and incredible shows how attached they are to their usual view of themselves and the world. Which is a good reason to begin practicing buddhism in my opinion, but it is not why they come to it in the first place, and what they will discover is really not what they would have thought. Ugrok fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 15:16
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What may be of help is to realize the fact that everyone, absolutely everyone, even the worst of the racist torturing dictators you could imagine, is just doing the exact same stuff as you : trying to be happy, and trying to avoid suffering. This perspective helps a lot with anger at other people doing bad stuff to people. Another thing that may help in dealing with anger can be found in Shantideva's "Way of the boddhisatva" : basically, when you are angry, be angry towards the anger, not towards something else.
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Dec 8, 2014 15:13
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Mr. Mambold posted:This is such bullshit, how can you even think you're being helpful? The fact is those perpetrators are not trying to be happy, they are inflicting pain because they live in pain and anger and fear you absolute rear end. I don't see how insulting me improves your point. Anyway i think you got me wrong. By no means was I trying to excuse anyone from his or her bad behavior. Of course loving people is better than being an rear end in a top hat who kills guys, this is not even a topic of discussion, come on. But compassion is not just about that. It's not just about fluffy duffy "love each other and everything will be well". This attitude helps, a lot, and i am not denying it does ; but i really think compassion should be understood as something more profound than that. It's about understanding that every single one sentient being, just by the fact that it is a sentient being, is, on its most basic level (i mean, really basic : from a bacteria, to a human being, there is some sort of biological striving, at the least, to be ok and to avoid being harmed), the same as you and functioning under the same rules as you. As long as we're stuck in samsara together, we ALL struggle to be happy and not to suffer. People who commit atrocities are exactly the same. Only, they are completely mistaken, asleep, they don't know their nature, they're dumb, and led by totally wrong impulses to achieve their goal. I agree with you : they act out of pain and fear. And pain and fear come from wrong views. Now, reacting to those guys (as, by irony, reacting as you are to my post) by being angry at them is totally normal, but is also part of the problem. You don't get people out of anger and fear by being angry and fearful at them. Buddha's way is really hard because of this too : you must learn not to express anger and not to add fuel to the fire, sometimes, even when you hate the people or your situation. This takes practice. Now the good part of this is that from the buddhist point of view, if you accept that every single being is suffering just as you are and may sometimes act badly just because they are deluded and sort of "misinformed" on what their life and happiness is really about, then you might work to improve things. If you come from the point of view, as seems to be your case, that "bad people just act out of anger and pain and that's it, it's like that", then you might as well give up on everything. Change starts with your own reactions to stuff. I'm sorry and apologize if i shocked or angered you as it was really not my intention. Ugrok fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 00:03
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Hey ! I know there are folks who will answer precisely to your request. I'm sure there is a technique to do this kind of stuff. But i just would like to say that Buddhism is not about transforming yourself in a perfect, peaceful and all loving robot. You are a human being, you will feel hatred, violence, aggressiveness of all sorts during all your life. From the zen school point of view, this is not a problem. The fact that you see that you are hateful (and that you see that as a problem) shows that you are mindful enough. From there i think it is a wrong approach to try to change the feeling itself. Just seeing it is enough for you to change : it allows you to not act on it, etc. Paradoxically, the first step to alleviate your hate might be to allow yourself to be hateful. Maybe you have good reasons to be hateful, who's to say ? Things won't get fixed by denying the feeling and not admitting that you feel the right to be hateful. Unconditional love means you deal with what you are right now. If you are hateful, then it's ok. If you are full of love, it's ok too. The thing practice does is that it allows you to see it happening as a big theater of the mind. But it won't suppress your feelings nor should it ! So my advice, from the zen point of view (again, i'm sure there are others good advices coming), is to not try to do anything, while practicing, about your hate. Just stay with it physically and get out of the trains of thought it involves you in, when you notice you are involved. That's all. If you try to suppress it or replace it with "better" feelings, you will experience what you are describing : putting fuel on the fire. Don't try to suppress, don't try to replace anything. During practice, stay with things as they are and don't change a thing. Things change by themselves. There is also an advice in Shantideva's "Way of the boddhisatva", which tells : "don't be angry towards a person, be angry towards the anger". But it's just an advice, and it has no effect whatsoever if you don't practice ; still, it may help to change your point of view... Ugrok fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 11:47
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Great explanation as always ! Nothing to clarify, but just a reminder : investigating all this is a waste of time if you don't practice.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:00
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Hello guys and girls ! I have a question on some basic visualization practices. I practice zazen daily, been doing so for 4 or 5 years. In zazen, as you may know, there is no visualization practice, you just sit, and whenever something comes to your mind, you let it go and go back to the breathe / posture / being just there without thinking. During the last few weeks i practiced a bit of yoga and relaxation with a teacher. And last time, she asked me to visualize a simple rock, and try to keep this image in my mind, seeing the details of the rock, feeling it's shape, etc. For some reason, it's REALLY, REALLY difficult to do that for me. I'm so tense on trying to keep it in mind that i end up exhausted. My reflex is, maybe due to zazen practice, to let go of an image as soon as it appears in my mind, and, obviously, to not try to evoke anything that is not there in the first place. In zazen you don't TRY to think about something, quite the contrary : you let things come and go as they want. For my relaxation teacher, visualization like this is apparently supposed to be really relaxing and to allow the mind to rest ; for me it's all the contrary, it's exhausting - what's relaxing is to have nothing at all in my mind, or at least, not to grasp it / focus on it ! I wonder if that is normal, if i should persevere, or not, and just stick to zazen as i know it. I also noticed that i am somewhat scared of that power of my own mind to evoke an image ; what if i'm not able to control it ? What if the image of the rock gets blocked in my head forever ? What if i spend my time imagining stuff and forgetting "real life" ? All of this functioning of my mind make me quite anxious. I already see that it is quite stupid : yeah, the human brain is able to visualize some things that are not there, big deal, HUGE news. But for me the feeling is existential : WHERE is it then ? What is it ? What helps me make the difference between an image in front of my eyes and an image in my mind ? I wonder if some of you, who practiced in other traditions (i know there are some standard visualization practices in most of buddhist schools), have been through the same questions (sorry if that's stupid - being in a difficult moment in my life, it's also possible that all of this is just anxious rambling). Thanks a lot ! Ugrok fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 15:55
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Food for thought ! Thank you. I'm in quite an anxious moment of my life and just want to feel better overall. I love doing zazen and i won't stop doing it - i already know by experience that it does not help with anxiety, or in a very indirect way, but i'm not doing it for this purpose. I'm involved in zen in my life and i study zen buddhism as well. Which is maybe why i have trouble with this kind of visualisation practice, which i find dualist. If i force the visualisation of a rock, then there's me, and there's the rock. It seems to me that it goes backward from the non dualist buddhist perspective of zen. But that said, i think lots of buddhist practices involve, at the beginning, focusing on an object. That's why it interests me also !
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Mar 24, 2017 16:17
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