Nothing changes.

Everything changes.

DON'T PANIC ! (oh, I seem to be loosing that towel of mine all the time! Anyone seen mine???  ) 

What goes around, comes around ... ??   

I think we’ve hit on one of the main differences in view between early Buddhism and later forms of Buddhism influenced by the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra.

“Nothing changes” is pointing out our Buddha nature, which is ultimately beyond characteristics. There’s a double meaning intended: (a) it can be described as unchanging; (b) it gives rise to an infinite variety of constantly changing appearances, which are like diffractions or emanations of the “nothingness”, so it’s as if Nothing changes.

Of course this is inaccurate. It’s merely intended as a koan. I’ve put this thread in the Humour section to emphasise this and the absurdity of attempting to sum up the meaning of life, the universe and everything in a single sentence, or any number of sentences.

“Everything changes” on the other hand is implying that distinctions between appearances ultimately exist. It’s not informed by the Second and Third turnings of the Dharma Wheel. 

I feel there is huge practical relevance in this for practitioners influenced by MCTB. Personally I've found that the “everything changes” view of early Buddhism leaves room for some degree of mental agitation, as there is no basis for completely trusting in appearances/reality. It’s as if one is adrift in a chaotic ocean of ultimately real appearances.

DhO practitioners need to be aware of the limitations of early Buddhism and recognize when it’s time to move on. Personally I’ve found Dzogchen has unlocked a whole new dimension of understanding which was completely inaccessible to me from within the Theravadin framework. I’d compare the magnitude of this to the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics.

aloha bb,

   It is typical of mahayana buddhism to categorize theravadin buddhism as "hinayana," the lesser vehicle. Most theravadins find this pejorative, as well they might. Many mahayana sects have so degraded the original message that they repeat words over and over or make a set number of prostrations or ritual observances and call that the way to enlightenment.

   The buddha in the pali suttas provides what the prophet, peace be upon him, would call "a straight path." Like the sufi path, like daniel's take on the buddha's core teachings, these scriptures provide a perfectly scientific and rational means of approaching the ultimate in human potential. There is no higher goal than nirvana, no greater achievement. Dzogchen may work also but it is not rocket science compared to a sledge. There is no order of magnitude difference between nibbana and nirvana. The buddha was one of many and all are  of one mind.

   All buddhism is rooted in the pali suttas and the historical buddha. All buddhists should be familiar with the pali suttas.

   I would only practice dzogchen on my deathbed. Too intense for a bodhisattva, too personally impersonal, if you understand me. Newtonian, you might say. Hinayana. 

(wink)
terry

form is emptiness

emptiness is form

   The second and third turnings of the dharma wheel were designed to bring the wheel back to its original state. To cleanse buddhism of the accretions of the centuries and return to the pristine originality of the buddha's actual teachings. To restore the freshness and directness of the early sangha, using the tools of modern hermeneutics and phenomenology.

   It would not be unreasonable to say that the return to the original scriptures and the attempt to determine what the original arahants actually had achieved  and replicate that is another turning of the wheel.

terry

"Personally I’ve found Dzogchen has unlocked a whole new dimension of understanding which was completely inaccessible to me from within the Theravadin framework. I’d compare the magnitude of this to the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics."

Still, there is no reason to devalue the wine opener just because it's not the wine itself We have this nicely aged bottle of red wine but what tool am I to use to pop it open so to enjoy it? I find POI/Shamatha-Vipassana do great job for pulling out that cork Only then can we "move on" to wine tasting! 

p.s. and I naively thought this thread was about 42 and knowing where ones towel is  

"Personally I’ve found Dzogchen has unlocked a whole new dimension of understanding which was completely inaccessible to me from within the Theravadin framework."

Btw, I would really be interested in more details about your new understanding as I'm now in a place that seems to feel another approach might be in order and yet unsure which. Much appreciated and thank you!

Green chili breakfast burrito.

Troublesome problem #2398 with Buddhism message boards - no one ever gets the joke  

You never studied. 

buddhist jokes are subtle and hard to know...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9DO26O6dIg

That, too, was a funny (and teenage boys kind of silly) movie. 

42

On a serious note, let's all try to be aware that "different" doesn't mean "better." If something suits your practice, do it! But it may not suit everyone, and it may not bring the same glorious revelations to them, either. I've done lots of different practices over the years and they all have something to be said for them.

