Madhyamaka, Cittamātra, and the true intent of Maitreya and Asaṅga self.Buddhism
Soh


John Tan commented "This article is very well written and yogacara never really explicitly said that mind is ultimate.  This idea privileging mind as ultimate over the relative phenomena was a later development."
 
 
Kyle Dixon sent me:














Madhyamaka, Cittamātra, and the true intent of Maitreya and Asaṅga self.Buddhism

Submitted 21 hours ago by nyanasagaramahayana

It is not existent nor nonexistent, not the same nor different;

Not produced nor destroyed, it will not diminish

Nor increase; it cannot be purified

Yet becomes perfectly pure—these are the characteristics of the ultimate.

Ornament of the Scriptures of the Great Vehicle, Maitreya, recited to Asaṅga

Mipham Comments:

According to the Mādhyamikas, it is not that all the phenomena that appear through the power of dependent arising are not existent on the relative, conventional level, nor that they are existent on the ultimate level; nor even that they are both existent and nonexistent. On the ultimate level, nonexistence is the true nature of phenomena that exist conventionally. So, apart from simply being distinguished by name, these two do not, in fact, exist as two distinct entities: they are like fire and its heat, or molasses and its sweetness. Could there, then, be a third possibility—that thatness is something that is neither existent on the relative level nor nonexistent on the ultimate level? No. There is no valid means of cognition that provides a proof for a third alternative that is neither a phenomenon nor an empty true nature. Such a third possibility could never be the intrinsic or true nature of conventional phenomena. The Mādhyamikas thus assert freedom from the four extremes (existence, nonexistence, both, and neither), freedom from all conceptual elaboration, the inseparability of the two truths—the inseparability of phenomena and their true nature—which has to be realized personally. This true nature free from conceptual elaboration is always the same in being devoid of production, destruction, diminution, and expansion. It has not as much as an atom’s worth of the characteristics of dualistic phenomena such as purity and impurity.

Now, the Cittamātra approach speaks of all phenomena being nothing other than simply the appearances of the mind, and it asserts that only the clear and aware consciousness of the dependent reality, the basis of perception, exists substantially. If the Cittamātrins’ final standpoint is the assertion that this consciousness is only a substantially existent entity inasmuch as it is the cause for all conventional phenomena appearing, and that apart from this assertion they are not claiming that it exists substantially as a truly existing entity in ultimate truth, then they are not at all in contradiction with the Mādhyamika tradition. On the other hand, if they were to assert that it is truly existent in ultimate truth, they would be contradicting the Mādhyamika approach. It seems, therefore, that it is just this particular point that needs to be examined as a source of contention (or otherwise) for the Mādhyamikas.

In the cycle of teachings of Maitreya and the writings of the great charioteer Asaṅga, whose thinking is one and the same, it is taught that individuals on the level of earnest aspiration first understand that all phenomena are simply the mind. Subsequently they have the experience that there is no object to be apprehended in the mind. Then, at the stage of the supreme mundane level on the path of joining, they realize that because there is no object, neither is there a subject, and immediately after that, they attain the first level with the direct realization of the truth of ultimate reality devoid of the duality of subject and object. As for things being only the mind, the source of the dualistic perception of things appearing as environment, sense objects, and a body is the consciousness of the ground of all, which is accepted as existing substantially on the conventional level but is taught as being like a magical illusion and so on since it appears in a variety of ways while not existing dualistically. For this reason, because this tradition realizes, perfectly correctly, that the nondual consciousness is devoid of any truly existing entities and of characteristics, the ultimate intentions of the charioteers of Madhyamaka and Cittamātra should be considered as being in agreement.

Why, then, do the Mādhyamika masters refute the Cittamātra tenet system? Because self-styled proponents of the Cittamātra tenets, when speaking of mind-only, say that there are no external objects but that the mind exists substantially—like a rope that is devoid of snakeness, but not devoid of ropeness. Having failed to understand that such statements are asserted from the conventional point of view, they believe the nondual consciousness to be truly existent on the ultimate level. It is this tenet that the Mādhyamikas repudiate. But, they say, we do not refute the thinking of Ārya Asaṅga, who correctly realized the mind-only path taught by the Buddha.

