This sea, how do you know it exist other than concepts and holding a certain philosophy? Can you feel it? Is it just a philosophical construction? Cause I can just bring in Abhidhamma and say none of the 5 aggregates require this sea to function.
When it has no function, it’s superfluous creation. Like an aether which is discarded.
There’s no sutta which says mind is the sea and consciousness is a wave arising from it. That’s just Hinduism thinking of atman and Brahman.
Ultimately it’s just concepts. And concepts can be easily mistaken as permanent.
Is that true? If there is no mind, how do vinnana’s uberhaupt arise? Can they arise from rupa as cause? From space as cause?
There can be no rebirth without sea. Those sankhara’s that become a support for a new rebirth-vinnana (SN12.38) , those sankhara’s arise in mind. They cannot arise in space, in rupa.
Is atman imagined as grasped wave function or as soul-and self- like?
I have felt that there is something illusionairy in thinking, and also experiencing, in terms of real existing boundaries. I feel that this sense of seperation is a product of the mind.
It is easy to be fooled by the magician of vinnana. Vinnana is so coarse, so dominating our world, that many people feel vinnana is mind and even our lifes. This coarseness of coming and going perceptions and feeling, totally blinds and makes us blind for what has not the characteristic to arise, cease and change. I see a Buddha who wants to cure this obsession with vinnana.
Vinnana presents us a coming and going but it blinds us for what is not coming and going.
When Sariputta said that ‘one perception arose in me, another ceases in me’…those perceptions he saw coming and going but not that empty aspect of ‘in me’ .
Buddhism is about gradual understandings, where doubts about the teachings are gradually overcome (note: ‘doubt’ is one of the five hindrances to progress on the path). So, I guess you are having some doubts and hopefully, you will be able to overcome them soon… I wish you the very best for that!
For me it is only rational that the basic function of mind is awareness, an ability to know. This ability to know it not the same as a sense-vinnana. Sense-vinnana’s can arise because there is this ability to know. This ability to know is not absent under narcosis, deep dreamless sleep, being unconscious, but sense-vinnnana’s are. So, there is no reason to believe mind is a stream of sense vinnana’s, but mind in essence refers to the ability to know.
This ability to know i think of as its basic sensitivity and susceptibility. It can receive and sense.
But on this basic level of mind this is not yet a clear cut experience (a sense vinnana)
I do not believe there is a person that has ever seen this ability to know ceasing, but there are persons who teach that this ability to know is amazing, constant, stable and cannot be seperated from the stillness and emptiness of mind. It is without any suffering.
Sense vinnana’s, but also sankhara’s, cannot arise without this basic ability to know. I believe this is also meant in dhp1. This ability to know is mind as forerunner of all the phenomena we perceive.
One cannot say that this ability to know is the ability of sense vinnana…no… a sense vinnana is clearly and irrefutable the result of this basic ability to know.
It is easy to understand that such experiences we refer to as ‘sweet’, ‘sour’, painful, pleasant do not arise from nothing. All have mind as cause.
For some it is apparantly new to think about mind in terms of the ability to know. They can only think about mind as knowing-something-specific (vinnana). But it is easy to understand that such vinnana’s do not arise from nothing and only arise because, first of all, there IS an ability to know.
As ability to know mind is seen in its must basic and pure form.
First, let me just say that you’re just taking this thing Burgs call the Dhammakāya as Nibbāna, but since you don’t even see the Dhammakāya yet, your faith in it is just based on your faith in certain teachers who made this mistaken identification.
I got you because in parinibbāna, we agree that the 5 aggregates ceases, no sense vinnana as you call it arises. No knowledge. Without any capacity for change in parinibbāna because it is permanent and changeless, there’s no capacity for sense vinnana to ever arise again. In what sense can the mind as you call it still have this capacity to know? When it cannot ever be manifested ever? The unmanifest is also a term for nibbāna.
So it’s superfluous, extra. Useless, not actually there. Just a product of imagination for after parinibbāna. Dhammakāya does not survive the death of arahant.
I do not see a mistaken identification. What i see is that one must distiguish sense-vinnana’s from the basic ability of mind to know. There is no reason to believe that when vinnana’s cease this basic ability also ceases. But if one is very much attached to and identified with vinnana one probably experiences a black out when vinnana ceases.
Futhermore, you can question my level, like @Daya also does, but i feel it is not appropriate to make me subject of discussion. I also do this not with you and @Daya or others. Please stop with this.
I do not understand why you keep on speaking about mere cessation, or nothing remaining after a last death, as if there is still something…why do you talk about mere cessation as permanent?
There is nothing anymore and to even talk about this makes no sense, let alone call it permanent.
The capacity to know probably does not depend on the presence of objects to be known. But i also do not see this clear yet. But i believe this is what teachers describe. It comes down to: the ability to know cannot be seperated from the essential emptiness of mind.
Well…there are teachers that are considered arahant or awakened that are without doubts that mere cessation is wrong and is even impossible. They have no doubts about this. And there are, apparantly, teachers, considered arahants, awakened, who are sure that all ceases after a final death.
Tja…that is the situation.
