B U D D H I S M    I N    A    N U T S H E L L 
		==============================================


		Namo  Tassa  Bhagavato  Arahato  Samma-Sambuddhassa


				Chapter One

			        THE  BUDDHA


	On the full moon day of May, in the year 623 B.C. there was born in the
     district of Nepal an Indian Sakya Prince named Siddhattha Gotama, who was 
     destined to be the greatest religious teacher in the world.  Brought up in
     the lap of luxury, receiving an education befitting a prince, he married
     and had a son.

	His contemplative nature and boundless compassion did not permit him to
     enjoy the fleeting material pleasures of a Royal household.  He knew no
     woe, but he felt a deep pity for sorrowing humanity.  Amidst comfort and
     prosperity, he realized the universality of sorrow.  The palace, with all
     its worldly amusements, was no longer a congenial place for the
     compassionate prince.  The time was ripe for him to depart.  Realizing the
     vanity of sensual enjoyments, in his twenty-ninth year, he renounced all
     worldly pleasures and donning the simple yellow garb of an ascetic, alone,
     penniless, wandered forth in search of Truth and Peace.

	It was an unprecedented historic renunciation; for he renounced not in
     his old age but in the prime of manhood, not in poverty but in plenty.
     As it was the belief in the ancient days that no deliverance could be
     gained unless one leads a life of strict asceticism, he strenuously
     practiced all forms of severe austerities.  "Adding vigil after vigil,
     and penance after penance," he made a superhuman effort for six long years.

	His body was reduced to almost a skeleton.  The more he tormented his
     body, the farther his goal receded from him.  The painful, unsuccessful
     austerities which he strenuously practiced proved absolutely futile.  He
     was now fully convinced, through personal experience, of the utter
     futility of self-mortification which weakened his body and resulted in
     lassitude of spirit.

	Benefiting by this invaluable experience of his, he finally decided to
     follow an independent course, avoiding the two extremes of self-indulgence
     and self-mortification.  The former retards one's spiritual progress, and
     the latter weakens one's intellect.  The new way which he himself
     discovered was the Middle Path.  Majjhima Patipada, which subsequently
     became one of the salient characteristics of his teaching.

	One happy morning, while He was deeply absorbed in meditation, unaided 
     and unguided by any supernatural power and solely relying on His efforts
     and wisdom.  He eradicated all defilements, purified Himself, and,
     realizing things as they truly are, attained Enlightenment (Buddhahood) at
     the age of 35.  He was not born a Buddha, but He became a Buddha by His
     own striving.  As the perfect embodiment of all the virtues He preached,
     endowed with deep wisdom commensurate with His boundless compassion.  He
     devoted the remainder of His precious life to serve humanity both by
     example and precept, dominated by no personal motive whatever.

	After a very successful ministry of 45 long years the Buddha, as every 
     other human being, succumbed to the inexorable law of change, and finally
     passed away in His 80th year, exhorting His disciples to regard His
     doctrine as their teacher.

	The Buddha was a human being.  As a man he was born, as a man He lived,
     and as a man His life came to an end.  Through a human being, He became an
     extraordinary man (Acchariya Manussa), but He never arrogated to Himself
     divinity.  The Buddha laid stress on this important point and left no room
     whatever for anyone to fall into the error of thinking that He was an
     immortal divine being.  Fortunately there is no defication in the case of
     the Buddha.  It should, however, be remarked that there was no Teacher,
     "ever so godless as the Buddha, yet none so god-like."

	The Buddha was neither an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, as is
     believed by some, nor is He a saviour who freely saves others by His
     personal salvation.  The Buddha exhorts His disciples to depend on
     themselves for their deliverance, for both purity and defilement depend
     on oneself.  Clarifying His replationship with His followers and
     emphasizing the importance of self-reliance and individual striving, the
     Buddha plainly states:  "You should exert yourselves, the Tathagatas are
     only teachers."

	The Buddhas point out the path, and it is left for us to follow that 
     path to obtain our purification.

	"To depend on others for salvation is negative, but to depend on oneself
     is positive,"  Dependance on others means a surrender of one's effort.

	In exhorting His disciples to be self-dependent the Buddha says in the
     Parinibbana Sutra: "Be ye islands unto yourselves, be ye a refuge unto
     yourselves, seek not for refuge in others."  These significant words are
     self-elevating.  They reveal how vital is self-exertion to accomplish
     one's object and, how superficial and futile is it seek redemption through
     benignant saviours and to crave for illusory happiness in an afterlife
     through the propitiation of imaginary Gods or by irresponsive prayers and
     meaningless sacrifices.

	Furthermore, the Buddha does not claim the monopoly of Buddhahood which,
     as a matter of fact, is not the prerogative of any specially graced 
     person.  He reached the highest possible state of perfection any person
     could aspire to, and without the close-fist of a teacher He reveals the
     only straight path that leads thereto.  According to the Teachings of the
     Buddha anybody may aspire to that supreme state of perfection if he makes
     the necessary exertion.  The Buddha does not condemn men by calling them
     wretched sinners, but, on the contrary, He gladdens them by saying that
     they are pure in heart at conception.  In His opinion, the world is not
     wicked but is deluded by ignorance.  Instead of dishearting His followers
     and reserving that exalted state only to Himself, He encourages and
     induces them to emulate Him, for Buddhahood is latent in all.  In one
     sense, all are potential Buddhas.

	One who aspires to become a Buddha is called a Bodhisatta, which, 
     literally, means a wisdom-being.  This Bodhisatta ideal is the most
     beautiful and the most refined course of life that has ever been presented
     to this ego-centric world, for what is nobler than a life of service and
     purity.

	As a man He attained Buddhahood and proclaimed to the world the latent
     inconceivable possibilities and the creative power of man.  Instead of
     placing an unseen Almighty God over man who arbitrarily controls the
     destinies of mankind, and making him subservient to a supreme power, He
     raised the worth of mankind. It was He who taught that man can gain his
     deliverance and purification by his own exertion without depending on an
     external God or mediating priests.  It was He who taught the ego-centric
     world that the noble ideal of selfless service.  It was He who revolted
     against the degrading caste system and taught equality of mankind and
     gave equal opportunities for all to distinguish themselves in every walk
     of life.

	He declared that the gates of success and prosperity were open to all in
     every condition of life, high or low, saint or criminal, who would care
     to turn a new leaf and aspire to perfection.

	Irrespective of caste, color or rank He established for both deserving 
     men and women a democratically constituted celibate Order.  He did not
     force His followers to be slaves either to His Teachings or to Himself
     but granted complete freedom of thought.

	He comforted the bereaved by His consoling words.  He ministered to the 
     sick that were deserted.  He helped the poor that were neglected.  He
     ennobled the lives of the deluded, purified the corrupted lives of
     criminals.  He encouraged the feeble, united the divided, enlightened the
     ignorant, clarified the mystic, guided the benighted, elevated the base,
     dignified the noble.  Both rich and poor, saints and criminals loved Him
     alike.  Despotic and righteous kings, famous and obscure princess and
     nobles, generous and stingy millionaires, haughty and humble scholars,
     destitute paupers, down-trodden scavengers, wicked murderers, despised
     courtesans -- all benefited by His words of wisdom and compassion.

	His noble example as a source of inspiration to all.  His serene and 
     peaceful countenance was a soothing sight to the pious eyes.  His message
     of Peace and Tolerance was welcomed by all with indescribable joy and was
     of eternal benefit to every one who had the fortune to hear and practice
     it.

	Whenever His teaching penetrated it left an indelible impression upon 
     the character of the respective peoples.  The cultural advancement of all
     the Buddhist nations was mainly due to His sublime Teachings.  In fact,
     all Buddhist countries like Ceylon, Burmam, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam,
     Laos, Nepal, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, etc. grew up in the 
     cradle of Buddhism.  Though more than 2500 years have elapsed since the
     passing away of this greatest Teacher, yet his unique personality exerts
     a great influence on all who come to know Him.

	His iron will, profound wisdom, universal love, boundless compassion,
     selfless service, historic renunciation, perfect purity, magnetic
     personality, exemplary methods employed to propagate the Teachings, and
     his final success -- all these factors have compelled about one-fifth of
     the population of the world today to hail the Buddha as their supreme
     Teacher.

	Paying a glowing tribute to the Buddha Sri Radhakrishnan states:  "In
     Gautama the Buddha we have a master-mind from the Ease second to none so
     far as the influence on the thought and life  of the human race is
     concerned, and, sacred to all as the founder of a religious tradition
     whose hold is hardly less wide and deep than any other.  He belongs to
     the history of the world's thought, to the general inheritance of all
     cultivated men, for, judged by intellectual integrity, moral earnestness,
     and spiritual insight, He is undoubtedly one of the greatest figures in
     history."

	In "The Three Greatest Men in History",  W. G. Wells writes:  "In the 
     Buddha you see clearly a man, simple, devout, lonely, battling for light
     -- a vivid human personality, not a myth.  He too gave a message to
     mankind universal in character.  Many of our best modern ideas are in
     closest harmony with it.   All the miseries and discontents are due, he
     taught, to selfishness.  Before a man can become serene he must cease to
     live for his senses or himself.  Then he merges into a great being.
     Buddha in different language called men to self-forgetfulness 500 years
     before Christ.  In some ways he is nearer to us and our needs.  He was
     more lucid upon our individual importance and service than Christ, and
     less ambiguous upon the question of personal immortality."

	St. Hilaire remarks:  "The perfect model of all the virtues He preaches.
     His life has not a stain upon it."

	Fausboll says -- "The more I know Him, the more I love Him."

	A humble follower of his would say -- "The more I know Him, the more I
     love Him;  the more I love Him, the more I know Him."



                                ON BUDDHISM

	Buddhism is generally regarded as the religion established by a man
     known as Shakyamuni, born Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in India nearly
     3000 years ago. However, Buddhism includes not only Shakyamuni's sutras
     (teachings) but also all subsequent treatises and commentaries on what he
     taught. After his death differing interpretations naturally arose. As
     Buddhism spread to many different countries, doctrines of varying degrees
     of profundity came into being. But the original purpose of Buddhism
     remained the same: TO REMOVE HUMAN SUFFERING AND TO GIVE PEOPLE HAPPINESS.

	When Shakyamuni was young, he observed people suffering as a result of
     Birth, Old Age, Sickness and Death. He wondered why they had to undergo
     such suffering. This question plagued not only Shakyamuni nearly 3000
     years ago, but continues to be a fundamental and universally human concern
     today. Today, we continue to ask "What is Life? Where does our life come
     from? Why must we age, sicken and die? What happens to us after death? How
     can we escape this How should we live? How can we become absolutely happy?" 

	The tenets of Buddhism answer these questions. Shakyamuni's teachings
     say that all the things that we see, feel, hear or otherwise experience are
     impermanent and subject to change. This includes our own lives. Yet at the
     core of all these human experiences is something eternal and immutable. 
     That something is called the eternal law of life, or the law of causality.
     Everything in the universe, including human life, is borne out of it, has
     been borne out of it many times in the past, and will contunuously be born
     out of it in the future. When a person dies, what is permanent and
     immutable in this life returns to its source and will continue to do so
     repeatedly after each lifetime.

	In this way, Shakyamuni clarified the eternity of life. In another way,
     his teachings clarified the individual circumstances of our day-to-day 
     lives.  According to Buddhism, each time we die we take with us the causes
     and effects of each finished or unfinished deed. Upon the occasion of our
     birth they come back with us as determining factors as we live out this
     lifetime. This is the principle of karma, which states that everything 
     that is happening now is the result of our previous causes. Further, the
     causes we make now shape our future. Thus our lives encompass the three
     existences of past, present and future. It is the failure to understand
     the eternal essence of our lives and our ignorance of the law of cause
     and effect that are the source of human suffering.

	In this way, Shakyamuni clarified the source of our unhappiness. He
     taught that people could achieve happiness by becoming enlightened to the
     true nature of life. What Shakyamuni revealed about the universal nature 
     of life was important. He presented a theoretical approach to 
     understanding our human suffering, but he did not leave behind a 
     universal practice to achieve human happiness. This did not happen until
     700 years ago with the advent of Nichiren Daishonin. He was enlightened
     to the true nature of human life. Moreover, he established a practice,
     universal in nature, that people could utilize to break the inexorable
     chains of karma so that absolute happiness in this lifetime could become
     a reality.
					--Ashley McGinley


     When Buddha was borned, astrologers had predicted that he would become a
     great king or a great monk. His father did not want him to become a monk,
     so he made sure that Sidharth will not see any sorrows of life. But by
     accident, when going for an outing, Sidharth saw, at three different
     occassions, a person with disease, an old man and a dead body.  After
     these incidences, he started contemplating on the sorrows of humanity,
     not from his childhood.

     Concerning Buddha's "Middle Way", I do not see that it was the "new" way
     Buddha invented.  The Gita clearly tells that a yogi lives a "balanced"
     life; he neither eats too much nor too less, he neither sleeps too much
     nor too less, etc.  May be at the time of Buddha, the prevalent 
     conditions did not conform to this, so Buddha re-asserted it.

     Buddha died of unintensional food poisoing.

     How do you know that he is not an incarnation of Hindu God Vishnu?
     If Vishnu can incarnate as fish, tortoise, beast, half man & half beast,
     etc, why can't he incarnate as Buddha?  Shrimad Bhagavatam says that
     there are 10 prominent incarnations based their sphere of influence and
     there are innumerable incarnations all over. Also, if one sees the
     background of all these prominent incarnations, at the time they 
     incarnated, it will be seen that true essence of Hindu religion (called
     as Sanatan Dharma or eternal religion by Hindus thenselves) was lost at
     that time. Same was true at the time of Buddha.  At that time, people
     put much stress on rituals, spirituality was becoming a monopoly of
     Brahmins, people were more fatalist, there was a religion (?) called
     Charvak Dharma which preached to have material enjoyments only, etc.
     When one looks at this background then one can appreciate what Buddha did.

      1. He laid heavy stress on self effort to counter attact the then
          prevaling fatalist ideas.
      2. He told the rituals themselves do not give one realization and preached
          against it.
      3. He tauched in Pali, Ardhamaagadhi(?) to rebel against monopoly of
          priests.
      4. Because of Charvak philosophy Buddha laid much stress on renunciation.
          It was not that Hindu religion did not know about all these things
          before Buddha. Infact, renunciation is one of the stages on life
          prescribed by Hindu religion.
      5. To discourage so called intellectual arguments, he always kept quiet
          when asked irrelavent questions like life after death, presence of
          hell and heaven etc. He insisted on Nirguna Brahman to de-emphasize
          rituals.

     Isn't this all fit to what Krishna says in Gita as "whenever there is loss
     of Dharma, I incarnate to uphold it"? 

     I am not bent upon proving that Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu, but I
     think one must at least look at these points. If one reads about many
     incarnations in India, one will surely see that all of them preach 
     messages aimed at removing the then prevailing problems in the society.

     All things have their own importance. Rituals have importance in keeping a
     common person busy and make him/her more interested in God. A person with
     inclination for a form of God with attributes will progress much faster
     through image worship than contemplating on formless aspects of God. A 
     common person turns to God first to ask for something. Slowly when his/her
     understanding improves, he/she thinks that asking for materialistic things
     or for afterlife happiness is stupid. One can not neglect such traits in
     common people.

     Buddha talked of Brahman without form rather than Brahman with form and
     attributes.

     Do not tell me that no one before Buddha practised selfless service. Yes,
     it was he revolted against caste system at that time and it was correct    
     because castes were never supposed to be based on one's birth.  If one
     reads vedic literature and Gita, one finds that it was one's mental
     inclination more that birth right.  Also, it is not hinted that one
     caste is supirior than other. So Buddha re-asserted the poisition of
     scriptures.

     The sole purpose of replying to this post is to say that Buddha noticed the
     handicaps in the then Hindu society and preached something similar to Raj
     Yoga and Gyana Yoga together.  Whether he was incarnation of God or not
     depends on personal belief.  In this sense, his mission is similar to that
     of Christ. Christ tried to removed the then prevailing problems in
     Judaism and Buddha in Hinduism.  Gambhirananda notes following difference
     between two "for Christ other people did not understand him but his
     desciples did,  But for Buddha other people understood him but his not
     desciples." ( I do not exactly remember the words, I am quoting from my
     memory.  I read his book some 3-4 years back.)  This is the reason why
     Buddhism did not survive in India: its birth place.

-- By an anonymous poster


		B U D D H I S M    I N    A    N U T S H E L L 
		==============================================

				Chapter Three

			      IS IT A RELIGION?


	It is neither a religion in the sense in which that word is commonly 
understood, for it is not "a system of faith and worship owing any allegiance
to a supernatural being."

	Buddhism does not demand blind faith from its adherents.  Here mere
belief is dethroned and is substituted by confidence based on knowledge, which,
in Pali, is known as Saddha.  The confidence placed by a follower on the Buddha
is like that of a sick person in a noted physician, or a student in his teacher.
A Buddhist seeks refuge in the Buddha because it was He who discovered the Path
of Deliverance.

