If you wish us to continue discussion with me, please start making personal statements, rather than statements of ‘fact’. This might be clear to you but it is not clear to me.
What is clear to me is, this is referring to all of the six types of consciousness, that are not poisoned by clinging and therefore are not suffering. In effect, I read this as ‘any (or all) consciousness, thus not having landed, not increasing, not concocting, is released’.
Just like saying ‘Asians are kind’, we don’t need to say ‘all Asians…’.
It seems the concept of the three doors to Nibbana came later, but the meditative states they refer to were present in the EBTs. Akumpita (unshakable deliverance of mind) was after attaining Nibbana so it was more refined then the three as they were pre-Nibbana samadhi states.
The Pāli word is ‘mano’ and maybe you can see, it is related to the English word ‘mind’. I don’t know what was meant by the word ‘mano’, but I use my logic, experience and modern science, on top of my understanding of Pali.
‘Mind’ is the usual chosen translation, but I don’t agree for these reasons: I think no one trained in medicine will say there is an organ in the body called ‘mind’, rather if you ask ‘which organ in the body is associated with mental functions’ they will say ‘the brain’; secondly, ‘mind’ seems a very unclear term in English, so much so, that even psychology does not seem to have a definition they all accept. ‘psyche’ to the Greeks and Jung meant ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’.
I need to make the Buddha’s teaching practical and for me, to be practical, it must be clear.
I had to go back to find what you were referring to, as you didn’t supply a quote, only a date. I think your question is in regard to this:
worldling - always clinging to one of the five aggregates
I mean clinging all the time to one of the aggregates. Only when we start practising the path, do I believe we have a break from clinging.
I understand that consciousness arises, free and luminous, based on the contact of eye and visual object etc, as I said before. If there is clinging, then it is no longer luminous and free. Once clinging is given up, then it is luminous and free again.
I see them according to this: All saṅkhārā are impermanent, all dhammā are anattā. Only the 5 Clinging Aggregates are also dukkha, vis the First Noble Truth. If that is not clear enough, I see the Five Khandhas are impermanent (anicca) and not soul (anattā) only.
Hopefully we both understand the view I am explaining to be: ‘the Five Aggregates are impermanent and not soul, but the Five Clinging Aggregates are impermanent, suffering and not soul’.
I can speak for myself, I now practice differently from how I did when I held what I understand is the (a more) traditional view, that is, the Five Aggregates (without clinging) have all three characteristics.
Now, I seek total freedom from suffering in this very life. I have more faith, joy, energy, concentration and, I believe, wisdom, though not complete (of course all are debatable)
Considering troll behaviour and the first Noble Truth some find suffering enjoyable-it’s called masochistic behaviour. They may not want to escape suffering but just invite attacks on to themselves. Narcissists will attack back with a vengeance but these people won’t. There maybe subconscious provocative statements that draw people in. It’s best not to engage as it will play into the dysfunctional behaviour.
Rehabilitation would be to tolerate and not reject them. Long term boundaried but kind ‘re-parenting’ type relationships would be positive.
So , what do you think
is the difference between
" Material " and " spirit " ?
According to above ,
seems the 6 sense organs and
6 corresponding Objects are
therefore considered " materials " ?
Hence , Buddha teachings
therefore is nothing really
About " spiritual " things ?
Not even " psychological " ?
Rather , it is about Materials
and pathological affairs !
For me, spiritual and psychological both cover the same concerns, but a psychological approach seems more balanced, as it seems to value both the body and mental states. All ‘spiritual’ philosophies I know of, seem to devalue the body/material things. ‘Pathological’ is part of psychiatry, as I understand it and I’m not really interested in psychiatry.
I would not class any of the six consciousnesses as physical, or material, but, for me, they are dependent on the body and this seems to be expressed by the Buddha when he said ‘consciousness is bound up with the body’ SuttaCentral. Bhikkhu Sāti seems to have thought the Buddha taught consciousness was independent of the body and could pass from life to life and the Buddha reprimanded him: SuttaCentral.
The sixth type of consciousness, I have called ‘thinking’, but that is just simplified language. We don’t really have the word ‘minding’ in English with the sense of ‘activities of the mind’. For me the sixth includes such things as: thinking, imagining, intuiting, remembering, planning…
All the types of consciousness would have sensation (vedanā) and emotion (saṅkhāra) associated with them. To me, these are psychological and possibly spiritual concerns, but that would be moving into the teaching of Dependent Origination.
I went search at wiki ,
It seems all human functioning
Related to below categories .
Psychiatry includes various
study of abnormalities
related to mood, behaviour,
cognition, and perceptions.