Because of the mind, the phenomena of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa arise; if there were no mind, there would be no saṃsāra and no nirvāṇa. How? It is by the power of the mind that defilements create karma, subsequently producing the process of defilement that is saṃsāra. And it is with the mind that one gives rise to the wisdom of the realization of no-self and to compassion, practices the Mahāyāna path, and thereby achieves buddhahood, whose nature is the five kinds of gnosis, the transformation of the eight consciousnesses, and the ground of all. It is with the mind, too, that the listeners and solitary realizers realize the no-self of the individual and attain nirvāṇa, beyond the suffering of grasping at existence. So the roots of defilement and purity depend on the mind. Anyone who is a Buddhist has to accept this.

So, if this so-called “self-illuminating nondual consciousness” asserted by the Cittamātrins is understood to be a consciousness that is the ultimate of all dualistic consciousnesses, and it is merely that its subject and object are inexpressible, and if such a consciousness is understood to be truly existent and not intrinsically empty, then it is something that has to be refuted. If, on the other hand, that consciousness is understood to be unborn from the very beginning (i.e. empty), to be directly experienced by reflexive awareness, and to be self-illuminating gnosis without subject or object, it is something to be established. Both the Madhyamaka and Mantrayāna have to accept this. If there were no reflexively aware gnosis, or mind of clear light, it would be impossible for there to be a mind that realizes the truth of the ultimate reality on the path of learning; and at the time of the path of no more learning, the nirvāṇa without residue, the Buddha would have no omniscient gnosis. And in that case there would be no difference between the Buddha’s nirvāṇa and the nirvāṇa of the lower vehicles, which is like the extinction of a lamp, so how could one talk about the Buddha’s bodies (kāyas), different kinds of gnosis, and inexhaustible activities?

To sum up, thatness, which is the actual condition of all phenomena, is the completely unbiased union of appearance and emptiness, to be realized personally. If one realizes that it never changes in any situation, whether in the ground, path, or result, one will be saved from the abyss of unwholesome, extremist views.

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Pure Land and Buddha Field
Soh

 Soh Wei Yu

The Original Pure Land
Padmasambhava is to be inseparable from the primordial nature.
His Copper-Colored Mountain buddhafield is the purity of your personal experience.
May everyone be born in this original pure land,
The uncontrived natural state of indivisible appearance and awareness.
CHOKGYUR LINGPA
(Jewels of Enlightenment: Wisdom Teachings from the Great Tibetan Masters
By Erik Pema Kunsang)
29 Comments
Comments

Mr. A
Sounds very Advaitic Soh
🙂

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Soh Wei Yu
Mr. A
That is dzogchen view, however dzogchen is different from Advaita as explained by the Dzogchen teacher Arcaya Malcolm Smith and his student Kyle Dixon:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2020/08/acarya-malcolm-on-dzogchen-and-advaita.html
Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
AWAKENINGTOREALITY.BLOGSPOT.COM
Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
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Mr. A
Soh
, excerpt from your reference provided above,
"This is a non-reductive system. Nothing is actually reifed as being established at the end of the path. Just an array of illusory appearances"… See More

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Soh Wei Yu
Mr. A
Illusory appearances do not “exist”. They are empty of extremes such as existence or non existence

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Mr. A
Soh
, yes....I am also talking of "illusory" appearances dear. Why would one use the word "illusory"?!

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Mr. A
Even in Advaita all phenomena neither exist nor not exist. They are called mithya (neither sat nor asat)

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Soh Wei Yu
Mr. A
No substrate is necessary.
Substrate implies a background. It is seen here that the sense of a background is erroneous. There is no background. Appearances are just vibrant transparent pellucid presencing. Even what you call I - even in the absence of five senses - is just another “foreground” manifestation mistaken into an ultimate background.
I will stop here because it is likely going to end up in a neverending debate

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Soh Wei Yu
You either realise it or do not

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Mr. A
Soh
you have grown wise. I agree, three thousand years have not resolved this. But just to let you know there are refutations to what you have stated too in Shankara's Upadeshasahasri.
At any rate. I ain't serious. Just enjoying some appearances 🙂

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Soh Wei Yu
Right now every manifestation is pellucid, vibrant, utterly alive, bright, transparent, boundless, presencing all and everywhere with no trace of self/Self/objects
Utter joy and bliss
Utter perfection and purity everywhere
Utter paradise
Eyes always wide opened all senses open and beaming with brilliance without the dichotomy of sense organs, sense object and sense consciousness
Energetic radiance in total exertion
Transcendence is in the ordinary, nirvana is samsara
What was realised as “I” is just the same luminous taste in all manifestation, except there is no background I. That background unchanging is simply a wrong view. “Who” no longer applies, it is a flawed enquiry, and no longer applies for the past ten years.