In other words, what does no doubt even mean? All those teachers do not doubt but meanwhile they teach different things and are considered awakened.
So, in my opinion no-doubts is totally meaningless. I see that people use it to judge the level of others (a sotapanna is beyond doubts). But this is meaningless if you realise what the actual situation is in Buddhist Sangha.
Buddha says…do not go by what lineages and teachers say…i agree…it is all a mess and what they teach is all over the place. That is reality of buddhism. There is no consensus on anything. Not about the goal, not about the nature of Nibbana, the nature of parinibbana, the understanding of no(t)-self, the translation of words, mundane and supra mundane, nature of jhana…endless…
I have accepted this. In a sense it is conducive because at least one must discover things for oneself.
You, or others, cannot convince me by refering to what certain teachers and lineage see as the Truth.
Does not work for me. Opposed to their opinions are always many teachers who hold another Truth.
So, i try think for myself. Also meditate ofcourse. And for me it is very clear that thinking about (stream of) vinnana as mind is wrong. This is very coarse understanding of mind.
That is one point where i have arrived at. But this meets only resistance. So be it. For my self i do not doubt this point anymore.
What is the use of saying I have the ability to wake up, after I died? Nope, this corpse has no more ability to open eyes ever again. What’s the use of saying there’s the ability to know without any way of knowledge arising ever again? Makes no sense.
The mind as the ability to know is taught as not personal and not something local. It is not bound to this material body. Sense-vinnana’s are bound to this body, at least while alive.
It is more something of nature, just like atoms. It does not arise because of brain activity or having a body. It is intrinsic to life and nature. Maybe you can see it as the ground for all existences but at the same time beyond it. Like a field of intelligence that cannot be destroyed or cease. Maybe like the screen on which all our lifes take place.
At least the Buddha also teaches what has no characteristics to arise, cease, change, is stable, constant, does not desintegrate, is everlasting, imperishable…yes…and i refuse to think that one can talk this way about mere cessation, or nothing left after a last death.
Ability to know implies change. arising of knowledge. Doesn’t matter local or nonlocal, any knowledge on anywhere on anyone. If there’s no change, no arising of knowledge, makes no sense to say there’s ability to know.
Like saying someone has an ability to climb Mount Everest, can be true, even if they don’t actually climb it, but after they die, and Mount everest itself is gone to dust, it makes no more sense to say that that ability is still there, because the arising of knowledge is conditioned.
If what you are looking for is there, it is not mind. Mind as a faculty of reason is limited. Philosophy can (almost) prove that, e.g. with Kant’s antinomies (but better not look that up if you are already confused).
Your idea is body and mind, mind connects to Nibbana somehow. But this is not what the Buddha taught, nor is it - imo - philosophically likely. The whole concept of annata is to say the opposite - that mind in the above sense is conditioned. Science also points in that directiob.
Your hypothesis can only be upheld by looking for something more than mind - eg Buddha nature or something conforming to the “divine spark” of the ancient Gnostics. Otherwise your idea is against the essence of Buddhism … or so it seems.
Ability to know refers to the basic sensititive and susceptibility of mind. First of all mind must be able to receive info. And that receiving of info is only possible if mind has a certain sensititive and susceptibility. This is described as minds clear nature. The element of clarity. It is not an experience or knowledge. It is that what precedes all experiences and all knowledge.
This is conditioned. All processes of receiving info is conditioned. When all conditions ceases, there’s no more conditions for info to be received. Thus no longer possible to receive info.
Like an eye which can see, but in the far future, in the heat death of the universe, where the last photons are all gone too far from each other and basically each occupy their own visible universe, without any chance of coming into contact with the eye, and wavelength too long into the radio waves, of many trillions of light years long… there’s no condition for light to come to the eye. No way for eye to see. No reversing the universe. You’re still saying eye have the ability to see? Isn’t that attaching to something as this as eternal?
Yes, we talk about Buddha Nature. This is my favorite Buddhist teaching. Probably people will immediately protest that this whole idea of Buddha Nature is absent in the sutta’s. Yes, as word but, i believe, not in meaning. But i forsee this becomes, again, one of this endless discussion. I am not gonna do this.
First of all we must agree on what is mind? Is mind gone when you are unconscious? If not, what is the mind where you refer to as still being present? As example of a possible question.
And besides anatta there is also the concept of asankhata too! What does not arise, cease and change and is therefor not ruled by conditions. There are also many sutta’s about the unmade, unbecome , etc. as you know.
In any case I would have to start with dividing the reasoning faculty from whatever I wanted to be eternal, because from the viewpoint of philosophy and science it is likely that the reasoning faculty by itself is limited and finite.
I sure cannot work this out just like that, this would be a whole project. Why not consult known sources of Mahayana Buddhism? I believe this concept is included in what they call the “third turning of the wheel of Dhamma”.
I agree, it is a whole project, but i feel it is a beginning to come to some agreement about: if there are no perceptions and feelings, such under narcosis, in deep dreamless sleep, does this also mean that there is no mind? Or, in other words, is mind the same as a stream of vinnana’s, or stream of sense moments? Does it equal consciousness?
