Sunset is making me depressed

[tatsumaru]

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

Paradigm lock. You're a skeptic, you believe that for something to be true, it has to be proven first. Well, obviously, that's a groundless assumption. The whole notion of proof is just absurd, a vicious cycle. You hold on to this skeptic position so much that you're afraid of letting go of it. You believe that you will become prone to delusions if you lose that filter. Therefore, you limit Truth to what passes through that filter, which, I hope you can see, is very limited and myopic, if even possible.

That could be true. It doesn't necessarily need to be proven via the scientific method but it has to be distinct from belief or lies in some way. Otherwise if we drop this verification thing then nothing is left and you might as well say that everything is true, which for me is a useless conclusion because if everything is true then true doesn't mean anything. My first spiritual teacher told me that True is something that doesn't change ever,  and if it changes that it can't be it. Obviously that's just an idea though, why would you go and define what truth is from the point of view of not knowing what truth is.

 

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You doubt the existence of Truth, and you use skepticism to do that. But the mere fact that you are trying to disprove something assumes a 'thing' to begin with, which is, in essence, prior to proof or disproof. That 'thing' is Truth. Similar to Descartes' famous statement: "Cogito, ergo sum", but without a self.

Well just like anything else "Truth" is just a concept or an idea. Jed McKenna says one thing is certain "There is truth" and he starts his whole journey from there, but I don't see how that's certain at all, I mean truth is just a concept and maybe you can even argue that logic dictates that something is true, but existence doesn't have any obligation to be logical. In fact I think logic can only survive with concepts and objects because it relies on comparison and how things relate to each other, but if you remove everything then what's left to be rational about. In a tv show called Sense8 they said "without your past there's nothing to think about and no thinker to think it". The idea is that the self is just an abstraction layer that emerges out of the past. So yeah I have a big problem with trying to use the relative in any way as a starting point to understand the absolute since the absolute by definition doesn't relate in any way with anything (hence it's not relative). Also the literal meaning of absolute is "not in solution with" so I don't see how any perspective can ever reach the absolute etc. Yeah I know what you mean with the descartes thing, I've heard this from Eckhart Tolle before - Oprah asked him what's real and he basically said that there is something that is like the fulcrum and its real, but that isn't certainty for me that's just rationalizing an experience - this could be anything. As you can see I am not able to trust anything and I am consumed by doubt. One spiritual teacher said to me - if you are going doubt everything you might as well doubt your doubts as well, which was kind of interesting and created a little crack in my confusion, but wasn't enough.

 

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You still haven't 'killed' your ego yet. You favour your survival over liberation/realising Truth.

I don't necessarily value survival over liberation as if I had a button that I could press to achieve maximum enlightenment at any price I would press it without hesitation. That being said I am skeptical about the whole no-self thing as it really doesn't make sense to me to surrender your center and claim non-separation but at the same time having your awareness only limited to your body organism. Yeah I am everything but I can only sense my thoughts and my body and my pain. That the Ego might be an illusion, I don't have a problem with that but I am not sure that's the same like saying there's no self. Vajrayana level buddhists actually don't claim there's no self, they only say that the you that you THINK you are isn't real.

Tathāgata: the Other Buddha; that can never be destroyed, and knows no death, only eternal life.

This is a subject that the majority of Buddhists stay far away from, and non-Buddhists, with the exception of some Taoists, ever farther. Tathāgata was the term that Sakyamuni referred to himself as, instead of the pronouns me, I or myself.   Tathāgata is the Buddha that most Buddhists, those on the Long Paths, don’t want to discuss.

“Those who cannot accept that the Tathāgata is eternal, cause misery”-Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

What? How can Buddha say that; didn’t he say everything is impermanent?

The Buddha said the Self is “indestructible like a diamond” -Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

No way! The Buddha said there was no self.

“I will now show you the nature which is not produced and not extinguished” -Shurangama Sutra.

Buddha said that “Buddha Nature [the Tathāgata] is the True Self and like a diamond, for example, it cannot be destroyed” Dharmaksema.

Yes, Buddha taught impermanence, suffering, Emptiness, non-self for child-like students; yet on the day of Parinirvana, the Tathāgata taught eternity, happiness, and the Self, saying , “now, when his students have overcome the sickness of false views and possess a healthy, more mature appetite, he can teach them the Tathāgatagarbha.”

“Those who hold the theory of non-self are injurers of the Buddhist doctrines, they are given up to the dualistic views of being and non-being; they are to be ejected by the convocation of the Bhikshus and are never to be spoken to”-Lankavatara Sutra 765.

So why did Sakyamuni Buddha speak of non-being?

