RE: Meaningful ideas and quotes
July 22, 2020 at 11:26 am
(This post was last modified: July 22, 2020 at 11:40 am by Porcupine.)
(July 22, 2020 at 8:52 am)Belacqua Wrote:Quote:8. When we reach enlightenment we and the world become one, and there is no duality.
This is really tricky for me.
Mind and matter and self and world are one and the same entity that is existence itself.
Very hard to grasp conceptually .... even harder to grasp perceptually. Although, it is all that can really be grasped at all anyway bu seeing that is the key. And when you see that the grasping becomes pointless and effortless and meaningless and either illusory or so effortless that it feels inappropriate to call it grasping anymore. You will still desire things but you won't crave things ... at least not in the same way. Mental strife dissolves and the only suffering that remains is bodily ... but we can experience painful bodily sensations in a gym that if we had without exercising would cause us great panic. So the body itself causing us far less suffering than we realize most of the time. True bodily pain is only experienced when it's absolutely excruciating.
As for the seeing? The seeing requires both understanding it cognitively *and* just knowing it deep in your gut. Kind of like how to lose fear of hell .... losing belief in God cognitively is sometimes not enough.
Let me know if you want me to PM you a lecture on Zen Buddhism because I can't send links here yet because I haven't been here for 60 days yet.
(July 22, 2020 at 8:52 am)Belacqua Wrote: The Buddhist unity may be different, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. Nirvana, after all, is total annihilation of the self, not unity.
It's annihilation of the self by realizing that it is illusory and delusory and has no distinct existence apart from the world. The eastern understanding of nothingness is no-thingness. And the world itself only doesn't exist in that there is ultimately no meaningful distinction because even though there is no nothing .... something is merely not nothing so something has no meaning either. And if something has no meaning (something as a whole as opposed to 'something in particular') then it is meaningless to say that nothing isn't it.
(July 22, 2020 at 8:52 am)Belacqua Wrote: Not a single Zen Buddhist at the Fukuyama Zen place I stayed at was the least bit interested in talking about it.
Hahahahahahah. But that's the WHOLE POINT of Zen. They can't describe the indescribable and you create the problem by defining them as your teacher.
Okay, I think you would really enjoy the SPECIFIC Alan Watts lecture that I am guessing you haven't heard. If you want it by PM then feel free to ask. I can't post it here.
"Zen … does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." - Alan Watts