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BDDHA WAS A MAJOR SHAKYA TEACHER
######################MSR HILL
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RAMANA M MEANT WHAT AM I ?
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CELTIC SPREAD
3 PROBLEMS- CHITTAMALA .....CHITTA SUDDHI......KARMA YOGA
TAMAS
- What does the current crisis show us about dying and living?
- How do we live when the planet's future is uncertain?
- What do the different spiritual traditions teach about living and dying?
- How to share the sacred work of grief and loss?
- How can we care for those who are dying?
- How can psychedelics prepare us for death?
- Which greater cosmological, planetary, evolutionary cycles are we part of?
- How are stars and galaxies born, how do they die?
- What does biology say about the cycles of life and death?
- What is the science on near death experiences?
- What does the investigation of "past lives" memories teach us?
Shantideva addresses this in the verses 17-19 of chapter 9 of the Bodhicharyavatara:
The Guardian of the World himself has said
That mind cannot be seen by mind.
In just the same way, he has said,
The sword’s edge cannot cut the sword.
“But,” you say, “it’s like the flame
That perfectly illuminates itself.”
The flame, in fact, can never light itself.
And why? Because the darkness never dims it!
Consciousness is awareness. It's not constant. Self is the delusion added on.
Consciousness or awareness is quite constant, unless you're dead or in deep sleep.
Generally, in Buddhism, the word consciousness is used for "moments of having an experience".
It doesn't refer to a supposed entity that is conscious and that ties all those moments of consciousness together. Such an entity is assumed to exist in various ways by most people in general and with more sophistication by various eternalistic philosophies such as Advaita Vedanta. Its existence is refuted in Buddhism, both on the basis of rational analysis and by simply being unfindable when you go look for it.
Everything that's experienced, such as sense perceptions or thoughts (for example the though "there must be something tying all my experiences together") is momentary, dependently arising and without existence of its own. Of course, within Buddhism there's various models for the details of this process, but I think that at least as for the Mahayana perspective, the ultimate conclusion is that what we experience of "mind" or "consciousness" is just as illusory as any other experience.
Or as I sometimes say it jokingly: consciousness is just something between your ears.
Just some illusory thoughts.
Theravada Abhidhamma model:
There's 89 or 121 possible types of consciousness, each lasting only for 1 thought moment. Which is a super duper short time, that we think we see and hear and think at the same time, whereas it's sequential and jumping back and forth.
That's what is meant by consciousness is not constant.
In deep sleep, there's still consciousness, no mindfulness, it's called bhavanga.
In the supramundane attainment of cessation of perception and feelings, the abhidhammic model is that there's no consciousness arising or falling at all while the person is in the absorption. This is another meaning of not constant.
No self is clearly seen. After emerging.
Arahants are aware of no self nature.
The reality is - that you are one person from birth to death and even though everything changes throughout the time, your consciousness is one, there is no more people who are experiencing experience. And there is one awareness that is experiencing the experience, it is the One That Knows that there is No Self. But you can't say that people who are experiencing No Self are people without subjective perspective, even thought they might have oceanic feeling, if I cut their hand they feel the pain no one around in their visual field and otherwise. These are facts.
The delusion of self is not itself a self. Delusion of self is not seeing this ultimate truth. Thus, we take the conventional truth of self as ultimately existing. Delusion of self is also responsible for that subjective feeling of self. No self doesn't mean to reject this subjective feelings of self.
The goal of buddhism is to break this delusion of self, via wisdom, not by aversion or force or intellectual reasoning. So after all these reading, you cannot intellectually reason your way into realizing not self. You can only intellectually understand it. Realizing requires morality, then deep meditation, then seeing impermanence, suffering nature of things, that's wisdom. Due to things being impermanent and therefore subject to suffering, it's also not worth identifying as self. This includes consciousness and all body and mind. Don't try to emulate this via imagination or intellectual understanding or aversion. This is a constant warning. Or else you'll go astray and suffering more.
The impermanence is also not constant nature. The two ways of seeing it on my previous comment both requires deep meditation. Since consciousness is also impermanent, it is not self.
Also MN 2 addresses the view to see no self by the self is a wrong view.
Also read this for better understanding of no self. https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/dupv3v/not_self_emptiness_using_the_example_of_a_company/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
“witness” or that perceptions is being recognised by awareness, therefore in your analogy of company you can say that our sense of self is made up of five aggragates, but underneath of it all is this awareness that is of aware and is not an object of control, but you can’t go beyond it, you can not see awareness from third person perspective, even though you CAN see five aggragetes from third person perspectivex
delusion of self brings the aggregates again and again throughout many lifetimes. Break the delusion of self, no more rebirth.
Delusion of self is not self, so this process of enlightenment is not called annihilation as there was never a self to be annihilated
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MAN ONCE A YEAR
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