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Mr. A
Wait, wait, let me spoil some of your utter joy and bliss 🙂
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Alan Watts: The Silent Mind
Soh

 





  • John Tan
    All the 4 parts of his talks [The Silent Mind] are good.👍
    2

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    • 5d

    • Soh Wei Yu
     
     
     
    John Tan: What do u find lacking in Alan Watt's "The silent mind" talk?

    He spoke of anatta, seeing DO, emptiness of mental constructs, effortlessness and spontaneity, in the flow but what is missing?  Or do u see anything missing?
     
    [12:35 PM, 9/1/2020] Soh Wei Yu: Didnt describe intensity of luminosity?
    [12:37 PM, 9/1/2020] John Tan: Yes.  Directness always have this clean, pure, pristine and transparent taste because there no imputation blocking.



    On someone else:

    [6:13 PM, 9/1/2020] John Tan: Possible but experience should b natural and spontaneous, no strain and no effort.

    What appears is fully transparent, vivid, pure, clean and pristine as the layer that blocks dissapears.

    Until each moment of experience is free from observer and observed, just natural spontaneous pellucid appearance in obviousness.

    When we de-construct more and more, we will also notice the relationship between radiance energy and mental deconstructions.  The universe will reveal itself more and more as radiance of vibrational energies in  dance rather than "concrete things".
    [6:16 PM, 9/1/2020] Soh Wei Yu: Oic..
    [6:23 PM, 9/1/2020] John Tan: As for non-conceptuality, it is not a mind trying to free itself from symbols and language.  Rather it is the insight that sees through mental constructs (reifications) and conventionalities.  It is an unbinding process of freeing the mind from being blinded by the semantics of conventions (existence, physicality, cause and effect, production) that is more crucial.
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All Around, All At Once: Unfabricated
Soh

Sent this to William Gaucher, who went through the earlier thusness stages and realised anatta recently and contacted me via the blog, after a discussion about fabrication and luminosity.


John tan said the following article is very good.


All Around, All at Once: Part 3: “Unfabricated”

Presented by Ven. Jinmyo Renge Osho-ajari

Dainen-ji, November 17, 2017

 

Each moment unfolds as a display of richness, of colours and forms and sounds, as a myriad of sensations. Sincere practice is allowing the whole bodymind to live as the brightness of seeing, the depth of sound, as ever-changing sensations, as the Luminosity of experiencing as a whole. And when we allow ourselves to do even a measure of this, there is a quality of questioning, of interest, of intimacy with everything that is being experienced. But to do this requires that we choose to stop following the congealing of attention into fabrications that lead to further contraction and inevitably, suffering.

 

Anzan Hoshin roshi says, in the series of classes on “The 8000 Line Prajnaparamita sutra”:

 

    Fear is the underlying mechanism of self-image, the attempt to reify reality in the most basic kind of way by simply freezing it and contracting. And the conventions of consensual experience or the experience of those who are unlearned, those who have not studied their experience, those who have not heard the Dharma, who have not practiced it, those whose lives are based on the understanding of a culture which is itself founded on contraction, will allow themselves to fall into that fear and will allow themselves to be held back by that fear from their own freedom.

 

What this points to is that we must wordlessly examine absolutely everything, taking nothing for granted: not who we think we are, not our memories, not what we think the body is, not what we think the mind is, not what our tendencies and habits tell us to do, not what our anger or fear is telling us to do. Any state you experience, any stance, any structure of attention you experience is not necessary. They are all recoil. They are all self-inflicted damage.

 

As the Roshi explained in Class 4 of the series “The Development of Buddhist Psychology:

 

    All conditioned existence gives rise to dukkha or unsatisfactoriness, suffering, contraction, confusion; that this suffering, this dukkha, is fueled by the mechanism of grasping, of trying to hold on to something when it cannot be held and by continually misunderstanding the nature of our experience.

