Only followers of a Buddha's Dhamma can attain Nibbana..

[trd]

Yes, it ceases with the destruction of the body. The root resting state of the ego ( "I" thought ) is impermanent. It is the unconditioned awareness ( the True Self ) that witnesses the limited, conditioned awareness that is permanent and unchanging.

Edited July 14, 2014 by trd

[rockyysdt]

Yes, it ceases with the destruction of the body. The root resting state of the ego ( "I" thought ) is impermanent. It is the unconditioned awareness ( the True Self ) that witnesses the limited, conditioned awareness that is permanent and unchanging.

So that which is permanent and unchanging (unconditioned awareness / true self), is it universal?

Is each incidence of mind/body, one of many which spring from the one (universal awareness).

The notion of permanent (timeless, no beginning - no end) is difficult for the mind to grasp.

[trd]

The true Self is the Self of all. There is only one Self, which is universal. One without a second. Otherwise you need to explain how individual souls are created and why and how many. If the unconditioned is your true nature which is formless, undifferentiated, boundless, how can there be more than one? Nevertheless there is the appearance of separate individuals in the relative as an expression of the absolute oneness. When Vincent says the world is obviously real to him, that is just not good enough. Well it is if you want to remain in ignorance, but if you want to discover the reality beyond that surface appearance, no matter how "real" it appears to the ego, then you have to question what you see.

I don't want to have a philosophical argument because as you rightly say, the mind cannot grasp it. The philosophical part of it is just to point the way towards direct experience, no more. You have to let go of this at some point because the mind will only see paradoxes and will continually end up hitting a brick wall. The truth of absolute being cannot be expressed, so why try? What I am not doing is to use reasoning and logic to try and convince a mind of the truth. That cannot be done. It is completely impossible. The only purpose is to try and create a "shift" in the mind that causes it to look inwards. Sounds easy? You already practice and perhaps take much of this for granted. For most people it is much harder than you might think.

Edited July 14, 2014 by trd

[VincentRJ]

Your claim that there is absolutely no difference between the reality of the dream state and the reality of the waking state as the perceiver, is simply not credible, at least to me. I can only speak for myself, but none of my dreams have had the clarity of detail and the 3-dimensionality of my waking life.

This is all in your imagination. Where is the objective proof of your waking life? If you mistake a rope for a snake, you will say it is an illusion. There was no snake.

We all make mistakes of identification from time to time, and there are always reasons. Mistaking a rope for a snake is most likely due to a person's general fear of snakes interfering with what might otherwise be a calm observation.

Another example would be the scenario, which has been used in psychology experiments, where someone appears on a stage holding a banana in his hand, as though it were a gun. At the same time, the sound of a real gun shot is made at some other location in the hall. When the audience is later interviewed about the incident, most of the members swear blind that the man on the stage was holding and shooting a gun. What's probably happening here, is that the alarming sound of the gun-shot interferes with what would otherwise be a calm observation that the man on the stage was actually holding a banana.

Hopefully, a consequence of practising Buddhist meditation and mindfulness should be that one will less easily confuse a rope with a snake because one has overcome fear of snakes and is able to observe more carefully and calmly the snake-like coil on the ground without jumping to erroneous conclusions.

Another issue here is, after having realised that the coil on the ground is a rope and not a snake, as was initially feared, are you also claiming that the rope is not really a rope, just as it's not a snake? Are you also claiming that the realisation of the mistaken identity is also an illusion?

If you had a face to face conversation with someone yesterday, it too has disappeared. What is the difference. Where is the proof that it happened. You can recall a memory. It too will disappear. You can contact the person to ask him to verify you had such a conversation. So what. It too will disappear.

Not unless you, or the person you were conversing with, are suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Most people remember the salient points of a conversation for at least a few days, and can verify that the conversation took place. If you're having doubts about whether or not such conversations really took place, try recording them with a portable digital recorder. However, this is not possible with dreams. Try video recording a dream. That's a bit difficult, don't you think?

When I was about 5 years old I had a vivid dream involving my parents who were sleeping in an adjoining bedroom. I discussed the dream with my father the next day and asked him what he meant when he did 'that', or said 'that' in my dream. Of course, my father claimed that he wasn't there and didn't know, which surprised me greatly. I exclaimed, "But I saw you there. You were definitely there."

That was the time, at the age of 5, that I learned that dreams are different to reality. I guess you could say that I was more advanced in that respect, at the age of 5, than Zhuangzi was, who as an adult was still confused about the reality of a butterfly in his dream.

It is not enough to simply say it is a given that your waking life is real. That is just an assumption. You say it is real because it appears to have continuity in time and space. But it is your mind which is creating a sense of time and space. Just as it does in a dream. To say that a dream does not appear real at the time is just not true. Most people would disagree with you.

