Emanyalpsid

I think a distinction can be made between the self-help and the spiritual (enlightenment etc.) part. The self-help is grounded in the physical world and offers a lot of help with coping and flowering in the world. This is not really up to debate. The spiritual part however is grounded in the mental world. There are different views on enlightenment and Leo, and a lot of people in this community, hold that there is an absolute, which is consciousness and everything is in this. In that sense, they are denying the physical world to exist out of material. For them the absolute is truth and the rest is wrong. This view clashes with other views on enlightenment and that is why other people want to 'expose' actualized. Everybody thinks they are right and others, who think or perceives things differently, are wrong. Some claim the truth and the rest looks for the truth. However, you could also grow plants or go fishing.

You are totally correct. In other words; from the human consciousness they see that everything is of dependent arising, including consciousness. If there is no perceived reality, there is no consciousness, and the other way around. However, there seems to be a reality (the universe) outside of consciousness as the sun sets in the west when we go to sleep and rises in the east when we wake up. But when we look closely at this reality, we see that a flower is dependent upon everything that surrounds the flower, so anything is relative and dependent upon everything that constitutes it and surrounds it. Just as a toilet is dependent upon matter, gravity, space and time. Exactly, the nothingness is non-grasping beause it is relative, there is no essence, so also the human consciousness is relative and the question. Your interpretation is spot on. Yes! Not the actual recognition of the absolute in the relative. But don't say silly, this could make them seem dumb. Buddhists prefer the term ignorant. Addendum: one of the deeper causes of this experience they have, could be, that they are too heavily focused on dissolving the self, instead of looking what is around the self. But this is just a guess..

No, as I explained earlier the universe is dependent upon conditions. So in a relative universe dependent arising is absolute. Without a universe no dependent arising. It is not a question of prior, there is distinction and no-distinction as dependent arising. Well the answer to the absolute truth lied in your question. You could also read it like; If you say that something exists alone, you are saying that something is opposed to nothing. If you look for the truth you must find the truth. But we are repeating ourselves, you don't understand me as you hold that something (Brahman, absolute) exist. I am trying to explain to you why this isn't so, however, because you hold on to this absolute, you do not understand me. So let's leave it at this. It is the difference between Buddhism and Hinduism.

It is not unchanging as everything is conditioned as I explained earlier. Dependent arising can exist besides eachother. Senses-body, cause-effect, matter-gravity, space-time, life-sourrounding, consciousness-reality, etc. Mind is just part of the senses, thus arises with body. If you make a distinction there is dependent arising. Indeed, they are just concepts, all words and thoughts are concepts. You think that something alone must exist because that is the question you ask yourself, like we established. The answer is dependent upon the question. If you look for a truth, you must find a truth. Again, everytime we make a distinction there is dependent arising. So, if you look for something to exist alone, you are looking for something opposed to nothing. However, you can only define something with the help of nothing. Without nothing there would be no something and without something there would be no nothing. If nothing is included into something, this something does not exist alone as it includes nothing. So with something arises nothing.

If you follow enlightenment this will make you have different interests then people who do not. However besides that, you could still have other common interests. The trick is to stay aware that everybody is different. So there are no better people or worse people. If the people you hang out with are not interesting for you, why do you hang out with them? Keep self-inquiring

Indeed, the answer is dependent upon the question. If you look for a truth, you must find a truth. No, they are of dependent arising. If a cause exists an effect exists. But this causality only exists in the mind. It is just the ever changing flow of reality. Only if we make a distinction, meaning define something, there is dependent arising. @Preetomwell I am only aware of a consciousness in this body. My consciousness changes with changes I make to the body. If I sleep good, eat well, exercise, etc. My consciousness changes. I am not aware of a consciousness outside of this body.

@Preetom seeing is knowing. Becoming aware is knowing. If I see that a cup breaks if I drop it, the effect of the breaking lies in me dropping it. If I didn't drop it, it wouldn't break. So we are not back at square one, I answered your questions. However you did not answered my question to you. You said; In ancient times Advaita Vedanta started with an inquiry like this, "Is there one thing, if understood properly, can explain the entirety of everything?" My question was; is the absolute truth an answer to this question? Are you trying to distract the attention away from this question? Are you avoiding this question?

The inquiry goes into this and sees that the cause is dependent upon the effect. How come you want to wake up to a truth about what you are?

That is funny, I guess that a Buddhist would say that a Hinduist stops at the Brahman.

There is no universe or reality existing upon itself, it is dependent upon conditions. If one conditions changes, the universe or reality changes. If all conditions are gone, the universe is gone. The conditions are just the aspect of universe. So, in the relativity of the universe, the dependent arising is absolute. Can you answer the question I posed to you?

Yes, but the difference is that Brahman is absolute and dependent arising is not.

Is the absolute truth an answer to this question? Be careful with framing things to a thread. Dependent origination is only the name for a process, it explains nothing as there is no-thing to be explained (according to Buddhism of course). It is not an idea but direct experience; if consciousness arises experience arises.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I will bow as this is your land.

If I come to think about Brahman a bit more I come to the conclusion that it is not really non-duality, because if there is an absolute, there is a thing (Brahman) opposed to nothing. This is beyond the subject-object distinction of course.