On a personal note, years ago I let the mahayana/hinayana division and related concerns that I thought were life and death important break up a message board and some online friendships. This was one of the most myopic and ignorant things I've ever done.

Here's to variety and diversity!

Eventually people will have to accept that the differences are not driven by tradition but by learning styles and later fossilized.  Visual, auditory or kinesthetic learning styles drive the techniques. And techniques are outgrown, they evolve from gross to very refined.  I submit to Supreme Mahatma Daniel Ingram, "the last time I did formal noting was probably in 2001 or so" ( from the Bible of the Core). Oh fellow seekers these words are sacred! 

 "the last time I did formal noting was probably in 2001 or so" 

BLASPHEMY 


...

I like what you write "but by learning styles and later fossilized" LOL nicely said. There is this strange brainwashing going on when we practice this stuff and seem to love "our practice" if it showed "results". For example Bhante Vimalaramsi first did Noting and got only frustration and then found Samatha and this led to some goodies In my expereince I first found Samatha and also the goodies but it just couldnt break down the last bits and then found Noting which exactly was what I needed; the corkscrew opener as I already had acquired a very niced aged bottle of Bordeaux with Samatha but just could't find the way to pop that bleedn' cork  

Yes, toast to finding what works best for you at any given time and may traditions and ways be criss-crossed for the most benefit to all! Cheers! 
Time for some fine poetry reading dont you think?!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysb-TwA7JCQ

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aboZctrHfK8

   Truly great artists at the peak of their game doing incisive social commentary.


(form is emptiness; emptiness is form)

from "learning how to learn" by idries shah



THE SHARPSHOOTING SCHOLARS


Scholars themselves know a great deal about the besetting sin of their profession, that of over-specialisation and blinkered dogma­tism. Here is a story about the whole matter, told me by a scholar who himself admitted, unlike many others, that he knew that he was like one of the characters in the tale: but that there was nothing, he believed, that he could do about it:

A number of academics, it appears, were enrolled in time of war into the infantry. After training they all proved to be crack shots, capable of hitting the bullseye far more often than any other recruits.

The time came for them to be sent into battle. As the enemy advanced, the order was given to fire. Nobody moved. 'For good­ness' sake', shouted the commanding officer, 'why don't you shoot?'

'How can we, you fool?' roared back one of the scholars, 'When we haven't be trained to fire at people?'

aloha pcd,


   You might really like dzogchen. It is pure and refined. You might check out lama surya das.


t

Hi t, 
Is it expensive ? I'm kinda broke Apparently one must have a one on one teacher for this stuff. 
Also not much of a religious lad over here and Tibetans are heavy on Devas and Hobbits and such  

Any GOOD link for dummies like me to read on Dzogchen? 

I did try to wrap my head around the 6 Realms model but I just keep laughing at Mind pondering all this stuff. At the end THIS either Is or Isn't and the rest is kind of a dream anyway until you hit your head into something and realize you are very much alive ouch! 

At the moment im mostly "chop wood, carry water" with fellow humans who know nothing about any of this stuff we fine folks ponder about here  

not a one off for kinnison...he also teaches preschool...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHTaMMyK274

   You could start with this:


https://www.lionsroar.com/dzogchen-explained/

if that doesn't put you off, here's a taste of:

The Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed
in Mud and Feathers
Heart of the Great Perfection:
Düdjom Lingpa’s Visions of the Great Perfection, Vol.1


https://wisdomexperience.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Root-Text-The-Foolish-Dharma-of-an-Idiot-Clothed-in-Mud-and-Feathers.pdf

Papa Che, please please do. Dzogchen sounds so correct for you!!!  I had a vision of you Hitchhiking in your sublime rainbow body shouting 42 and leaving smileys across the universe. And believe me, I know about these things!!

   What tipped you off? The idiot clothed in mud and feathers?

from "the foolish dharma of an idiot clothed in mud and feathers":


Some brilliant scholars disparage the Dharma and individuals, and with
skill in ridicule abandon the Dharma and commit root downfalls. With the
full ripening of that karma, they are vaulted into the depths of the ocean of
saṃsāra. In the eyes of such experts, if even the teachings of the jinas are not
appealing, there’s no need to speak of others’ teachings. If I err in the eyes of
others who are endowed with the eye of wisdom and proper conduct, I confess
and disclose all the breaches of conduct, vices, and downfalls committed
in all my lifetimes. May they be purified and cleansed, and may I please
be granted the supreme siddhi in this very lifetime!

