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Chris Jones
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Without
knowing who the person is, I can’t say whether they’ve actually
realized anatta or not, but based on that description it seems like
maybe there are still some aspects for them to clarify. Anatta isn’t
depersonalization/derealization at all, in my experience it improves
your life in almost every aspect. I feel better day to day and my
relationships have improved as well. There is not a day I regret it or
think that I deluded myself somehow. Nor do people around me think that
I’m detached, although I can seem unphased by things that would
otherwise make someone very upset/angry/etc.
There
are some symptoms of DP that sound familiar, like “feeling that people
and your surroundings are not real, like you're living in a movie or a
dream” or “[Surroundings] may seem like they only have two dimensions,
so they're flat with no depth. Or you could be more aware of your
surroundings, and they may appear clearer than usual”. But there is a
caveat. I experience things as “not real” from one perspective, but from
another I can also see how they are totally real in a conventional
sense. Due to that, it doesn’t negatively impact my interactions and
relationships at all.
It’s
like how when you’re watching a movie, you can notice the screen and
the screen is “flat” and 2-dimensional and the movie is simply light
being projected from the screen. This isn’t a delusion, quite the
opposite. Yet you can still continue to watch and enjoy the movie and
things are still “real” within the context of the movie.
Thus
nothing is lost from the experience, and one doesn’t distance
themselves but rather is even more engaged with reality. All in all I
wouldn’t worry too much about these things and would just suggest you to
continue with your practice in an uncontrived way, without trying to
fabricate any particular experience and see where it takes you.
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Soh Wei Yu
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Nice sharing.
Just a random thought for sharing..
Waking
life and sleep dreams are both equally empty and illusory, but where
dream objects are not conventionally valid with causal efficacy and
functionality, waking life does.
For
example if I borrowed money from someone in a dream and then I woke up,
I do not need to return the money to the dream guy or lady because
there is no functional purpose or causal efficacy to the dream money.
But
in waking life, money, although a mere coventional imputation with no
inherent reality to it, serves a function and has causal efficacy, this
function and causal efficacy too is empty without real existence like a
reflection but yet cannot be denied. In fact if you steal money from
someone, it can cause suffering and death to a person, a family, or
more.
This
is why Buddhas and Bodhisattvas never enter cessation and endlessly
return to help beings. Even though they understand there is no sentient
beings to be saved, ultimately. Even if they attained Buddhahood or
rainbow body, etc, they continue to help (illusory) beings, and their
unending compassion and spontaneous actions to liberate sentient beings
are never without consequences.
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Soh Wei Yu
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“The Danger of Refuting Too Much: Ethics and Emptiness
"Tsong-
kha- pa was particularly concerned that most of the then prevailing
Tibetan interpretations of Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophy
misidentified the object of negation. In his view, these widely
promulgated misunderstandings of Madhyamaka subvert ethical commitments
by treating them—and all other conventions—as provisional in the sense
that their validity or legitimacy is obviated by the profound truth of
emptiness. Tsong- kha- pa holds that profound emptiness must be
understood as complementing and fulfilling, rather than canceling out,
the principles of moral action. His writings aim to inspire and—as a
matter of historical fact—did inspire vigorous striving in active
virtue.
Tsong-
kha- pa insists that rational analysis is an indispensable tool in the
spiritual life. In order to make cogent the compatibility of emptiness
and ethics, Tsong- kha- pa had to show that the two truths, ultimate and
conventional, do not contradict, undermine, or supersede one another."
~ Introduction to Emptiness, Guy Newland”
“The birth of certainty ~ Lama Tsongkhapa
The knowledge that appearances arise unfailingly in dependence,
And the knowledge that they are empty and beyond all assertions—
As long as these two appear to you as separate,
There can be no realization of the Buddha’s wisdom.
Yet when they arise at once, not each in turn but both together,
Then through merely seeing unfailing dependent origination
Certainty is born, and all modes of misapprehension fall apart—
That is when discernment of the view has reached perfection.
– Lama Tsongkhapa
“EMPTINESS DEVIATING TO THE BASIC NATURE
Timeless
Deviation to the Nature of Knowables The meditation of inseparable
phenomena and emptiness is called “emptiness endowed with the supreme
aspect.” Not knowing how emptiness and interdependence abide in
nonduality, you decide that emptiness is a nothingness that has never
existed and that is not influenced at all by qualities or defects. Then
you underestimate the cause and effect of virtue and vice, or else lapse
exclusively into the nature of all things being originally pure,
primordially free, and so forth. Bearing such emptiness, the relative
level of interdependence is not mastered. In this respect, this is what
is known as mahamudra: one’s basic nature is unoriginated and, since it
is neither existent nor nonexistent, eternal nor nil, true nor false,
nor any other such aspects, it has no existence whatsoever. Nonetheless,
its unceasing radiance arises as the relative level of all kinds of
interdependence, so it is known as emptiness having the core of
interdependence and interdependence having the nature of emptiness.
