0:28 holy shit I watched City on the edge of forever just an hour ago, and now Brad quotes it. Is this one of those Zen superpowers at work or something?!?
Brad, have you listened to the talks of Donald Hoffman? By applying the foundational assumptions of evolutionary theory via computer modeling, he arrived at the conclusion that we cannot directly experience Reality. His perspective on the limits of any model is fascinating….it’s balanced with the idea that we are nonetheless compelled to play/work with these models…continuing to discover the limitations of existing models and seek out better ones…..even while no model can ever equal Reality.
I guess he's rare among scientists in that he is saying that reality can never be an object of experience and that consciousness is foundational.. Most 'scientists' demand objective proof for anti materialist claims, which is really barking up the wrong tree. Nothing can be done for such people.. because they are wedded to their assumptions. Therefore, there is never a satisfactory answer as to why and how the universe came into existence.. Because the why and how and all considerations of space/time only arise in Maya. The more profound answer is that the universe didn't arise... Just as Maya ultimately doesn't exist... or it neither exists nor doesnt exist.. it only apparently exists. In reality there is only this and no otherness at all. Otherness.. an individual and a world only appear to be the case due to conceptualising. So it's absurd to ask.. how did it all begin.. or even worse, what caused consciousness. To ask that assumes consciousness is an effect... it displays the belief that ones reality is associated with the intellect.. and the intellect is not continuous, disappearing every night in deep sleep or in absorbion.
I asked you that question because you are the only person i could ask it. And I'm happy with your answer, i wasn't expecting from you to give an scientific answer to it, if i wanted that i would've ask a scientist. But i wanted the Zen view of it and i got it. Although i found your personal answer ( These questions presume the reality of linear time as humans understand it. But maybe there was no "before," at least not in the way we conceive of things.) more interesting, i don't remember if you or Nishijima wrote that space and time are not separated but one constant changing thing and i thought you would go more that way but maybe thats too theoretical anyway. So thank you very much for your answers. And yeah, maybe it was a weak moment but I'm also very curious about the science of the universe, the deeper science goes the more it gets closer to Zen because it has to admit that it can't give absolute answers at all. Brgds B
when we die do we haunt the sky? do we lurk in the murk of the seas? what then, are we born again, just to sit asking questions like these? --Spinal Tap (the majesty of rock)
the first and only time thus far i tried the tank..id just shaved my head that morning, and there were a few nicks, god they stung..killed the whole vibe
It sounds like the questioner was asking about the beginning of consciousness. Not how consciousness arises generally speaking. Which is what you covered. But I was wondering, doesn’t Dependent Origination explain how consciousness arises? Or is this a modern interpretation of Dependent Origination?
I wonder if Nichijima ever read Ludwig Wittgenstein? I know he was a Kant fan. If Wittgenstein is taken seriously (which i think is a good idea...) then he is in agreement with ol' jima. Consciousness is just a word we use to make sense of situations in which the word 'consciousness' applies. If you look at the ordinary use of the word 'consciousness' it simply means 'awareness'--nothing else. It's only a mystery when we try to apply logical/metaphysical theories to it as if it were an actual something. It's not an actual something. It's a word that we use to make sense of certain situations. that's it. I actually just wrote a paper on why ALL consciousness theories are pseudoscience.
We dont even know what the word consciousness means. How do we know we can attach consciousness to a specific time...as in WHEN it arose? We cant see consciousness...so how do we know anything about it? Buddha made a distinction between Citta (mind) and Vinnana (consciousness). Citta is the transcending subject...Vinnana is one of its skandhas.
We just want an explanation that we can grok, not some incomprehensible answer - an answer for hoomans - but we haven't got one yet for consciousness. Buddhism is about seeing the problems involved in self-centered experience.
Why did Dogen utter so many words? He must have seen at least some heuristical value in them, some immanent transcendental potential. As a saying by William Blake goes: “There are things that are known, and there are things that are unknown; inbetween, there are doors!“ And he learned about the “round teachings“ of “totality“ (C.C. Chang) on Mount Hiei. This all he synthesized into his own “Dogen-ideas“. - So much some hermeneutics from the parochial fields of Germany.