 

“Dukkha” does not describe one particular kind of state and the "suffering" isn’t necessarily traumatic or dramatic. I mention this because sometimes students will describe a particular kind of state, such as boredom, as dukkha. For example, a student might describe a state of sinking mind, of disinterest, when what they really mean is boredom, and boredom is the result of stupidity klesa. In other words, boredom is a way of experiencing that is poisoned by a flattening of attention that you are fabricating, following, propagating. It is a kind of pouting that one is not being entertained. It is not as dramatic as the tantrums of anger or grasping. But it is still a childish tactic.

 

But dukkha refers to all  states which are the result of conditioned experience, and all states create suffering, unsatisfactoriness and bondage.

 

The roots of the Pali word "dukkha" are "jur" and "kha." "Bad" and "space". The root metaphor behind this is the hole in a wheel through which the axle passes being blocked. So the word means obstructed space.

 

We need to learn that the space of who we are, which is present as seeing and hearing and just the fact of experience is already open. When you are in a state, you think you have no choice about that, but the truth of the matter is that you are not choosing. You are following compulsion. Choose to actually practise and open attention and the axle will turn freely.

 

It’s easy to cultivate states when you are sitting - states of boredom, states of calm, states of quiet, states of euphoria, shiny, shiny states. But all of these are dead ends because whatever is experienced within the state can only be the product of the state. The context is narrowed to the kind of content that suits it. And this is why such states can seem so convincing, and so compelling. This is why you fixate on them. There is no one who is better at lying to you than you are, and the thing that’s convinced by the lie is the same thing that’s doing the lying. It’s not magic once you understand how the trick works. The states define who and what is imagined as a self but is really just a process of obstruction and fabrication.

 

    In Zen practice, however, what we are doing is attending openly, rather than fixating. You can’t ‘fix’ a state from inside of a state. You have to open around it and release it first. Anything you experience when attention is arranged in a structure (a state) is going to be biased and therefore cannot be true. Seeing these structures and learning to attend to them more and more openly with the whole of your experience is part of the many truths that zazen reveals. In the Class Six Outline in the series, “The Development of Buddhist Psychology”, the Roshi said,The Buddha has clearly seen that the root of dukkha was clinging to what  could not be clung to. This clinging was the result of conceiving of the impermanent and dynamic exertion of experience to be a collection of real and permanent objects and entities, believing that this clinging will bring pleasure and satisfaction whereas it results only in suffering and confusion, and that what is selfless and beyond the personal is self and personal. The succession of these moments of grasping and confusion he called “samsara”, the “flow”. He called the cessation of this useless struggle and strategic approach to experience “nibbana”, the “blowing out”. In many places throughout the early texts, we find the Buddha again and again asking students to give up their spiritual and secular strategies and just understand something so obvious that it is often missed.

 

This is why we ask students to sit according to a schedule, why the Roshi has said so often that “the schedule IS Buddha”. The dreaded committed sittings and the schedule you have promised to follow is important because you have to make choices that go beyond compulsion in order to do it. It is something in your life that will insist that you go further than your habits and tendencies dictate and can invite you into the world of the Buddhas. The world of the Buddhas is unfabricated and unborn and you arrive there by releasing yourself into it.

 

We sit zazen and we do this practice because moment after moment, we do not understand. Any snippets of understanding that come and go are not enough. We cannot afford to entertain ourselves with our states, our thoughts, our interpretations, our fabrications. These are all part of how we misunderstand and will not help us to clarify our understanding. We cannot afford to be lazy. So ‪this morning‬ and throughout this Dharma Assembly, please make the effort to really practise the richness of colours and forms and sounds, the nuance of sensations. Allow the whole bodymind to live as the brightness of seeing, the depth of sound, as ever-changing sensations, and as the Luminosity of experiencing as a whole, by opening all around, all at once.

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Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
Soh

Also see: Clarifications on Dharmakaya and Basis by Loppön Namdrol/Malcolm

The Degrees of Rigpa 

Choosing

 

 

Posted by Kyle Dixon. Kyle Dixon = Krodha

Posted by
u/krodha
16 days ago

m.youtube.com/watch?...
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level 1
krodha
3 points · 16 days ago

An interesting topic coming off the heels of the previous post about “non-duality.” In the Rig pa rang shar non-duality is rejected, but not completely, and for specific reasons.

