Playing with Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

It’s like the mind is those very things we mentioned (self image etc) and also the place where they occur as you say. Not super important difference 
 

Could be, I'm not sure. Then again, we'd need to grasp what the mind is.

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

In my experience paying attention to your mind is a crucial step if your goal is to see through it and dissolve it

Definitely. 

[UnbornTao]

 

 

Edited Sunday at 03:47 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access

- Nietzsche.

 

Edited July 1 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “You say the mind that is aware and makes distinctions is not located in a specific place. However, the air, the lands, the waters, and the creatures that fly over them or move on them or in them — all things, in fact, existing in the world — do have specific locations.”

“Then does the mind that you suppose has no specific location exist in some place, or else does it exist in no place? If it is located nowhere, then it is an absurdity — like a turtle with fur or a hare with horns. How can you speak of something that does not have a specific location? Suppose, however, things could in fact exist without a definite location. Now, what does not exist lacks attributes. What does exist has attributes. And whatever has attributes does have a location. How can you say then that the mind has no specific location? Therefore, you should know that when you say the mind which knows and is aware has no specific location, you state what is impossible.”

Then Ānanda stood up in the midst of the great assembly […]

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “Since time without beginning, all beings, because of the many distortions in their minds, have been creating seeds of actions and consequences, which then grow and ripen naturally, like a cluster of fruit on a rough tree.”

“People who undertake a spiritual practice but who fail to realize the ultimate enlightenment — people such as the Hearers of the Teaching and the Solitary Sages, as well as spiritual beings and others, such as false teachers and blind devotees, who follow wrong paths — all fail because they do not understand two fundamentals and are mistaken and confused in their practice. They are like someone who cooks sand, hoping to prepare a delicious meal. Even if the sand were cooked for countless ages numberless as motes of dust, no meal would result from it.”

“Ānanda, what are the two fundamentals? The first is the mind that is the basis of death and rebirth and that has continued since time without beginning. This mind is dependent on perceived objects, and it is this mind that you and all beings make use of and that each of you consider to be your own nature.”

“The second fundamental is full awakening, which also has no beginning; it is the original and pure essence of liberation. It is the original understanding, the real nature of consciousness. All conditioned phenomena arise from it, and yet it is among those phenomena that beings lose track of it. They have lost track of this fundamental understanding though it is active in them all day long, and because they remain unaware of it, they make the mistake of entering the various destinies.”

“Ānanda, because you now wish to know about the path of calming the mind and wish to be subject to death and rebirth no longer, I will question you again.”

Then the Thus-Come One raised his golden-hued arm and bent his five fingers — each of them marked with lines in the shape of a wheel — and he asked Ānanda, “Did you see something?”

Ānanda said, “I did.”

The Buddha said, “What did you see?”

Ānanda said, “I saw the Thus-Come One raise his arm and bend his fingers into a fist that sends forth light, dazzling my mind and eyes.

The Buddha said, “When you saw my fist emit light, what did you see it with?”

Ānanda said, “All of us in the great assembly saw it with our eyes.”

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “You have answered that the Thus-Come One bent his fingers into a fist that sent forth light, dazzling your mind and eyes. Your eyes can see my fist, but what do you take to be your mind that was dazzled by it?”

Ānanda said, “The Thus-Come One has just now been asking me about my mind’s location, and my mind is what I have been using to determine where it might be. My mind is that which has the capability of making such determinations.”

The Buddha exclaimed, “Ānanda! That is not your mind!”

Startled, Ānanda stood up, placed his palms together, and said to the Buddha, “If that is not my mind, what is it?”

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “It is merely your mental processes that assign false and illusory attributes to the world of perceived objects. These processes delude you about your true nature and have caused you, since time without beginning and in your present life, to mistake a burglar for your own child — to lose touch with your own original, everlasting mind — and thus you are bound to the cycle of death and rebirth.”

