Showing posts with label Albert Hong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albert Hong. Show all posts
Nice advice and expression of anatta in recent days from Yin Ling and Albert Hong.

Nice advice and expression of anatta in recent days from Yin Ling and Albert Hong.

 

Yin Ling

 
Thanks Soh Wei Yu. He collated all my random posts and Albert’s very nice comment, John’s training the AI 😂, and put it together.
Below is a crucial insight I wish everyone can realize.
When you bath the Buddha, the Buddha is you, the water is you, the temple is you, your hand is you, the ladle is you, and you are the nature of mind.
You are NOT the body, you are mind. You don’t die, don’t change, don’t move, and you are Buddha. Blessed Vesak. May all awaken to their true nature and stop suffering. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
🙏🏻

 

Yin Ling:
 
First step of meditation is to ascertain the knowing MIND. Without it there is no realisation. The bird, the sky, the touch, the coffee, are all your MIND. MIND once ascertained and strengthen will take one out of “self view” to realisation & we won’t get lost.
 
…
 
The Satipatthana sutta is a wonderful instruction to reach insight.
“Feel the body in the body”, when practicing, don’t think. Feel.
Truly feel the body FROM inside the body. Feel the sound from the sound itself. (1) tbc
 
…
 
(2) feel the feelings, thoughts and all 6 senses in itself and via itself.
It is as though u Insert ur awareness into the middle of the feelings and feel from inside.
 
….
 
(3) practice satipatthana for months to years, consistently.
The Buddha’s mindfulness practice aim to transform our mind : 1) weaken the central self energy and 2) realising awareness has always infused in the 6 senses, not apart.
 
…
 
(4)satipatthana will bring u to the powerful no-self realisation, if u were taught correctly and if u practice consistently 2 hours a day.
The mind energy WILL transform rapidly in 8-12 months.
😁
😝
——
Albert Hong:
 
it's remarkable that hearing is exactly the sound. there is no distance or gap. seeing is exactly color. feeling is exactly sensation. there is nothing extra. just that arising color, taste, sensation, sound.
and the flavor/texture of that is exactly consciousness. 
 
it's remarkable really. being to extend that sense of consciousness, which we all previously only emphasized as prior to thought, as some localized sensation behind the eyes. we have to notice how that is a very subtle effort, a kind of assumption at play. 
 
the flavor of consciousness is exactly the sensation, the color, the smell, the sensation. like holy shit there is no hearer. no seer. no feeler. it's only ever an assumption. 
 
you go into sensation for example. there is no actual link between sensations. it's only that sensation, which is exactly the flavor of luminosity. and it has no real link to anything else. thoughts don't touch it, smells don't, colors don't. it's remarkable what imputation-thought can assume to glob together a seeming "thingness".
 
but even between one sensation and another. there is only ever that arising which is exactly the sensation. there is no prior, so you don't even have a contrast. you can never hold two things. just that sensation. how remarkable. everything is contained right there. nothing prior, hence how could there even be a sensation. where is there continuity? there is no room or time or space for continuity. and yet it magically seems like there is.
 
even the witness. it's just a sensation at the end of the day. nothing prior, which experiences the witness-sensation. feeling is exactly that sensation. or lets extend that as the whole sphere of beingness. again another feeling-sensation. none of this has to disappear. the extra imputation of a feeler, has to be seen as silly. never will be, never has been, just never really examined.
 
 



 
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Representation and Presentation

 

    Soh Wei Yu
    Admin
    JT： “What Albert said about representation and presentation is very apt. There is a big difference in talking about:
    1. freedom from all elaborations/conceptualities -- representation and
    2. freedom from all elaborations/conceptualities from without self-nature perspective -- presentation.”
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    Geovani Geo

    JultSyp odm10rmied 
    Soh, in another thread you mention one-mind and no-mind. Lets go over that again, just for fun. There is the Only-Mind step (that you call one mind). Then, as all is Mind and Mind is also Mind you have No-Mind. Its the seeing that there isn't "something" binding the totality, or that Dharmakaya is the ever present, unborn, no-space that allows seeming manifestatioin, its not some "substance". What is next? Anatta? In quick words, is that the absence of self, the absence of doership?

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    • Differentiating I AM, One Mind, No Mind and Anatta
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    Albert Hong
    It’s all there is you’re ruthlessly objective and want to know. Learn the terms not how you know it but how the author is expressing it. Meaning they are saying something very specific.
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Albert Hong, there is something "new" in dealing with these issues anew. We all know the basics, but in a ping-pong dialogue, without copying and pasting, the dynamism may bring in "something" different, not seen before. If you prefer to exchange prints - go for it buddy.