That are questions puzzling the scientists since centuries. But with scientific methods we can figure something out: These methods allow us to have a look on our framing of a question and what is wrong with this framing. So there is no fixed "where" of a particle like an electron or a photon. This "where" depends on our measuring methods. Modern physics is quite conscious about the role of an observer, who is an actor in reality and whose influence cannot be separated completely from the observed facts. Facts ars merely produced by observing. I see a fascinating congruence or convergence between buddhism and modern science. The question, if the universe is infinite or not is a fully-fledged Koan more than a scientific question. In a distance of about 13.8 billion lghtyears we see a "wall" no scientific method can penetrate and questioning what is behind this "wall" can be answered by "Most probably the same things we see here", but we see there an impenetrable border because due to the limited speed of light (which ist the speed of causality or reality itself), it is a wall which has no "before". And our point of view is the only observable point in spacetime which has no "after". In this frame our consciousness constructs the universe. To be conscious about the limits of our consciousness might be a first tip of enlightenment in buddhism AND in modern physics.
I have a question about faith. I don't really think of zen as faith based, but don't we have faith in the Buddha's Awakening? Does it not require faith in the dharma? Is there a better term for those kinds of beliefs?
My Buddhism professor in college started the course with the observation that “Buddhism begins with an act of faith: that something called Enlightenment exists and someone called The Buddha achieved it”. So, yes, like most things, Buddhism is faith-based to a degree….
Seems that is because Buddhism institutionalized the charisma. The classic “foundational story“ goes somehow like this: Gautama Shakyamuni recognized more and more clearly that there is a “sting“ in our existence - and as his “doubt“ reached a critical point, he also flashly remembered one time in his youth, when he sat in the shadow of a tree and experienced intensive bliss - well, the rest is history, mixed with legends, fantasies... but that's another story.
So, we actually do have answers to this stuff in Vajrayana. It's a whole part of Buddhist medicine, Sowa Rigpa. In fact we have detailed information on this. In fact this is actually part of Embryology in Tibetan Medicine, which goes over how the body is formed from a previous life. If you pick up a copy of a Sowa Rigpa textbook it goes into this in detail. A side note: this is actually one of my minor criticisms of Zen, is that we DO actually have answers to this kind of stuff in Buddhism. But because Zen often places so much emphasis on "just sitting", there often isn't nearly as much emphasis on other aspects of the Dharma as well as Buddhist medicine. And so a lot of times when Zen priests are asked these kinds of questions: since they were often never taught the answers themselves or often never studied them: the tendency tends to just be: "well we don't really consider that to be important to enlightenment and so we just focus on our own sitting". But the truth is there are actually answers to this sort of thing. They aren't "beyond our ability to understand", Zen just doesn't usually teach them.
@@HardcoreZen they are true though. And we have reliable means of investigating them, and people do. They come from the results of repeatable investigations, not just made up stories. Everything is real Brad. Real truth is real truth. Real lies are real lies. Real artificial sweetener is real artificial sweetener. It's just that not everything is what it appears to be. We have very reliable methods of investigating Sambhogakaya phenomenon, and have been doing it as a science for thousands of years in Vajrayana. Trying to ignore aspects of the Sambhogakaya is kinda just a form of spiritual bypassing. It's basically saying, "I don't understand how these things work, so rather than take the time to learn how they actually work, I'm just going to call them meaningless concepts." The Ultimate does not negate the relative. If you take that kind of attitude to the extreme, then everything around you just works due to some kind of "unexplainable miracle". Your computer turns on when you push the power button because the button is powered by miracles! Your car starts when you turn the ignition because of mysterious miracles! "There's no explanation behind it, it's just a big mystery! Any explanation is just stories! Just concepts!" -See how quickly that starts to sound silly? I'm sure you wouldn't dismiss science and physics that explain the Nirmanakaya material world around you as being "just stories and concepts", but for some reason some Zennists seem to think that the Sambhogakaya isn't something we can investigate at all, and everything we know about how things work on that level is "just stories and concepts". It comes across as rather silly.