While I have sat at the feet of sublime human teachers and spiritual mentors
and drunk the ambrosia of their teachings, I have not become an authority.
Nevertheless, on occasion this fool has engaged in stupid meditations
that I have fabricated myself. On the basis of illusory visions in dreams, in
which others have granted me pointing-out instructions, I have engaged in
investigation and analysis and tried very hard to practice. However, since I
have not encountered a guru to lead me on the path, I have developed a
growing sense of high self-esteem, pride, and arrogance. That is my experience,
and I have proudly taken it to be realization and have confidence in it. Since
I definitely lack even the slightest excellent qualities of unmistaken primordial
consciousness stemming from an authentic view and meditation, I have
behaved as in the well-known aphorism, “While the marmot seems to be
practicing meditation, it is actually just hibernating.” I am candidly revealing
my own faults, without hiding anything, so please look upon me with
compassion! However, if I express the offering of my heart’s blood while at
least not violating the teachings of my sublime gurus, then what else is there
to do but write?

That's the one! Just read it during my break! Love it and dont love it at the same time. Will give it another spin when I have time. Thank you! 

   If different spiritual teachijngs were likened to drugs, some would be soporific, some antiseptic, some anesthetic, some analgesic, perhaps some steroids; dzogchen in this schema would definitely be a psychedelic. Go down that road and you will be changed by it, no telling how.

   Cast your fate to the winds. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

   I understand the love hate. I would hesitate to call it a straight path as it doesn't emphasize social behavior. Seems a bit "hinayana" in its emphasis on personal liberation, however universal in scope.

terry

"dzogchen in this schema would definitely be a psychedelic."

Ops! I was never good at drugs. They just make me sick. I mean it. I was always into lager or stout  

I might just stick to "chop wood carry water" and be happy or miserable with it. 

   When they asked salvador dali if he took drugs, he answered, "Drugs? Me, take drugs? I don't take drugs, I am drugs!"


...but here's another story about layman p'ang, from "crazy clouds; zen rebels, radicals and reformers" eds perle, steger:



In 786 P'ang appeared at the Mount Nan-yueh Monastery of Master Sekito and asked him, "Who is the man who doesn't accompany the ten thousand dharmas?" Sekito responded by putting a hand on P'ang's mouth, and the Layman was instantly enlightened. He remained with Sekito for a year, practicing among the monks as a lay student. One day the Master asked him, "How have you practiced Zen since coming here to this mountain?

   P'ang replied, "There's nothing I can say about my daily activities."

   "It's precisely because I know that you can't use words that I aask you," said Sekito.

   In response, P'ang produced a poem, whose last two lines have become Zen watchwords.

   My daily activities are not unusual,
   I'm just naturally in harmony with them.
   Grasping nothing, discarding nothing,
   In every place there is no hindrance, no conflict.
   My supernatural power and marvelous activity:
   Drawing water and chopping wood.

   Sekito offered to make him a monk then, but the Layman refused, saying, "I'll do what I like."

   If sufism is wine, zen is probably beer.

IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER
(Traditional)

Recorded by :
Brave Combo; Dr. Demento; The Dubliners; The Pogues.


In Heaven there is no beer
That's why we drink it here
And when we're all gone from here
Our friends will be drinking all the beer.

In Heaven there is no wine
So we drink till we feel fine
And when we leave this all behind
Our friends will be drinking all the wine.

In Heaven there is no fear
So we worry too much here
And we drink ourselves full of beer
To help us when we deal with the fear.

In Heaven there are no drugs
That's why we hang with thugs
And when the Lord pulls the plug
All the thugs will still be selling drugs, yeah.

Thugs and drugs
Beer...

In Heaven there is no sex
So let's do that next
And when our muscles no longer flex
Someone else will be having sex.

In Heaven there are no wars
Or cars, or movie stars
And when we no longer are
The world will probably still be having wars.

What the heck! Yeah!

