Chuck Kasmire:
the prisoner greco:
this is not what either i nor richard, whom you quote above, mean by actual freedom at all. what we mean is that it is a condition in which we do not experience feelings - they do not arise to fall away. stress is not amassed not because it falls away, but because it doesn't enter the picture to begin with.what do you make of this particular discrepancy?
In the Sutta that you cite, Buddha is instructing Ven. Malunkyaputta in how to practice. Malunkyaputta has not yet awakened. When Malunkyaputta repeats the teaching back (part of which you quote) he is showing that he understands the practice (essentially cultivating dispassion) - not that he understands the transcendent - this is how I read it. The quotes that I gave are from people who have awakened and are speaking from the transcendent perspective.
i have considered this interpretation as well, and so have cited that particular sutta as an(other) example, in addition to the texts from which you quoted in the original post, of how certain buddhist texts and passages can be read to mean the same thing as a pure consciousness experience (suggesting that experience of such has existed at some point for practitioners within the buddhist tradition - such as the buddha, hsin hsin ming, or hui neng - or who were associated with taoism - such as han shan).
assuming that this way of reading is correct, a good question is whether or not there is any textual evidence that this mode of experience was stabilised/made permanent by any such practitioner (such that they were living in, as i call it, an actual freedom from the human condition). do you know of any texts which could support the claim that they (any of them) were?
Chuck Kasmire:
For those reading this, the definition of 'feelings' we are using is: "Physical sensibility other than sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell. The condition of being emotionally affected or committed; an emotion (of fear, hope, etc.). Emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies. A belief not based solely on reason; an attitude, a sentiment."
for those reading this, i will note my agreement with chuck's definition of 'feelings' above (and so it follows that the term 'feelings' refers to any and all affective experience, which includes, among other things, any experience of irritation, agitation, frustration, craving, greed, libido, disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness, nervous tension, and apprehension).
Chuck Kasmire:
A difference between Buddhism and AF that will cause confusion is in how we see the experience of phenomena:
Richard: "The three ways a person can experience the world are:
1. cerebral (thoughts); 2. sensate (senses); 3. affective (feelings)."
Buddhism states that there are just the 5 senses and the mind. The affective being compounded.
according to the article on the actual freedom trust website on which richard wrote the
precis of actual freedom, from which your above passage originally comes (though the order has been reversed from what i find in the original), the affective (feelings) way of experiencing the world is forever deleted for the actually free person (a claim i can personally verify):
A Precis Of Actual Freedom, by Richard:
The entire affective faculty vanishes ... blind nature’s software package of instinctual passions is deleted.
in comparing the above with buddhism, do you mean to state that the entire affective faculty vanishes - that the entire package of instinctual passions is deleted - from the experience of a human who has reached awakening ... such that a human who has reached awakening will never, ever, experience feelings?
as you state that you are awakened, is this your (necessarily on-going) experience?
Chuck Kasmire:
i can move onto the ones i found in the quotes you posted above, next.
Go for it.
ok. i will do it in the format of contrasting my own experience with what is written in those texts from which you quoted above (with the relevant parts of the passages in bold):
Han Shan:
Hopes, fears, judgments of right and wrong, and feelings of pleasure or misery also vanish when the mind remains uninvolved in the worldly events that occasioned them.
my mind is not uninvolved in worldly events (it is only ever involved in worldly events). it is not by remaining uninvolved in worldly events that i am (my mind is) at peace and tranquil, it is because i have no affective faculty, and so such involvement does not cause any hope, fear, judgement of right and wrong, or feelings of pleasure and misery.. and so i am free to be involved as much as i like.
Hsin Hsin Ming:
To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance.
all i do, all day long, is see what appears (and act on it as is appropriate and beneficial). there is no 'going beyond appearance and emptiness' here.. these appearances (this world of people and things) are actually here (it actually exists). this is not an illusion which occurs in an empty world.. the changes which occur here in this world of people and things are actual (this world, and these changes, does not and do not only exist because of some kind of 'ignorance', they exist whether or not they are perceived).
Hui Neng:
As to dwelling on the mind: the (functional) mind is primarily delusive and as we come to realise that it is only a phantasm we see that there is no reason for dwelling upon it. As to dwelling upon its purity: our nature is intrinsically pure, and just as far as we get rid of discriminative thinking, there will remain nothing but purity in our nature; it is these delusive ideas that obscure our realisation of True reality (Tathata).
what is it, exactly, which is supposed to be delusive about the (functional) mind? this mind, which functions in determining, and thus discriminating between, various objects and courses of action, is not a phantasm - it actually exists in its function/in its occurrence as a faculty of this sensate and reflective flesh and blood body which i am, and of which i am the experience.. . which experience is not at all 'rid of discriminative thinking'.
tarin