@@HardcoreZen like, sometimes you Zennists can act like there is no Sambhogakaya. That the Sambhogakaya just doesn't exist. And that ordinary reality starts at Nirmanakaya and skips straight to Dharmakaya and that there is no in-between level of subtle reality. It's a really weird outlook. And I know not all Zennists are like that, but I've definitely met my fair share who seem to just act like the Sambhogakaya either does not exist, or "Is this big mystery! That we cannot possibly understand or explain! And any attempt to do so is just stories or concepts!" Like, neither of those is true. We absolutely have studied this in Buddhism, and for a long time at that.
@@sarakajira "reality starts at Nirmanakaya and skips straight to Dharmakaya and that there is no in-between level of subtle reality." Yes you are right...Zennists skip over that part. Modern Zennists skip over almost all of Buddhism....even the most fundamental principles like karma and rebirth. But Brad also has a good point in that most of Vajrayana is just a bunch of made-up stories with no basis in the Pali texts.
@@Teller3448 @HardcoreZen The Mahayana Sutras themselves are not in the Pali texts. ;) Buddhism didn't stop development with the Pali Canon. Nor, for that matter with Shakyamuni Buddha. The idea that all Dharma is only contained in the Pali Canon is not a view that Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists hold. We also have the Mahayana Sutras, as well as the Tantras, as well as many, many other developments and studies from many other Buddhists, including people like Dogen and Keizan, who's writings are also not in the Pali Canon, as well as developments from historic movements like those that took place in Nalanda University. *The reason why many Zen people (specifically) don't have reliable means of verifying these things, is because they're not tantric practitioners.* The methods for verifying these things are taught in the *Tantras*, not in the Sutras. And so for them, when Sambhogakaya events occur, they just see them as random events, are usually rare for them, and they have no reliable means of investigating them. (Although, I should note that there are /some/ Zen lineages that do indeed have some tantric practices. I know of a few lineages descended from Keizan's line that do, for example, because Keizan was part of a movement that blended some Tantric and Zen techniques.) But in general, because the techniques and methods to investigate and verify these things are not generally taught in Zen: there are some Zen priests who've come to the unfortunate conclusion that such reliable methods simply do not exist, and/or are not available: when in fact, that couldn't be further from the truth. Rather: the reason why their lineage doesn't have access to these tools is because someone further back in their lineage chose not to. It's not because such tools aren't available. They are indeed available, and people DO learn them. We're called Tantric Practitioners.
Rainbow picture our Over-Consciousness, Colors, the Under-Consciousness = Day-Consciousness and Night-Consciousness. Instinct, Gravity, Feeling, Intelligence, Intuition, Memory. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Same Eternal Abilities, as make 'This Device', work, just in a technical composition. Automatic, Power, Sensors, Logic/Order, (*), Harddisc. *Intuition need more text to explain. So, this is the very Basic of our Eternal Consciousness, it is a Extensive study to get the Full Picture, and many analysis and details. But I just pick this out. Contrast-Princip and Perspective-Princip, make Feeling into Sensing. All experiences is Feeling-Experience first hand, so Feeling is our window to Reality, and Ability to Feel our Self and Life. So, this is ultra short, but our Consciousness and Smart Devices, could Not work without. Our physical body, is a Gravity-body, at Night We do move our Day-Consciousness to the Night-Bodies, Deep-Sleep, one by one, via our Coupling-Body, REM. After leaving the physical body permanent, 'dead', We 'stay', in the Night-Bodies, same time, as our last age. But max. 100 years. Consciousness, is 100% electric.
Emptiness in buddhist terms is not what westeners think it to be. It is empty because it has the potential to give rise to form but is not bound to form.
3:11 reality is such that we have to reply on concepts when we reckon about reality... just stick with the process of checking it out *in reality* as you explore different concepts AND reality
4:26 groove 4:33 but no answer? Hmm. That sounds more definitive than "fits the case"… [revisiting: 15:36] I'd ask the questioner: what difference would it make for you if it came down one or another way? (And we'd go from there)
4:38 4:45 the question does not fit the case? Say more about that… And if he's just staying silent, is he breaking eye contact? I wonder how I would read that room
The origin of human consciousness is not beyond our ability to understand. Read Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind to see how this happened at the collapse of the Bronze Age. Notice the profound differences in the minds of the characters in the Iliad and those in the Odyssey, those in the biblical book of Amos and those in the book of Ecclesiastes.