The type of “non-duality” that is rejected is a substantialist non-duality like that found in Advaita Vedanta, which asserts a singular, transpersonal nature that is solely valid. Dzogchen rejects this view (i) because it is substantialist and eternalist, and (ii) because relatively we do experience ontic dualities in the form of conventional juxtapositions.

Moreover, the “non-dual” view of Dzogchen is emptiness free from extremes. This is how the Cuckoo of Vidyā can state ”The nature of diversity is non-dual,” because while refraining from negating a diverse array of discrete conventional entities, we understand that each discrete entity, being empty, is free from the dual extremes of existence and non-existence, hence “non-dual.” Thus the rang bzhin aspect of our nature appears as a diversity while being completely and totally inseparable from ka dag, or original purity, which is the Dzogchen treatment of emptiness free from extremes.

As such, Dzogchen champions a “non-dual duality,” or a “dualistic non-duality,” as Malcolm says, “take your pick.”

level 1
microbuddha
2 points · 16 days ago

thank you for posting.

level 1
RareTruthRises
2 points · 16 days ago · edited 16 days ago

“In Ati, the pristine consciousness — subsumed by the consciousness that apprehends primordial liberation and the abiding basis as ultimate — is inseparable in all buddhas and sentient beings as a mere consciousness. Since the ultimate pervades them without any nature at all, it is contained within each individual consciousness.”

Excerpt From: Ācārya Malcolm Smith. “Buddhahood in This Life: The Great Commentary by Vimalamitra”.

How is this pristine consciousness not functionally transpersonal? And why is "dualistic non-duality" not the same as Advaita? If the ultimate has no nature then why label it 'pristine consciousness that pervades'? I find this quite confusing and as much as I respect Malcolm he didn't really clarify these issues. Any ideas?

level 2
krodha
3 points · 16 days ago · edited 16 days ago

How is this pristine consciousness not functionally transpersonal?

A “transpersonal” jñāna would be a single, universal instance of jñāna that is shared by all sentient beings.

Instead jñāna is a generic characteristic like the heat of fire or the wetness of water, indentical in expression in each unique conventional instance but since the mind it represents the nature of is personal, belonging to a discrete entity, we do not say that there is a single, transpersonal, universal jñāna as an entity itself that is collectively shared.

If the ultimate has no nature then why label it 'pristine consciousness that pervades'?

It “pervades” consciousnesses in the same way wetness, as an identical quality, pervades each and every instance of water.

Ultimately there are no minds, no sentient beings etc., but conventionally we say there are discrete instances. When we negate entities from the stand point if the way things really are, we don’t then assert that there is a single extant purusa that is established in their place.

level 3
RareTruthRises
1 point · 16 days ago

Ah o.k. So jñāna is a property of the individual. If you have a mind then you have jñāna. But then ultimately there are no minds? So ultimately there is no jñāna?

level 4
krodha
2 points · 16 days ago

So ultimately there is no jñāna?

Yes, ultimately there is nothing at all. This is the meaning of the exhaustion of dharmatā at the end of the Dzogchen path. Since all dharmas are realized to be non-arisen, their dharmatā or nature likewise cannot be said to remain. Jñāna [ye shes] is after all simply the dharmatā or nature of our mind. Our citta dharmatā or cittatā [sems nyid].

Nevertheless, at the time of the result there are still appearances that manifest as the non-dual expressions of one’s own primordial state. The exhaustion of dharmatā does not actually mean everything disappears into some blank void. It just means we are totally liberated from everything, even jñāna.

level 5
RareTruthRises
1 point · 16 days ago

We are liberated because there is nothing at all?

level 6
krodha
2 points · 16 days ago · edited 16 days ago

Ultimately no dharmas at all, no conditioned phenomena. And in classic buddhadharmic fashion, Dzogchen considers that a dharmatā, a “nature,” is the nature of an apparently conditioned entity, a dharmin. Upon realizing the nature [dharmatā] of the dharmin, the dharmin is recognized to have never arisen in the first place, it cannot be found anywhere. That absence of arising is the dharmatā to be realized. And so we do not then state that the dharmatā as such continues to be a dharmatā. With the exhaustion of the dharmin, dharmatā is also exhausted because the objective to be realized in relation to the dharmin has been realized, and the absence of arising is now known.