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    Albert Hong
    Geovani Geo when you read something there is constant relationship to what you read. It isn’t a dead thing.
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    That is right. There are different kinds of communication, not jsut one.

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    • Soh Wei Yu
    Admin
    Even to express it as “allowing manifestation” implies a container of manifestation. There is no container. Manifestation is dharmakaya, thats all. That is anatta, then there are two aspects of it expressed in the two stanzas.
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    • 12w
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    Albert Hong
    Soh Wei Yu the problem is this deep tendency to reify.
    It isn't particularly clear that one can make a distinction say between movement and stillness.
    People say manifestation arises from space. Or movement arises from stillness.
    It isn't clear that there is a holding onto stillness and dualizing it from motion.
    If there are two things then that is dualism pure and simple.
    And yet if we merge that stillness and movement into a single formless substance then we fall into Monism and inherent view again.
    There is a deep tendency for the mind to desire wholeness or oneness. It is very alluring and beautiful to the mind.
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    • Albert Hong
    in seeing, no seer. in hearing, no hear. if we just contemplate that then you'd instantly get that there is no extra witness, or space, or container, or self.
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    Christine Walsh
    Albert Hong I contemplated just that for years and did not instantly get it. Just sayin'...😁
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        • 11w
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Yea.. this is the kind of subtlety that is interesting do converse about. There is a point here that is very difficult to express. Its about that wich is naturally not ever absent. But expressed in this way it seems to be something. But it is not! Take 3D-space as an analogy. Is there a thing called space? No. It is originally there, right? The same line of pointing can be extended to the Dharmakaya.

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    Albert Hong
    Geovani Geo from what I understand. space is just the luminosity extending infinitely everywhere all the time. literally the motion of luminosity creates space. but it also creates all the elements and all appearance as well. Yet there is no space as a referent. Nor is there luminosity as a referent. Nothing can be pinned down as a thing. But we can understand things as endless relations in a conventional/nominal way.
    But people who practice have this experience of a space and then there is arising of stuff from that space. And that experience has within it a series of assumptions.

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    Jenny Jennings Foerst
    Albert Hong People cannot profitably skip the totalizing-Space phase, but it is only a phase, if one keeps practicing. Luminosity more likely to be recognized if Space phase comes first. I know you know, just mentioning for others.
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    • Jenny Jennings Foerst
    Space is, yes, a set of assumptions, a construct. So is time, yet time also seems to keep going, so the "beyond" of that construct is especially tricky in that "beyond-ness" is what is in question. So immediacy, but time travel is possible, too.

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    • Albert Hong
    I've heard teachings on the distinction between a presentation verses a representation. And it's a useful way to understand appearance. Appearance or Form is exactly itself. Exactly a presentation of itself. It isn't a representation like say a still life painting of an orange. There is the actual orange (referent) and the symbol/representation of the orange. This the traditional finger pointing to the moon analogy. But this is also incorrect because there is only ever presentation.
    So even the painting of the orange, which isn't the actual orange is itself a presentation of itself. And the orange is as well.
    When we focus on lets say the presence. then it isn't clear that presence isn't a thing but the very presentation of form.
    And form is nothing but constant activity. So form is forming. Presence is presencing. They aren't distinct.
    But when we reify presence. Then it seems presence is something and everything else is soemthing else. Then we have to naturally unify everything with this presence.
    But that is incorrect because everything is already exactly itself as forming/presencing.
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    • Albert Hong
    So there is no need to emphasize presence as a thing. or even as something special. because it is exactly the forms.

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    • Albert Hong
    If you reify a background. Lets say an absence of a background. Then you make that a reference point in relationship to everything else.
    So it feels and is experienced as an emanationist theory of sorts. Something arises from nothing. Even if it seems non dualistic. You are making a distinction in experience between the two. something and nothing. arising and non arising.
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Yes, that is right.

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Movement and stillness cannot be separated. Existence and no-existence neither.

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    "Yet there is no space as a referent. Nor is there luminosity as a referent."
    This is what I meant when used space as an analogy. Space is not something. To say its there makes no sense jsut as to say it is not. Both make it a thing.