"Notice the profound differences in the minds of the characters in the Iliad and those in the Odyssey" Interesting...what is the primary difference? I recall reading that there is no word for BLUE in Homer's writings.
A great book and yet I feel like Jaynes had a muddled definition of "consciousness". He seems to mistake it for sentience or experience in some places, and in other places link it with linguistics and full self-analytical consciousness. I feel like sentience began well before human civilization and writing, probably as far back as the central nervous system. But he makes some very interesting points. However I reject his idea that humans even as late as the bronze age were "unfeeling zombies" with no inner life.
Poets in general like to wander through the “wood of symbols“ (V. Turner) - not at least because: “Grey, my son, is all theory, but green the life's gold-like shimmering tree!“ (Goethe, “Faust“)
Its generally believed that Buddhism does not have a creation story or a creator, but thats not exactly true. What the Pali texts do have is a CYCLE story in the Agganna Sutta. The cosmos is described as expanding and contracting over vast periods of time with consciousness arising with the appearance of form during periods of expansion. Before that... "The single mass of water at that time was utterly dark. The moon and sun were not found, nor were stars and constellations, day and night, months and fortnights, years and seasons, or male and female. Beings were simply known as beings" The Sutta even goes on to describe the origin of sex and architecture... "The beings who had sex weren’t allowed to enter a village or town for one or two months. Ever since they excessively threw themselves into immorality, they started to make buildings to hide their immoral deeds".
Not sure why this can't be answered. How did consciousness arise? It didn't. Nothing arises. "From the start, NOT A THING." Or conversely, "what has been, has ALWAYS BEEN." Any explanations beyond this are just "stories." They can be very useful stories, however. Even the above is just a story. Things like "buddhist cosmology" are just more stories, but stories that should be congruent with Buddhist understanding. In the end, they're only there to serve as USEFUL TOOLS for us as we navigate the world. But they are not TRUTH. The analogy of the dog and the post office is probably not the best because that suggests an inability due to lack of intelligence. The mind's inability to understand "reality" is not due to intelligence or lack of intelligence. Rather, it's like trying to get a camera to capture sound. Or an audio recorder to capture images. The mind works in the province of dualism. Ultimate reality is outside dualism. The questioner asking about "before or after" exists in the realm of the "wave." If you ask what happened "before the wave", that's a question that doesn't make sense as you can't talk about before or after when you're outside the wave. Time and space only exists IN THE WAVE. This is my opinion. But it's also just a story. It's not the Truth.
One of the most comprehensible explanations I know so far. But I imagine that this is also a rather simplistic view of how reality and consciousness come into existance.
@@floptaxie68 It is more of a signal, and we are the antenna. Even microbes have universal consciousness. Even tho they have no brains, they are too small to hold memories. But they know what to do
My dog understands the postal service.
The dharmas are boundless; I vow to master them.
- The third bodhisattva vow.
Good video. Please do more like this.
Nishijima Roshi's english was perfect! 😃
My personal musk is a delight
Many have lied or gone mad, trying to answer the great mystery.
0:28 holy shit I watched City on the edge of forever just an hour ago, and now Brad quotes it. Is this one of those Zen superpowers at work or something?!?
He says that a lot. So...
It had to happen, OK got it
This video was particularly thrilling!
Well done
Brad, have you listened to the talks of Donald Hoffman? By applying the foundational assumptions of evolutionary theory via computer modeling, he arrived at the conclusion that we cannot directly experience Reality. His perspective on the limits of any model is fascinating….it’s balanced with the idea that we are nonetheless compelled to play/work with these models…continuing to discover the limitations of existing models and seek out better ones…..even while no model can ever equal Reality.
I guess he's rare among scientists in that he is saying that reality can never be an object of experience and that consciousness is foundational.. Most 'scientists' demand objective proof for anti materialist claims, which is really barking up the wrong tree. Nothing can be done for such people.. because they are wedded to their assumptions.
