posted June 03, 2012 08:31 AM            

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Originally posted by Faith:
Namaste Xiiro,

At the risk of steering this thread way off track, may I ask your opinion of samsara? Are you Buddhist?

Cheers, thanks for the discussion!

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Part of me is a Buddhist lol. Buddhism (like Christianity) is a simple philosophy, which after thousands of years of poking and prodding, has become complex. Part of this has to do with a common method by which religion spreads. As Buddhism expanded, its teachings utilized cultural images to convert people who were only familiar with local spiritual practices. So when you read about reincarnating into different realms, devas, hungry ghosts, merit, and all the pretty things that adorn Buddhism as a religion; keep in mind that beneath all that there is a simple message.

My take on Samsara:

The Four Noble Truths - This has the potential to be very looong, so I am going to attempt to make this as simple as possible. I suggest looking up these topics if you have the time or interest. The Four Noble Truths create the foundation for the Buddhist philosophy, they are as follows.

1. Suffering exists
2. Suffering exists because though nothing is permanent, we continue to crave permanence.
3. It is possible for suffering to end
4. The path to ending suffering

My understanding Samsara (in Buddhist terms), is "addiction to craving". It is living life without question. Samsara is translated to mean "Continuous Movement", just unconsciously going and going without ever stopping. A person caught in Samsara would likely live their life, die, and slide into a new incarnation without even being aware of the transition (only taking with them the unconscious residue of their former lives). In Buddhism, cultivation of "stopping" is part of learning how to get out of Samsara.

In the Buddha's life story, he is born a prince and given every luxury imaginable. When he is unintentionally faced with the realities of sickness, age, and death he vows to become a monastic and discover an end to suffering. After a long time of fruitless/self destructive asceticism, he decides he is going to just sit under a damned tree and not move until he finds an answer. It is only through stopping and sitting, that the Buddha was able to "wake up". So when I mentioned Samsara earlier, I was referring to the idea that a person is free to choose to be unconscious of their atrophy. In order to honestly see the atrophy, one must choose to stop and pay attention to the decisions they are making (or the results of their decisions).

In Buddhist belief, everything is mind, and in a sense that is pretty accurate. Everything we experience is a mental fabrication, based on sensory input. The woman you know as "mother" is a completely different person from the woman your grandmother knows as "daughter". And though you agree she is the same entity, you both observe that entity from two completely different angles. It is impossible for your grandmother to experience your mother in the same way you do, so in a sense the mother you know is made up of your mind.

posted June 03, 2012 02:17 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
Xiiro, your Posts always make me smile; they exhibit both kindness nad intelligence. Would you like to be a Mod?

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posted June 04, 2012 12:11 AM            

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Originally posted by Love&Light:
It was nice to read this discussion guys. Xiiro are you by any chance Deux Antares of the yester years? He/She had the same crystal clear analytical capacity and very sensible, matter of fact and yet loving thought process stream. I love that.

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posted June 04, 2012 09:05 AM            

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Originally posted by Xiiro:
Part of me is a Buddhist lol. Buddhism (like Christianity) is a simple philosophy, which after thousands of years of poking and prodding, has become complex. Part of this has to do with a common method by which religion spreads. As Buddhism expanded, its teachings utilized cultural images to convert people who were only familiar with local spiritual practices. So when you read about reincarnating into different realms, devas, hungry ghosts, merit, and all the pretty things that adorn Buddhism as a religion; keep in mind that beneath all that there is a simple message.

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LOL, well said. For some reason I thought Buddhism would be impervious to chicanery.

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The Four Noble Truths create the foundation for the Buddhist philosophy...

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I was reading Eckhart Tolle books all last year...I mean reading and re-reading, so I am happily familiar with these ideas. This is the Buddhism I know and love.

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Samsara is translated to mean "Continuous Movement", just unconsciously going and going without ever stopping. A person caught in Samsara would likely live their life, die, and slide into a new incarnation without even being aware of the transition (only taking with them the unconscious residue of their former lives). In Buddhism, cultivation of "stopping" is part of learning how to get out of Samsara.

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So I think this is what I was getting at as well...if you are imprisoned in unconscious behavior, you are not really free. But you still have free will...there is still the potential to walk out of your prison, I trust.