	A Buddhist does not seek refuge in the Buddha with the hope that he 
will be saved by His personal purification.  The Buddha gives no such guarantee.
It is not within the power of a Buddha to wash away the impurities of others.
One could neither purify nor defile another.

	The Buddha, as Teacher, instructs us, but we ourselves are directly 
responsible for our purification.

	Although a Buddhist seeks refuge in the Buddha, he does not make any
self-surrender.  Nor does a Buddhist sacrifice his freedom of thought by 
becoming a follower of the Buddha.  He can exercise his own free will and 
develop his knowledge even to the extent of becoming a Buddha himself.

	The starting point of Buddhism is reasoning or understanding, or, in 
other words, Samma-ditthi.

	To the seekers of truth the Buddha says:
	"Do not accept anything on (mere) hearsay -- (i.e. thinking that thus
have we heard it from a long time).  Do not accept anything by mere tradition --
(i.e. thinking that it has thus been handed down through many generations).  Do
not accept anything on account of mere rumors -- (i.e. by believing what others
say without any investigation).  Do not accept anything just because it accords
with your scriptures.  Do not accept anything by mere supposition.  Do not 
accept anything by mere inference.  Do not accept anything by merely considering
the reasons.  Do not accept anything merely because it agrees with your 
pre-conceived notions.  Do not accept anything merely because it seems 
acceptable -- (i.e. thinking that as the speaker seems to be a good person his 
words should be accepted).  Do not accept anything thinking that the ascetic is
respected by us (therefore it is right to accept his word).

	"But when you now for yourselves -- these things are immoral, these 
things are blame worthy, these things are censured by the wise, these things,
when performed and undertaken, conduce to ruin and sorrow -- then indeed do you
reject them.

	"When you know for yourselves -- these things are moral, these things 
are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things, when 
performed and undertaken, conduce to well-being and happiness -- then do you
live acting accordingly."

	These inspiring words of the Buddha still retain their original force
and freshness.

	Though there is no blind faith, one might argue whether there is no
worshiping of images etc. in Buddhism.

	Buddhists do not worship an image expecting worldly of spiritual 
favors, but pay their reverence to what it represents.

	An understanding Buddhist, in offering flowers and incense to an image,
designedly makes himself feel that he is in the presence of the living Buddha 
and thereby gains inspiration from His noble personality and breathes deep His
boundless compassion.  He tries to follow His noble example.

	The Bo-tree is also a symbol of Enlightenment.  These external objects
of reverence are not absolutely necessary, but they are useful as they tend to
concentrate one's attention.  An intellectual person could dispense with them as
he could easily focus his attention and visualize the Buddha.

	For our own good, and out of gratitude, we pay such external respect;
but what the Buddha expects from His disciples is not so much obeisance as the
actual observance of His Teachings.  The Buddha says -- "He honors me best who
practices my teaching best."  "He who sees the Dharma sees me."

	With regard to images, however, Count Kevserling remarks -- "I see
nothing more grand in this world than the image of the Buddha.  It is an 
absolutely perfect embodiment of spirituality in the visible domain."

	Furthermore, it must be mentioned that there are no petitional or
intercessory prayers in Buddhism.  However much we may pray to the Buddha we 
cannot be saved.  The Buddha does not grant favors to those who pray to Him.
Instead of petitional prayers there is meditation that leads to self-control,
purification and enlightenment.  Meditation is neither a silent reverie nor
keeping the mind blank.  It is an active striving.  It serves as a tonic both
to the heart and the mind.  The Buddha not only speaks of the futility of 
offering prayers but also disparages a slave mentality.  A Buddhist should not
pray to be saved, but should rely on himself and win his freedom.

	"Prayers take the character of private communications, selfish bargaining with God.  It seeks for objects of earthly ambitions and inflames the sense of
self.  Meditation on the other hand is self-change."

	In Buddhism there is not, as in most other religions, an Almighty God to
be obeyed and feared.  The Buddha does not believe in a cosmic potentate, 
omniscient and omnipresent.  In Buddhism there are no divine revelations or 
divine messengers.  A Buddhist is, therefore, not subservient to any higher 
supernatural power which controls his destines and which arbitrarily rewards and
punishes.  Since Buddhists do not believe in revelations of a divine being.
Buddhism does not claim the monopoly of truth and does not condemn any other
religion.  But Buddhism recognizes the infinite latent possibilities of man and
teaches that man can gain deliverance from suffering by his own efforts 
independent of divine help or mediating priests.

	Buddhism cannot, therefore, strictly be called a religion because it is
neither a system of faith and worship, nor "the outward act or form by which men
indicate their recognition of the existence of a God or gods having power over
their own destiny to whom obedience, service, and honor are due."

	If, by religion, is meant "a teaching which takes a view of life that is
more than superficial, a teaching which furnishes men with a guide to conduct 
that is in accord with this its in-look, a teaching which enables those who give
it heed to face life with fortitude and death with serenity,"  or a system to 
get rid of the ills of life, then it is certainly a religion of religions.



In Article: <1992Apr1.035720.21300@iitmax.iit.edu>
v111q3r9@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Yi L Chiang) writes:


>	If the immortal soul, which is supposed to be the essence of man, is 
>eternal, there cannot be either a rise or a fall.  Besides one cannot understand
>why "different souls are so variously constituted at the outset."

When is the "outset"? If you say birth, then one can easily explain that karma
is different for the different souls and thus you have different situations
or circumstances for them -ie. this karma is from previous lives. As for
rising and falling, who rises and falls? This rise and fall is only from
the standpoint of ego consciousness. BTW, the sanskrit term "karma" is also
defined as "action" ('kamma' without the Boston accent ;-) although I'm aware
of the different treatment of these terms in Buddhism and in other schools
of Indian philosophy (and I'm well aware that "kamma" is a Pali word).


>But we worldings, veiled by the web of illusion, mistaken this apparent 
>continuity to be something eternal and go to the extent of introducing an 
>unchanging soul, an Atta, the supposed doer and receptacle of all actions to 
>this ever-changing consciousness.

Could it be that we think we are eternal because we are? That which truly is 
has no beginning and no end, so how do you and I fit into That?

>	If there is no soul, what is it that is reborn?  One might ask.

Ultimately, nothing is born or reborn.

>	Well, there is nothing to be re-born.  When life ceases, the Kammic
>energy re-materializes itself in another form.  

Life does not cease. It only transforms to another state. 
As for continuity of thought, all humans have the sense of "I" and "I am".
As Ramana Maharshi taught, behind every thought of the mind is the "I"
thought and this is the first thought, without this "I-thought" no other
thought arises. We all have this "I-thought" and it is continuous throughout
life and lives. Ramana Maharshi said that if we trace this sense of "I"
or "I am-ness" to its source, one will find ego disappear and then one
abides in the Self, the great I AM THAT I AM. The sense of "I" is felt by
all, no matter where you go or what you do, there is an "I am" feeling.
Ramana Maharshi suggests we enquire who that "I" is. When one searches
for the basis or foundation of dualities, one finds that they are indeed
baseless and non-existent and only Self is. The little "i" of ego or
ahankara is baseless and Ramana Maharshi says that when one looks for the
source of this "i" one only finds "I" of Self. Obviously not the Buddhist
philosophy of today but a view well worth pondering. The rising and falling
pertains to "i" only as the Self has neither beginning nor end, without 
attributes, does not go here nor there, does not appear or disappear, does
not rise nor fall, knows neither birth or death, has no shape nor size, not 
above nor below nor left nor right nor front nor behind, beyond words or 
descriptions, and That alone is. 


	Roger Adams
	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA        		          292 Dwapara :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------




>You quoted Sri Ramana Maharshi and said you were aware that what he
>said was not current Buddhist thought.  This bit of seeing into
>the delusion of i and the fact that all there is is I, is very
>Zen, but in different language.  "i thought" is not at all the
>same as "I thought" though.  i thought gets slain with insight
>into the non-existence of the separate self, or separate anything.
>I thought doesn't really translate into language easily, though.


When you say "I thought ..." who is the "I"? Can you say "I thought.."
or "I did..." or "I want..." without first have "I"?

>There is no enduring self to be reborn/reincarnated.  That's the
>same thing in yet another different garb of language.

You are starting to sound like me ;-) ie. "same thing in yet another
different garb of language".

> Best wishes.
>                                -- Greg
>



Roger Adams <RADAMS@Cerritos.EDU> wrote:
>When you say "I thought ..." who is the "I"? Can you say "I thought.."
>or "I did..." or "I want..." without first have "I"?

When hearing, do you hear the listener?
When looking, do you see the seer?
When feeling, do you feel the feeler?
When thinking, do you think the thinker?
Where?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Wachowitz                               75742@novell1.rz.fht-mannheim.de
   *   wonder everyday   *   nothing in particular   *   all is special   *




Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.



Raj quotes the Buddha, I respond and perhaps jumble it up a bit:


				......
				
       The Perfect One then preached  to  the  five  monks  on  the
       absence  of the True Self in anything that the senses or the
       mind can grasp.


Response:

The Lazy Dude then made some passing remarks to his five friends
on the presence of the True Self in everything that the senses or
the mind can grasp.



				......
Buddha:
				
       "O monks, the thing variously called thought  and  mind  and
       discriminative consciousness is the very same thing to which
       the ignorant common people  cling,  thinking,  "this  is  my
       self."  It  would be better, monks, if they were to approach
       the body, rather than the mind, as the  self.  The  body  is
       seen  enduring  for  many  years,  but  this thing variously
       called thought and mind  and  discriminative  consciousness,
       this  by  night and day dissolves as one thing and reappears
       as another."



Response:

O friends, most people think that their thought or mind is what they
really are.  They look to their mind or some abstraction from it and
think that this is all that comprises them.  It might be better, friends,
if we were to see the body, rather than the mind, as the self.  The
body is seen enduring for many years, but the thoughts and stuff just
kinda go away every now and again.




Buddha:

       "As a monkey faring through jungle and forest  catches  hold
       of a bough, and having let go takes hold of another, even so
       does this  thing  variously  called  thought  and  mind  and
       discriminative   consciousness,   this   by  night  and  day
       dissolves as one thing and reappears as another."


Response:

Yeah, what she said.


Buddha:

       The body, monks, is not the self. For if it were,  it  would
       not  be  subject  to  disease, and it would be exactly as we
       might wish it to be. So  also  with  feelings,  perceptions,
       predisposing     mental   formations,   and   discriminative
       consciousness. For if, monks,  the  consciousness  were  the
       self,  it  would  not be subject to anguish, and it would be
       exactly as we might wish it to be."


Response:

The body, friends, IS the self, as much as any self you are likely to
find.  It lasts longer, it seems more real, it has weakness, it changes.
Whoever said that the self cannot change?  And who says that because
a thing is not subject to anguish that it is 1) real or 2) the way we want
it to be?  No, the Buddha was talking out of both sides of hir mouth.

There is the path of the Busibody, there is the Path of the Laze.  The
Busibuddha goes for the gusto, tries for 'enlightenment' and must reach
the end of such a path.  For the Laze, the body is sufficient.


Buddha:

       "Monks,  what  do  you  think?  Is  the  body  permanent  or
       perishable?"


Response:

Yin or Yang?    Nirvana or Samsara?  What do YOU think?


Buddha:

       "Perishable, Lord," answered the monks.


Response:

The Buddha was talking to yes-men, not monks.


Buddha:

       "And that which is perishable, does it cause pain or lasting
       happiness?"


Response:

Another ridiculous question.  Asking for absolutes in a sea of impermanence.


Buddha:

       "It causes pain, Lord."

       "But is it correct to regard what is perishable and  painful
       as 'this is my ego, this is my soul, this is my true self?'"


Response:

This story is not told by the Buddha, but by someone who wants to start a
religion.  'Correctness' is a foul concept meant to enslave and disempower.
If Buddha DID say this, then I suspect the translator.

As you may have suspected, my answer would be something like:  It is 'correct'
to regard myself as anything I like.  I could regard myself as a bunch of
molecules, a soul, a bit of Buddha-nature, or even as a body, and still be
just as 'correct'.  Soul was invented by Greeks, who translated this?!


Buddha (and progs):

       "Certainly not, Lord."

       "As with body, monks, so also  with  feelings,  perceptions,
       predisposing    mental    formations,   and   discriminative
       consciousness. Would it be correct to regard  any  of  these
       aggregates, perishable and painful, as 'this is my ego, this
       is my soul, this is my true self?'"


Response:

Again, this depends upon perspective, as I'm sure the Buddha knew.

As with body, friends, so also with feelings, perceptions,
predisposing mental formations, and discriminative
consciousness.  Would you like to regard any of these aggregates,
perishable and painful, as 'this is my ego, this is my soul, this is
my true self'?  That is your option.  Pray you choose it only with
much thought previous.


Buddha and responding animals:

       "That is impossible, Lord."

       "Well, monks, that being the case, he who is able to see all
       things  as they really are will regard all bodies, feelings,
       perceptions,     predispositions,     and     discriminative
       consciousness,  be  they  past,  present, or future, be they
       internal or external, gross or subtle, far or near, as 'none
       of  these is my ego, none of these is my soul, none of these
       is my true self.'"


Response:

Here the Buddha redeems Hirself.  Note that she says: '...that being
the case' and 'he who is able to see all things as they really are
will...'.  I like these qualifications and think that it preserves some
of the content where it might otherwise become an orthodox windstorm.


Well, friends, that being the case, she who is able to see all things
as they really are will regard all bodies, feelings, perceptions,
predispositions, and discriminitive consciousness - past, present or
future, external or internal, gross or subtle, far or near - as
'these are my self', 'these are my soul', 'these are my true self',
and learn from them accordingly.



Buddha:

       "Considering this, O monks, the wise  Aryan  disciple  turns
       away  from body, feelings, perceptions, predispositions, and
       discriminative consciousness. Turning  away  from  them,  he
       becomes  free from craving; through being free from craving,
       he becomes emancipated; and in him who  is  emancipated  the
       knowledge arises: 'I am free; rebirth is exhausted; lived is
       the life religious; nothing more remains to be  done;  there
       is no more of life under finite conditions.'"


Response:

Considering this, O friends, the lowly Laze takes all as Master and
turns toward the body, feelings, perceptions, predispositions, and
discriminative consciousness.  Turning toward them, she becomes
able to see the difference between craving and living; through being
able to release craving she becomes liberated; and in hir who is 
liberated the knowledge arises:  'I am free; rebirth is an oversimplification;
life is to be lived, nothing else; there is nothing to do; so much nothing
to do that I better get out there and have some fun real soon!


Our narrator:

       Thus spoke Sakyamuni Buddha; and well pleased were the monks
       with his words..............................................

       [From Robert Allen Mitchell's "The Buddha: His Life Retold,"
       Paragon  House,  New  York,  NY,  1989  (pages 58-59)]

       ---  A "Beautiful Book to read."
               -----------------------


Response:

Thus spoke nobody important from the background.  Not written about in any
book, not retold to countless followers, perhaps not that interesting to
all concerned.



Invoke me under my stars!   Love is the law, love under will.



Yours in grand delusions,

Tagi





		B U D D H I S M    I N    A    N U T S H E L L 
		==============================================
		   	   written by Narada Thera


		 	       Chapter  Eleven

			     THE PATH TO NIBBANA


	How is Nibbana to be achieved?

	It is by following the Noble Eight-fold Path which consists of Right
Understanding (Samma-ditthi), Right Thoughts (samma-sankappa), Right Speech 
(samma-vaca), Right Actions (samma-kammanta), Right Livelihood (samma-ajiva),
Right Effort (samma-vayama), Right Mindfulness (samma-sati), and Right 
Concentration (samma-samadhi).

	1.  RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, which is the key-note of Buddhism, is explained
as the knowledge of the four Noble Truths.  To understand rightly means to
understand things as they really are and not as they appear to be.  This refers
primarily to a correct understanding of oneself, because, as the Rohitassa Sutta
states "Dependent on this one-fanthom long body with its consciousness" are all
the four Truths.  In the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path, Right 
Understanding stands at the beginning as well as at its end.  A minimum degree 
of Right Understanding is necessary at the very beginning because it gives the
right motivations to the other seven factors of the Path and gives to them 
correct direction.  At the culmination of the practice, Right Understanding has
matured into perfect Insight Wisdom (vipacsana-panna), leading directly to the
Stages of Sainthood.

	2.  Clear vision or right understanding leads to clear thinking.  The
second factor of the Noble Eight-fold Path is therefore, RIGHT THOUGHTS
(samma-sankappa), which serves the double purpose of eliminating evil thoughts
and developing pure thoughts.  Right Thoughts, in this particular connection,
are threefold.  They consist of:

		i.  NEKKHAMMA -- Renunciation of worldly pleasures or the 
				virtues	of selflessness, which is opposed to 
				attachment, selfishness, and possessiveness.

	       ii.  AVYAPADA -- Loving-kindness, goodwill, or benevolence, which
				is opposed to hatred, ill-will, or aversion; and

	      iii.  AVIHIMSA -- Harmlessness or compassion, which is opposed to
				cruelty and callousness. 