Pathology (from the
Greek roots of pathos (πάθος),
meaning “experience” or “suffering”,
and -logia (-λογία), “study of”) is a significant component
of the causal study of disease.
Psychology is about study
Of behavior and mental processes,
including perception, cognition, attention, emotion (affect),
intelligence, phenomenology,
motivation (conation),
brain functioning, and personality.
Physiology (/ˌfɪziˈɒlədʒi/;
from Ancient Greek φύσις (physis),
meaning ‘nature, origin’,
and -λογία (-logia),
meaning ‘study of’) is study
of the normal mechanisms,
and their interactions,
which operate within a living system.
Although Buddha teachings has
similarity with " psychology " , yet
main difference is Buddha dhamma
has the sense of " spirituality "
whereas psychology absent of it .
Devalued ,
Seems so , Buddha dhamma
Expresses the same message also !
With the existence of
The 5 aggregates which causes
the arises of clinging therefore
the 5 clung to aggregates ,
hence resulting in suffering .
The hereafter of an arahant ,
seems no different to the
View of annihilation !?
The outcome of practicing
dhamma equate to
valueless at the end ?!
There is not a thing left
To Appreciate it then ?!
I don’t see your point in stating the results of the wiki search.
What do you mean by ‘the sense of spirituality’?
Glad to know you absolutely know what is Buddha Dhamma, such that you can make theses statements of fact about it, though I do not find such statements interesting, quite the opposite, they sound arrogant to me. In any case, making them is not taking the training of the Buddha to know and express our opinions as such. If you wish to continue doing this, I’d rather not continue the conversation.
I take your ‘devalued, seems so’ to refer to all spiritual philosophies.
That is how you and possibly the majority see it! But I don’t see it that way. For me, one clear example of the opposite is the reflection on the use of the Four Requisites and the simple story of the Buddha telling Ānanda that he will lie down because his back aches.
To me this is pure invention/imagination and misrepresentation of the Buddha, where in the First Four Nikayas does the Buddha say the Five Aggregates cause the arising of clinging? Please supply a quote. No quote or apology, then I’ll say goodbye.
As I have read many times, either craving or ignorance causes clinging, not the Five Aggregates.
good luck with that view and that is not how I understand the Buddha’s teaching. To me, that view is based on mixing up the Five Aggregates as the problem rather than the Five Clinging Aggregates.
Feelings in English can mean either bodily sensations or mental emotions. That’s why I avoid using it. I believe the Buddha was precise and since bodily sensations are very different to me to mental emotions, I expect the Buddha used different terms for both. I believe vedanā was used as ‘sensation’ (three kinds) and saṅkhāra was used as ‘emotion’ (two kinds). I don’t follow the popular translation.
Sorry for inappropriate
expression in my Language ,
I probably should says
with the existence of the
5 aggregates as grounds ,
is the pre conditions for
any craving to happen and
clinging to arise thereafter .
What you mean by
2 kinds of emotion ?
Is there any quote from
Sutta clearly saying
vedana as sensation
and sankhara as emotion ?
To my understanding
Pali dictionary or Chinese Agama
didn’t appear say so ?
Anyway I appreciate your
kindness for taking
your time in answering ,
explaining , and clarify some
of my misunderstanding
In the dhamma .
Well, then, I agree. I would put this briefly as ‘one must be alive to crave and cling’. LOL
wholesome or right or skilful and unwholesome or wrong or unskilful, meaning: does not harm oneself or others and harms oneself or others
I cannot say if there is or isn’t. I can only truly say that I have not found such a quote. My understanding has developed due to my study and practice and my attempt to make the Buddha’s teaching meaningful to this very life/this immediate experience.
I didn’t say ‘parinibbana happened under the Bodhi tree’, but rather ‘Parinibbāna would be the end of clinging, which I believe happened under the Bodhi Tree for the Buddha.’ Since, for me, (pari/complete)nibbāna is the complete ending of the Five Aggregates that Cling, not the Five Aggregates (that don’t cling, or are not clung-to).
To summarise after this interesting discussion, I have become aware of two answers to ‘what is the First Noble Truth?’ that is, ‘what is suffering?’.
One is the summary sentence of the First Noble Truth and goes: The Five Clung-to Aggregates are suffering’, or ‘life with clinging is suffering’. This agrees with many EBTs. From this, for me, even if something were permanent, if it were clung to, it would be suffering. Scientifically speaking, energy is permanent and I can accept it as such. It is said, it only changes form, but if I clung to it as my soul (which has some personally recognisable feature beyond simply impersonal energy), then, for me, it would be (permanent and) suffering.
The other is based on the doctrine of the Three (Universal) Characteristics. It makes a causal link between them. All (conditioned) things are impermanent, what is impermanent is suffering, what is suffering is not soul. By this, as I read it, it is impermanence not clinging that defines suffering.