He told a story of a woman with an ailing infant. The sickness of that child requires that it temporarily desist from drinking its mother’s milk while the medicine which has been administered to it is assimilated. To facilitate this, the mother smears her breasts with a bitter substance, and this deters the infant from suckling at his mother’s breasts. But after the medicine has been absorbed, the child can drink the health-bestowing mother’s milk to his heart’s content – although at first he is hesitant and fearful of doing so. This relates to the doctrine of non-Self, Emptiness (which many commentators on Buddhism equate with “non-substantialism” or “non-essentialism”) and Self: when his students are still spiritually “sick”, the Buddha gives them the bitter medicine of “non-Self” and Emptiness; but when they have progressed into greater health and maturity, he teaches them the reality of the Tathagatagarbha. 

A commentator mentions how early in this sutra the Buddha has to reprimand his enthusiastic “non-Self”-championing monks who “repeatedly meditate upon the idea that there is no Self” for being perverse in their understanding of Dharma and wrong-headedly applying the teaching of non-Self where its writ does not run – to the real Self.

“As when a garment is cleansed of its dirt, or when gold is removed from its impurities, they are not destroyed but remain as they are; so is the skandha self freed from its defilements”- Lankavatara Sutra 756.

 

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You still haven't transcended morality yet.

I agree. I recently watched the "What is the devil" video of Leo so I kind of know what you mean. It's an interesting take but I still don't get it completely since you kind of only let go of the concept of self, but you still have to eat and survive which is like a contradiction to not being a separate thing and not having to survive. You still have to defend yourself if someone attacks you - it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like you are doing the same stuff but just like a zombie instead of consciously.


 

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You still haven't transcended the meaningful vs. meaningless duality yet.

I agree. I need adventure and purpose in my life. I don't know what to do without a meaning. Claiming that it's 100% freedom is obviously bullshit. No one is really free in a relative world where everything is connected. In fact I have yet to see anyone who is actually free. Maybe you can free some space in your mind but I haven't seen anyone who is free. With cause and effect there are also consequences. Maybe you can get to the level where consequences do not matter to you but I wouldn't call this freedom.

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You're disconnected from your emotions, you always keep them under the surface and never embrace them, and you underrate them tremendously.

If you mean this as in being like a Vulkan from Star Trek, then I wouldn't agree. I am a sensitive person. You should see me cry to great violin music and animes.
 

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You believe that realising Truth will lead you to a happy/meaningful life. I mean it certainly will, but from your current position it will not until you drop that belief, because ego is standing in the way.

I don't believe that, in fact I have a suspicion that I will not like truth at all. Chogyam Trungpa said "Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.". I do believe that if I find it there will be some relief because the search will be over. Not sure if I am going to be happy, but I am going to be complete. Or at least that's my current belief. I am not sure how to drop it because it feels almost inherent like it's in my dna or something.

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

I'm just speculative with this one, but you believe in free will.

I don't have an opinion on free will. I've reasons to believe and disbelieve free will so at this point I consider myself agnostic on this topic. My inner feeling is that we have something like a fate but we have the free will to resist it and suffer from going against the stream, which is not really free will but rather just making shit harder.
 

 

18 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

You believe that to get 'here', you have to do something. But that belief of something needs to be done, is itself a move out of 'here' so to speak.

Well I am not aware that I am enlightened so at least the awareness I need to uncover which is still something that I need to do. If I don't need to do anything then there wouldn't be any struggle.


All in all truth would be something that is 100% clear and beyond any possibility of doubt (not just because you are not smart enough to doubt but for some reason completely undoubtale) and also it wouldn't change and it wouldn't be subject to change ever. A classic definition of truth is "whatever the case is" but for me that's a very weak definition because then you have to go into what it means for something to be and not to be, and then you go into buddhists dependent origination which leads to the realization that nothing really exists and there is nothing at all to hold on to which kind of destroys this definiton. Yeah... all of these are just ideas and concept I wouldn't want to impose my belief system over reality (if there's even such a thing).

Cheers.

 

Edited August 13, 2019 by tatsumaru

[Truth Addict]

11 hours ago, tatsumaru said:

That could be true. It doesn't necessarily need to be proven via the scientific method but it has to be distinct from belief or lies in some way. Otherwise if we drop this verification thing then nothing is left and you might as well say that everything is true, which for me is a useless conclusion because if everything is true then true doesn't mean anything. My first spiritual teacher told me that True is something that doesn't change ever,  and if it changes that it can't be it. Obviously that's just an idea though, why would you go and define what truth is from the point of view of not knowing what truth is.