	3.  Right Thoughts lead to RIGHT SPEECH, the third factor.  This 
includes abstinence from falsehood, slandering harsh words, and frivolous talk.

	4.  Right Speech must be followed by RIGHT ACTION which comprises 
abstinence from killing, stealing and sexual misconduct.

	5.  Purifying his thoughts, words and deeds at the outset, the spiritual
pilgrim tries to purify his LIVELIHOOD by refraining from the five kinds of 
trade which are forbidden to a lay-disciple.  They are trading in arms, human
beings, animals for slaughter, intoxicating drinks and drugs, and poisons.

	For monks, wrong livelihood consists of hypocritical conduct and wrong
means of obtaining the requisites of monk-life.

	6.  RIGHT EFFORT is fourfold, namely:
		
		i.  the endeavour to discard evil that has already arisen;
	       ii.  the endeavour to prevent the arising of unarisen evil;
	      iii.  the endeavour to develop unarisen good;
	       iv.  the endeavour to promote the good which has already arisen.

	7.  RIGHT MINDFULNESS is constant mindfulness with regard to body, 
feelings, thoughts, and mind-objects.

	8.  Right Effort and Right Mindfulness lead to RIGHT CONCENTRATION.  It
is the one-pointedness of mind, culminating in the Jhanas or meditative 
absorptions.

	Of these eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path the first two are
grouped under the heading of Wisdom (panna), the following three under Morality
(sila), and the last three under Concentration (samadhi).  But according to the
order of development the sequence is as follows:

	I.  Morality (sila)  -  Right Speech
			     -  Right Action
			     -  Right Livelihood

       II.  Concentration (samadhi)  -  Right Effort
				     -  Right Mindfulness
				     -  Right Concentration

      III.  Wisdom (panna)  -  Right Understanding
			    -  Right Thoughts

	Morality (sila) is the first stage on this path to Nibbana.

	Without killing or causing injury to any living creatures, man should be
kind and compassionate towards all, even to the tiniest creature that crawls at
his feet.  Refraining from stealing, he should be upright and honest in all his 
dealings.  Abstaining from sexual misconduct which debases the exalted nature of
man, he should be pure.  Shunning false speech, he should be truthful.  Avoiding
pernicious drinks that promote heedlessness, he should be sober and diligent.

	These elementary principles of regulated behaviour are essential to one
who treads the path to Nibbana.  Violation of them means the introduction of 
obstacles on the path which will obstruct his moral progress.  Observance of
them means steady and smooth progress along the path.

	The spiritual pilgrim, disciplining thus his words and deeds, may, 
advance a step further and try to control his senses.

	While he progresses slowly and steadily with regulated word and deed and
restrained senses, the Kammic force of this striving aspirant may compel him to
renounce worldly pleasures and adopt the ascetic life.  To him then comes the 
idea that,
	
		"A den of strife is household life,
		And filled with toil and need;
		But free and high as the open sky
		Is the life the homeless lead."

	It should not be understood that everyone is expected to lead the life
of a Bhikkhu or a celibate life to achieve one's goal.  One's spiritual progress
is expedited by being a Bhikkhu although as a lay follower one can become an
Arahat.  After attaining the third stage of Sainthood, one leads a life of 
celibacy.

	Securing a firm footing on the ground of morality, the progressing 
pilgrim then embarks upon the higher practice of Samadhi, the control and 
culture of the mind -- the second stage on this Path.

	Samadhi -- is the "one-pointedness of the mind." It is the concentration
of the mind on one object to the entire exclusion of all irrelevant matter.

	There are different subjects for meditation according to the 
temperaments of the individuals.  Concentration on respiration is the easiest to
gain the one-pointedness of the mind.  Meditation on loving-kindness is very
beneficial as it is conducive to mental peace and happiness.

	Cultivation of the four sublime states -- loving-kindness (Metta),
compassion (Karuna), sympathetic joy (Mudita) and equanimity (Upekkha) -- is 
highly commendable.

	After giving careful consideration to the subject for contemplation, he
should choose the one most suited to his temperament.  This being satisfactorily
settled, he makes a persistent effort to focus his mind until he becomes so
wholly absorbed and interested in it, that all other thoughts get ipso facto 
excluded from the mind.  The five hindrances to progress -- namely, 
sense-desire, hatred, sloth and torpor, restlessness and brooding and doubts are
then temporarily inhibited.  Eventually he gains ecstatic concentration and, to
his indescribable joy, becomes enwrapt in Jhana, enjoying the calmness and
serenity of a one-pointed-mind.

	When one gains this perfect one-pointedness of the mind it is possible 
for one to develop the five Supernormal Powers (Abhinna) -- Divine Eye
(Dibbacakkhu), Divine Ear (Dibbasota), Reminiscence of past births 
(Pubbenivasanus-sati-nana).  Thought Reading (Paracitta vijanana) and different
Psychic Powers (Iddhividha).  It must not be understood that those supernormal 
powers are essential for Sainthood.

	Though the mind is now purified there still lies dormant in him the 
tendency to give vent to his passions, for, by concentration, passions are 
lulled to sleep temporarily.  They may rise to the surface at unexpected
moments.

	Both Discipline and Concentration are helpful to clear the Path of its
obstacles but it is Insight (Vipassana Panna) alone which enable one to see 
things as they truly are, and consequently reach the ultimate goal by 
completely annihilating the passions inhibited by Samadhi.  This is the third
and the final stage on the Path to Nibbana.

	With his one-pointed mind which now resembles a polished mirror he looks
at the world to get a correct view of life.  Whenever he turns his eyes he sees
nought but the Three Characteristics -- ANICCA (transciency), DUKKHA (sorrow) 
and ANATTA (soul-lessness) standing out in bold relief.  He comprehends that 
life is constantly changing and all conditioned things are transcient.  Neither
in heaven nor on earth does he find any genuine happiness, for every form of
pleasure is a prelude to pain.  What is transcient is therefore painful, and 
where change and sorrow prevail there cannot be a permanent immortal soul.

	Whereupon, of these three characteristics, he chooses one that appeals
to him most and intently keeps on developing Insight in that particular 
direction until that glorious day comes to him when he would realize Nibbana for
the first time in his life, having destroyed the three Fetters -- self-illusion
(Sakkaya-ditthi), doubts (Vicikiccha), indulgence in (wrongful) rites and 
ceremonies (Silabbata-paramasa).

	At this stage he is called a Sotapanna (Stream-Winner) -- one who has
entered the stream that leads to Nibbana.  As he has not eradicated all Fetters
he is reborn seven times at the most.

	Summoning up fresh courage, as a result of this glimpse of Nibbana, the
Pilgrim makes rapid progress and cultivating deeper Insight becomes a 
Sakadagami -- (Once Returner) - by weakening two more Fetters -- namely 
Sense-desire (Kamaraga) and ill-will (Patigha).  He is called a Sakadagami
because he is reborn on earth only once in case he does not attain Arahatship.

	It is in the third stage of Sainthood -- ANAGAMI (Never-Returner) that 
he completely discards the aforesaid two Fetters.  Thereafter, he neither 
returns to this world nor does he seek birth in the celestial realms, since he 
has no more desire for sensual pleasures.  After death he is reborn in the
"Pure Abodes" (Suddhavasa), a congenial Brahma plane, till he attains 
Arahatship.

	Now the saintly pilgrim, encouraged by the unprecedented success of his
endeavours, makes his final advance and destroying the remaining Fetters, 
namely, lust after life in Realms of Forms (Ruparaga) and Formless Realms
(Aruparaga), conceti (Mana), restlessness (Uddhacca), and ignorance (Avijja),
becomes a perfect Saint -- an Arahat, a Worthy One.

	Instantly he realizes that what was to be accomplished has been done, 
that a heavy burden of sorrow has been relinquished, that all forms of 
attachment have been totally annihilated, and that the Path to Nibbana has been
trodden.  The Worthy-One now stands on heights more than celestial, far removed
from the rebellious passions and defilements of the world, realizing the 
unutterable bliss of Nibbana and like many an Arahat of old, uttering that paean
of joy:-

		"Goodwill and wisdom, mind by method trained,
		 The highest conduct on good morals based,
		 This maketh mortals pure, not rank or wealth."

	As T.H. Huxley states -- "Buddhism is a system which knows no God in the
western sense, which denies a soul to man, which counts the belief in 
immortality a blunder, which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice, which
bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation, which in its 
original purity knew nothing of vows of obedience and never sought the aid of 
the secular arm: yet spread over a considerable moiety of the world with 
marvellous rapidity -- and is still the dominant creed of a large fraction of 
mankind."




The Eskimos, the Laplanders, the Greenlanders, and the Russian
Kurgi tribes are the populations with the highest animal flesh 
consumption in the world, and they also have the lowest life
expectancy, often only about 30 years.

    Kapleu, P., "To Cherish All Life," Harper and Row, San Francisco,
    1981, pg. 67

The Ecuadorian Vilcambas, the Abkhasians (near the Black Sea), the 
Himalayan Hunzas, the Yucatan Indians, the East Indian Todas, and the 
Pakistan Hunzakuts all eat little or no meat (~1.5% calories from meat
and dairy combined) and have life the highest expectancies in the 
world.

    Hur, R., "Food Reform: Our Desperate Need," Heidelberg Publishers,
    1975 pgs 21,95

    Ibid

    Leaf, A., National Geographic, 143:93, 1973

Mike
    


Mr. Wachowitz makes a good point by quoting Hui-Neng:
 
* Enlightenment still happens without a tree
* The mind is also not a mirror.
* Where nothing is stable, not a single thing,
* Where should the dust remain?
 
My point about effort was serious.  Great effort is required
in examining the inner mind.  Sloppiness of effort produces karma.
Meditation can be many things, of course, let's not get semantic,
I am concerned about Westerners pursuing this process of inner
discovery as a hobby, and then creating flip responses to questions
of what is this? and what is that? and "so what..."
 
Bassui says:
  Whether awake or asleep, standing or sitting, deeply questioning
what thing is your inner mind with the profound desire for 
enlightenment, is called practice, meditation, will, and the spirit
of the way.  Questioning the inner mind like this is also called
zazen. 
 
There has developed in the past 40 years in the West a so-called
"Supermarket Buddhism."  This amalgam of quick, cute responses to
serious questions is harmful to the serious student.  I believe that
most practitioners of zen in the West are victims of this sloppy
and lazy "feel good" mess.  I believe that it is possible that
Western languages do not have the capacity to express the subtlety
which the Oriental languages contain in their brevity.  
Reading bad translations of Zen texts can certainly lead people
into bad mental habits in their consideration of this matter.
 
Just one more quick point on another subject, one I'd like to see
discussed -------
 
What has happened to the idea of Hell as an impetus to serious
zazen?  Many ancient texts urge on their students to greater effort
by this threat.  Reincarnation into worse conditions has also
vanished from modern Zen treatises.  Why?
 
Maybe it's all this "feel-good" zen...
 
HA HA HA!
 
Jeff



>From idealord@dorsai.com (Jeff Harrington):
> My point about effort was serious.  Great effort is required
> in examining the inner mind.
It definitely isn't my intention to "discuss away" effort. I agree
wholeheartly that effort is (usually) necessary to attain "something"
(whatever this may be). The request to "practice according to the first
poem" - to take care, work - was meant very seriously. Presenting both
positions - work and nothing to reach - may appear contradictory,
but I don't think they really are. The formulation that "there is no goal"
can be interpreted in (at least) two ways:
- You are already at the "goal", so there is no goal.
- You will always have to work, there is no "goal" that frees you from work.
I think both should be seen _together_.
Complete control is an illusion, wild and uncontrolled behaviour is evil.

> Meditation can be many things, of course, let's not get semantic,
I didn't ask you what you mean by meditation to argue about semantic
subtleties, but to encourage you to talk about it (and yes, of course
practice is necessary, but it may be helpful to get some advice about how
to practice). I'm sorry if that came over as (useless) hair-splitting,
or even an attempt to "attack" your position (or that of anybody else).

> I am concerned about Westerners pursuing this process of inner
> discovery as a hobby, and then creating flip responses to questions
> of what is this? and what is that? and "so what..."
I completely agree that funny dialogues alone will only provide you with
a bunch of jokes at best (not that I didn't like jokes, I really like them),
but hardly a well-founded understanding (or should I say non-understanding?).
Pursuing those "funny" questions seriously can be one method to "throw away"
the attachment to concepts, taking them for reality.
That reminds me of a quote I've read a few years ago:
"Who doesn't laugh didn't get the point.
 Who only laughs missed the chance for enlightenment."

> There has developed in the past 40 years in the West a so-called
> "Supermarket Buddhism." This amalgam of quick, cute responses to
> serious questions is harmful to the serious student.
Again I do completely agree. The "work" can be supported by questions/answers,
but it surely has to be done, and nobody else can do it for you.
A problem of broad audiences like this newsgroup is that what is helpful for
some may cause problems for others, and both may need help.

> I believe that it is possible that
> Western languages do not have the capacity to express the subtlety
> which the Oriental languages contain in their brevity.
I strongly doubt that. There are many examples in the ancient scriptures where
the teachers has to work very hard to wipe out any attachment to these words/
notions. These words are just symbols for what in fact cannot be described,
and I don't think the native-speakers of those languages (be it now or in the
past) have in any way an easyer job. I agree that it may often be preferable
to let some words untranslated, to stress the point that they are only
symbols; but I certainly dislike the way some people use technical terms
to confuse novices, perhaps trying to show what "experts" they already are.
I find that habit disgusting.

> Reading bad translations of Zen texts can certainly lead people
> into bad mental habits in their consideration of this matter.
Agreed, there's much garbage floating around. Perhaps it would be useful
to discuss experiences people have with various books, giving hints for
those who are (not yet) in the position to evaluate their quality?

> Reincarnation into worse conditions has also vanished from modern Zen
> treatises. Why?
Who really knows something about reincarnation (and I don't mean just having
read books or listened to people supposedly knowing what they are speaking
of) should elaborate on that. I'm certainly not in the position to do that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Wachowitz
75742@novell1.rz.fht-mannheim.de



mayne@sun16.scri.fsu.edu (Bill Mayne) writes:

>Briefly, some in alt.atheism (and others) define atheism as lack of
>belief or non-belief in God (capital "G" because this is mostly in
>relation to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic diety which is the predominant
>god of western culture and "atheism" is a western word.) They assert
>that this is not the positive belief in the non-existence of God.
>Certainly by this weak definition Buddhists are atheists. But some
>would argue that (1) the conception of god involved here is too narrow,
>and in any case this non-belief is properly called "agnosticism".

>The caveat is that I am using a later
>Judeo-Christian-Islamic definition of "god", i.e. an omnipotent and
>immortal being who created an in some sense rules the universe.

The trouble with this definition of atheism (I know, I said I didn't want
to go into this but there is a point that I want to make) is that it focuses
on a man-made concept of God - ie. "you tell me that God is a creator of
this universe and sometimes punishes us and sometimes rewards us etc. therefore
I am an atheist".  But what if God is entirely different from what anyone
in these man-made traditions has ever said about Her/Him/It?  

To say you are an atheist implies that not only do you reject any given
concept of God that has been given by various religions and often deteriorated
over time into foolish dogma and doctrine, but you also would seem to be
rejecting any concept of God that is entirely different from the so called
"Judeo-Christian-Islamic" concept or even some fundamentalist Hindu concept
that you reject.  That is like someone telling me that God is an all-powerful
being that sends people to an awful Hell forever if they don't accept a 
particular man as their savior.  I might respond to this  and say "Well, if
that is God, then I am an atheist!" but what if that *isn't* God at all
but some faulty man-made idea (which surely would be the case).  The faulty
concept should not logically exclude the existence of an entirely different
God.  But the point I really want to make here and in previous posts is that
in some spiritual paths its not necessary or desirable to conceptualize
ultimate truth(s) and therefore non-belief can be useful in the way that
it prevents false satisfaction with mere mental concepts of Truth or God or
Self - THAT must be experience or known directly.

	Roger Adams

	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



id38@vaxb.acs.unt.edu (Sreenivas Koney) writes:

>Well.. it's common in India to develop an intricate thread of thought..
>and finally free the student from the largely pedagogical exercise by
>having the lead character self-destruct.. e.g. Kali.. after all her
>acts, chops off her head, letting you go!  I'm inclined to think Zen should
>also have this undercurrent of "negate everything including their own
>negations" to conform to prevent the student from being too stuck up with
>concepts.  Once the psychological transformation is complete.. nirvana
>has been reached.. sunyata is the Brahman.. everything is equally invalid
>or equally valid. Now, how can a Buddhist (one who has reached nirvana)
>answer the "atheism/theism" query!?  He cannot.