Hasn't your mind created the above statement, Trd? I don't claim that a dream does not appear real at the time. I claim it does not appear as real as one's awareness during waking hours, in terms of the quality of detail experienced and observed, in addition to the fact that other people who may feature in the dream will later assert they were not there. There is also the concept of a 'lucid' dream when the dreamer is aware he's having a dream. I occasionally get a hint of that when dreaming.

[VincentRJ]

Continued:

So what is the point of all this? The point is as I've said many, many times, is that if the world appears to be real, but yet also appears and disappears from moment to moment, the best you can say is that it is neither real or unreal.

I think you mean that certain aspects of the world which are subject to movement, and/or relatively rapid change, appear and disappear in relation to the perspective of a stationary observer. That's the nature of certain evanescent things, not necessarily the nature of the whole world.

If you want to make a case that everything is impermanent and changing, then it's very deceptive to choose only examples of things which by their nature are usually in a state of observable change or movement. A cloud in the sky will often gradually disappear during the course of the day. Surely we understand that the cloud has merely changed its form, letting fall its fine droplets of water to the ground (rain), or evaporating with heat to the extent it becomes invisible water vapour, or perhaps has just blown out of sight with the wind.

Likewise, when a plane appears in the sky, we might see it moving from left to right. After a few minutes it disappears out of sight. Surely you don't think that the plane has truly disappeared? It's simply changed its location. If such a plane seems to have really disappeared, as in that recent Malaysian Airlines flight, there's a huge search mounted until it's found.

My house has always appeared in the same location it was built. It's not designed to fly. I'd be very amazed if one day, when returning from holiday, I found no trace of my house, just as devout Buddhists would be amazed if, one day when visiting the local, 1,000-year-old temple, they found it had disappeared, and instead found a monk calmly sitting on the ground where the temple used to be, telling everyone that they should not be surprised because... hadn't the Buddha taught that everything is impermanent?

The reality is that everything has a specific, but sometimes approximate 'shelf life' according to its nature and related circumstances. A flower may last only a few days in a vase before it begins to wilt and decay, whereas a gold or bronze artifact could predate the life of Siddhartha and still be in excellent condition. Certain diamonds are claimed to be 3.3 billion years old. Is that permanent enough for you, Trd?

You are quite a challenge Vincent. It's very difficult to break through your extremely protective shell. I sense there is a lot of fear to overcome.

I'm not aware of any personal fear of any significance, that's trying to bubble up or pierce my shell, although I do have what I would describe as a 'concern' regarding the competence of people in charge of our worldly affairs. I'm troubled to an extent by an awareness that Governments often do not appear to learn from history and instead keep repeating the mistakes of history. The continual fighting and squabbling in parts of the Middle East, that's been going on for centuries, seem totally crazy to me, as were World Wars I and II. It would be a good thing if such fighting was far less permanent.

A lot of people could learn something useful from the wisdom of Buddhism, but I think we should avoid taking some of those Buddhist principles to extremes.

[trd]

Yes, it ceases with the destruction of the body. The root resting state of the ego ( "I" thought ) is impermanent. It is the unconditioned awareness ( the True Self ) that witnesses the limited, conditioned awareness that is permanent and unchanging.

So that which is permanent and unchanging (unconditioned awareness / true self), is it universal?

Is each incidence of mind/body, one of many which spring from the one (universal awareness).

The notion of permanent (timeless, no beginning - no end) is difficult for the mind to grasp.

Rocky, I think a little more clarification is needed about what I said concerning the mind experiencing itself.

So from the "intellectual" understanding that everything the mind experiences is fleeting, that all thoughts, perceptions and sensations are constantly appearing and disappearing, we have to conclude that both the person you think you are and the external world have no substantial reality. These are the principles of not self (anatta) and impermanence. (anicca) The consequence of this mistaken identification is suffering. (dukkha) By real, I mean that which is always there, without beginning or end, unchanging and not dependent on anything other than itself. This definition of reality comes to us from the sages who discovered the truth. Of course we use the word reality to describe the relative world, but we are only describing relative truths.

The first step towards discovering what is absolutely real is to turn the intellectual grasp of impermanence into a direct experience by understanding the duality of mind. There exists a subject/object relationship with the mind as the knower and the object which is known. The object can be a thought or emotion, which is really the same thing, or a perception where the sense organ becomes the knower of the object to be experienced and in turn the mind becomes the knower of what the sense organ perceives. Most people are totally caught up in their thoughts. As a constant stream of thoughts spontaneously appear in the mind, there follows a constant reaction to and identification with those thoughts, but what is missed is a connection with the silent awareness from which those thoughts arise. It is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. Fortunately such teachings of the sages make the means available to access that knowledge.

