Greetings Katy
katy steger:
I listened to the "bonus follow-up" you linked. He says at 3/4 point,
"I find all of this enormously inspiring and fascinating as challenges for experience (...) if this can actually become experiential, that's pretty interesting, to put it lightly," which indicates that he may be teaching some of this based on text principle versus realization.
Maybe, but who knows, he comes from that old school group of people like Jack Kornfield, and they don't talk about their attainments. I've listened to about thirty of his talks and guided meditations, and he talks a fair bit about his history and experiences. I'd be inclined to think he has experience an attainment?
I've read part of a thread of yours where you talk about the problems of Thanassaro Bikkhu, Thanassaro is quite good for a traditionalist, who is likely wrong in the areas you critiqued him. I'd like to remind you that Daniel's last teacher before he attained, Sayadaw U Pandita, who is also my teacher in Melbourne, has quite a lot of traditional dogma just as Thanasaaro. I asked him about whether an Arhat would die if he didn't take the robes, and he said yes. If he spoke truly then he must not think Daniels attained. What I think here, is that attainment of Arhatship doesn't make you perfect in your morals or intellectual wisdom, and you can still be wrong about things. In the end it is only the person how knows whether they are attained based on, what identifications remain.
I remember Daniel in a thread once saying that Wallace is close minded, around dry insight and by that suggesting also that other areas of his critiques of soft jhana are wrong. I expect Wallace to be close minded around the dry insight issue, but that doesn't mean Dry Insighter's have to follow suit. But there does seems to be some discrepancy between, notions of soft jhana, insight jhana and the notion of jhana in the Visuddhimagga. But that doesn't mean everything that Mahasi taught is wrong, and i understand what he means by soft jhana and insight jhana, but they don't conform to the common language of the Visuddhimagga. I guess I'll have to accept the break with the association with those traditional terms, within the the dry insight school.
Yes, I listen to a teacher, sometimes debate them, but ultimately, I have to do my own work.
For myself, for example, the typology of khandas was adequate to guide me in meditation and I still refer to it for convention in conversation. To me the khanda of consciousness, because it is a typology, contains the experiences of consciousnesses I've had and which I raised above: this includes primary "released" consciousness arising after cessation and which is can move in equanimity, and its predecessor ~ subtly conceited consciousness, which can also move about in equanimity, though it is not released and bears subtle conceit, and affective consciousness seen in "normal" daily moods.
So what makes your words any different to anyone else's words. I'm assuming that mixed in with the sharing about your experience is also a sense of advice, sorry if that isn't so. Its not that your advice isn't good, its just that other advice is also good.
Yeah i have a chat every now and then and share a point or two and also disagree with a point or two. Mostly I avoid these more complicated debates, and offer simple advice around practices I know and how to practice them.
It seems that dzogchen might be wrong or they might be right, about a deeper level of consciousness, but this is not the point, for me, because that can't really be resolved, without the direct experience of it, just with Path. The point to me is understanding others views, with clarity, and then making up your own mind, along with maybe seen how or why someone might think that way. In that regard, we have more of a chance to read between the lines, to the essence of their intention, rather than get caught up, in the semantics of their perspectives. Or we might go this is how these people think, i'm not inclined to think that, there is reincarnation or rigpa, or continuation after Arhatship. But its not like they want to burn all gays and think god is sending everyone to hell that doesn't believe in him. And maybe its possibly true, that there is reincarnation and rigpa, personally i don't know. Thought I feel a strong, a bit more strongly about reincarnation, truthfully I still don't know.
There is a theme, that emptiness is form and form is emptiness, and emptiness is not other than form and form is not other than emptiness. Thats how I view the concept of self and not self. So I see a dilemma, in this need to attack self, there is no self to attack, what's the big deal? But this is one of those argument even amongst Buddhist who advocate for no-self...
"I have annoyed quite a few faith driven students at Namhai Norbhu's retreats in Australia."
Where I would spend more time in argumentation or rumination, then I would essentially be getting gratified by those ruminating/argumentative actions and avoiding my own study-practice. That would be me; I'm not saying that's what you're doing. Sometimes training in meditation on the cushion and/or dedicating weeks and weeks to sincere, effortful sati is too hard compared with habitual ruminating/argumentation/speculation/discursiveness. So one ruminates and argues and seeks to discuss a bit. That is useful for unwinding that urge/habit until those activities are seen to be unreliable and not satisfactory.
At the time i was studying Dzogchen, and i was trying to work out whether, Rigpa could actually be worked with and what the difference was between awareness and rigpa, no one really understood, and many of them were upset by my questioning, because it created doubt in them around their devotion to Namkhai Norbu and his path and around their attachment of Dzogchen.
Yeah, I'm not spending all my time getting it done, but are you, and are you an Arhat? Have you finished it all, and just because one person does, does that mean it will be that easy for everyone?
I've got another retreat in april for a month, I'll be good a month before that retreat. I don't like a lot about existence, it often bores me but i don't like meditating a lot too(I'm sick of trying to make it better, and the sensitisation that comes with the practice, i'm getting better at accepting that.). I've notice in the last four years since I started this path, that after my earlier retreat, that on a deeper level I may be becoming more equanimous. My basis for saying that is that, during my last retreat, last April. Things where mostly smooth! And that has never the case before (in my eleven months of retreat), it was sort of fucking intense a lot of the time. So is my glass half full or is it half empty? I'm taking it easy, or trying to, while I study transpersonal counselling.
Also, I quoted LongNails not to effect silence. Not at all. But to question a tone of perhaps needless disagreement/presumption (which I also question in myself when I spot it) which can telegraph that one is using the mind's energy to ruminate on evaluating others versus seeing for oneself in practice, wherein satisfaction, satiety, can actually be found. LongNails on this point is akin to the fifth point in the
five qualifications of a teacher that I like to remember, helpful to seekers and teachers alike.
Yes I see that point, but you seem quite vocal your self.
Also I'm getting better at not getting involved, for an socialist greenie & idealist. Jack Kornfield said quite elegantly, that, some people care a bit more and this can make them angry or more offensive, and some people are more detached and this can make them more tolerable or uninvolved. They are both quite good qualities in different ways.
Sharing, at least with people who I feel i can help in areas of meditation that I have traversed, makes me happy, makes me feel metta, this gives me meaning, in a dark night period were dukha and a no-self, kind of nothingness of meaning has prevailed, for many years. This helps my personality, my sense of self as it is reconstructed in each new moment. Jack Kornfield also talked about the benefits of approaches that deal with personality and how this can be complementary to some peoples path. Comic examples of this are enlightened people who need counselling to learn to relate to others better, depicted in, After the Ecstasy the Laundry.
You sound a be more zealous, and critical, than you have been, in some of your other threads that i've seen. I tend to not read that much of what goes on on this site. As sometime its to intellectual and a lot of the arguments go round in circles. Many seem to have a tendency to nit pick over finer points, than aren't relevant to me. To the people i know, i am intellectual, but to the people on this site, I think what I write may be a bit intellectually disinteresting, maybe even a bit simple. Maybe this is just my projection around some of the arguments on this site. But when i start to read a lot of these threads, I quickly get really bored by the intellectualisations and arguments. But if a person seems to be speaking from a position of trying to learn something, something that i know about, something that is coming from the heart, then it seems much more interesting to me. Yes there is some conceit around this but also there is just some really nice rejoicing in the opportunity to help, and in peoples progress on the path. And some compassion and some empathy.
Shit I've gone on, oh well...