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    Albert Hong
    In how people use language when speaking about spiritual or meditative experience, it is common. How people use language is also how they shape their perception, which shapes their responses/actions. It
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    • Albert Hong
    It is a whole package. So reification of space, of nothingness, of a container, of something formless as distinct from something else.
    It is very common for meditators.

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    • Albert Hong
    More common then that is the Monist variant of taking formless presence as the single source of everything.
    Pretty much all the conversation on here. Is nothing but the endless distinctions between IAM, ONE MIND and NO MIND.
    And how Anatta is a distinct realization.
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    • Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Albert Hong very true Al. You can often see where the people are at by how they express themsleves.

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    • Albert Hong
    Robert Dominik Tkanka yeah. language is how we shape everything. Nama-Rupa. Name and form are the same.

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    • Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Albert Hong true. If people dont want to release their clinging they will often make argument along the lines of "this is (my) experience" or "I know this from experience". I mean of course you do. Our view shapes our world.

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      • 12w
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    • Soh Wei Yu
    Admin
    JT： “What Albert said about representation and presentation is very apt. There is a big difference in talking about:
    1. freedom from all elaborations/conceptualities -- representation and
    2. freedom from all elaborations/conceptualities from without self-nature perspective -- presentation.”
    2

    • Reply
    • 12w

    • Soh Wei Yu
    Admin
    Reminded of what i wrote in 2012
    Buddha-Dharma: A Dream in a Dream
    (Above: Ted Biringer's book)
    Like always, Ted Biringer have interesting and well written postings.
    Just like to add a short comment:
    Dogen here relates nyo (“like”), to ze (“this”), evoking the familiar Zen association nyoze (“like this,” “thusness”). He goes on to draw the implication that “like this” signifies not mere resemblance but the nondual identity of symbol and symbolized. He thus rejects any dualistic notion of metaphor or simile (hiyi), whereby an image points to, represents, or approximates something other than itself. Rather, for Dogen, the symbol itself is the very presence of total dynamism, i.e., it presents.
    Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, note 8, p.251
    I could think of one example: people liken “Buddha-nature” to be “like the moon”.
    In actuality, the very appearance of the moon is buddha-nature, it is not that there is some hidden thing called buddha-nature which merely resembles the moon. The moon is buddha-nature, the buddha-nature is the moon, the nondual identity of symbol and symbolized. Or as Dogen says, the moon-face buddha and sun-face buddha, the whole body is the whole moon. There is nothing hidden or latent about it, there is no hidden noumenon in which phenomenon or symbols can “point to” or “hint at”. The symbol, e.g. the moon, is itself the very presence of total dynamism. Furthermore, manifestation does not 'come from' Buddha-nature, nor does Buddha-nature 'contains' manifestation, Buddha-nature is empty of a self but conventionally imputed on the "myriad forms". Likewise for Truth, Awareness, etc.
    In fact everything is like this.
    Scent of a flower is not scent of “a flower”, the scent does not represent or approximate something other than itself but is a complete reality (well not exactly a 'reality' but rather a whole and complete manifestation/appearance which is empty and unreal) in itself: the scent IS the flower, wheel of a car is not wheel of “a car”, the car IS the wheel. Wheel cannot be said to "come from a car" or "be contained by a car". The word “car” is a mere imputation, not a true reality that can be established. “Self” and aggregates are likewise.
    Seen in such manner, all constructs are deconstructed and what's left is just the shimmering "dream-like" (coreless, empty, illusory), luminous appearances which is all there is, but not to be confused with a dreamy state.
    Anyway this is Ted's new post:
    Friday, June 01, 2012
    Buddha-Dharma: A Dream in a Dream
    On the True Nature of the Self...
    The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.
    Wallace Stevens
    The appearance of buddhas and ancestors in the world, being prior to the emergence of any incipient sign, has nothing to do with old, narrow opinions. This accounts for the virtues of buddha-ancestors, as of going beyond the Buddha. Unconcerned with time, the life-span [of buddha-ancestors] is neither prolonged nor momentary, as it is far from the comprehension of ordinary minds.
    The ever turning wheel of the Dharma is also a principle prior to the emergence of any incipient sign; as such, it is an eternal paragon with immeasurably great merit. [Buddha-ancestors] expound this as a dream in a dream. Because they see verification within verification, it is known as expounding a dream in a dream.
    The place where a dream is expounded in a dream is indeed the land and assembly of buddha-ancestors. The buddha-land and buddha-assembly, the ancestral way and ancestral seat, are all verification founded upon verification, hence all are the expounding of a dream in a dream. Upon encountering their utterances and discourses, do not think that these are not of the buddha-assembly; they are the Buddha’s turning the wheel of the Dharma. Because this wheel of the Dharma turns in all directions, the great oceans and Mt. Sumeru, the lands and buddhas are all realized. Such is expounding a dream in a dream, which is prior to all dreams.
    The entire world, crystal-clear everywhere, is a dream; and a dream is all grasses [things] clear and bright. To doubt the dream state is itself to dream; all perplexity is a dream as well. At this very moment, [all are] grasses of the “dream state,” grasses “in” [a dream], grasses“expounding” [a dream], and so on. Even as we study this, the very roots and stalks, leaves and branches, flowers and fruits, lights and hues [of our perception] are all a great dream. Never mistake this, however, for a dreamy state.
    Dogen, Shobogenzo, Muchu-setsumu (Expounding a dream in a dream), Trans. Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p.279-280
    It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera. Only it hurts.
    Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers)
    Dogen here relates nyo (“like”), to ze (“this”), evoking the familiar Zen association nyoze (“like this,” “thusness”). He goes on to draw the implication that “like this” signifies not mere resemblance but the nondual identity of symbol and symbolized. He thus rejects any dualistic notion of metaphor or simile (hiyi), whereby an image points to, represents, or approximates something other than itself. Rather, for Dogen, the symbol itself is the very presence of total dynamism, i.e., it presents.
    Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, note 8, p.251
    If the new empirical results are taken seriously, then people throughout our culture have to rethink some of their most cherished beliefs about what science and philosophy are and consider their values from a new perspective...
    If conceptual metaphors are real, then all literalist and objective views of meaning and knowledge are false. We can no longer pretend to build an account of concepts and knowledge on objective, literal foundations. This constitutes a profound challenge to many of the traditional ways of thinking about what it means to be human, about how the mind works, and about our nature as social and cultural creatures.
    George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, p.273
    Allegory and metaphor both start off saying one thing as if it were another. But where allegorical method divides this double talk into two constituents – latent and manifest – and requires translation of manifest into latent, the metaphorical method keeps the two voices together, here the dream as it tells itself, ambiguously evocative and concretely precise at each and every instant. Metaphors are not subject to interpretive translation without breaking up their peculiar unity... Since symbols and metaphors cannot be translated, another method for understanding dreams is needed, a method in which masks, disguises, and doubleness inherently belong, a method that is itself metaphorical.
    …if the dream is psychic nature per se, unconditioned, spontaneous, primary, and this psychic nature can show a dramatic structure, then the nature of the mind is poetic. To go to the root human ontology, its truth, essence, and nature, one must move in the fictional mode and use poetic tools.
    James Hillman, Healing Fiction, pp35-36 [italics Hillman’s]
    Peace,
    Ted
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Albert Hong writes, "So it feels and is experienced as an emanationist theory of sorts. Something arises from nothing. Even if it seems non dualistic. You are making a distinction in experience between the two. something and nothing. arising and non arising."
    This is interesting. Could you elaborate on the emanationist thing?
    Please dont press the answer button. Lets stay on this main thread or soon my PC looses you.