Therefore, emptiness does not stray to the nature of knowables. In the
Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way it is said: Anything that doesn’t
arise dependently Is a phenomenon that has no existence. Therefore
anything that is not empty Is a phenomenon that has no existence. And as
said in the Commentary on Bodhichitta: It is taught that the relative
plane is emptiness, And emptiness alone is the relative plane.” – The
Royal Seal of Mahamudra, Volume 2, Khamtrul Rinpoche
JUSTDHARMA.COM
The birth of certainty ~ Lama Tsongkhapa
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Soh Wei Yu
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"
Thorough knowledge of relative truth is ultimate truth; for this reason
the two truths are mutually confirming and not in contradiction at
all." – Acarya Malcolm, 2021
“A lot of talk on here lately about how lame relative reality is vs how awesome ultimate reality is.
Apparently
an omniscient master is supposed to see how both the relative and the
ultimate exist at the same time in a Union of Appearance and Emptiness.
It's because everything is dependently arisen that it can be seen as empty.
Not even the smallest speck exists by its own power.
Je
Tsongkhapa said, "Since objects do not exist through their own nature,
they are established as existing through the force of convention."
He was the biggest proponent of keeping vows and virtuous actions through all stages of sutra and tantra.
He also leveraged the relative by practicing millions of prostrations and offering mandalas.
He also practiced generation and completion stages of tantra while keeping his conduct spotless.
He
held conduct in the highest regard in all of his texts on tantra such
as his masterwork, A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages.” - Jason
Parker, 2019
---
Longchenpa on Nihilism
From Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind.
"Those who scorn the law of karmic cause and fruit
Are students of the nihilist view outside the Dharma.
They rely on the thought that all is void;
They fall in the extreme of nothingness
And go from higher to lower states.
They have embarked on an evil path
And from the evil destinies will have no freedom,
Casting happy states of being far away.
”The law of karmic cause and fruit,
Compassion and the gathering of merit -
All this is but provisional teaching fit for children:
Enlightenment will not be gained thereby.
Great yogis should remain without intentional action.
They should meditate upon reality that is like space.
Such is the definitive instruction.”
The view of those who speak like this
Of all views is the most nihilist:
They have embraced the lowest of all paths.
How strange is this!
They want a fruit but have annulled its cause.
If reality is but a space-like void,
What need is there to meditate?
And if it is not so, then even if one meditates
Such efforts are to no avail.
If meditation on mere voidness leads to liberation,
Even those with minds completely blank
Attain enlightenment!
But since those people have asserted meditation,
Cause and its result they thus establish!
Throw far away such faulty paths as these!
The true, authentic path asserts
The arising in dependence of both cause and fruit,
The natural union of skillful means and wisdom.
Through the causality of nonexistent but appearing acts,
Through meditation on the nonexistent but appearing path,
The fruit is gained, appearing and yet nonexistent;
And for the sake of nonexistent but appearing beings,
Enlightened acts, appearing and yet nonexistent, manifest.
Such is pure causality’s profound interdependence.
This is the essential pith
Of all the Sutra texts whose meaning is definitive
And indeed of all the tantras.
Through the joining of the two accumulations,
The generation and completion stages,
Perfect buddhahood is swiftly gained.
Thus all the causal processes
Whereby samsara is contrived should be abandoned,
And all acts that are the cause of liberation
Should be earnestly performed.
High position in samsara
And the final excellence of buddhahood
Will speedily be gained."
from Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind (Volume 1)
Also by Longchenpa:
"To
reject practice by saying, ‘it is conceptual!’ is the path of fools. A
tendency of the inexperienced and something to be avoided.”
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Soh Wei Yu
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“Cause
and effort are conventional so they are of course illusory. But only
in the eyes of (Soh: unawakened) sentient beings, illusory are
unimportant and have no consequences.”
- John Tan
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Soh Wei Yu
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Therefore,
those who fall into a sense of purposelessness is likely harboring a
nihilist view (the worst kind of wrong view in buddhadharma) that
asserts non existence and negates dependent arising, and is the complete
opposite of the wisdom that realizes the union of dependent arising and
emptiness
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