For me the second teaching is in conflict with the first, but if I take birth, aging and death, as physical, (ignoring a fair bit of evidence that the Buddha used the terms in a non-physical way), then I can easily omit ‘clinging’ from the summary sentence and get ‘the Five Aggregates are Suffering’ or ‘life is suffering’, why?, because it’s impermanent!
After a while I had to give up the second explanation, as I believed the teaching in the First Discourse would lead me to end suffering and had tested the second explanation which didn’t help.
Suffering is the result of clinging to something that is impermanent.
Impermanence is not intrinsically suffering ; it is just a fundamental characteristic of this universe so it’s not good or bad, it’s just is.
Once our craving for permanence (and to other aspects of life, such as beauty, etc.) is gone then we can be in lasting happiness.
I would say ‘Suffering is clinging to something that is impermanent’ but it seems we basically agree. (or/also suffering is clinging to something that may be permanent)
But the following teaching, as I pointed out in my summary, has exactly the message that there is suffering directly due to impermanence, with no mention of clinging: SuttaCentral. I do not accept this teaching as an authentic teaching of the Buddha any longer. I cannot accept the First Noble Truth and this teaching any longer. I have to choose, one or the other. Since I tested the first (impermanence) version and found it ineffectual, I now follow the second (clinging) version.
Yes, that is the conclusion from the teaching of the Three Universal Characteristics, based on such quotes above and I don’t accept it any longer.
I do not believe suffering is the result of only clinging to something that is impermanent. I believe that clinging to anything permanent or not, is suffering. I do not claim to know that there are permanent things and I do not claim that all things are impermanent (this is not eel wriggling, but rather not venturing into unanswerable questions). I try to follow the Buddha’s teaching. Please note the misquote of the Buddha’s teaching that ‘all things are impermanent’ (=? sabbe dhammā aniccā). This has the Buddha declare what I would call a ‘dogma’, which has to be believed, until one is fully enlightened, which is usually assumed to include omniscience (so one can see the whole universe and know it’s impermanent).
What I see the Buddha teach is, to reflect on the Five (Clinging) Aggregates as impermanent. For me the Five (Clinging) Aggregates is another way of talking about direct experience, So, we can investigate this hypothesis and know if it is true at any time (akālika). No blind faith needed!
What I understand from the EBTs is the Buddha taught 'all conditioned things are impermanent Pāli: sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā, not all things, i.e. not the universe is impermanent,
This is the teaching found in any contemplative tradition, Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist… If that were what the Buddha realised and taught, then it would seem that he did not teach something new, as is claimed in the ‘First’ Discourse.
Also, this links with the Second Noble Truth, which is usually taught by the tradition as ‘craving is the cause of suffering’, but we have other EBT teachings that point to Ignorance as the cause. This is another time I can no longer live with both options, but have to choose. I have tested the popular ‘craving’ version, which we also find Hinduism and Taoism teaching and found it does not lead to the goal the Buddha seems to have pointed to. Now I choose the ‘ignorance’ version.
‘so it’s not good or bad, it just is.’ this is the usual outcome of the ‘craving is the cause of suffering’ version. In essence, one must develop pure equanimity. For me, equanimity is good, but it is not the goal, it is not Nibbāna. Clinging to equanimilty, is also suffering, imo. Giving up judgements, is not the path, imo. Part of wisdom is discernment, knowing wholesome from unwholesome, healthy from unhealthy, skillful from unskilful, right from wrong and how that is different from ‘good and bad’.
It would seem we can’t have ethics/morality (sīla) if we don’t judge what is right and wrong behaviour.
If the person were not enlightened at all, they might have the experience of the first kind of happiness, that is, happiness of the five sense pleasures in any one of the situations you mentioned. The Buddha accepted that as one kind of happiness, but the lowest kind. MN59
If they were not enlightened at all, then they would cling to that experience. It would be a physical pleasure, but it would be a mental suffering, similar to addiction to drugs.
I think we could say that the Buddha wanted us to experience total happiness, not just physical happiness (with mental suffering). I would say that an Arahant still experiences pleasures of the five senses, (unless he is in ‘cessation of feeling and perception’ the 10th kind of happiness in MN59) but he would not be not addicted to them. He would know them as they really are, conditioned, impermanent and not soul. They would not be suffering to him, because he would not cling to them. He would appreciate them while they lasted and know when they stopped, without longing, but he would understand the conditions for them and can therefore recreate wholesome ones with understanding.
It was said , I am not sure which sutta , after enlightenment that an arahant will still follow their liking and disliking according to unenlightened life style ? Such as fonds of some fruits or foods.