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    • Albert Hong
    Basically it is a theory and experience of people that there is an underlying reality of sorts. A Godhead or an Absolute.
    Be it a void. Be it a subtle light realm. Be it presence. There are endless flavors of pretty much the same thing.
    You have a circle. and from that circle arises a dot. From that dot arises endless dots.
    0 to 1 to 2 to 10,000 things.
    Taoism has its own version. The Christians have their own version.

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    • Albert Hong
    And though it is a theory. Views shape experiences. Experience is never apart from views. Even non conceptual experience has its basis in conceptual habit that forces a way of seeing.
    So we can always assume regardless of what is experience. Directly or not. It is bounded by the habitual momentum of latent conceptual impressions.
    And continually what we see. What I experience as well in my practice. IS this tendency to make a container. Or make a source.
    We can call it whatever we desire. Mind. Emptiness, Buddha. God. Reality. Self. Etc. It has endless symbolic representations.
    And we tend to overemphasize it. Because well its special. It seems spiritual. It seems like well better than everything else.
    And in doing so we dualize that thing we cling to verses everyhting else.
    And we get sophisticated and then say everything else is coming from there. or made of it. And we're okay with that. It seems to make sense.
    But that whole thing is dualism. Lol
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    • Albert Hong
    I'm not even saying there isn't value in it. There is tremendous practical value and refining of mind and view.
    But in the end if you have two things. Even if they are the same thing. And even if they are formless, absence. No matter how you dress it up.
    It is a cause of suffering because it is dualism.