This is what I meant by "negating the negation" in that you don't allow
yourself to get comfortable with concepts such as "atheism" or "God" or
"nirvana" since certain spiritual paths would want to discourage false
satisfaction with certain postures or positions such as "God does not exist"
or "God does exist" and rather find out directly what Reality or Truth or
God is and forget about posturing around some fool's concept of what God
is.  This is quite different than denying that God exists which is also
foolish because you are giving too much weight or credibility to some
"official" concept of what God is which has nothing to do with what God is.
So what is God?  I think certain paths such as vedanta if not some branch
of Buddhism would say to find out through direct experience or direct 
knowledge.

>For the Hindoos.. several forms of yoga exist.. which include karma yoga,
>raja yoga.. etc.  Every form of endeavour towards englightenment is equally
>valid.. yoga = bhoga. Hearing sermons and reading books may be valid for
>some people.  Buddhism, as in Japan, has a stronger emphasis on bhoga = yoga
>and concluding Buddhism is atheistic is not quite correct.  There are
>Avalokiteswaras who specialize in endowing gifts of learning and in days
>past many a monastry had that dude reigning.. Zen might be a different flavor.

>Even in Hinduism.. Gods are only personifications of Brahman.. they
>don't really exist!  Hinduism on the street is a far cry from this.. tho!

I feel that what Sreenivas Koney shows here is that the seeming contradictions
between Buddhism and Hinduism (and I would personally add Christianity too)
are man-made and also due to the lack of understanding of how seemingly
opposite approaches to enlightenment can still wind up with enlightenment.
Anyone care to join me in seeing the truth in these various approaches
and that following one does not mean the others are false?



	Roger Adams

	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------




In article <1991Oct8.154942.12669@nas.nasa.gov> jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>For nearly a year and a half, with varying regularity, I have been
>attending the meditation classes run by the local FWBO (Friends of the
>Western Buddhist Order), who teach mindfulness of breathing and metta
>bhavana.

Some background: I have no direct experience with FWBO, but I have read
some of their literature and I know people who have had direct
experience.  FWBO is a blend of Mahayana and Theravada teaching.  The
founder was originally ordained in the Theravada tradition in Sri
Lanka. The two meditation practices you mentioned, mindfulness of
breathing and metta bhavana are to most prevalent forms of meditation
in the Theravada tradition and the emphasis on them in FWBO probably
reflects Theravada roots. (I emphasize this because of some things which
follow.) The Mahayana tradition and many non-Buddhist traditions also
use mindfulness of breathing and some kind of metta bhavana, though
often under other names.

>  The latter [metta bhavana] I find impossible, not to my knowledge ever
>having experienced metta, and thus having little idea of how to evoke it.

Could it be that you are making things unnecessarily difficult or over
interpreting here? "Metta" is a Pali (and possibly also Sanskrit) word
usually translated "loving kindness". It is not specially related to an
ecstatic meditative state. Ordinary people don't experience metta in a
very pure form like the Buddha, but surely you have experienced some
degree of loving kindness, at least toward yourself or people or
animals (e.g. pets) who are especially close and dear to you. I don't
know about FWBO specifically, but the traditional metta meditation
starts by building on that. This is based on the sound psychological
principle that it is natural to want happiness for yourself, and that
you can't love others unless you first love yourself. You develop metta
first for yourself and then proceed to direct it to others. There are
recitations like:

May I be well, peaceful, and happy.
May no harm come to me.
May no difficulty come to me.
May no problem come to me.
May I always meet with success.
May I have the patience, courage, understanding, and determination,
to meet and overcome the inevitable diffulties, problems, and failures
  in life."

May my parents be well, peaceful, and happy...
May my teachers be well, peaceful, and happy...
[and so on through my relatives, friends, indifferent people (i.e. those
to whom I have no special connection)...and finally my enemies and
(summarizing and culminating in) all living beings.]

This kind of metta bhavana is actually one of the most accessible forms
of meditation. In my practice tradition it is often recommended that
each session begin with metta bhavana, continue with mindfulness of
breathing or some other method, and end with sharing merit (especially
for those who like a little ritual).

By the way, metta is one of the four "brahma viharas" (literally
"divine abodes") or wholesome attitudes. The others are "piti" or
sympathetic joy (being happy for the well being of others), "karuna" or
compassion (the wholesome wish for others who are suffering to be free
from suffering), and "upekha" or equanimity. All the brahma viharas are
suitable subjects for meditation. The traditional forms are similar to
metta, i.e. beginning with yourself (the easiest), and extending to
those dear to you (not so hard), and on enemies (the hardest). For
equanimity the order is reversed, since equanimity is most difficult
toward one's self, easiest toward indifferent people.

Again, in the Buddha or a saint these are perfected to a far greater
degree than in ordinary people. But that doesn't mean that ordinary
people don't have some sense of them. That is one reason why they are
such a good starting point. Buddhism recognizes that you have to start
where you are.

>  I
>find mindfulness of breathing possible, but have yet to notice any
>effect whatever, and my stubbornness in persisting is beginning to wear
>thin.

I also find the purest form of mindfulness of breathing very difficult
and I'm certainly not a qualified teacher. Part of the trouble may be
grasping at extraordinary experiences rather than just calmly
practicing without such subtle (or not so subtle) craving.

I have found the exercises described in the Maha Sattipathanna (sp?)
Sutta to be helpful. Basically these tie the noting of other mental and
physical occurrences to the breath "Calming the mind I breathe in.
Calming the mind. I breathe out...  Experiencing sensual desire I
breathe in.  Experiencing sensual desire I breathe out... Free from
sensual desire I breathe in..." It sounds pretty simplistic but if you
just literally follow the directions of the sutta the meaning may
become clear. Living teachers are great if you can find one, but you
could do worse than going to the original texts for instruction on
Buddhist meditation.

>Is there anyone here who has actually experienced such things as access
>concentration, the four dhyanas, and emptiness?  Should I disregard
>them as being merely ancient mythology?  If so, what reason is there
>for meditating?

I would not dismiss them, but neither would I be concerned about them.

You may have trouble finding people who openly claim such experiences.
I am somewhat skeptical of self-proclaimed enlightened masters. The few
people I know who seem to have very developed meditation practice and
virtue and who may well have experienced some jhanas are extremely
modest about their accomplishments.

For a monk to falsely claim certain spiritual attainments is
"parijika", one of the most serious offenses against the monastic
code.  As a result of this the tradition in the Theravada Sangha has
become to play it safe and never to make such claims for oneself,
though there may have been some recent exceptions and it is not unknown
for students to claim that their teachers are/were enlightened.

This complete refusal to announce or generally to recognize
accomplishmensts may well be going too far, since there were people
acknowledged as sotapannas and on up through arahants (degrees of
spiritual attainments) in the Buddha's time and for a while afterward.
I liken this (and I'll probably get in trouble here) to the Jewish
tradition of not speaking or writing the name of G_d, which some say is
derived from the command not to take the name of G_d in vain, or to
keeping separate dishes for beef and milk because of the command not to
cook the meat of a calf in its mother's milk. (Apologies to Jewish
readers if I have massacred the explanation or this doesn't agree with
your understanding.)

The reason for meditating isn't to grasp at experiences. Concentration
is just a tool, and feelings just a by product. The important thing is
understanding. This is a hard lesson to learn. I may ruffle some
feathers here but I'll assert that a good grounding in teaching, such
as may be gained through reading, listening to good teachers, etc. is
valuable partly because it may lead to more wholesome motivation to
persist in practice.

>I recently discovered the existence of two other meditation groups in
>the local area, which I might visit sometime.

By all means if you haven't found the practice you have been taught
suits you look around. There are many kinds of people and many
authentic styles. Few if any modern teachers have the skill of the
Buddha in matching style of practice to the individual. So, without
casting aspersions on any, it may be good to consider a change,
especially if you haven't previously explored more than one option.

>And that's it.  I have no problem with the response of those around me,
>as I live alone and am disinclined to discuss such matters except with
>those who have some understanding of them.

Oops. Disregard the above as I can claim little if any real
understanding. (I realize that looks like I'm making a show of false
modesty. So be it. I know it is true.) Why bring it up on the network
at all? :-)

>  All too often I see
>meditation being regarded by the ignorant only as a therapy for the
>mentally inadequate or as flaky New-Age mumbo-jumbo.

Sometimes the ignorant are right. I believe this is a good reason to
stay grounded in the original (written) sources or follow a teacher
who is.

>I have also tried the exercises in Iyengar's "Light on Pranayama". 
>Whenever I have seen pranayama mentioned anywhere, it has always been
>to the accompaniment of grave warnings about the dangers of
>unsupervised practice, yet for me it has had as little effect as
>meditation, and I no longer practice it.

It appears that you and I are very much alike. I think the dangers of
meditation are exaggerated, like saying to be careful jumping too high
because you can hurt yourself falling down. Yeah, maybe if you are a
good enough athlete to jump that high. Not me. My problem is getting
off the ground at all. My question isn't is a practice safe, but is
it effective?

I wish you success in your search.

Bill Mayne




In article <1991Oct8.154942.12669@nas.nasa.gov> jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>
>For nearly a year and a half, with varying regularity, I have been
>attending the meditation classes run by the local FWBO (Friends of the
>Western Buddhist Order), who teach mindfulness of breathing and metta
>bhavana.  The latter I find impossible, not to my knowledge ever having
>experienced metta, and thus having little idea of how to evoke it.  I
>find mindfulness of breathing possible, but have yet to notice any
>effect whatever, and my stubbornness in persisting is beginning to wear
>thin.

I would recommend an intensive meditation retreat. With
meditation of ten or more hours/day for several days in
a row, a strong momentum of concentration builds. When
concentration is strong, mindfulness can become very
penetrating and the whole experience becomes quite 
interesting.

There are two factors of mind that are important in
meditation practice. The first is *initial* application
of the mind to the object of meditation. If you are
practising awareness of breathing, this would be the
energy to connect to the in-breath just as it begins,
and to the out-breath just as that begins. This
particular mental factor is a direct antidote to the
hindrance of sloth/torpor. The effort to make this
initial connection is very useful in overcoming
sleepiness or laziness in the mind.

The second factor is the energy required to *sustain*
attention for the entire duration of the object. Usually,
in vipassana practice, attention is directed towards the
sensations of in- and out- breathing at the tip of the
nose, or the rising and falling of the abdomen caused by
the breathing. So, this would be the energy to be aware
of the full length of the in-breath, or one full rising.
This factor of mind is an antidote to the hindrance of
doubt. When there is sustained attention through the
life of the object, there is no more doubt about its
nature. This brings great clarity into the mind, which
is necessary for knowing all the secondary objects of
meditation.

These two factors of mind have to be brought into play
again and again. Connect and sustain attention for an
in-breath, then an out-breath, then in-, breath after
breath. This greatly simplifies the practice and brings
it down to one half-breath at a time. These factors are
greatly strengthened by continuity in practice- hence
the value of the retreat experience. Additionally, 
after several days of vipassana practice, metta becomes
much more accesible.

There is a lot that can be said about practice outside
retreat - but that'll have to be another post. Meditation
can transform our whole understanding of life, so please
be persistent! Good luck...

Cheers
Sridhar




SRE Netters:

Once again, I am glad to see such a great response regarding mantra yoga,
or the practice of japa as I have explained for those of you who have emailed
me personally. For the benefit of all netters, I am going to post a nice
overview of mantray yoga for the  those of you who cannot email me directly
for whatever reason.  The mercy of Srila Prabupada is for the benefit
of all humanity and living entities, unconditionally.  Her goes..

In 1965 Srila Prabupada, a spiritual master from India, visited the US while
taking sannyas (old age renunciation from worldly life) to teach westerners
about "mantra yoga" - which, literally,  means worshipping God through the
invocation or chanting of his holy names.  In the shastras from India,
there are avatars of the Supreme Vishnu who have incarnated into physical life
to save the planet from destruction.  Matsya - the fish incarnation saved
Manu the first man;  the "boar" incarnation saved the planet after it
was hit by a comet and knocked into outer space, Buddha - the enlightened 
incarnation, Rama - the King who saved Sita  - his eternal consort from the
demon Ravana, and Krsna - the cowherd boy from Vrindaban who played
his transcendental flute. The savior of this age of Kali Yuga is Kalki - who
will appear riding a white horse - and he wil kill demons with his sword and
also save devotees of the Supreme Lord.

The chanting of God's names - Rama,Krsna, etc.  enable one to approach the
supreme Godhead through the invocation, if you will, of his names.  
The goal of life is to worship God at every step, for , ultimately, our real
relationship outside of the cycle of material reincarnation is of that with the
Supreme Lord inthe spiritual sky. By chanting the maha-mantra - which 
delivers ourselves from nescience to spiritual awareness or awakening - 
we are surrendering our desire for material sense gratification so that we will
enable our consciousness to associate with that of the Supreme Lord - who is
sat-chit-ananda - or the embodiment of knowledge, bliss and
eternality.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to his disciple Arjuna: "Whenever there is a
decline of dharmma, I myself decline ".  Thus, the supreme God incarnates time
after time to save the world from destruction. 

Jesus, similarly, preached that we must  "praise God with all thy heart and
soul"  - "Hallowed be thy name".  Thus, the chanting of God's names (japa) and
the congregationl chanting (kirtana) are an extremely "auspicious" engagements
which not only enables one to "transcend" material consciousness and attain
spiritual, or original consciousness, but is also a helps you, as
jiva-spirit-soul - realize your eternal,relationship with God that is beyond
time, space, or any mundane measurement.

The mantra is 

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna 
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama 
Rama Rama Hare Hare

Srila Prabupada calls this the "maha" or great mantra.  Man=mind, tra=deliver
from.  In other words, while incarnated in a physical body, we  have material
consciousness, usually.  This mantra can help take your 
consciousness to the spiritual level, or original state of sat-chit-anada
(knowledge, eternality and bliss, cosmic).

In this cycle of the earth, known as the Kali Yuga, the recommended sacrifice  -
known in sanskrit as "Yuga Dharmma"   - to transcend the "wheel  of samsara", or
repeated birth and death
is simply the chanting of God's names .  

In the Gita Krsna says to his devotee Arjuna"Those who worship the gods go to
the gods; those who worship family go to be with their ancestors, and those who
worship me come to me"

keith johnson
boston, ma



I am an instructor of Taoist Yoga, and during my studies and instructor
training I have received lots of information on safety in meditition and
or lack thereof.

As a generalization, it is my understanding and experience that the
majority of the meditation techniques taught to the general public
(you walk in off the street and .... ) are safe. Generally, the
more dangerous ones are taught to you only as part of advanced study,
and in theory by an instructor who knows the safety points. I haven't
met that many instructors who know what the safety points are, some of which
is because the incidence of problems is, statistically speaking, very
low.

However, if you read "Franny & Zooey" (j.d. salinger?) you have
a clear case of someone who has problems created in their life
by meditation (Franny is doing a Jesus mantra) and faints in
restaurants, etc. Where did J.D. Salinger get the idea?

In the system I am studying/teaching, we have acquired a
reputation in certain circles as a place to send "broken students"
to be fixed. Thus we hear lots of stories from the master, and other
instructors, and our own students. There are the following classes of
repetitive problems.  We do not have data, we don't collect data.
(We only collect data on our own system)
So any numbers I give are GUESTIMATES designed to show orders of
magnitudes.

Let me say this is not intended as a criticism of any particular
system. Most people who are teaching are sincere, and sincerely want
to help their students and to learn more themselves. I am publishing
this information so that people are aware there are [statistically
small] risks involved, and what can be done about some of them.



Most common problems:
headaches and lingering space-iness. Headaches are
caused by too much energy in the head. "Space-iness" by more energy
than you can handle - more than you are accustomed to. The Rx would
be to cut back on practice a bit, or learn how to bring the energy
down to navel.




Kundalini psychosis.
?2 to 3? cases per year? in USA? I believe there is a
body called (something like) the Kundalini Research Institute in NYC. 
They would have data on this.  They see cases of what are described
as 'kundalini psychosis', which is a state "indistinguishable" from
clinical psychosis, except that is brought on by kundalini yoga
practice [and many other types of practice, the kundalini people
had the bad luck of having their name associated with it], and if
'treated promptly' it disappears. If not treated, it may not
disappear, and you fall into western medicine treatments for insanity.
There is no western explanation or treatment for this, although
I think there are papers on it. Anyone know the references? In our
system, we say that it is caused by too much hot energy (kundalini)
in the head at once, which overheats the brain. [You might say it
is caused by over-achievement in meditation]. It is treated by
teaching the person how to bring the energy down out of their
head into the navel.

A lesser variety of this is people having hallucinations after
meditation ends, usually transitory. Again too much energy in head.
No data on frequency.