So to continue with this first step involves the practice of turning the attention back to the root thought of the mind, the "I" thought. This awareness or sense of I amness, is the primary thought of the ego. Everything else develops from the first person of "I" to the third person identification of, I am happy, I am sad, I am hungry, I am going shopping etc etc. The more you practice, the more familiar you become with it, the more the natural power of discrimination develops so there is a clear distinction between simple awareness and thought. Most people don't understand or experience this, so to get to this point is already a significant achievement. However this experience cannot be described as an awakening because it is only temporary. Even if the mind becomes completely still and one pointed (samadhi) it will still return to identifying with objects and lose that stillness. In samadhi there is a complete defocussing and evaporation of the individual, personal sense of "I" into an undifferentiated impersonal awareness. With it comes a feeling of peace and bliss. This unbounded awareness is that which is prior to mind. The personal "I" is the root thought of the mind. The mind cannot go back further than that. The personal "I" is perishable and dies with the body. But it is at this junction where there is an expansion from the limited to the infinite, from the personal to impersonal awareness which is truly unconditioned and when meditation happens. This is the imperishable.

We are used to talking about meditation as something which is practiced, but although convenient to refer to it like this, and I do myself, this is not strictly correct. It is more meaningful to say that it is the practice of quietening the mind which makes meditation happen as a completely automatic and effortless state or process. This is important to understand because if there is a practice, it implies intent. It implies effort. How can something unconditioned exist if there is intent? So by understanding that meditation happens without effort as a separate effect of what originally starts out as a practice with intent, it can be seen that the transition from a practice to the natural state of the true Self which is self sustaining and permanent comes about from the meditation state which is also self sustaining. It is this final merging from a temporary self sustaining state to that which is permanently established and self sustaining. This is awakening to your true nature. No new karmas are created, but existing karmas must still run their course until the body is given up, rather like if you cut the power to an electric fan, the blades will still continue turning for a while.

[rockyysdt]

We are used to talking about meditation as something which is practiced, but although convenient to refer to it like this, and I do myself, this is not strictly correct. It is more meaningful to say that it is the practice of quietening the mind which makes meditation happen as a completely automatic and effortless state or process. This is important to understand because if there is a practice, it implies intent. It implies effort. How can something unconditioned exist if there is intent? So by understanding that meditation happens without effort as a separate effect of what originally starts out as a practice with intent, it can be seen that the transition from a practice to the natural state of the true Self which is self sustaining and permanent comes about from the meditation state which is also self sustaining. It is this final merging from a temporary self sustaining state to that which is permanently established and self sustaining.

This is my experience.

When I've tried to meditate, it remained elusive.

The more I tried, the more tense I would become, as would rampant thoughts prevail.

When my practice revolves around perfecting my posture & improving my concentration associated with awareness of body & breath, Samadhi comes of its own accord.

Given the correct conditions, the gift of Samadhi comes of its own accord.

I'm puzzled about our need to become aware of or experience that which is permanent and unchanging (unconditioned awareness / true self)!

The "permanent and unchanging", the "unborn and deathless", the "unconditioned and permanent", timeless Awareness (true self), has always been & will always be, whether we experience it or not.

What is the importance of that which is impermanent & conditioned to experience it?

It seems that to accomplish this one must diminish/destroy the relative, something which time will do anyway (impermanent).

If we are relative, conditioned, and illusory in comparison to the absolute, what is the imperative?

Edited July 15, 2014 by rockyysdt

[trd]

I have no issues with anything you have said. I am simply explaining the mechanics of it.

Most meditators practice without considering these things. It doesn't matter. As long as you are able to experience samadhi to varying degrees, then all is well.

[trd]

As you asked specific questions, I will answer them.

I'm puzzled about our need to become aware of or experience that which is permanent and unchanging (unconditioned awareness / true self)!

You cannot become aware of such an experience with intent. Re-read what I said. You can only put your attention on simple awareness. You do it with breath. The final outcome happens naturally by itself. You just need to wait for the door to open to the unbounded. If you feel the "need" it won't happen as you explain when you "try" too hard.

The "permanent and unchanging", the "unborn and deathless", the "unconditioned and permanent", timeless Awareness (true self), has always been & will always be, whether we experience it or not.

Correct.

What is the importance of that which is impermanent & conditioned to experience it?

No "importance". It is your natural state that is all. Edited July 15, 2014 by trd

[trd]

It seems that to accomplish this one must diminish/destroy the relative, something which time will do anyway (impermanent).

There is nothing to do.

If we are relative, conditioned, and illusory in comparison to the absolute, what is the imperative?

For most people - none. What is your imperative to practice?

Edited July 15, 2014 by trd

[rockyysdt]

If we are relative, conditioned, and illusory in comparison to the absolute, what is the imperative?

For most people - none. What is your imperative to practice?

My reasons are multiple.

What is questionable is that much of it involves the "I' which might be getting in the way.