Ānanda said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One, I am the Buddha’s favorite cousin. It was my mind that loved the Buddha and led me to enter the monastic life. That mind of mine has been responsible not only for my serving the Thus-Come One but also for my serving all Buddhas and all good and wise teachers throughout as many lands as there are sand-grains in the River Ganges. It has always been that mind that has marshaled great courage to practice every difficult aspect of the Teaching. If I were ever to slander the Teaching and forsake forever my good roots in it, that mind of mine would be the cause even of that. If this activity of comprehending is not the mind, then I have no mind, and I am the same as a clod of earth or a piece of wood, because nothing exists apart from my mind’s awareness and its knowledge. Why does the Thus-Come One say that this is not my mind? Now I am genuinely alarmed and frightened; neither I nor anyone else here in the great assembly is free of doubt. I only hope that the Thus-Come One, with great compassion for us, will instruct all those among us who are not yet awake.”

Then to Ānanda and the others in the great assembly the World-Honored One gave instruction in gaining patience with the state of mind in which no mental objects arise.

From the teaching seat he reached out and circled his hand on the crown of Ānanda’s head, saying to him, “The Thus-Come One has often explained that all phenomena that come into being are nothing more than manifestations of the mind. All things that are subject to the principle of cause and effect — from the largest world to the smallest mote of dust — come into being because of the mind. If we examine the fundamental nature of each thing in the world, Ānanda, down to even the smallest wisps of grass, we will see that all have reality. Even space has a name and attributes. Given that, how could the clear wondrous, pure mind — the mind that truly understands and is the basic nature of all mental states — itself lack reality?”

“But if, as you insist, that which makes distinctions and is aware of them, which knows and understands them is indeed the mind, then that mind would necessarily have its own essential nature independent of its involvement with objects — with visible objects, sounds, odors, flavors, and objects of touch. Yet now, as you listen to my Teaching, it is due to sounds that you can distinguish my meaning. Even if you were to withdraw into a state of quietude in which all seeing, hearing, awareness of tastes, and tactile awareness ceased, you still would be making distinctions among the shadowy objects of cognition in your mind.”

“I am not demanding that you just accept that this distinction-making capacity is not the mind. But examine your mind in minute detail to determine if a distinction-making capacity exists independent of its perceived objects of awareness. That would truly be your mind. If, on the other hand, your distinction-making capacity does not have an essential nature apart from its perceived objects, then it too would be a perceived object — a shadowy mental object. Perceived objects are not permanent, and when that mind ceased to exist such that it had no more reality than a turtle with fur or a hare with horns, then your true nature would cease to exist along with it. Then who would be left to practice and to perfect patience with the state of mind in which no mental objects arise?”

At that point Ānanda and the others in the great assembly were utterly dumbfounded. They had nothing to say.

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “The reason why so many practitioners in the world do not succeed in putting an end to outflows and becoming fully realized practitioners — though they may have passed through all nine of the successive stages of meditative absorption — is that they are attached to distorted mental processes that come into being and then cease to be, and they mistake these processes for what is real. That is why, even though you have become quite learned, you have not become a sage.”

When Ānanda had heard that, he again wept sorrowfully. He then bowed to the ground, knelt on both knees, placed his palms together, and said to the World-Honored One, “Ever since I followed the Buddha and resolved to enter the monastic life, I have relied on the Buddha’s awe-inspiring spirit. I have often thought, ‘There is no reason for me to toil at spiritual practice,’ because I just expected that the Thus-Come One would graciously transfer some of his profound insight to me. I never realized that in fact he simply could not stand in for me, in body or in mind. Thus I abandoned my original resolve, and though my body has indeed entered the monastic life, my mind has not entered the Path. I am like that poor son who ran away from his father. Today I realize that, though I am learned, I might as well not have learned anything if I do not practice, just as someone who only talks of food never gets full.”

[…]

Thereupon the World-Honored One said to Ānanda, “I now will raise for all of you a great guiding principle so that all beings in all ten directions can gain access to what is wondrous, subtle, and hidden — the pure and luminous mind that understands — and so that they can open their clear-seeing eyes.”

- The Surangama Sutra.

Edited Sunday at 03:42 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]