Many types of sexual practices can lead rapidly to serious problems.
This is one of the two major reasons "everyone" (note the big quotes)
is against sexual practice (the other reason is morality). Sex
energy IS potent stuff - notice how much of our lives it runs. If
the person teaching you doesn't know how to do the practices
safely, you can get splitting headaches after just hours of practice.
If you persist, it gets exponentially worse. Sex practices can
be done safely, and exist in Chinese, Tibetan, Indian, etc. systems.

We have heard of some cases of from catholic monks / nuns who 
were "unusually devout and unusually celibate", or something
(no one really knows why), but they got their sexual energy to
all go up to the higher centers by praying, and they got overloaded,
and had no real control over it.



Chigon related problems. There is "a lot of this" in PRC/Hong Kong.
Enough that there was a TV program on it in about 1986/87.
People who get more energy than they can handle. Most common
symptom is uncontrollable body movements. Usually treated with TCM
(traditional Chinese medicine: herbs and acupunture).

Also, vivid, horrible, "nightmare on elm street" type dreams. We
say this is caused by overheating the liver [ mostly] & large
intestine, and can be dealt with by TCM. High fiber diets (-> emptying
large intestine, -> allows other organs to cool) help prevent this.
There are meditations to cool / balance organ energy.




Healer / Channel-er burn out
Many people who heal, and teach healing, heal using their own personal
energy instead of drawing energy from an external source to use. At
some point, they drain their batteries (takes many years).  Then they
are in serious trouble, and their vitality decreases and their immune
systems weaken. Also, not all healers know how to avoid picking up 
illness / sick energy from clients, and how to avoid passing it on.

In our system, we regard channeling as being a valid phenomenon, but
a dangerous one to only be attempted by skilled people. We do not 
practice / teach / or participate in it. Our belief / our interpretation
/ our guess, is that the entity you channel is coming to you and
trading its information for your energy. The two (only two, small sample)
channels I have spoken to said their experience matched our
interpretation, but who knows.
Anyway, we believe it is dangerous, and a 'short' trip (not too many years)
to burnout.



More esoteric / unbelievable / weird problems

"Persecution". I don't know what to call this. It is when people 
are doing meditations that open their heart or throat centers, but
who are doing this solo - without a teacher, or with insufficient
knowledge.  Opening these centers can make you vulnerable to external
control by "unscrupulous" people - normally your teacher "protects" you
or you should be taught how to protect yourself first. Resolved by
learning how to seal your heart/throat centers against others, or
acquiring a teacher / protector. I have heard of 2 or 3 cases of
this, period. Supposedly your teacher will use their access to your
heart/throat to 'help' you, bad teachers will use same to control
and exploit you.

N.B. this is why so many ancient traditions have people wearing jewelry
/ amulets over neck / chest. They are protection devices. And to some
extent, they work.


An obvious culprit
Drugs & meditation. At high dosage levels / with strong
chemicals, people can leave their bodies & "get lost".

According to TCM, most recreational drugs consume a lot of your "energy."
When we are / were young and healthy, we didn't notice. As one person
said " In your teens and twenties, you buy on credit . In your thirties,
you start to pay as you go. In your forties, all your bills come due."

Anyhow, I hope this information is helpful, and that no one is offended.
For more info, people can email me. Good luck on your path.






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I also emailed this, but it may be of general interest.

In <1991Oct16.172846.12891@nas.nasa.gov> david@gca-prism.com (David Oskard) writes:

>My personal experience for today is that I've been having a difficult
>time recently waking up for meditation.  However, today a miracle
>occurred!  I was had a dream about being at a meditation center and
>being in the master's presence.  Then I actually woke up at 6AM for
>meditation!  So how do y'all wake up before you absolutely have to???

I don't know how to wake up -- I find that when I'm asleep, I don't have
control over that, or anything else :-) -- but once I have realised that
I am conscious, I find two things useful for getting properly awake:

(1) Get out of bed *immediately*.  "As if your bed was full of snakes",
say certain Zen manuals, so I have heard, though depending on how you
feel about snakes, that might be excessive :-).

(2) Do Vrksasana for half a minute or a minute on each leg.

Vrksasana ("Tree posture") is a yoga posture performed thus: stand up
straight; lift the arms straight up over the head, palms together; raise
the right leg and place the right foot against the left thigh as high up
as possible, pointing straight down to the floor, with the right knee
pointing directly to the right; look straight ahead.  Balance like that
for half a minute, or however long seems reasonable.  Repeat interchanging
left and right.

I find the mental effort of balancing, as much as the physical, to have
the required effect.

If you find it too easy, try doing it with your eyes closed!

--
Richard Kennaway          SYS, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
Internet:  jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk		uucp:  ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk



>
>In <1991Oct16.172846.12891@nas.nasa.gov> david@gca-prism.com (David Oskard) writes:
>
>>My personal experience for today is that I've been having a difficult
>>time recently waking up for meditation.  However, today a miracle
>>occurred!  I was had a dream about being at a meditation center and
>>being in the master's presence.  Then I actually woke up at 6AM for
>>meditation!  So how do y'all wake up before you absolutely have to???
>
>I don't know how to wake up -- I find that when I'm asleep, I don't have
>control over that, or anything else :-) -- but once I have realised that
>I am conscious, I find two things useful for getting properly awake:
>
...

with regards to waking up, there is something that has almost *always* worked
for me ever since I was a child of 10: before going to sleep, I tell myself
to wake up at the time I want to wake up and repeat this message three times.
And to my never ending surprise I do wake up the time I told myself (unless
I have been pulling all nighters in a row etc, in which case I rely on an
alarm clock).


It may have nothing to do with meditation. But I thought it may be significant
for some to know.



Rajesh
-- 
725-1776 CSL Modulars J




> raj@globe1.att.com (Rajendra P Sharma)
>Subject: Meditation (Re: Dangers of Meditation)

>Now i have a more "basic" question.
>
>Background: i used to [try to] meditate a few years back.
>            When i found that i had no control over the meditation
>            process, i gave it up (or more accurately, it fell off
>            by itself).
>
>So the question is: Does one "do" the meditation,
>                              or
>                     "it happens by itself?"
>
>i will appreciate any replies [that are based on experience].

>From my experience, I'd have to say both and neither.  I'm not trying to be
funny; that's really the way it seems.

I "do" the meditation to the extent that some action is necessary and there 
is some kind of method or procedure to be applied, at least initially.  For
example, I sit crosslegged with my spine straight and focus my attention on
my breathing.  When my attention wanders, I notice my thoughts, then gently
direct my attention back to the breathing.

On the other hand, when my attention is focused in that way, I don't cling
to some sense of an "I" that is "doing" the breathing.  You could say that
the breathing "does" me.  More accurately, the breathing "does" itself, and
there isn't any "me" in it at all.  Even when my thoughts wander, the thoughts
also "do" themselves, and the awareness is the same whether the focus is the
breathing or the thoughts.  What I mean to say is that there is a sort of
unified stream of awareness that just flows without any separation into
"this does that", etc.

So, it starts with me "doing" something, then it moves on to something "doing"
me, then something "doing" itself, then just "doing" with nothing that "does"
and no activity that is "being done by something".  The separation of the
experience into "action" and "actor" vanishes completely.

A device that I have sometimes found helpful is to regard the breathing and
the thinking as things which are just happening by themselves, while I watch
passively.  This technique has been described as sitting on the bank and
watching the river flow.  It helps me to focus the attention.  But I don't
stop there.  The next step is difficult to explain.  I drop the idea of a 
passive "self" that does the watching (it is just an invented device to begin
with), and just let the "river" of experience flow, without making a
distinction between "it" and "me".  The "watcher" vanishes and pure awareness
flows of itself, without a label.

>From your brief description of your attempts to meditate, it sounds to me
as though you may have been trying too hard to "control" it.  There is a
balance to be found which is neither tightly controlled nor chaotic.
It's alright for the mind to wander.  Trying to stop it forcefully is
a futile exercise (One Zen Buddhist likened it to trying to still the water
by beating down the waves with a stick).  When you notice wandering thoughts,
acknowledge and accept them, then refocus your attention.  Don't chastise
yourself for having wandering thoughts.  For me, one of the first things
that meditation taught me was just how much my thoughts wander.  Gradually,
with repeated practice, it became easier to keep my attention focused.

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> RADAMS@Cerritos.EDU (Roger Adams)
>Subject: Re: Zen Mind, Everyday Mind
>
>ap856@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John A. Wincek) writes:
>
>>Maintaining the feeling of meditation throughout the day is not that easy. 
>>It was not for me at least.  I have found that "practicing the presence of
>>God" helps maintain that feeling...

>Yes, I'm all for being practical and having both feet firmly planted on the
>ground so that tasks such as driving a car can be done well but this does
>not conflict with practicing the presence or being aware of the inner
>Reality or Self at the same time as paying full attention to one's 
>activities...

For me, paying full attention to my activities is a form of meditation
in itself, and I don't feel a need to add to it some sense of an "inner"
reality.  In this kind of active meditation, the activity IS the reality
and it isn't inner or outer.  I don't separate myself from it.  In addition
to that, my experience has been that if I meditate regularly, the meditative
"attitude", or whatever you call it, tends to spread into my activities 
aturally without any special effort to make it happen.  At some point in my
practice I found myself becoming more relaxed, more attentive, more accepting
of circumstances, and better able to "go with the flow" in the normal course 
of activity.  I don't know when it started, exactly.  It was subtle and 
gradual, and I suppose it was going on to some extent before I noticed it.
My advice would be just to practice regularly, and don't worry about making 
some kind of special effort to extend it into your other activities.  I
think that will happen naturally.

However, if you want to do something as a kind of "mini-meditation" now
and then, in a spare moment, I've found that it's helpful to use a mantra
in my sitting meditation.  After a while, you'll become conditioned and
tune in to meditative awareness quite easily by merely repeating the mantra
a few times.  After still further practice, you won't need the mantra
anymore.

There's just one thing I'd like to caution you about.  I don't think
you should cling to the idea that there's some special state of mind
that's more appropriate or better in some way than any other state of
mind, and that this special state of mind is something desireable that
should be grasped and maintained.  I think it's better to approach
every state of mind that comes along, whatever it is, with awareness
and acceptance, and without clinging to any particular state.  That's
my own approach in meditation practice, and it's one that spills over
quite readily into other activities.

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id38@vaxb.acs.unt.edu raises a very valid point.

In the context of Chinese systems (Taoism, qigong, Traditional
Chinese Medicine (accupuncture and herbology)) the 'energy' is
regarded as being 'real' and having 'real effects' on the 
human body.

There are patterns of body sensations supposed to associated
with the energy, and many people can be "trained" to "feel" them.
Skeptics disagree. 

Having said that, caution is needed as TCM (Trad Chinese Med.)
has a very complex model of the human body which is quite different
from that of western medicine.




> raj@globe1.att.com (Rajendra P Sharma)
>Subject: Meditation

>Now, meditation or whatever (if i go by the term: "deeper" mind-states)
>happens by itself, all by itself at its own timing. But i have no
>inkling what to call it (it doesn't seem to matter). 

>Therefore, i am not sure what meditation is, what it's not, whether
>one "does" it, or does it "do" one? [That was the motivation for
>my earlier question].

>i can't draw any conclusions. Because the conclusions i draw [when
>examined] seem to come out of the memory of my earlier readings.

Good point.  Asking _what it is_ is asking which pigeon-hole to put it
in, which category of things, which label to stick on it.  It is an
attempt to tie it to some set of ideas.  That activity is what has to
be dropped in order to experience what defies all labels.  If you find that
you cannot label the experience, maybe you're on the right track.
If not being able to label it bothers you, I think you probably still have
some clinging to ideas or some belief that everything can be grasped by 
conceptualization.  When there is no grasping for conceptual understanding 
and awareness flows freely, that is it.

Asking whether _it does me_ or _I do it_ or _it does itself_ is still looking
for a conceptual handle to grab.

>May be (as someone said in this newsgroup), we're always in
>meditation - always were, always are, and always remain!

I think there is only reality and nothing else, but there is a difference 
between grasping at concepts or labels and clear, free flow without the
extra baggage.  One is confusion and the other isn't.

>I DON'T' KNOW!

Great! 

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The practice of "mindfulness"--of trying to maintain the thread of 
self-awareness during one's ordinary daily activities--is central
to many disciplines, including "Gurdjieff work". But the notion
that this state of mind can be sustained without purposeful effort
is unproved at best. In fact, in the Gurdjieff tradition there are
numerous exercises whose main purpose can be seen as ways of proving
to oneself that the subjective feeling of continuous consciousness
is entirely illusory--that, in fact, we slip in and out of "clear
consciousness" quite imperceptibly, sometimes spending long periods
of time in unbridled daydreams WITHOUT REALIZING IT.

So, I would agree that "being present" during the day is a very fine
thing. But the serious student must realize that he/she is NOT present
most of the time before a more sustained presence of mind can become
a real possibility. Or as G. would say: before we can escape from
prison, it is necessary to know that we are IN presion.

					-Alan




> adobe!!asanders@decwrl.dec.com
>Subject: Re: Zen Mind, Everyday Mind

>The practice of "mindfulness"--of trying to maintain the thread of 
>self-awareness during one's ordinary daily activities--is central
>to many disciplines, including "Gurdjieff work". But the notion
>that this state of mind can be sustained without purposeful effort
>is unproved at best.

We seem to be back in the same old debate about effort vs. no effort.
I don't really see it as an either-or situation.  I don't know about
what has been proven and what hasn't.  I suppose it depends on what
you consider to be "proof".  Ultimately, nothing can be proven, since
the criteria for proving something rest upon assumptions that are not
proven by those criteria (that would be circular).  What I do know is
what I have experienced.  Based on that, I can confidently say that at
least in my case, meditating regularly results in a heightened awareness
that carries over into other activities without any special effort to
make that happen.  Is that proof?  Well, to _me_ it's enough; to you,
it may not be, if it doesn't fit your own experience.

That doesn't mean that there is no effort at all in my practice.  Of course,
it takes some degree of discipline and effort to meditate regularly.  On the
other hand, to me, effective meditation is the practice of sitting
and letting go - of concepts, grasping, emotional attachment and desire,
and _effort_.  There may be a method and a deliberate sitting down to
practice, but the awareness that comes about in that kind of meditation is
truly a free and effortless flow.  So, there is both effort and
effortlessness, or there is an initial effort that leads to effortlessness.

My experience has been that, with regular practice, it gradually becomes
easier to come around to that effortless awareness; so that, in time,
less initial effort is necessary.  In addition to that, I find that I
become more likely to notice when I've become caught up in a mode of
conceptual or emotional grasping and struggling - I tend to catch myself
doing it.  I also become more aware of tension and stress when they
occur.  Catching myself like that is the beginning of letting go and
returning to effortless awareness, which as I said, becomes easier to
do as a result of regular practice.  But all of that seems to come
naturally as a by-product of regular practice, and I don't seem to
have to strain to make it happen.  By spending time in free and effortless
flow, on a regular basis, the contrast between that and struggling becomes
more and more self-evident.  The straining and struggling become easier
to recognize and easier to drop.

There is something that I used to do that I learned from a yoga teacher.
At various times during the day, whenever you think of it, you take
deliberate notice of your actions, thoughts and emotions, including
any tension you might feel in your body, and just take a deep breath
and let go.  That helps, I think.  I don't do it anymore because it
doesn't seem to be necessary.  I seem to catch myself automatically,
as I described.  The important point I want to make about that technique
is that again there is an initial effort but it is directed towards letting
go of the effort and struggle that we get caught up in.

>In fact, in the Gurdjieff tradition there are
>numerous exercises whose main purpose can be seen as ways of proving
>to oneself that the subjective feeling of continuous consciousness
>is entirely illusory--that, in fact, we slip in and out of "clear
>consciousness" quite imperceptibly, sometimes spending long periods
>of time in unbridled daydreams WITHOUT REALIZING IT.

That sounds a little strange to me.  I'm not sure I understand what you're
getting at.  I think that daydreams are conscious phenomena, regardless of
whether or not one realizes what they are.  Just as I can be immersed in the
sound of "OM" without thinking "I am now conscious of the sound of OM", I can
be immersed in a daydream without thinking "I am now conscious of a daydream".
The absence of that thought doesn't make me unconscious, nor does it make
the daydream or the sound of OM less present.  In fact, I'd say that when
I'm immersed in a daydream in that way, its presence is clearer and more
"pure", since there is no I-concept and no consciousness-concept mixed up
in it.

If you think wandering thoughts and daydreams are not conscious events, then
what do you think they are?

Even when we're completely caught up in some struggling and grasping or some
tangled web of thought and imagination, we're still conscious.

>So, I would agree that "being present" during the day is a very fine
>thing. But the serious student must realize that he/she is NOT present
>most of the time before a more sustained presence of mind can become
>a real possibility.

I don't understand this.  How can anyone be NOT present?

