Real practical care for the welbeing of animals, children, old people, sick people, disabled people etc does come with a burden. People who have that care, do not share in the dream of endless patience, no desires, having endless love, endless compassion, being knowledgable, being without doubts, worries etc. For those people this is all just an unrealistic dreamworld. It also is. It all depends on causes and conditions. But it is not realistic to aspect an end of suffering with certain responsibilities etc. Buddha is also realistic in this.
It is always so easy to judge people that they have to big ego’s, to much passion, to strong belief in a self for those who have not that care. But let them take care of people…the will flee as quick they can…
because care for others means that one must r e a l l y practise virtues. In a forest not.
We are free to make up our own minds. I choice: fettering gets lost and nothing else. One does not loose the ability to conceive but one looses the fetter of mana. One does not loose passion but the fetter of raga. One does not loose all sense of me and mine regarding body and mind but the blind and instinctive identification with body and mind. Etc.
I see no reason to believe otherwise. Buddha clearly still had a sense of me and mine. Call it conventional, call it that what is needed to live a normal life, but for me it is sure that when one does not want to teach imagening that this will become with trouble for oneself, one cannot be totally free of any sense of self. And also, someone calling a fool shows passion and annoyance. And if one wants that the teachings are not distorted that shows passion, desire.
Like Dhamma, there is so much written. And it is all useless to refer to some statement in a scripture.
There is never any consistencies in scriptures. Not in EBT, no where. I am happy with that. At least we start to think on our own.
In my opinion the bond with father and mother is not love. It is kamma, i think. It is more like a debt one pays, Such a things. It is amazing how loyal children are. But is that love? I do not think so. Children can even be abused or neglected and still they do not see their parents as evil, bad. Maybe some, but i think not many. I think it is also not really gratitude.
So, when a plan arises for the Buddha…I am going on retraite now…there is no sense of self at all in that? When the Buddha is just awakened and wonders with whom he will share his attainments first, there is no sense of self in that at all?
Yes Mr. Dilthey. But nobody is asking you to lose your empirical sense of self (other than maybe as an experiment in meditation) - that would be Schizophrenia. What No-Self is all about is realizing that your Self is not permanent, constantly changing. It’s conditioned like everything else. That’s all there’s to it.
Also, picking the Buddha as an example is only going to trigger erverybody.
Well, the function is certainly real, in seeing, whether you call it an experience or not, seeing or not, these are provisional terms. And yes, you have to dissolve your empirical sense of Self, which is centrifuge to delusion and illusion.
I disagree. You are not able to take one single step with your empirical sense of self dissolved. Nor does this seem to me to be necessary to reach the goal of Dhamma, which is already achieved by detaching mentally.
Losing one’s empirical sense of self is what happens to people on LSD, and I bet you would agree that they do not make an especially convincing case for Arhat.
Becoming an Arhat and the disillusioned dissolving of a pretend Ego (also an illusion of material nature) on a drug trip are not the same thing. An Arhat does not even need the slightest sense of Self because they have abandoned the fetters, especially through practice and Sila, and have gone thus far to the Other Shore. Once there, how can we say there is a Self in Nibbana? That is the Way, and one we should all aspire to.
Ourselves, perceived as persons, solely lie in the five aggregates, is negating the person, there is no person outside of the aggregates. It is a difficult fetter to overcome in realizing that Buddhism has this impersonal understanding of Higher Nature, called Nibbana.
But nobody is asking you to lose your empirical sense of self (other than maybe as an experiment in meditation) - that would be Schizophrenia. What No-Self is all about is realizing that your Self is not permanent, constantly changing. It’s conditioned like everything else. That’s all there’s to it.