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After a long time of fruitless/self destructive asceticism, he decides he is going to just sit under a damned tree and not move until he finds an answer. It is only through stopping and sitting, that the Buddha was able to "wake up".

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LOL...the Buddha's life in a nutshell.

I think this is why I suffer too much. My kids make too much noise. No time to just sit under a "damn tree" and get my act together.

Only half-kidding! I really think we need silence, at least while we are "learning the ropes" of consciousness.

Can you tell me your thoughts on that, Xiiro? How vital an ingredient is silence, with awakening? And sound, too? Do you personally think that saying OM against a silent background is effective with anything?

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In Buddhist belief, everything is mind, and in a sense that is pretty accurate. Everything we experience is a mental fabrication, based on sensory input....
In the same spirit, I like to believe the universe and its rules are what we make it. What ends up seeming most important is how we treat our selves and others.

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This is what I believed when I was about ten years old. I suspected that the world revolved around me...not in an egotistical sense at all...but I realized that I had no way of proving that people didn't outright disappear when they left my presence. So maybe I am inherently Buddhist.

But as you said, there is an element of otherness that is fundamentally important. I would like to talk with you again, I don't want you to disappear into cyberspace. If I write, I think there is a good chance you will reply, if not on this thread, somewhere down the line on another one. But are you an artificial construct of my mind?

I think you are not. I think that reality can go on independently of me (...imagine that! ) and the connections we make with separate realities/people have meanings. I think that through connections we glimpse the oneness of everything, in a way that we cannot see if flying solo.

What I'm getting at it is, I trust there is a place for unity in the grand scheme of things...which means, that if the universe is what we individually make of it, it seems less powerful and interesting to me, compared to my present notion, that it has its own separate, absolute nature, which we can tap into to experience joy, love, and peace...the end of suffering.

Either I'm too emotionally invested in absolutes to even entertain the idea that we each make our own cosmic reality....or it logically doesn't click with me.

Hmmm!

posted June 04, 2012 03:21 PM            

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Originally posted by Faith:
Thank you again, Xiiro!
How vital an ingredient is silence, with awakening? And sound, too? Do you personally think that saying OM against a silent background is effective with anything?
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I think the Buddha made a very deliberate and Taurian statement by investing a physical effort to sit. I feel there is a theme in Buddhism, "all objects arise when conditions are right", so if one seeks awakening, one must do anything possible to make conditions right. I am also partial to the Zen way of thinking however, that the conditions for awakening are always present. The noise in a dream loses its value, once we focus on waking up.

Where could you go for quiet, when the concept of silence is impermanent? On the beach where the ocean rushes, in the country where flies and bees buzz around your ears, in the forest where birds sing and ants crawl on your toes, in a sensory deprivation tank where the ringing sound in your ears fills the chamber? And say you were able to discover silence, floating out in the blackness of space, how then do you contend with silencing all the noises one's thoughts make? Though silence helps us relax, it is not an essential ingredient to awakening.

I am inclined to feel the same about sounds and mantras. I LOVE the sound of OM being chanted, I am a big fan of "Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo". Buddhist meditation (as I understand it), is about renunciation however. It's about accepting the (mental, sensory, emotional) objects which arise, but learning not to grab for them. "The mind is burning, the senses are burning", always looking for more fuel. When we stop and sit, the mind begins to starve and it panics. It starts to notice subtle sounds, it starts to remember grocery lists, and things we should have said to people we fought with, it reaches out to feed on whatever it can. Mantras and Images can take our focus away from what is going on right now. As we imagine them rippling out into the universe, we completely ignore what is happening in the here and now. They can serve as food for the mind and senses to continue burning in my opinion.

The Buddha suggested paying attention to the breath for feeding the mind and senses. The breath continuously rises and falls, which can remind us of impermanence. It happens in the body, which anchors the mind in the present. And we can use the breath to soothe and accept issues which arise (now that the mind is no longer busying itself with distraction). If our connection to God is through the heart (which in the original Buddhist language, heart and mind were the same entity), and the life breathed into man is God's breath, then learning to be with the breath is one of the most sacred ways to experience God.