I get the impression that you think being "present" or "conscious" means
having an idea that labels the experience - something like thinking "Now
this is happening" or "now I am aware of this" - or maybe just having
the subjective feeling of being something that is aware of something
(which to me is a subtle form of egoism).  I think that "this is happening" 
whether you have that idea or not and whether you have that subjective 
feeling or not.  I think there is no other alternative, and I don't believe
that hanging onto such ideas or subjective feelings adds anything to it.

I'm not disagreeing with you regarding the practice of mindfulness.  It's
just that I think the main benefit of mindfulness is that you notice the
grasping, when it happens, and learn to let go of it.  Mindfulness is 
simply paying attention to what's going on, not clinging to some subjective
feeling or state.  Even without it, there is still consciousness.  You can't
make reality appear and disappear by being mindful or not mindful, and
grasping is grasping whether you do it mindfully or not.  I think it's
the letting go that matters.

>Or as G. would say: before we can escape from
>prison, it is necessary to know that we are IN presion.

Well, maybe that explains why I don't agree with these ideas from Gurdjieff.
I don't think I'm in prison.  I think the only prisons are the ones we invent 
in our confused imagination.  If we don't invent prisons for ourselves, then
we don't have to struggle to escape from them.  

To me, practice means not inventing prisons and having nothing from which
to escape.  Does that require effort?  If someone is in the habit of 
inventing prisons and struggling to escape, then I'd say it takes some
effort to brake the momentum of that habit.  When the habit is destroyed,
freedom is effortless.

What about Gurdjieff going around telling people they have to "know" they are
in prison?  I think statements like that simply prolong the habit of believing
you're in prison and struggling to escape from you own imaginary chains.

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In article <1991Oct21.225850.15091@nas.nasa.gov> raj@globe1.att.com
writes:

[...]
>	- watching thoughts, mantra, vipasana, breathing, etc.:
>          no matter which one i started with, they led to a blankness
>	  (i used to call it "void (or sunyata), felt good, but i was
>          there to notice it). Also i would start with one (say
>          watching breathing), but by itself it would change to
>          other (say watching thoughts) [this is what i meant when
>          i said, that it was not in my "control"]. 
>
>	  But i knew that one should not try to control anything in
>          meditation, so i didn't [also i was doing it alone (no
>          teacher)].

I don't think that this is entirely accurate for vipassana.
In general, it is not wise to be attached to techniques, but
it is useful to see their value and apply them in an appropriate
way. There are techniques in vipassana, and these do involve
'doing' to an extent. Vipassana is based on the Maha Satipatthana
Sutta of the Buddha and in that discourse, the Buddha lays out
appropriate objects for meditation. Generally speaking, the
most useful lesson we can learn is to stay focussed *primarily*
on what is happening in the body. Mindfulness of the "body in the
body" leads naturally to all the other foundations of mindfulness.
The value of this is that bodily energies are neutral, and they
cannot be manipulated (atleast not without special and conscious
effort). Thus, we are asked to use as our primary object, the
*sensations* of the rising and falling of the abdomen or the
*sensations* caused by the contact of air at the tip of the
nostrils. This is very grounding and safe and a real feeling
of security can arise. The important thing is to stay with the
physical sensations, and *not* with the *concept* of breathing
or with the flow of air in and out. In short, keep it simple:
in the body, and not in the mind.

There is some gentle and non-coercive effort involved in keeping
attention on the primary object. Vipassana is not shikan-taza. 
There are periods when mindfulness will arise by itself, with no 
effort at all. But, usually, there is the quiet noting of various 
secondary objects, *and* the effort to reconnect with the primary 
object. Attention will wander a million times, but each time we 
notice that we have wandered, we note that and return to the primary 
object. If we keep the practice simple, whatever needs to be seen 
will unfold by itself. If "nothing" seems to be happening, that is 
alright too. 

Sridhar



pingali%gaia@cs.umass.edu (Sridhar Pingali) writes:

>This is where questions come up for me. Let us include the mind
>as one of the six sense bases. If consciousness does not arise at one
>of the six sense doors, where can it arise? 

The Self is always aware of itself so this sense of awareness can arise
from the Self, independent of the mind which is only an instrument.

>I am using the word 'consciousness' to mean 'knowing'. 

I would use 'consciousness' as meaning awareness.

>Hearing takes place when there is contact and in hearing, there is
>just what is heard. Everything is 'just this much'. Any concept
>of Self, God or anything else is an addition to 'just this much'
>and is little more than contact at the mind sense door. 
>If nirvana is the ending, the cessation, the coolness, the deathless, beyond
>all birth and death and the conditioned becoming of the five
>aggregates, then it must also be the ending of knowledge. If it
>transcends the body-mind process, there are no *means* by which
>we can come upon it, no way in which it can be described. I do
>not see how anybody can practice awareness of a Self that has
>nothing to do with the six sense bases. All we can do is practice
>awareness of some concept in the mind. I'd be happy to hear
>anything to the contrary - for I assure you, I am not playing
>semantic games.

I don't see the problem since from my point of view, God or Self is the
only reality and we are not apart from That.  This Self or God is said to
be Sat-Chit-Ananda which Paramahansa Yogananda has translated as 'ever
existing, ever conscious, ever new joy'.  If this Sat-chit-ananda is ever
present, everywhere, within and without, then how good is your mindfulness
or awareness if you don't perceive this ever present Reality or if you
only sense this Reality once in a while?  I am not playing any word games
either but its inevitable that we will have different definitions of some
of the words we are using in this discussion, depending on what path or
philosophy or non-path or non-philosophy we are coming from.  Many masters
have said that this Self or God is ever present and in fact, the only
reality and can be perceived directly as one's own very Self.  We *are*
this Self.  How can the Self not know itself?  Does the Self need the five
senses to perceive itself? Does the Self need the mind to perceive itself?
Before the mind, body, and five senses were, the Self is, always has been,
always will be.  If we are this Self, which is beyond the senses and mind,
then how can we be aware of this Self if we only pay attention to the mind
or external events?  Practicing the presence may begin with the mind but
if it never transcends the mind, it is not fully successful. I'm just
saying that we can be aware, without depending on mental concepts, of God
or Self since that is who we are anyway and the Self knows itself "I Am
That I Am".  The path that I follow emphasizes scientific meditation as
the main sadhana so that one can experience God or Self in at least a small
measure at first so that one can then be firmly resolved to fully know
the Self as the only reality.  All other practices are to keep one in this
resolve and to help the meditations to be deeper and are no substitute for
meditation.  By Self-realization or God-realization, I don't mean mental
knowledge or 6-sense or 5-sense knowledge, I mean something beyond words
which I suspect is what others call Nirvana but we don't have to wait to
begin to experience That which is who we really are.

	Roger Adams

	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This posting is a continuation of a previous one on the interplay
between the insights gained during formal sitting meditation with
the other activities in my life.

As I described before, I have been doing quite a bit of work with
terminally ill persons over the past few years.
And I feel that there has been quite a bit of feedback
between these two areas -- first from meditation to the carepartnering
and then from that back into the meditation.

As the people I am working with all have AIDS, profound dementia is
often part of the progress toward death.  Sometimes it occurs for
a fairly brief period of weeks, but some of the opportunistic
infections associated with AIDS (such as PML) produce a long
drawn out progression of mental and physical decay lasting months.

Attention span becomes reduced to a matter of less than a minute,
memory and recall are random and inappropriate, hallucinations -
auditory and visual are common.  In short, the entire array of
human intellectual responses is present and active, but in a
manner that bears no apparent relationship to the environment.

There is a pronounced tendency on the part of persons trying to care
for patients with dementia to patronize them on the one hand, and
to attempt to reason with them on the other so that they will
acknowledge their "inappropriate" behavior and correct it.  To a fairly
large extent this was my respone to dementia prior to my experiences
meditating.

By and large this type of reaction is at least mildly coercive, it
is also futile and therefore a source of continuing exasperation.
The patient rarely complies willingly and frequently becomes very
puzzled and agitated.

A great change has taken place in my manner of dealing with people
with this level of dementia, and the work has become not only easier
for me but I have a level of skill which has made this thing sort
of personal "specialty".   This change came about almost entirely
through the insights which came from meditation.

Perhaps everyone who has tried meditation is familar with the shock
which comes of finding out how pronounced is the restless quality of
the mind, how it never ceases to chatter and will seem to "mindlessly"
drag up topics if outside stimuli don't provide it with topics.

Over months and months I gained not only familiarity with this chaos, but
a certain respect for its "naturalness".  I also came to see that
there was a difference between being chaos and watching chaos ---
though this is very difficult for me to convey.  A major part of
the difficulty being that I don't think there is such a thing as
a difference, but somehow the "quality" of the chaos became different..
Part of this I can attempt to describe with an analogy.  It is
similar to having a large stream of beads poured out in front of you.
You can frantically  grab at them and attempt to string them on a
cord in such a way that a pattern is produced and the result is a
"necklace".  Or you can watch the stream of beads pouring before you
and accept that it is not always the time to string beads.

Another discovery at this point was the rather short life that
these seeming patterns had.

It occured to me, rather suddenly and intellectually, at one point
that the demented person I was with was acting and verbalizing
very much in the same fashion that I did in an interior fashion
when I sat down to meditate.  It really was quite a surprise.  It
suddenly seemed like such a familar, and much less threatening
happening.

I thought, "He's just saying his mind out loud."  What I was used
to going off to a room alone to do and experiencing in silence, he was
experiencing in a place and manner that was audible.  The content
was not more or less "demented" than much of what paraded through
my mind when left "unattended."

Very quickly I lost the urgent need to mold and shape his being there.
I think I realized that he had been and was "there", and that I had
been trying to make "something" out of his "there."  To go back to my
analogy, he had been both watching and being the beads pouring by
while I had been frantically trying to string them into necklaces.
My efforts had been incomprehensible to him, and now they quickly
seemed so to me as well.

>From that time on this dealing with the dementia of other person's
behavior has become an ongoing experience in dealing with my own.
Sometimes it almost seems as if these situations replicate my sitting
experiences, except that my stream of mental chatter has become
incarnate.

The illusion of the coherence of a self continues to break down.

One of the most recent patients I helped was a fellow named Bob.
Bob had been a friend of mine and a neighbor for over a decade.
He had been many things in his life and he had spent long hours
over the years telling me about his family, school and his personal
life.  I was used to his rather irascible moods and to his rather
offbeat sense of humor.  He had been diagnosed with HIV in the
early very early 80s, helped found the largest AIDS volunteer
organization in the country, went to college in the evenings
and earned his B.A., created an ombudsman's function within the
AIDS organization he had helped found to intervene on behalf of
persons with AIDS who were widely discriminated against in the
first few years of the 80s.  His work was largely responsible for
the fact that in New York State AIDS is classified as a disability
and persons with AIDS are protected by all the laws applying to
persons with other disabilities.  He received several awards from
the governor and sat on at least two State commissions to set
AIDS policy in the State.

When he got PML as an infection he talked about the green men who walked
on his ceiling, turned his sliced turkey dinner over and over and
commented on how damp his Time magazine was, had the flowers in his
room covered to keep off the snow and wore his shoes on his head
more than once.

When he was discharged from the hospital for the last time, a social
worker came to see him and I was sitting on his bed while he was
loosely tied into a chair.

She told him, "Bob, it looks like you can go home.  What do you think
about that?"  He was leaning forward and listening intently.  He
replied that he thought that was, "Fine."  She then slowly and carefully
she went over each step of the plans for his care.  With great kindness
she kept asking him, "Bob, what do you think of that?"  And he listened
raptly and seemed very pleased with all the provisions which had been
made on his behalf and replied enthusiastically about them.  When
she was finished she asked, "How does that sound to you, Bob."  He
replied, "It sounds good."  She said, "Do you have any questions?"

He said, "Just one," and leaning forward, asked, "Who is Bob?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I was in the hospital and unable to attend his memorial service.  A
a video tape had been made, and I was given a copy.  When I was
at home convalescing I decided to watch it.  It was in a large,
impressive church and the speakers were a cross section of his
contacts from his AIDS-related work and intimate friends.  Each
speaker talked very personally about the Bob they knew.  The
video ended.  I burst out laughing because the scene at the
hospital with the social worker flashed through my mind.

"Who is Bob?"

Jack Carroll




In article <1991Oct24.001151.26254@nas.nasa.gov> RADAMS@Cerritos.EDU
(Roger Adams) writes:

[...]
> How aware are you if you are
>only aware of what you perceive through the five senses?  Awareness includes
>inner awareness of God or Self or Reality or Bliss or Sat-chit-ananda or
>peace or love (whatever term fits your philosophy or path) and not just an 
>awareness of external events or of ones thoughts which also can be said 
>to be external activity since the mind is only an instrument as is the body 
>and not who we really are.

This is where questions come up for me. Let us include the mind
as one of the six sense bases. If consciousness does not arise at one
of the six sense doors, where can it arise? I am using the word 
'consciousness' to mean 'knowing'. The word 'contact' is used to
describe the coming together of a sense base (say, the ear), the
object heard (some sound wave) and consciousness (hearing consciousness).
Hearing takes place when there is contact and in hearing, there is
just what is heard. Everything is 'just this much'. Any concept
of Self, God or anything else is an addition to 'just this much'
and is little more than contact at the mind sense door. If nirvana
is the ending, the cessation, the coolness, the deathless, beyond
all birth and death and the conditioned becoming of the five
aggregates, then it must also be the ending of knowledge. If it
transcends the body-mind process, there are no *means* by which
we can come upon it, no way in which it can be described. I do
not see how anybody can practice awareness of a Self that has
nothing to do with the six sense bases. All we can do is practice
awareness of some concept in the mind. I'd be happy to hear
anything to the contrary - for I assure you, I am not playing
semantic games.

*when you say six sense bases, is it the outcome of those
*six sense bases?? if it is then one is stuck for ever, no matter
*whom one quotes.?? Are their six sense bases?? Have you ever posed
* question( I have, that is why I am wriing this). There is a contradiction
*in language when I try to express, there are and there are not. Is there
*conciousness( the normal meaning of that word)? there is and there is not.
*Yes of course, ending of all knowledge contains all knowledge.(this again is
*contradictory,but this is the trouble with language).You cant practice the
*awareness of self. that is a childish trick that can only produce delusion.
*what is that one can be aware of?? only the things which are fcts, and awareness
*ends the fact, that is  the tranformation of consciousness. At the ending of
*fact, it exists and does not exist.

S. Kumar 

We *can* remain with 'just this much'. If there is suffering,
there is just suffering. If there is bliss, there is just bliss.
In 'just this much', there is the ending, the completion and
the cessation of all concepts. Nothing special.

Sridhar




| ...Ultimately, nothing can be proven, since the criteria for 
| proving something rest upon assumptions that are not proven...

						-Tom

Suppose we agree that a "conscious" person should be capable of 
choosing his own words when he speaks IF HE WANTS TO. Having settled 
that, suppose we agree to do an experiment together: to try to eliminate 
a few commonly-used words from our vocabularies, strictly as an exercise, 
in order to investigate our hypothesis. Let's say we also agree to spend 
a certain amount of time together during the course of the experiment, 
and to remind each other whenever one of these words slips out.

Now, suppose we find out by doing this experiment that the words we 
agreed not to say keep popping out of our mouths unintentionally, and 
that we do not even hear them. What does this tell us about our normal 
state of mind?

| Mindfulness is simply paying attention to what's going on...

Agreed. But where is "mindfulness" when we do not even hear the
sound of our own voice speaking? Where is "attention" focused?

| Even without it [mindfulness], there is still consciousness.

Where is our "attention" when we drive right past our exit on the 
freeway and "wake up" ten minutes later to realize what has happened? 
This is "consciousness"? Like "love", "consciousness" really needs
several different words, depending on what we are talking about.
Without mindfulness, there is SOME LEVEL of consciousness, but...

| I can be immersed in a daydream without thinking "I am now conscious 
of a daydream". The absence of that thought doesn't make me unconscious...

Agreed. "Thinking" is NOT "consciousness". But the absence of awareness
THAT the activity (daydreaming) is occurring means the absence of
consciousness, in the sense that I understand it.

| If you think wandering thoughts and daydreams are not conscious 
| events, then what do you think they are?

Aimless mind activity. Automatic pilot. Nobody home. What happens when
you put something down somewhere and cannot remember what you did with it?
We walk, we talk, we perform expedient actions and we are NOT THERE.

| How can anyone be NOT present? ...I get the impression that you 
| think being "present" or "conscious" means having an idea that 
| labels the experience...

Easy!

No idea, no label. Just "being there". My contention is that much of
the time we (at least most of us) are NOT THERE, and that the simplest
possible experiments quickly prove this beyond any doubt.

Mind you, I am NOT saying that Tom Simmonds is not present. I don't
know you. Maybe you are conscious all the time!

| I think the only prisons are the ones we invent in our confused 
| imagination.

Even if this is true, it's not so difficult to demonstrate that
"confused imagination" is the normal state of mind of much of humanity. 
To me, the absurdity of the "we are already conscious" school is revealed 
by simply taking a look around us. Would compassionate, self-realized 
human beings do what we do, live as we live? No way!
		