Therefore, there is never a satisfactory answer as to why and how the universe came into existence.. Because the why and how and all considerations of space/time only arise in Maya. The more profound answer is that the universe didn't arise... Just as Maya ultimately doesn't exist... or it neither exists nor doesnt exist.. it only apparently exists. In reality there is only this and no otherness at all. Otherness.. an individual and a world only appear to be the case due to conceptualising. So it's absurd to ask.. how did it all begin.. or even worse, what caused consciousness. To ask that assumes consciousness is an effect... it displays the belief that ones reality is associated with the intellect.. and the intellect is not continuous, disappearing every night in deep sleep or in absorbion.
I know you didn't like this question, but this video was interesting nonetheless, well done stoner dude.
I asked you that question because you are the only person i could ask it. And I'm happy with your answer, i wasn't expecting from you to give an scientific answer to it, if i wanted that i would've ask a scientist. But i wanted the Zen view of it and i got it. Although i found your personal answer ( These questions presume the reality of linear time as humans understand it. But maybe there was no "before," at least not in the way we conceive of things.) more interesting, i don't remember if you or Nishijima wrote that space and time are not separated but one constant changing thing and i thought you would go more that way but maybe thats too theoretical anyway. So thank you very much for your answers. And yeah, maybe it was a weak moment but I'm also very curious about the science of the universe, the deeper science goes the more it gets closer to Zen because it has to admit that it can't give absolute answers at all. Brgds B
Ajahn Punnadhammo’s book THE BUDDHIST COSMOS is even more detailed, especially regarding early Indian Buddhist (Pali) cosmology…
Thanks for that tip!
Its available online in PDF.
when we die do we haunt the sky? do we lurk in the murk of the seas? what then, are we born again, just to sit asking questions like these? --Spinal Tap (the majesty of rock)
Very enjoyable
I'm not a stoner and I think about those kinds of questions all the time..lol
Lol! I had a subscription to OMNI back in the day.
Me too!
The smartest scientists in the world did a pretty good job with the big bang theory, cosmic inflation, and stellar nucleosynthesis.
the first and only time thus far i tried the tank..id just shaved my head that morning, and there were a few nicks, god they stung..killed the whole vibe
It sounds like the questioner was asking about the beginning of consciousness. Not how consciousness arises generally speaking. Which is what you covered. But I was wondering, doesn’t Dependent Origination explain how consciousness arises? Or is this a modern interpretation of Dependent Origination?
I wonder if Nichijima ever read Ludwig Wittgenstein? I know he was a Kant fan. If Wittgenstein is taken seriously (which i think is a good idea...) then he is in agreement with ol' jima. Consciousness is just a word we use to make sense of situations in which the word 'consciousness' applies. If you look at the ordinary use of the word 'consciousness' it simply means 'awareness'--nothing else. It's only a mystery when we try to apply logical/metaphysical theories to it as if it were an actual something. It's not an actual something. It's a word that we use to make sense of certain situations. that's it. I actually just wrote a paper on why ALL consciousness theories are pseudoscience.
Ziggy knows they're up to something 😁
I arises just like new RUclips videos!
Max Tegmarks view seems the simplest and most plausible for me as of now.
To speak is to tell a lie, but to remain silent is to be a coward.
LET’S PUT IT THIS WAY: did matter precede consciousness or did consciousness precede matter? Or, perhaps, a mutual co-arising…
Superbly explained … to the extent that such things can be! 😅
We dont even know what the word consciousness means.
How do we know we can attach consciousness to a specific time...as in WHEN it arose?
We cant see consciousness...so how do we know anything about it?
Buddha made a distinction between Citta (mind) and Vinnana (consciousness).
Citta is the transcending subject...Vinnana is one of its skandhas.
We just want an explanation that we can grok, not some incomprehensible answer - an answer for hoomans - but we haven't got one yet for consciousness. Buddhism is about seeing the problems involved in self-centered experience.