A useless conclusion = ego's ultimate disappointment

Yet, saying that everything is true is not how it sounds to you. The word 'true' becomes meaningless and useless. It gets replaced with something prior to it, it gets replaced with the word 'is', and you finally become free from the mind's captivity.

Notice that even in discussing this, you're still highly dependent on your skepticism.

And no, truth does not need to be distinct from anything else, precisely because it is everything. It is all-encapsulating. Nothing can be different from the truth. To think otherwise is the assumption. A lie is not actually a lie. It is a mistaken Truth. For example, if I told you that milk is black, am I actually lying? No, what happened is that I produced some sounds with my mouth and you did the interpretation. The truth about that scenario is that the milk wasn't neither white nor black, but that you heard some sounds and imagined a black liquid. Now, if you go and discover that milk is actually white, then you discover that you only had a wrong image in your mind. The image existed in your mind, and the actual milk existed in your direct experience. To lie is to mistake this for that or that for this. To lie is to mistake the map for the territory. That's how delusion gets created. But the encapsulating thing that was always present throughout the whole thing was you/being/the present moment/God etc... In truth, lies do not exist, but you can create a lie by mixing truths up. That's all.

11 hours ago, tatsumaru said:

Well just like anything else "Truth" is just a concept or an idea. Jed McKenna says one thing is certain "There is truth" and he starts his whole journey from there, but I don't see how that's certain at all, I mean truth is just a concept and maybe you can even argue that logic dictates that something is true, but existence doesn't have any obligation to be logical. In fact I think logic can only survive with concepts and objects because it relies on comparison and how things relate to each other, but if you remove everything then what's left to be rational about. In a tv show called Sense8 they said "without your past there's nothing to think about and no thinker to think it". The idea is that the self is just an abstraction layer that emerges out of the past. So yeah I have a big problem with trying to use the relative in any way as a starting point to understand the absolute since the absolute by definition doesn't relate in any way with anything (hence it's not relative). Also the literal meaning of absolute is "not in solution with" so I don't see how any perspective can ever reach the absolute etc. Yeah I know what you mean with the descartes thing, I've heard this from Eckhart Tolle before - Oprah asked him what's real and he basically said that there is something that is like the fulcrum and its real, but that isn't certainty for me that's just rationalizing an experience - this could be anything. As you can see I am not able to trust anything and I am consumed by doubt. One spiritual teacher said to me - if you are going doubt everything you might as well doubt your doubts as well, which was kind of interesting and created a little crack in my confusion, but wasn't enough.

No. Truth is a word that points to the actual thing, be it ideas, sensations, chickens, or anything else.

Jed's statement is a little bit misleading for you. Why use the word truth? How about the word existence instead? What could there be but existence/being?

Let's rephrase Jed's statement: 'There is existence'.

Of course there is. How can that even be doubted?

Jed did not start his journey from there. That "premise" was actually the conclusion at the end of his journey. He just said it that way so he doesn't give the answer and spoil it for us. Anyway, why would you assume that anything that is, is not true in the first place? It's ridiculous how easily we can delude ourselves with our own thinking. What more than being does it need for something that exists in order to be evident? Isn't the being itself evident without anything else? How would being fit inside of any paradigm when it's always bigger than the paradigm? Look at a rock and try to prove it. How ridiculous would that be?! It's clear that it's already there, what the fuck am I doing? Why is thought required at all? Who said that thought is required? Thought, of course. How ridiculous is that? Do you see the importance of going meta and being aware?

Notice your dependency on thought. Notice how it is grounded in fear of not-knowing. Notice that you know that you will have nothing to ground yourself in if you lose all of your paradigms, you might have referred to this as going insane. The question is: why do you think you need a ground in the first place? The answer is because you're attached to survival, and survival is your only frame of reference that you use to make sense of everything. Thoughts are maps, you fear that if you lose your maps you will be lost, you fear that if you become lost you will not be able to survive. But think about it; Do trees, animals, or even baby human beings have maps? No, of course not. Well, then how do they survive? I don't know, they just do. On the other hand, a very sophisticated thinker who knows everything about survival could get run over by a bus anytime he's not looking. So, this survival argument of the mind becomes silly, because it's completely out of control. It takes courage, yes, but it's worth it, cuz it's freeing.

...

I haven't read the rest of the post yet. I will do sometime soon, and I might reply or might not. I hope something got clarified up to you.

Edited August 14, 2019 by Truth Addict

[ChrisZoZo]

@tatsumaru only the person can find depression in pure love try doing moojiji's invitation. 

 

 

Edited August 18, 2019 by ChrisZoZo