					-Alan



simmonds@molson.siemens.com (Tom Simmonds) writes:

>I think I understand your point, and I agree that we are the Self, or Reality,
>or Buddha-Mind, or Awareness, or whatever.  I have trouble with this particular
>approach to it, though.  It seems to separate reality into two things: the
>pure, transcendent Self, on the one hand, and the world of the senses and
>"external" events on the other. If there is no other reality but the Self,
>how can there be any senses apart from it?  Where are these so-called "external"
>events?  How can the Self be "beyond" the senses and the mind which
>are not separate from it?  As soon as you make these kinds of distinctions,
>you get into trouble.  These are the inevitable kinds of questions that arise
>from that kind of dualism.

I think we all get into trouble in trying to discuss these things in detail
but I will try to clarify the difference between stating a metaphysical
truth and trying to realize this truth through inner experience.  The Self
or God is the only reality and thus nothing is outside of that so nothing
can be separate from it - this is the metaphysical statement of truth. Now
in realizing Self or God, we must take into account that our delusion or
the fact that full realization or nirvana is not being experienced yet 
(at least for most of us :-) is that we are identifying with the body and 
mind and this external, transient, impermanent world rather than with that 
which is eternal.  The path I follow says that we need to direct the life 
force which ordinarily projects outward to illumine what is in this transient 
world and causing our false identification with it (instead of just enjoying 
it as a passing show or dream) and direct this life force within to perceive 
our true Self.  The Self is beyond thought and bodily sensations but once 
realized (according to my guru) overflows into them.  The question of 
dividing Self from non-Self does not arise in one who as thus fully 
realized the Self.  The distinctions are drawn to facilitate the ridding 
of delusion or muddy water that keeps us from realizing this Nirvana or 
eternal Bliss.

>Some of the ancient texts describe the Self or Awareness as being like
>pure space.  

The Self may appear in space but I would say is beyond space, beyond any
dualism. But I agree with your point of indivisibility of Self or Awareness
as a metaphysical truth but in practical sadhana, one needs to distinguish
from transient and eternal for the purposes of awakening from delusion.
An awakened one can say that "all this is That" or all is God and not see
any division but one who is in delusion needs to search within until ones true
Self is realized before being able to truly see all as the undivided Truth
or Self - this is of course is from the perspective of my spiritual path
but I think all paths eventually lead the attention inward or within, 
transcending mind and body until God or Self or Nirvana is realized.


	Roger Adams

	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------




In article <1991Oct26.032330.3901@nas.nasa.gov> RADAMS@Cerritos.EDU
 (Roger Adams) writes:
>I think we all get into trouble in trying to discuss these things in detail
>but I will try to clarify the difference between stating a metaphysical
>truth and trying to realize this truth through inner experience.  The Self
>or God is the only reality and thus nothing is outside of that so nothing
>can be separate from it - this is the metaphysical statement of truth.

Well, I don't know. If *I* were to say something like that,
that would be just metaphysical speculation. What I have 
learnt in meditation is this: craving and aversion arise
wherever contact takes place and that is only place that
letting go can occur. Letting go happens not because there
is some alternate reality to escape into, but because in
holding on that which is changing there is suffering, and 
in the letting go there is release from suffering. Just 
suffering and its end, moment by moment. 

Thinking is not the only thing that happens at the mind
sense base. There can be a variety of experiences there.
For example, there were occasions in my practice when the   
mind became vastly luminous and spacious. On other occasions, 
the mind became filled with a delicious coolness, or with 
a penetrating ringing silence. Now, all these mind states
were fun and interesting, but like everything else, they
too came to an end. I couldn't see any abiding self in
them. Ultimately all experience is just more stuff and
it does not matter what it is that we are holding on to,
in the letting go there is release. I remember one occasion
when there was the same relief at letting go of an experience
of great bliss, that there is in the letting go of unwholesome
mind states. None of these experiences was because of some
'external' sense input, but the senses didn't cease working.
I can't hold on the memory of these states and wish I had
them back either. That is just more suffering.

Let me give another example. I was driving back home from
a retreat, and there was the complete letting go of the
concept of time. Time just ceased. There was still driving,
still the doing of whatever needed to be done. Each moment
was met with complete trust and a total response, and each
moment was timeless. There was this sense of enormous freedom
and safety. There was no self or Self in that, just effortless
flow. And, I assure you, all the senses were working (I got
got back home in one piece :-)). If anything, they were all
working with heightened awareness, and I noticed many more
details of the route than I had done in my earlier trips.
The drive took an hour by the hands of the watch, but it
might as well have been a moment or an eternity or nothing.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that we have to
find our freedom in the very midst of things. Now it is
entirely possible that there is indeed this state that
completely transcends the body-mind process. I have
heard some people who have 'known' that say so. I have
never come across it myself, so how can I possibly
practice awareness of it? We always have to start where
we are, not where we think we ought to be. Where I am
is with just the six sense bases, nothing more. If I
say that 'I am the Self which is eternal' (whatever *that*
means), that thought or feeling in my mind has no more
substance than any other random thought 'the sky is
blue'. 

So here is where I am, and the practice is to be with
just what is. The mind that is developed is one that
is ready for anything, not one that is trying to get
blissed out. For me at any rate, sense contact is 
where the problems come up, and that is the place where
wisdom can arise.

Peace,
Sridhar



In article <1991Oct26.032330.3901@nas.nasa.gov> RADAMS@Cerritos.EDU (Roger Adams) writes:
>simmonds@molson.siemens.com (Tom Simmonds) writes:
> [...]
>The distinctions are drawn to facilitate the ridding 
>of delusion or muddy water that keeps us from realizing this Nirvana or 
>eternal Bliss.

Hi Roger,

	I think we are back to base one.  May I point :) out a delusion or muddy
water in this sentence ?:  "realizing this Nirvana or eternal Bliss."  Please
tell me why you think it isn't as much of a delusion as anything else you may
have had in mind.




In article <1991Oct26.000828.25707@nas.nasa.gov> skumar@smdvx1.intel.com
 (Sitanshu Kumar) writes:

>*when you say six sense bases, is it the outcome of those
>*six sense bases?? if it is then one is stuck for ever, no matter
>*whom one quotes.?? Are their six sense bases?? Have you ever posed
>* question( I have, that is why I am wriing this).

I am not sure that I understand your question. Is the
question whether the six sense bases arise from the six
sense bases? The fact is that there are these six sense
bases. All experience takes place at one of these bases
and all experience is conditoned. 'Conditioned' in the
sense that the aggregates of form, feeling, perception,
mental formations and consciousness arise conditioned
upon one another. Anything else, and the question begins
to sound very much like a first cause question, one
that cannot be answered. Where are we stuck?

 
> There is a contradiction
>*in language when I try to express, there are and there are not. Is there
>*conciousness( the normal meaning of that word)? there is and there is not.

What is the normal meaning of that word?

>*Yes of course, ending of all knowledge contains all knowledge.(this again is
>*contradictory,but this is the trouble with language).You cant practice the
>*awareness of self. that is a childish trick that can only produce delusion.
>*what is that one can be aware of?? only the things which are fcts, and awareness
>*ends the fact, that is  the tranformation of consciousness. At the ending of
>*fact, it exists and does not exist.
>
>S. Kumar 

I don't have serious disagreement with this.

Sridhar



muttiah@ecn.purdue.edu (Ranjan S Muttiah) writes:

>Hi Roger,
>	I think we are back to base one.  May I point :) out a delusion or muddy
>water in this sentence ?:  "realizing this Nirvana or eternal Bliss."  Please
>tell me why you think it isn't as much of a delusion as anything else you may
>have had in mind.

Did we ever leave base one?  Not to my knowledge.  We can never leave base
one except through our inner experience - not with words and debates.
What is the proof of the existence of God or Bliss?  
	The hypothesis is that this God or Bliss can be realized
through inner experience.  There are those such as Paramahansa Yogananda
who say, through their own experience, that this hypothesis is true.  What
would be a scientific approach to proving or disproving this hypothesis?
How about finding out for ourselves if the methods recommended by these
masters produce any results or any increasing realization of God?  I'm
currently involved in this inner experimentation and I have seen some
progress and very modest results which convince me of the validity of the
hypothesis so far ie. this Bliss or God is real and can be realized.


	Roger Adams

	radams@cerritos.edu               To those in whom love dwells,
	Cerritos College                  the whole world is one family.
	11110 Alondra Blvd                             A Hindu Proverb
        Norwalk, California 90650
	USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				REAL GROWTH

A phenomenon that is ubiquitous seems to be growth. Nations are trying to
grow economically, individuals are trying to increase their wealth,
knowledge or get wiser.  The bottom line seems to be all want to grow into
something better or higher as best as we understand these terms.  Those
who don't aspire for such growth are quickly overtaken by the rest; the
decay of numerous civilizations, Rome being a classic example.  Several
tribes  that haven't kept pace with the technological explosion are now
near extinct.

In growing, we feel good and that seems to be the motivation.  For
example, a  problem successfully solved, a higher GPA etc. makes us feel
good.  On the other hand, when the results don't match our expectations,
we are miserable.  So, in our endeavor to grow, we also face frustrations;
and life goes on.  It is natural to ask whether in all these years of living we
have had sustained happiness.  Honestly, for most of us the answer is no.
In our usual pursuit of physical, mental or material possessions as a
source of happiness, we are lost.  Otherwise we won't have misery-ridden
millionaires and cheerful poor folks.

There is thus this tendency to grow but a lack of suitable end to grow
towards for sustained well-being.  This is the quandary. The present
endeavors may provide us a better standard of living but unfortunately  do
not provide us lasting happiness.  Then the question is what should we
grow towards?  What is the reason for fleeting moments of happiness in an
otherwise uneventful life?  This is more or less the question facing most
of us.

When we seek our well-being from external sources we are only accumulating
wealth in terms of money or knowledge but not our inner well-being.  Of
course sometimes a poem, falling leaf or that equation gives us ecstacy
that arises out of "insight".  Insight by definition is seeing the inside.
This "seeing" the inside we should do to ourselves  to know the
cause-and-effect relationship between our actions and endeavors and the
consequent feelings we derive.  I may hazard to say that we don't even
know how we feel in most instances.  When we begin to examine ourselves,
we perceive what to do and what not to do, how to guide our actions for a
growing sense of well-being.  In fact, the concepts of feeling good or
happiness themselves keep changing with the growing awareness of our inner
condition and its relation to our thoughts, actions and environment.

There is a huge difference between 'to live; and to be 'alive.'  All of us
live but only a few of us are alive.  Like a piece of driftwood we go
through motions of life doing the acts that we can safely perform and
expect known rewards.  We are so afraid to step out of our well laid-out
existence that only a shocking experience seems to awaken us from this
slumber.  If not slumber what is this? Even our efforts to grow are well
laid out by existing knowledge of accepatability and activity of the
majority.  It requires a little courage to step out of the rut and take
charge of life.  What meaning does all our activities have anyway?  Is
it consistent with the growth we ought to seek?

It is a highly worthwhile exercise to question ourselves once in a while,
"What if I die in a few days?"  None of us can escape death and it is only
a delusion to keep this event out of our minds.  If we face death starkly,
will our activities hold any meaning?  Present efforts for comfort in the
old age or a carefree attitude are both dead ends.  We cannot postpone our
well-being for tomorrow by accumulating goodies today, atleast not goodies
alone.  There is the need for strengthening the inner fibre that will
carry us through.  This is the real growth, of our inner strength, inner
transformation.

As the saying goes, "Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot
think."  Leaving tomorrow to devils and whiling away the present is a
sheer act of escapism and irresponsibility. So, to grow to be happy always
is an undertaking of responsibility, a duty to ourselves by seeing our
inside and constantly applying efforts  towards attaining a feeling
of well-being.  Only in the assiduous pursuit of this endeavor will there
be a lasting satisfaction.  Otherwise this very valuable existence is
almost futile.
-- 
JANAKIRAMAN,SHANKER
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp:	  ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt8554a
Internet: gt8554a@prism.gatech.edu




I have been receiving many letters, some I like, some I don't, but all
I appreciate...there are a few things I would like to say, and I can't
respond to everyone (and it is just at this moment that I thought about
an alias to send it to everyone...but I'm already here!).

First of all, the concept of sunyata (pronounced shun-ya-ta) is a Mahayana
Buddhist text...which was created to explain the Theravada concept of
anatman (no-soul:  which implies transience, the basic precept that
everything is transient and not perrmanenet).  It is only through time and
reinterpretation that it came to mean 'emptiness' in the nihilistic sense.
It originally meant that there is nothing permanent, not that there is
nothing period---which seems to be the general understanding on this board.
Although this is a valid interpretation...it is not the historical meaning
of the word/concept.

Also, not everything that comes out of someone's mouth is an enlightened or
buddha-statement, and therefor there are differences...to put it into zen
terms (with relation to koans) there is no right or wrong answer...it is
where the answer came from (meaning the state of mind)...and it only came
about in later zen traditions that there is no difference between meditation
and enlightenment (nor any difference between anything else...mainly because
of this reinterpretation of shunyata)...this is therefore also tied into my
point above (basically that this was not the original (I use the Theravada
tradition as the original because it is the historically oldest) idea and
point of the concept and dharma)  [if you prefer pali, use dhamma]

As for my own personal beliefs, I find significance in them all...after all
mappo is a mahayana concept (meaning that there will come a time when the
buddha's message is too clouded and no one will no what the dharma, at which
time maitreya will come and teach us again) I think this applies to the world
situation today (not necessarily included or excluded here...I want to slam
no one)

upaya: tough to translate, basically it means 'expedient means', i.e. it
is a good method by which to get something, however, the means must be left
behind also.  thus, we must learn the dharma, but before enlightenment we must
also give it up.  though the word arises in mahayana tradition, the idea is
present in theravada tradition.

though sillyness, semantics, and what have you, may be fun...[I noticed some
of this happening about my sig file]...you musn't be attached to them...of
course I'm sure not everyone here, likes the message, but I don't know...I'm
on some other boards as well---and there too I witness similar things as well
as tradition/faith bashing....


I think that the essential message is the four noble truths:

1) all existence is suffering

2) this suffering is caused by attachment to impermanent thing; and our
ignorance that they are impermanent

3) cessation of attachment leads to cessation of suffering

4) the eightfold path leads to the cessation of attachment; the eightfold
path state the right mindfullness, intention, act, etc....but is basicall
meant as a statement of the buddha's own idea of 'the middle way'...after
all, that is where the buddha found his enlightenment...neither as a monk
nor as a king (king's son)...




just for some concideration....



take it as you like, but sooner or later...you have to leave it behind.





---peace



love



Jon



-- 
wisdom is                               Jonathan Horvath [jah14]
there is no mirror                      Case Western Reserve University
there is buddha [ultimate]-nature       RLGN/pscl
dust can never be                       140 Michelson [216] 754-2044 (2043)




In article <1991Oct31.210202.2810@nas.nasa.gov> skumar@smdvx1.intel.com
 (Sitanshu Kumar) raises some interesting issues:
>
>**  Is it a fact that there are six
>** sense bases?? when you see a fact (phycological fact) it disappears.
>**I dont know what you mean by conditioned. have you really seen what you
>** state, or it is just a theory from some book. If you have seen 
>** aggregate formation(or you are seeing it now) it will disappear.

Is it the seeing that causes the disappearing? There is mindfulness
of birth as well as of death of the aggregate. If mindfulness causes
the disappearing, it also causes the appearing. When there is mind-
fulness, there is no identification with that which arises. This
removes the condition for further arising of related aggregates *if*
the aggregate is one of mental formations. So, if there is a thought,
and the thought is seen, there is no identification with it. Thus, the
condition for building chains of thought is removed. But, if there
is mindfulness of the birth of the aggregate of form, will the seeing
cause it's death? Or will it die because that is it's nature?

 
>** There are no six senses, sir. there is a movement of senses.

True.

>** notions of particularity and generality arise in divided conciousness.
>** Any question from such a state is divided from the begining. The very
>** act of questioning (in the real sense) is a leap outside. 

Not necessarily. The lightness and transformation that comes from
the ending of facts is conditioned on the ending. That experience
is also within the stream. 

>** When you really consider something, it drops away. Do you know what
>** remains??

This is a good question. All I can say now is 'something else to
consider'.

Peace,
Sridhar



In article <1991Oct28.170511.29116@nas.nasa.gov> RADAMS@Cerritos.EDU (Roger Adams) writes:
>muttiah@ecn.purdue.edu (Ranjan S Muttiah) writes:
>>Hi Roger,
>>	I think we are back to base one.  May I point :) out a delusion or muddy
>>water in this sentence ?:  "realizing this Nirvana or eternal Bliss."  Please
>>tell me why you think it isn't as much of a delusion as anything else you may
>>have had in mind.
>Did we ever leave base one?  Not to my knowledge.  We can never leave base
>one except through our inner experience - not with words and debates.