This is a non-reductive system. Nothing is actually reifed as being established at the end of the path. Just an array of illusory appearances.

level 7
RareTruthRises
1 point · 16 days ago

Ah o.k so it's like this:

“Since all phenomena are included within the mind, there is no phenomena that exists outside the mind. The mind, which is by its very nature unborn, is simply referred to as “actual reality.” Now, who is it that meditates on what? It has thus been stated:

'Just as space is without reality and therefore

Space as such is not meditated upon,

How could the mind, which is by its very nature unborn,

Meditate on the unborn as such?'

Yet, if someone asks, “Just how is it that the convention meditation is designated?” it is stated:

'All effort is eliminated after recognizing that

Problems and their remedies are indistinguishable;

Practice the simple convention we call meditation by

Settling within an uncontrived state of great equanimity.'

That is, when it is recognized that both the class of afflictions that should be eliminated and the remedies that should be taken up are indistinguishable by nature, all effort connected to bias is eliminated and one simply settles into a state of great equanimity that is only conventionally labeled meditation.”

Excerpt From: Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo. “Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle”.

level 2
TigerDuckDHL
1 point · 16 days ago

If the ultimate has no nature then why label it 'pristine consciousness that pervades'?

Ultimate nature cannot be labelled as anything.

Ultimate nature cannot be labelled as pristine awareness, rigpa, nondual, emptiness free from extremes, or whatsoever.

Simply because ultimately there is no a single object or a single phenomena for you to describe.

level 3
RareTruthRises
1 point · 16 days ago

It seems to have a function and characteristics.

level 4
krodha
2 points · 16 days ago

Yes, but it is a generic characteristic [samanyalakṣana], not a specific characteristic [svalakṣana].

level 5
TigerDuckDHL
0 points · 16 days ago

There are no generic characteristic and specific characterisric in ultimate truth

level 6
krodha
1 point · 16 days ago

So-called “ultimate truth” is a generic characteristic of phenomena. Not a specific characteristic of a relative entity like the blue color of a car. That is the meaning of this distinction.

level 4
TigerDuckDHL
1 point · 16 days ago

Those function, those characteristics are simply continuous changes that look like interaction of multiple objects.

 

...
Ju Mipham Refutes the Misconception of a Singularity in any Conditioned or Unconditioned Phenomena : Dzogchen (reddit.com)

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level 2
krodha
OP·7d·edited 7d

The Dharmakaya isn't a phenomena though.

Dharmakāya is just emptiness, a lack of intrinsic nature, which is classified as an unconditioned phenomenon. Space, emptiness and two forms of cessation are the only unconditioned phenomena in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna.

The Dharmakaya is primordial awareness without anything else to be perceived.

Dharmakāya is not primordial awareness. So-called “primordial awareness” is negated by dharmakāya. Mañjuśrī states in the Bodhisattvacāryavatārabhāṣya:

Since it is taught that the ultimate is emptiness, one states, “It is devoid of even the gnosis that realizes the ultimate.”

3
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level 4
krodha
OP·7d·edited 7d

The Dharmakaya is primordial purity as unbound and unborn awareness.

No, it is emptiness as a lack of intrinsic nature. Gnosis or jñāna is intimately related to dharmakāya, but even jñāna is said to technically be absent in dharmakāya.

The Ārya-trikāya-nāma-mahāyāna-sūtra:

Son of a good family, meaning of the dharmakāya of the tathāgatas is the absence of intrinsic nature, like space.

Dharmakāya is precisely emptiness.

Sunyata is the emptiness of everything of any independent causation or origination, it is indeed an unconditioned phenomena that is a consequence of primordial purity but Sunyata is not that primordial purity itself.

This is not the case, Huangbo elaborates on the synonymous nature of dharmakāya and emptiness:

Emptiness is the Buddha's dharmakāya, just as the dharmakāya is emptiness. People's usual understanding is that the dharmakāya pervades emptiness, and that it is contained in emptiness. However, this is erroneous, for we should understand that the dharmakāya is emptiness and that emptiness is the dharmakāya.

If one thinks that emptiness is an entity and that this emptiness is separate from the dharmakāya or that there is a dharmakāya outside of emptiness, one is holding a wrong view. In the complete absence of views about emptiness, the true dharmakāya appears. Emptiness and dharmakāya are not different. The most important thing is your empty, cognizant mind. Its natural emptiness is dharmakāya, also called empty essence.