Sex and war,
Bars and cars.
Drugs, thugs,
And delicious food.

    

  How about christianity? The opiate of the people? Tobacco? 

   Confucianism certainly tea. Taoism, home brewed rice wine.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKkIYFQR4Jg

Nah, I leave christianity to Tim of the Cross He can smoke for all of us Im sure

What is Vipassana then? Black coffee without sugar?  

from SN 45.2
Upaddha Sutta: Half (of the Holy Life)
translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was living among the Sakyans. Now there is a Sakyan town named Sakkara. There Ven. Ananda went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to the Blessed One, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, "This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie."

"Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, he can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path."

   Vipassana is coffee, sure. And samatha is cannabis, which is why they complement each other so nicely.

(caffeinated smile)

(every time I see the "reply with quote" button and press it, I reply with a quote)



"The smoker you drink, the player you get."

~joe walsh

   the opioid of the people...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrsbjjuDTzU

Ha, Starbucks apparently has a Three C's Latte on their secret menu...

from "freud and philosophy" by paul ricouer, p26-27:



The difficulty—it initiated my research in the first place—is this: there is no general hermeneutics, no universal canon for exegesis, but only disparate and opposed theories concerning the rules of interpretation. The hermeneutic field, whose outer contours we have traced, is internally at variance with itself.

I have neither the intention nor the means to attempt a complete enumeration of hermeneutic styles. The more enlightening course, it seems to me, is to start with the polarized opposition that creates the greatest tension at the outset of our investigation. According to the one pole, hermeneutics is understood as the manifestation and restoration of a meaning addressed to me in the manner of a mes­sage, a proclamation, or as is sometimes said, a kerygma; according to the other pole, it is understood as a demystification, as a reduc­tion of illusion. Psychoanalysis, at least on a first reading, aligns it­ self with the second understanding of hermeneutics.

From the beginning we must consider this double possibility: this tension, this extreme polarity, is the truest expression of our "mod­ernity." The situation in which language today finds itself comprises this double possibility, this double solicitation and urgency: on the one hand, purify discourse of its excrescences, liquidate the idols, go from drunkenness to sobriety, realize our state of poverty once and for all; on the other hand, use the most "nihilistic," destructive, iconoclastic movement so as to let speak what once, what each time, was said, when meaning appeared anew, when meaning was at its fullest. Hermeneutics seems to me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness to listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience. In our time we have not finished doing away with idols and we have barely begun to listen to symbols. It may be that this situation, in its apparent distress, is instructive: it may be that extreme iconoclasm belongs to the restoration of mean­ing.

The underlying reason for initially posing the problem in the above way is to bring into the open the crisis of language that today makes us oscillate between demystification and restoration of mean­ing. To my mind, an introduction to the psychoanalysis of culture has had to proceed in this roundabout way. 

sri papaji, as you know, there is something on tap at the bar(do) of last resort for every existential taste. But the signature drink of Judeo-Christianity is a little concoction called wormwood and gall, which is sort of like a black-and-tan gone very bad, often with a sour vinegar chaser. It's so awful no one wants to drink it--- even Jesus prayed to just have the cup taken away. But there are certain moment when it's the only drink in town. And it's killer shit, and goes down surprisingly smoothly in the end. The hangover lasts at least three days, though.

love, tim

Hi Tim! 
I'll take that drink over Vogon Poetry any time
How much worse could it be!? (Hide)  

 SUZANNE
(Leonard Cohen}

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer that you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind
And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him, and you want to travel blind
And you think you maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with her mind
Now, Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river
She's wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor
And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they wil lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds her mirror
And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE
(Leonard Cohen)

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you
For like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "you must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "hey, why not ask for more?"
Oh, like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

If it were up to me (it's not) I'd get rid of the "Reply with Quote" button.

Just sayin'

tweet tweet


(bonfire of the dialogs)


Terry Pratchett — 'Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.'

Burn, baby burn!

(I'm a son of the '60's, in case you couldn't tell.)

    ("burn baby burn" perhaps the saddest response to oppression ever seen...reminiscent of thich quang duc and of course the burning of poor black neighborhoods in philadelphia cheered by people driven beyond despair)


   the 20s are the new 60s





"We have met the enemy and he is us."

