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Here is a link to a free PDF of one of the books geshe-la mentioned last session.
Just thought I’d wade in here on the sunyata is sunyata debate, as I love this stuff.I was taught that as all dharmas are empty then there are no distinctions between them but also no restrictions. That if you have emptiness there has to be an opposite, something as opposed to nothing, so the conventional emptiness is that, but the ultimate emptiness is nothing and something, both and neither so the negation is contained in the being. I am not sure that helps?
Thanks for all these links:)
I came across this article in this Spring’s issue of Tricycle magazine. I have found it so useful to apply the 9 tips for contemplation to each topic we study with Geshe-la. It is called “The lost art of contemplation-how to digest a Dharma talk and meditate on its wisdom” I have posted the link here and hopefully everybody can see it as you can view up to three articles a month I think on “Tricycle” without subscribing (so I’m not breaching copyright either). For those that are subscribers it is on page 38 Spring 2021.Hi Libuse, thank you for such an interesting post! I like your shopping bag analogy and I have attempted to answer using the same analogy. Happy to be corrected or discuss with anybody. Here is what I thought:
We perceive we are in a supermarket. Our mental continuum is like a shopping trolley in a supermarket. Our current life is the bag you mention which is affected by what is already in the shopping trolley good and bad. The contents of the trolley give it the momentum, and steer the trolley down a certain aisle. However, your bag in the trolley has the ability at anytime to begin to affect what is in the trolley itself and steer it down the right aisle. The goods picked up and placed in the shopping bag in the right aisle contain the capacity for your whole trolley to see there is no real difference between all the bags in your trolley, and all the bags in all the trolleys in the supermarket. By mistakenly thinking there is you keep going round and round the supermarket in bag after bag after bag. By the time you get to the tlll from the right aisle, with all the right goods in your bag, you will be able to see that the perception of the bag, trolley and supermarket itself is wrong.Then the walls of the supermarket fall away and “your” trolley can see the reality that there is and isn’t a supermarket or trolleys, both and neither at the same time. All is emptiness which is itself something and nothing, both and neither, at the same time. At this point “your” bag and trolley can opt to hang around the supermarket trying to help other bags to guide their trolleys down the right aisle, at the same time as being empty of own being. It is almost impossible to understand this inside the supermarket without our bag containing realisations.
Your trolley must have some great stuff in it for your bag to be on this course! 😊Hi Kamlo,
Yes it makes perfect sense, thanks for having another stab at explaining it. I think I worry as I have read in several places that the mind and its thoughts at the point of death can determine the realm in which you are re-born. So somebody, even a lama, who had perfectly followed a dharmic path through life may develop dementia and in his last moments be angry with a carer or the world, as his mental faculties have been eroded. However your last post actually reassured me as I think I now understand there is the subtle mind underneath the surface cognitive mind. Thank you! That is something I have been chewing over for a long time and it has gone some way to resolving it for me.Jared, I have just coincidentally finished reading your full paper which I found really useful! Is it ok if I download it and cite it in discussions? Thank you for putting all that information together and for sharing it, it is a considered and scholarly piece of work. I also love the term “quantum head scratcher” :). It has sent me off looking for any research on sophisticated AI being classed as a conscious observer in experiments (ie something far more than a detector or the AI in the classic Lycan idea of robots and minds). I am so interested in the idea of the idea of the conscious and unconscious observer, interpretation and meaning. All the links you provide to further reading and works are brilliant, I am busy following them now and reflecting on them.
Diana the Guardian article is really helpful, thank you so much for that.
Tahlia that is so interesting. As a psychotherapist I have a lot of clients who come to me trying to disentangle their own thoughts and beliefs from those of their parents and societies. I think during meditation we can break that down and begin analysing for ourselves what we actually know to be true and separating it from what feels innate but is conditioned. I always thought that being born into a Buddhist culture would have given me an advantage in understanding its concepts but now I can see there is work to be done there too particularly with the idea of “don’t take my word for it examine it for yourself” which my old teacher often said. Thank you so much for sharing.
Alessia, this is wonderful, I love the Voltaire and the logic.
Hello Everyone
I’m Sarah and I live in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.I love having a place to debate the dharma online!I have been interested in Buddhism since I was a teen in the 80s then i did my first degree in Religious Studies at Lancaster Uni and started practicing there. That course threw us straight into the Vajrayana and I thought I understood emptiness and had all the answers, haha! In the past few decades since, I have learned that I have a lot more learning to do! I have struggled however to find the lineage and teacher that felt right, so have dabbled a great deal.
It has also been overwhelming but wonderful to have so much choice of the most amazing teachers online as a result of the pandemic and I feel so fortunate, especially to have been looking at just the right time to find Geshe Namdak teaching the BP.
I am the education visits coordinator at Jamyang Leeds and I am very happy to meet you all and share our thoughts on the dharma. 🙂
PS How have others managed to get their photo on the site? I can’t find how to do that.
I am so grateful for this forum for debate and understanding, thank you Diana for raising a question.
Will seek out the John Cleese references and the “Unmistaken Child” documentary.
Hi Kamlo I found the quote from His Holiness really interesting and helpful. I wonder about the Dharmakirti quote and logic though. How would this apply to dementia? I remember my super fit, previously gentle grandfather wrestling with nurses who he thought were trying to kill him as his mind had deteriorated. There was also little chance of my headmaster father understanding the dharma after early dementia had set in.I also think about some of the patients in Oliver Sacks book “The Man who Mistook his wife for a hat” who temporarily lost their mind faculties? So there is destruction of awareness of mind in this way although the physical body and senses remain in tact?Hi Diana, that sounds like a real struggle for you. I don’t know how I could be a Buddhist and not accept reincarnation.I think we are fortunate to have Geshe Namdak as our teacher with his interest in science. At the last teaching weekend he mentioned exploring the available research on reincarnation and cited in particular the work of Ian Stevenson and his successor Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia. Stevenson used both quantative and qualitative methodology in his lifelong study of reincarnation (often relating it to birthmarks) and his work was continued by his colleague Jim Tucker after his death. I also found the work of Michael B Sabom a cardiologist convincing when I read it as an impressionable teenager in the 80s. They have published books which are available on Abe books etc. Their work also features in the new Netflix series “Surviving Death” so if you ignore all the silly medium stuff and skip to the last episode you can see a couple of pretty compelling interviews with Westerners who remember their past lives where the evidence for this was collected and documented by Stevenson and Tucker. Logically it is the only thing that makes sense to me and this evidence reinforces that. I realise that it might not help if you are struggling conceptually but I thought I would post an answer just in case it does:)