I think the perfect time for mantras is in preparation for meditation, or as prayer. When someone is having a hard time and I am unable to offer a physical hug, I tell them "I'll send good vibes your way", or when I experience something beautiful, I radiate my feelings in praise of the experience. Some Buddhist meditations begin with cultivating love for the self, then radiating out to include those you love, then those you know, then those you don't know well, then those you dislike, then those you have never met. The beginning focus for some meditation is "May the progress made in this meditation, benefit countless beings". The focus of the meditation is always founded on observing the breath in the body though.

Ultimately I think whatever offers results for you, you should do. In my own practice, I appreciate the Buddhist understanding of how addicted the mind is to objects. Focusing on the breath and remaining in the body, transforms anything into a meditation for me without needing silence or sitting. When I work, I breathe and attend to work, when I walk, I breathe and attend to walking, the same goes for when I sit, eat, drive, play with my nephew and nieces, etc.. It is not easy to do, but becomes easier the more I practice lol.

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Originally posted by Faith:
This is what I believed when I was about ten years old. I suspected that the world revolved around me...not in an egotistical sense at all...but I realized that I had no way of proving that people didn't outright disappear when they left my presence. So maybe I am inherently Buddhist.

But as you said, there is an element of otherness that is fundamentally important. I would like to talk with you again, I don't want you to disappear into cyberspace. If I write, I think there is a good chance you will reply, if not on this thread, somewhere down the line on another one. But are you an artificial construct of my mind?

I think you are not. I think that reality can go on independently of me (...imagine that! ) and the connections we make with separate realities/people have meanings. I think that through connections we glimpse the oneness of everything, in a way that we cannot see if flying solo.

What I'm getting at it is, I trust there is a place for unity in the grand scheme of things...which means, that if the universe is what we individually make of it, it seems less powerful and interesting to me, compared to my present notion, that it has its own separate, absolute nature, which we can tap into to experience joy, love, and peace...the end of suffering.

Either I'm too emotionally invested in absolutes to even entertain the idea that we each make our own cosmic reality....or it logically doesn't click with me.

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Boy do I identify with this. Spirituality can easily fall over into schizophrenia, or turn someone into a sociopath haha. I played with the idea for several years, that everyone was just a cartoon I made up to keep my self entertained. It even extended to the idea that nothing existed beyond my field of vision, that I walked around in a movie screen bubble, with 3D images playing in 360 degrees. No matter what angle I came at the idea, I could never find a definitive answer. So the issue moved away from "is everyone else real, is the universe vast?" and evolved into, "Do you want everyone else to be real and the universe to be vast?". I concluded for my self 1). In this experience, "others" seem intended to be real and the universe seems intended to be vast. And 2). How badly will it harm me to believe in the intended physics of reality?

I concluded that loneliness and living in a bubble were more destructive than being a sheep to my apparent reality =). If at the end of my life, I step out of a machine and say, "Well that video game was great and very convincing" then good. I do the same thing with movies that I did with life. I refuse to suspend my disbelief because I fear being duped by something I know is not real. When it comes down to it though, I gain more joy out of allowing my self to believe, then being able to walk away saying, "I knew that was gonna happen".

I like the conclusions you came to in your own struggle with the plasticity of reality. I especially enjoyed your comment on individuality vs ultimate reality. Is it possible for both individuality and ultimate reality to exist together, instead of contrarily I wonder? For example, What if ultimate reality were the timeless potential of all choices having already been made and every path having already been carved? What if free will were choosing to connect the dots from one "Now" to another, through an ultimate potential of "all things are possible"? What if you already exist in all possible scenarios and free will is consciousness choosing which "You", in which scenario, to inhabit next? Like when you press on the face of an LCD watch, all the numbers become "0"s with "X"s through them, because that is the potential template for all possible times.

posted June 04, 2012 03:22 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
Just do what you already do. But have to pick the right Forum for you.

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posted June 05, 2012 07:56 AM            

1) Your comment about doing everything possible to make conditions right for awakening hit a deep nerve with me. If my memory is worth its weight in salt, I'll remember that as a succinct guideline. Voice in my head: "Clean the house, you can't be enlightened with toys everywhere!" I've been on the fence about feng shui, but I'm thinking it's time to evolve along those lines.

2) I thought Zen was more about surroundings than even "regular" Buddhism (?) I have to research more.

3) Thank you for your song recommendation- never heard it before but will check youTube.