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Yea. Suddenly there is just this conceptless presence. No need to question what "presence" is or is not. Any framing is jsut more mind movement, including any and all affirming and negating.There is no duality, no separation, no pondering. When measurement, questioning, drive to become something else, drive to seek for a ground or groundlessness arises it is immediately perceived as shadow.

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    Robert Dominik Tkanka
    No need to question what it is. Better to question whether if at all it really is.

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    • Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Also suddenly or always already so?

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Is there anything not already so?

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Is there some otherness to be regarded?

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    • 12w
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Yes, i get the "suddenlly". Its because, here, there is still the "in and out" movement. Dont you?

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    Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Geovani Geo ah this is worth exploring. Where does the movement end and stillness start? Are they one? Are they two?

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    • Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Me? I like the wave metaphor. There is no boundary between the peak and trough. Its continuous. But peak is not the same as trough

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    • Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Geovani Geo as per Anatta there is no going in and out. Its not like one has a self and suddenly doesnt have it. Anatta is always already so all the way through

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Robert Dominik Tkanka, I went for a walk and thought "I will be surprised if someone doesn't catch me with my pants down with my in-out stuff" 🙂
    Of course this is an example of wrong view, of there being something to get in or fall out from. Its just thoughts, based in such wrong view, claiming so.

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Including the "I have lost what I have already seen" move.

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    • Robert Dominik Tkanka
    Good comments Albert
    Here are my 2 cents
    There is this popular tendency to disregard teachings on the view because of attachement to misguided experience of nonconceptuality (or clarity). Yet as you pointed the experience is conditioned by the view or Id say contextualised.
    You can view nonconceptual experience as a meditative state you go in and out.
    You can view its an ego death.
    You can view to such experience with drugs and think the drug is giving you this.
    You can view it is by God's grace.
    You can view this is enlightemnent so you try to make this special state last longer.
    You can think "I am That".
    You can view it as "that out of which everything arises".
    All these views are limiting. Buddhadharma is ultimately about freeing from all views. As Buddha says Tathagata has done away with all points of view. As Nagarjuna says he claims nothing so he does not fall in error. As Shang Shung Nyen Gyud says there is no view to uphold.
    Without these veils of views you see/know reality as it is. Hence vidya/rigpa literally means to see (and if you take things like Thogal into account then this is very literal). As Buddha says in Aggi-Vachagotta Sutta Tathagata has done away with views but he sees dependent origination.
    There are many traps of course. Some intuit lack of views part but wrongly fall into disease of nonconceptuality. Buddha can use all views for the benefit of all, knows all views. If one is afraid of views then one is still conceptuaholic or viewholic (alcoholic doesnt drink but is still enslaved).
    Many - often these go together - bullshit themsleves claiming they have no view. While at the same time they act out materialism or idealism. Many people are not even aware of their views but just like mindless drones.
    Hence we use right views - relatively and circumstancially - to get out of this mess. Like picking thorn with a thorn.
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    • 12w
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    Albert Hong
    Guru Rinpoche also said, "Though the view should be as vast as the sky, keep your conduct as fine as barley flour." Don't confuse one with the other. When training in the view, you can be as unbiased, as impartial, as vast, immense, and unlimited as the sky. Your behavior, on the other hand, should be as careful as possible in discriminating what is beneficial or harmful, what is good or evil. One can combine the view and conduct, but don't mix them or lose one in the other. That is very important.
    'View like the sky' means that nothing is held onto in any way whatsoever. You are not stuck anywhere at all. In other words, there is no discrimination as to what to accept and what to reject; no line is drawn separating one thing from the other. 'Conduct as fine as barley flour' means that there is good and evil, and one needs to differentiate between the two. Give up negative deeds; practice the Dharma. In your behavior, in your conduct, it is necessary to accept and reject.
    ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, As it Is Volume II
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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    Yes. Any view is a trap. Including the quest for non-conceptuality.

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    • Geovani Geo
    Author
    I think at one point one simply sees the surge of any sort of thought movement trying to create or perpetuate the me-shadow.

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    • Christoffer Sørensen
    Good points Albert Hong. When I wrote a comment here in this group the other day it felt like a impersonal force making me do it to expose some beliefs.
    But then it could easily be the underlying belief in those forces that shapes the experience.
    Anatta squashes all views and dismantles erroneous beliefs.

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