Given this as a premise, it would be impossible to answer:

>What is the proof of the existence of God or Bliss?  

Most of the proofs have been offered through ontological means
(all of them unconvincing).   Discourse has to be based on some
common notions that are expressed through words.

>	The hypothesis is that this God or Bliss can be realized
>through inner experience.  There are those such as Paramahansa Yogananda
>who say, through their own experience, that this hypothesis is true.  

Given the above premise, I wouldn't believe him at all.  The man could
just be trying to sell books for all we know ...  nothing against Yogananda
but going by the premise that inner experiences can't be conveyed with
words.

>Whatwould be a scientific approach to proving or disproving this hypothesis?

Repeatability ?  If Buddha is only recorded person (at least in the popular
press) to have achieved a state wherein he was unable to express his
sensations, we can all roll up our mats and go home I guess :).

>How about finding out for ourselves if the methods recommended by these
>masters produce any results or any increasing realization of God?  

I think this falls outside the bounds of the issue here.  There is nothing
wrong in trying this or that.  But the question is, *what* is trying
to be achieved.  If the goal is nirvana, a state at which nothing can be
expressed, what are we after ?  A state without delusions ? (then why isn't
nirvana itself a state of delusions ?)  A state without expression ?  Then
why bother talking about it :-).

>I'm currently involved in this inner experimentation and I have seen some
>progress and very modest results which convince me of the validity of the
>hypothesis so far ie. this Bliss or God is real and can be realized.

Anyone should find his or her own bliss (whatever that may be).  Nothing 
wrong with that.  The problem here is one of determining what one is chasing 
after.



>From Jae H Nam <centry@athena.mit.edu>:
> What other koans are there?
There are several thouthands (though I guess most use only a few hundred).
A good place to start is the Wu-men-kuan (Chineese; Japaneese Mumonkan).
A beautyful translation (with teishos) is the following:

Koun Yamada, "Gateless Gate - A definitive translation of the Mumonkan"

(I do only know the German translation of the English original, which
 probably isn't worse :-)

Another good starter is the Pi-Yen-Lu (Chineese; Japaneese: Hekiganroku);
It is very poetic, but sometimes more depentant on cultural background.
I know that there is a translation by Thomas Cleary, but I can't comment on
it's quality (particularly comments about cultural/historical background
might be helpful, though not directly related to the "solution").
It is much larger than the Mumonkan, since it contains more koans, poems and
comments of ancient Zen masters.

> Is it really true that if you've mastered one, you've mastered all?
It isn't that simple, though it seems to be a common experience that the
first one is the most difficult.
There are a few which are used as first ones (Mu, sound of one hand, and a few
more); others are probably more appropriate later.

> Are there still any delusions left that one carries within him that must be
> dealt away with
What would any answer help you? Find out yourself!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Wachowitz                               75742@novell1.rz.fht-mannheim.de



I have not much to say about koans, but I would like to share with you the
following essay:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Da Avabhasa: "Real questions are gestures toward an answer.  They are the
ground of real enterprises.  False or fake questions are merely symptoms of
failed seeking.  They seem to invite the search for an answer, but they
truly function to undermine the motion of serious enquiry.  They are
themselves a neurotic or motionless stand point.  Emotionally, they are the
results of previous failed enquiry, rather than the initiators of new and
future enquiry....

Such is the correct understanding of the traditional "ultimate question"
[Does God exists?].  It is not a true question (to be made the source of an
enquiry that can possibly lead to a positive or affirmative answer in
response).  It is a false or pseudo-question, a symptom of dis-ease, a
negative proposition hidden (nonetheless made effective) in the form of a 
conventional open-ended question.  Such pseudo-questions must first of all
be recognized as such.  And this is the key: The secret of how to deal with
false questions is to recognize them as such, and so transcend them rather
than seek to answer them...

Such questions are actually forms of what the Japanese call the "ko-an".
The "ko-an" is an apparent question - that is, we tend to try to answer it
via the usual operations of mind.  But the "question" itself works to
undermine the mental process.  It is actually a form of meditation on doubt,
or failed mind.  therefore, the "ko-an" is "answered" only when it is
transcended as a motivator of thought.  When its power to initiate doubt and
confine us to doubt is understood and transcended, then there is a sudden
rush of joy, freedom, and tacit Intuition of Transcendental Being...

Actually, all "ko-an" or ultimate pseudo-questions are absurd propositions.
But great intuitive insight (into the body-mind-self as well as the apparent
"question") is required for such to be really understood.  The "ko-an"
"Does God exist?" is actually the absurd propositional question "Does
Reality exist, or only the Un-Real?"  The use of the word God" tends to
cause us to forget that the "question" is an invitation to consider the
Reality or Truth of Nature and the Nature or Truth of Reality.  Whatever
ultimately exists is, by definition, Reality.  The "Un-Real" cannot exist
(although it can seem to be presumed or proposed).  The hidden negative
proposition in the "ko-an" or pseudo-question "Does God exist?" is: "Reality
does not exist, only the Un-Real exists."  It is an absurd proposition, but
we tend to take it seriously, until true understanding Awakens.

The struggle with a "ko-an" is traditionally initiated by honest or rightly
purposive Teachers who place them on their students' minds the way a
dishonest merchant places a heavy finger on a scale to make his patrons
believe they have been given a full weight... Therefore, understand.  The
"ko-an" is intended to initiate a struggle that will frustrate temporarily
but also ultimately lead to the conversion of being.  The ultimate
conversion is from pshcho-physical egoity (and materialistic presumptions
about Reality) to Being (or Transcendental Freedom, prior to all the
illusory burdens of presumed knowledge and conventional experience).

The Real exists.  The Real is all that exists, and only what exists.  The
Real is not exclusively outside the self (in the context of objects,
relations, or all that is not-self), for then it would not include whatever
is self.  Nor is the Real exclusively inside the self, for then It would not
include whatever is apparently related to the self.  the Real is the
Ultimate context of the self and its relations.  It includes and transcends
the self and all its possible relations..."

                                                  Da Avabhasa (The "Bright")
                                                  The God in Every Body Book

  Copyright Sri Love-Anandashram (Naitauba) Pty Ltd, as trustee for the
       Sri Love-Anandashram (Naitauba) Trust. All Rights Reserved
	  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

So perhaps "MU" is a pseudo-answer that a roshi uses to confound a student
who approaches him with a pseudo-question?

A while back I posted a humorous talk by Da Avabhasa where he considers with
his devotees the koan: "Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is
there anything? Where is it? What is it?"  Email me if you like a copy of
this talk.

Yee.




The following is an article I'd like to submit to s.r.e.
THank you.
Kyo Kang
================= article starts here =====



The following is an excerpt from "Teachings of The Heart"  
by Zen Master TaeHeng SeNim.

----------------

The Vastness of The One Mind

The One Mind is endless; you cannot conceive of how vast. It includes space
and time, but it does not depend on space or time. If you learn to use your
Mind freely, you will not be limited by space or time, either. You will be
able to meet the needs of a friend ten thousand miles away in the flash of a
moment!

...

The One Mind is the great principle which protects the universe, which is its
creation. The One Mind has existed since the beginning. It exists today and
will exist forever. It existed before the Buddha was born 2,500 years ago. It
is the truth, it is permanent and it is everything.

All beings have this One Mind. Despite its presence in all living beings, it
is only One Mind. There is no difference between the Mind in one and the Mind
in another.

Suppose we build a house on a hundred square yards of land and build a fence
to enclose that area. The land inside the fence is mine, and the land beyond
it belongs to others. The fence is my body and my discriminating, egoistic
mind. Originally there were no fences on the plain where my land is.
Originally the land did not have boundaries. Human beings drew the borders and
made fences between individuals. But if we pull the fence down, the boundaries
between us will vanish. Then the plain will belong to me and everyone else at
the same time. It will be jointly owned.

In a family, each member of the household is free to use anything belonging to
the household. The boundaries between members are blurred and everyone is
closer. The One Mind is like that plain, it is like that family: without
boundaries.

In truth, the One Mind originally belongs to nobody in particular. It is the
life of us all. Let us pull down the fences of discrimication and become the
One Mind again.

The profound power of the One Mind is too great to be contained within a small
enclosure. If you've built your fence around 100 square meters, you can only
live in that space. If you have 1,000 square meters, your living quarters are
much larger. If you have built no fence, however, then it is impossible to
describe how big your living quarters are. Words become meaningless.

"Big" can have meaning only in reference to something smaller or larger. "Big"
is a measure of comparison. But if you have transcended all boundaries, there
is nothing you can be compared to. There is nothing relative; everything is 
absolute, total, endless. You become Suchness. "Han," the Korean word for
"one" also means "big." It is the "One" in the One Mind, but is does not mean 
large only. Han is beyond numbers.

Killing your ego is the first step of the practicing mind. How can you get rid
of egoism? Put down the states of the mind, do not discriminate, and accept
things as they come. The endless, permanent and profound One Mind includes
everything within and outside of me. That is myself. That is why I am telling
you to get rid of your boundaries and leave everything to the Ju In Gong*, to
the One Mind.

To leave your boundaries, confidence is necessary. In fact, powerful faith is
necessary. Some religions teach us to believe in God. If this is true, then
there are two beings: humans and God. But reality must not be divided into
parts. Many dangers ensue if you seek reality outside yourself. This leaves
the mind empty, like a vacant house, so that it can be easily broken into.

Seek the One Mind within you, remembering that the seeker and the Ju In Gong
are not two. They are one and the same. The Ju In Gong and I are one. How can
I explain this! It is beyond the capabilities of the tongue. We say that it is
the Middle Way, for the Middle Way is not in the middle. There is no
discrimination between the Ju In Gong and me. The true void mysteriously
exists.

* Ju In Gong (Korean) - the owner of myself, master of the mind, Buddha Mind,
the original face, the real self, Buddha Nature, One Mind of Buddha, own being




		
		The Silent Mind (Part 1)

Mental Constructions:
---------------------

	The first stage in Sri Aurobindo's yoga and the fundamental task which 

gives the key to many realizations is the silence of the mind. One may ask, why 

silence the mind? but it is quite obvious that if we want to discover a new 

world within us, we must first leave the old - all depends on the resolve with 

which we cross this step. Sometimes just a flash suffices; something in us cries

out,  "Enough of this twaddle!" and we cling once and for all, and we go ahead 

without a look behind us. Others say yes-no and sway endlessly between the two

worlds. But clearly it is not a question of lopping off a possession painfully 

acquired, in the name of heaven knows what Wisdom-Peace-Serenity(on this side 

we are not going to be taken in by fine words), we are not in quest of holiness

but of youth- the eternal youth of a being who grows, -not in the quest of

lesser being but of better being and above all of vaster being: Has it not

occured to you that if they really sought for something cold, dark and gloomy as

the supreme good, they would not be sages but asse? Sri Aurobindo once          

humorously remarked.

	All kinds of discoveries are made, in truth, when the mental machinary

stops, and the first is that if the power to think is a remarkable gift, the 

power not to think is even more so; let the seeker try it for just for five

minutes and he will see what stuff he is made of! He will find that he lives 

in a clandstine turmoil, an exhausting whirlwind, but never exhausted, where    

there is room only for his thoughts, his feelings, his impulsions, his reactions

- himself, always himself, enormous gnome who obtrudes everywhere, veils        

everything, hears only himself, sees only himself, knows only himself(if that)

and whose perpetual themes, more or less alternating, can give him the illusions

of novelty. In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental,    

nervous, and physical habits held togather by a few ruling ideas, desires and

associations - an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major

vibrations. At the age of eighteen we seem to be set, our major vibrations 

established, and around them indefinitely will come to be coiled in thicker and

thicker, more polished, more refined layers, the sediments of a sempiternal same

thing with a thousand faces which we call culture or "ourselves" - in fact, we

are shut up in a construction, which may be of lead without a skylight, or 

graceful like a minaret, but always shut up, buzzing, repetitive, men in a skin

of granite or in a statute of glass. The first work of yoga is to breathe freely

And naturally, to break this mental screen which allows only a single type of

vibration to filter through and to know the multi-coloured infinitude of 

vibrations, that is, the world at least and all beings such as they really

are and another "ourself" worth much more than we think.


Active Meditation:
------------------ 


	When one sits down with eyes closed to silence the mind, one is at 

first submerged by a torrent of thoughts - they crop up from everywhere like

frightened, nay, aggressive rats. There is but one way of stopping this 

commotion: to try and try again, patiently, persistently. And above all not 

to commit the mistake of stuggling mentally with the mind or somewhere deeper

an aspiration, the very one which has put us on the way, need of our being,

like a password which has an efficacy for us alone; if one clings to it the 

work is more easy, for we pass from a negative to a positive attitude - the 

oftener we repeat our password, the more it will gather strength. We may also

take the help of an image like that of a vast ocean, without a ripple, on which

one lies floating - one floats along, one become tranqul vastness; at the same  

time we get to know not only silence but a widening of consciousness. In fact 

each one must find his way , and the less taut he is the quicker he will succeed

 "One may start a process of one kind or another for the purpose which would    

normally mean a long labor and be seized, even at the outset, by a rapid 

intervention or manifestation of Silence with an effect out of all proportion

to the means used in the beginning. One commences with a method, but the work

is taken up by a Grace from the above, from That to which one aspires or an 

irruption of the infinitudes of the Spirit. It was in this last way that I 

myself came by the mind's absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had its

actual experience." (Sri Aurobindo) This is a very important point, for we are

tempted to think that these yogic experiences are beautiful and quite           

interesting, but, after all, they are far beyond our ordinary humanity; how     

shall we, such as we are, be able ever to reach there? Our mistake is to judge

by our present self the possibilities of another self. Now, precisely, yoga 

awakens automatically, by the simple fact that one has started on the way, a

whole gamut of latent faculties and invisible forces which considerably surpass

the possiblities of our surface being and which can do for us that which we are

normally incapable: "One has to have the passage clear betweem the outer mind 

and something in the inner being.. for they (the Yogic consciousness and its

powers) are already there within you, and the best way of "clearing" is to make

the mind silent. We do not know who we are and still less what we are capable

of.


Something new:
 
First of all it must be understood that any such questions, being as they are
reliant on sub-abysmal concepts and terms, can only be answered incompletely.
This is for two reasons. The first is that language itself is sub-abysmal, and
therefor unable to convey truths and realities that transcend the manifested
worlds below the abyss. The second is that any such answers will be colored by
the personality, or individuality, or point-of-view, or karma, of the
respondent - unless, of course, given by one whose p.o.v. is above the abyss,
in which case point one, above, still applies.

Second, any answer regardless of the p.o.v. of the speaker will in turn be
colored by that of the listener.

> What is the value and aim of human life?

The Great Game, called by the Hindu "Lila". (1)

> Is there a Power whose will has fixed this aim and the means of its 
> attainment?

Tat tvam asi. (2)

> If so, why does it leave us in ignorance of the aim, manipulating us like
> puppets? But if not, man is simply the plaything of natural forces and of 
> the egotism of others, obliged, like them, to protect his own self.

To understand why the author limited herself to these two narrow choices, it is
necessary to know where she was leading; in this case, to the theory that each
of us has three basic selves: the Automaton (3), the Permanent Witness (4), and
the Spiritual Witness (5). She evidently found it necessary to couch her p.o.v.
of the human dilemna in terms of the dichotomy offered above, in order to
advance this construct. From *this* p.o.v., however, such a narrow field of
choices is greatly inaccurate. 

I have blindfolded myself to myself in order to have the enjoyment of finding
myself again.

> And in either case, why do we sometimes revolt against this self, which can
> never be satisfied with aspiration to a grade above its own? Can this self
> be in revolt against itself? If not, then what in oneself is opposing it?

See above.

> Can the answer to these questions be discovered within ourselves, or must we
> look for it outside?

Shall we tell what a glass is by looking at the inside of it, or the outside?

> If we look for it in some teaching or other, what criterion shall we use to
> judge the value of the teaching?

Is it effective? Does it help advance our "progress"? The answers to these
questions can only be known by the Higher Self, what de Lubicz calls the
Permanent and Spiritual Witnesses, as the human mind is easily fooled by
emotions, desires, and "lust of attainment". Furthermore, only the Higher Self
is able to perceive the "larger picture".

> If our own conscience is to judge, what is this conscience to which we apply
> for a decision?

The conscience belongs to that part of the "individual" that is below the
abyss, and therefor is limited by environment, society, heredity, karma,
experience and understanding.


(1) "This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as
nothing, and the joy of dissolution all."  Liber Legis, I:30

(2) "That thou art." -The Upanishads

(3) The Personal Will, or lower self, comprised of the various physical, mental
and spiritual bodies, the animal mind, the racial mind, the individual mind,
the emotions, etc.

(4) The Higher Self of the individual, also sometimes called the Holy Guardian
Angel.

(5) The Divine Self, or Higher Self that the individual partakes of, but that
is not limited to that one individual.