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Originally posted by Xiiro:

Boy do I identify with this. Spirituality can easily fall over into schizophrenia, or turn someone into a sociopath haha. I played with the idea for several years, that everyone was just a cartoon I made up to keep my self entertained. It even extended to the idea that nothing existed beyond my field of vision, that I walked around in a movie screen bubble, with 3D images playing in 360 degrees. No matter what angle I came at the idea, I could never find a definitive answer. So the issue moved away from "is everyone else real, is the universe vast?" and evolved into, "Do you want everyone else to be real and the universe to be vast?". I concluded for my self 1). In this experience, "others" seem intended to be real and the universe seems intended to be vast. And 2). How badly will it harm me to believe in the intended physics of reality?

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Well. When I was younger and really immersed in this whole line of thinking, I would have written off everything you just wrote as the universe playing one of its freaky little games of "fun house hall of mirrors" with me. Because I used to think the exact. same. way.

So there's no way to differentiate you, an objective reality, from you, the projection created in my head, whose writing eerily matches the stuff I cooked up when I was a precocious little philosopher. I mean, I used to stare at the ceiling in my bedroom for hours, trying to solve this whole problem by the force of my concentration.

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I concluded that loneliness and living in a bubble were more destructive than being a sheep to my apparent reality =). If at the end of my life, I step out of a machine and say, "Well that video game was great and very convincing" then good. I do the same thing with movies that I did with life. I refuse to suspend my disbelief because I fear being duped by something I know is not real. When it comes down to it though, I gain more joy out of allowing my self to believe, then being able to walk away saying, "I knew that was gonna happen".

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Again, uncanny similarities, but I don't have the same fear of being duped because I just threw in the towel long ago. "Okay, life, you got me. I'm stumped."

But I named myself Faith here partly because I feel that my faith in that parallel universe of peace and joy is the bedrock of my sanity. Maybe true peace and joy only exist as blobs of space-time intermingled with the whole giant mess of illusion, but they will always exist.

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I especially enjoyed your comment on individuality vs ultimate reality. Is it possible for both individuality and ultimate reality to exist together, instead of contrarily I wonder? For example, What if ultimate reality were the timeless potential of all choices having already been made and every path having already been carved?

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I need to build an addition onto my brain to hold this thought there. I'll bet your brain weighs a lot more than mine.

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What if free will were choosing to connect the dots from one "Now" to another, through an ultimate potential of "all things are possible"? What if you already exist in all possible scenarios and free will is consciousness choosing which "You", in which scenario, to inhabit next?

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Well then I think I'm a real dumb*ss for picking this "me"! But I feel constrained to do everything step by step, so each progressive self that I inhabit is only slightly different from the last. What I need is a quantum leap into a renovated life, but I lack self-discipline.

Do you think imaging is one way to find the next best self to inhabit? Maybe if I spend more time focusing on the "me" I want to be, I will pick her out of the crowd of potentialities and reside in her.

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Like when you press on the face of an LCD watch, all the numbers become "0"s with "X"s through them, because that is the potential template for all possible times.

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I get it. That's something I could ruminate over for a while, coming up with different applications for the analogy.

My reigning pet theory about existence is at odds with that, though. I've been suspecting that we live forwards and backwards.
(And please DON'T tell me if you have, too, I will definitely think you are my holographic double or something if you do. )

But this notion came to me when I read In Cold Blood and noticed that the wife who got murdered had a nervous disorder for years...as if she was expecting the upcoming tragedy and mourning in advance.

The whole existence of psychic ability fits into this scenario rather well.

posted June 06, 2012 12:42 AM              

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Originally posted by Randall:
No one is completely free

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posted June 06, 2012 03:31 AM            

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Originally posted by Faith:
Do you think imaging is one way to find the next best self to inhabit? Maybe if I spend more time focusing on the "me" I want to be, I will pick her out of the crowd of potentialities and reside in her.

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I believe anything is possible, though I am partial to the idea that waiting for another time or place to discover "now", will only result in waiting to discover "now" later. I don't believe there is a next best you Faith, I believe you have always been the best you and will continue to maintain bestness. The trick is getting your self to see that.

posted June 11, 2012 01:18 AM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
X, do you have a Forum preference to Mod?

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