As such your container and contained view is inaccurate.

This is just reinforcing the point I was making about cognizing. In the Dharmakaya there isn't anything but awareness,

Again in the sūtras and tantras it is clearly stated that even jñāna ceases.

“Awareness” is a mental factor and not the right term to be using.

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level 6
krodha
OP·7d

The emptiness of the Dharmakaya is the unborn and unbound nature of the primordial awareness.

What is “primordial awareness?” You keep using this term but it isn’t clear what Sanskrit or Tibetan term you are glossing.

Yep, Huang Po knows what's up

Yes, he demonstrated that your container-contained view with dharmakāya and emptiness is nonsense.

I got some great Huang Po quotes to use if that's an authoritative source around here.

In certain, specific contexts, such as discussing traditional principles. However Zen is not Dzogchen and so we must be careful.

5

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

 

Kyle:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/is07ez/how_is_buddhism_anatta_different_from_upanishadic/

krodha
15 points · 12 days ago · edited 12 days ago

Here is an old post on this topic, just swap “Advaita” with “Upanisad” and it is the same deal.

——————————————————

I wrote this in the past, in the context of the definition of “non-dual” in these systems, but it describes how emptiness [śūnyatā] is different from the brahman or purusa of Advaita:

An ontological non-duality [advaita] is monistic, we find this type of non-dualism in teachings like Advaita Vedanta. Buddhism has a different type of non-duality [advāya], which is epistemic instead of ontological.

An ontological non-duality is where everything is reduced to a single substance that exists alone by itself, which is the definition of monism. For example if subject and object were merged and we then held a view that the union of the two as a single X is truly substantial and valid. This is an affirming negation, where an unconditioned purusa is affirmed via negation of phenomenal entities.

On the other hand, an epistemological non-duality is simply a recognition that the nature of phenomena is free from the dual extremes of existence and non-existence, hence "non-dual". This is a non-reductive non-duality, and a non-affirming negation because it does not leave anything in its wake, there is no X left over once the nature of phenomena is recognized.

In epistemic non-duality the nature of a conditioned phenomenon [dharma] and its non-arisen nature [dharmatā] are ultimately neither the same nor different, hence they are "non-dual", because the misconception of a conditioned entity is a byproduct of ignorance, and therefore said entity has never truly come into existence in the first place. This means that the allegedly conditioned entity has truly been unconditioned from the very beginning. And to realize this fact only requires a cessation of cause for the arising of the misconception of a conditioned entity, i.e., a cessation of ignorance. If dharmins and dharmatā were not non-dual then it would be impossible to recognize the unborn nature of phenomena because that nature would be rendered another conditioned entity.

TL;DR:

Non-duality in Hinduism and sanatanadharma in general is a view that promulgates an ontological, transpersonal, homogenous, unconditioned existent. Which means that non-duality in the sanatanadharma is a substantial and reductive non-duality.

Whereas one's (ultimate) nature in the buddhadharma is epistemic, personal, heterogeneous and free from the extremes of existence and non-existence. This means that one's so-called "non-dual" nature in Buddhism is an insubstantial and non-reductive non-duality.

Regarding these differences, the Tarkjavālā states:

Since [the tīrthika position of] self, permanence, all pervasivness and oneness contradict their opposite, [the Buddhist position of] no-self, impermanence, non-pervasiveness and multiplicity, they are completely different.

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You should read this to start, it was authored by a teacher who began as an Advaitin, and realized the result of Advaita. He was urged to teach Advaita by his contemporaries and master because his realization was considered profound. However he did not feel his realization was complete, and later discovered Vajrayāna, and continued to refine his insight and realized that the purusa of Vedanta can also be seen through.

His view is very clear, and he is extremely well informed. I heard of him because he came to my friend in a dream and invited him to receive teachings at his place in Nepal I believe. At any rate, he very thoroughly demonstrates the differences in view, and having mastered both paths, is adamant that they are very different in praxis and result. I agree with him wholeheartedly.

https://www.byomakusuma.org/MadhyamikaBuddhismVisAVisHinduVedanta.html

This one as well (which goes over advāya vs. advaita, and the real meaning of tathāgatagarbha): Enlightenment in Buddhism vs. Vedanta

 

 

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