~pogo

Desperation and hopelessness can lead to things like that. Self-immolation, of the body and the neighborhood.

op cit, pp54-56



In our attempt to justify the recourse to hermeneutics that are already constituted—that of the phenomenology of religion and that of psychoanalysis—we suggested that their conflict might well be not only a crisis of language but, deeper still, a crisis of reflec­tion: to destroy the idols, to listen to symbols—are not these, we asked, one and the same enterprise? Indeed, the profound unity of the demystifying and the remythicizing of discourse can be seen only at the end of an ascesis of reflection, in the course of which the debate dramatizing the hermeneutic field shall have become a dis­cipline of thinking.

One trait of this discipline is already clear to us: the two enter­prises which we at first opposed to one another—the reduction of illusions and the restoration of the fullness of meaning—are alike in that they both shift the origin of meaning to another center which is no longer the immediate subject of reflection: "conscious­ness"—the watchful ego, attentive to its own presence, anxious about self and attached to self. Thus hermeneutics, approached from its most opposed poles, represents a challenge and a test for reflection, whose first tendency is to identify itself with immediate consciousness. To let ourselves be torn by the contradiction between these divergent hermeneutics is to give ourselves up to the wonder that puts the reflection in motion: it is no doubt necessary for us to be separated from ourselves, to be set off center, in order finally to know what is signified by the I think, I am.

We thought we had resolved the antinomy of myth and philos­ophy by appealing to interpretation itself for the mediation between myth and philosophy or, in a broader sense, between symbols and reflection. But that mediation is not given, it is to be constructed.

It is not given like a ready-made solution. The dispossession of the ego, which psychoanalysis more than any other hermeneutics demands of us, is the first achievement of reflection that reflection does not understand. But the phenomenological interpretation of the sacred, to which psychoanalysis seems to be diametrically op­posed, is no less foreign to the style and fundamental intention of the reflective method; does it not oppose a method of transcendence to the method of immanence of reflective philosophy? Does not the sacred, manifested in its symbols, seem to pertain to revelation rather than to reflection? Whether one looks back to the will to power of the Nietzschean man, to the generic being of the Marxist man, to the libido of the Freudian man, or whether one looks ahead to the transcendent home of signification which we designate here by the vague term the "sacred," the home of meaning is not con­sciousness but something other than consciousness.

Both hermeneutics pose therefore the same crucial question: Can the dispossession of consciousness to the profit of another home of meaning be understood as an act of reflection, as the first gesture of reappropriation? This is the question that remains in sus­pense; it is more radical than the question of the coexistence of sev­eral styles of interpretation, or the whole crisis of language in which the hermeneutic conflict is set.

We suspect that these three "crises"—crisis of language, crisis of interpretation, crisis of reflection—can only be overcome together. In order to become concrete, i.e. equal to its richest contents, re­flection must become hermeneutic; but there exists no general her­meneutics. This aporia sets us in movement: would it not be one and the same thing to arbitrate the war of hermeneutics and to en­large reflection to the dimensions of a critique of interpretations? Is it not by one and the same movement that reflection can become concrete reflection and that the rivalry between interpretations can be comprehended, in the double sense of the term: justified by re­flection and embodied in its work?

For the moment our perplexity is great. What is offered to us is a three-term relation, a figure with three heads: reflection, interpre­tation understood as restoration of meaning, interpretation under­stood as reduction of illusion. No doubt we shall have to penetrate quite deeply into the conflict between interpretations before we see appear, as a requirement of the very war of hermeneutics, the means of grounding the three together in reflection. But in its turn reflection will no longer be the positing, as feeble as it is peremp­tory, as sterile as it is irrefutable, of the I think, I am: it will have become concrete reflection; and its concreteness will be due to the harsh hermeneutic discipline.

the homeless, and the homeless...


burn baby burn...

   the re-emergence of the phoenix

(episode iv a new hope)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/

I liked the hari seldon angle of the atlantic article - which just came out today, btw - but here is the peter turchin himself talking about what's next in a vice article...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3e4p9/peter-turchin-cliodynamics-political-unrest-2020

and his stuff is "all over the net" these days...

I think that meaning of life, universe and everything is...

...actually funk it!!1
Much bigger mystery is: Why do you reply with quote to everything, few times in a row, even your own posts?