Well, I doubt it. This Brahman thing seems to make the difference. According to buddhism, If there is an absolute there is an attachment. I also see that people find holding on to a truth very important. What I said earlier, in Buddhism the truth is seen as dependent upon your belief. Edit: it seems that for 90% (if you have to make an estimation) they are roughly the same. Only in the end, meaning close to Nirvana, there seems to be a difference.

So Brahman is existence and consciousness in it, but we can't name it because we are it. I got this. With regard to your previous example: Now what is that 'something'? Beneath any illusion or appearance, there must be a Reality. For example, the mirage in the desert appears like a 'pond', but it's Reality is ''a play of light''. The TV screen appears like the Breaking Bad show, but it's Reality is a flat, contentless screen. That 'something' is Brahman/Absolute Consciousness. A Buddhist would say, yes but this play of light comes from the sun and it has mass. And the existence of mass is dependent upon gravity. So the light is empty of existence upon itself, without gravity or mass there would be no light. The same holds for the screen as matter has mass and is dependent upon gravity. For the light and the screen to be there, they need everything around them, space, time, matter, etc. So they are full of everything but also nothing as they do not exist upon themselves. So, for a buddhist nothing exists upon itself, not even existence or Brahman.

In Buddhism there is no absolute truth or anything absolute. "The four noble truths" are just a poor translation into English, they had better translated them into "The four realizations". In buddhism they see that truth is dependent upon your belief.

It is not a truth, it is more like a realization. A transcendtal understanding as an insight into the nature of reality. Of course, the flower is only a flower when it is defined as a flower. Therefore its essence is empty. But the flower is also not nothing. Here is the fundamental difference. Buddhists see that we indeed only see the universe through our lenses, but this universe seems to be there without us perceiving it, however it is not absolute. Agreed In Buddhism they also see the dependent origin of the human conscious. However, they are not aware of a brahmanic or absolute consciousness. In buddhism, without human consciousness there is nothing experienced.

I am trying to understand it. Brahman is the whole of existence right? Is this existence absolute? Does the existence exist upon itself? Got it. Yeah this is similar with Brahman is existence right? So Atman is dissolved into Brahman?

Indeed, thanks for the clarification. I was going to write something about this but could not find the right words yet. Buddha figured out a way to the non-self and even realized non-existence; everything is of dependent origin. He then told of his way to other people, eventually they wrote their interpretation down and so fort. However, with each interpretation differences started to emerge, which led to different paths and later different schools. With Hinduism there became a greater distinction to Buddhism as they have a fundamentally different interpretation of the Dharma. The whole religion of Buddhism or Hinduism is what people made of it, with all the rules, traditions, and all the other stuff that comes along with them, like you said.

This is not a technicality but a fundamental difference. You probably dont know where I am coming from but I attained Nirvana, in the buddhist context, and I can therefore, from a buddhist view, see where the differences are. In Buddhism, the buddha nature where you are refering to means the realization of emptiness, this is the realization that nothing is absolute. If you refer to the Ten Bulls or the Ten Ox Herding Pictures, these come from Zen, which is a mix between Buddhism and Taoism. The pictures are made somewhere in the 11th century. The ten ox herding pictures are comparable to the ten Bodhisattva Buhmi, or 10 stages of enlightenment in the Mahayana school of buddhism. They have nothing to do with Hinduism or Brahman as they stem from China.

Not quite, while in Buddhism there is no absolute. This makes for a major difference in how non-duality, and therefore reality, is perceived. According to my understanding of Hinduism, this non-duality or One is absolute consciousness and everything is in it. In Buddhism there is no One, but only conditions of dependent origin.

It seems to me that it would be extrermely helpful for people in search for enlightenment to be able to make a distinction between the buddhist enlightenment and the hinduist enlightenment as they are fundamentally different. If they don't know this difference, they will just be confused what enlightenment is and how to get there. It would be helpful for them, if there is a difference, which there is, to explain these differences. It would seem rather oblivious to let this be there but not discuss it. Unless there is a preference on this forum for one of the two, but then it would be better to make this clear. If you can explain how Hinduism looks at enlightenment this would be very helpful, like I said my knowledge is very limited. As what I get out of the video you posted, according to advaita, consciousness is absolute and everything appears in consciousness. This is similar as to what I wrote that Brahman is the cause of everything and everything is within Brahman.

Okay thanks, yeah it is difficult explaining where you are on the path. Maybe this website will help you further, it explains all of the teachings, up until Nirvana, but from the point of the Western thinking mind. So the teachings are easy to understand as they are easier to relate to from our way of thinking. You first might read some things you already know, but it is worth the whole read to get the full understanding. Probably takes you only 2 hours or so. Of course you can also skip chapters if you want. http://www.foundationsofhumanlife.com May you be well!

Not many Buddhists here to my experience. So you are more than welcome. Most people here seem to gain input from hinduists / advaita vedanta streams. Although they seem to mix concepts and teachings from Buddhism with them, maybe thinking they point to the same.. Makes it hard to communicate with them as you are basically talking to a different world. They are forming a belief towards absolute consciousness and in Buddhism you are thought to look through these as they come out of ignorance. Not much to gain here for a searching Buddhist. How far are you on the path?