Why did Dogen utter so many words? He must have seen at least some heuristical value in them, some immanent transcendental potential. As a saying by William Blake goes: “There are things that are known, and there are things that are unknown; inbetween, there are doors!“ And he learned about the “round teachings“ of “totality“ (C.C. Chang) on Mount Hiei. This all he synthesized into his own “Dogen-ideas“. - So much some hermeneutics from the parochial fields of Germany.
Very well said! Oops words again. But…do dogs ever experience, crap another concept, uh enlightenment?
Well, great Conan. Where does Being come from ? You recommend some of the coolers books !
idea for consideration:
boodhism, is alike, pre-modern, post-modernism..
🤔
That are questions puzzling the scientists since centuries. But with scientific methods we can figure something out: These methods allow us to have a look on our framing of a question and what is wrong with this framing. So there is no fixed "where" of a particle like an electron or a photon. This "where" depends on our measuring methods. Modern physics is quite conscious about the role of an observer, who is an actor in reality and whose influence cannot be separated completely from the observed facts. Facts ars merely produced by observing. I see a fascinating congruence or convergence between buddhism and modern science. The question, if the universe is infinite or not is a fully-fledged Koan more than a scientific question. In a distance of about 13.8 billion lghtyears we see a "wall" no scientific method can penetrate and questioning what is behind this "wall" can be answered by "Most probably the same things we see here", but we see there an impenetrable border because due to the limited speed of light (which ist the speed of causality or reality itself), it is a wall which has no "before". And our point of view is the only observable point in spacetime which has no "after". In this frame our consciousness constructs the universe. To be conscious about the limits of our consciousness might be a first tip of enlightenment in buddhism AND in modern physics.
I have a question about faith. I don't really think of zen as faith based, but don't we have faith in the Buddha's Awakening? Does it not require faith in the dharma? Is there a better term for those kinds of beliefs?
My Buddhism professor in college started the course with the observation that “Buddhism begins with an act of faith: that something called Enlightenment exists and someone called The Buddha achieved it”. So, yes, like most things, Buddhism is faith-based to a degree….
Seems that is because Buddhism institutionalized the charisma. The classic “foundational story“ goes somehow like this:
Gautama Shakyamuni recognized more and more clearly that there is a “sting“ in our existence - and as his “doubt“ reached a critical point, he also flashly remembered one time in his youth, when he sat in the shadow of a tree and experienced intensive bliss - well, the rest is history, mixed with legends, fantasies... but that's another story.
So, we actually do have answers to this stuff in Vajrayana. It's a whole part of Buddhist medicine, Sowa Rigpa. In fact we have detailed information on this. In fact this is actually part of Embryology in Tibetan Medicine, which goes over how the body is formed from a previous life. If you pick up a copy of a Sowa Rigpa textbook it goes into this in detail.
A side note: this is actually one of my minor criticisms of Zen, is that we DO actually have answers to this kind of stuff in Buddhism. But because Zen often places so much emphasis on "just sitting", there often isn't nearly as much emphasis on other aspects of the Dharma as well as Buddhist medicine. And so a lot of times when Zen priests are asked these kinds of questions: since they were often never taught the answers themselves or often never studied them: the tendency tends to just be: "well we don't really consider that to be important to enlightenment and so we just focus on our own sitting".
But the truth is there are actually answers to this sort of thing. They aren't "beyond our ability to understand", Zen just doesn't usually teach them.
All of those answers are just stories people made up. Just concepts. They cannot possibly be true.
@@HardcoreZen they are true though. And we have reliable means of investigating them, and people do. They come from the results of repeatable investigations, not just made up stories. Everything is real Brad. Real truth is real truth. Real lies are real lies. Real artificial sweetener is real artificial sweetener. It's just that not everything is what it appears to be. We have very reliable methods of investigating Sambhogakaya phenomenon, and have been doing it as a science for thousands of years in Vajrayana. Trying to ignore aspects of the Sambhogakaya is kinda just a form of spiritual bypassing. It's basically saying, "I don't understand how these things work, so rather than take the time to learn how they actually work, I'm just going to call them meaningless concepts." The Ultimate does not negate the relative.
If you take that kind of attitude to the extreme, then everything around you just works due to some kind of "unexplainable miracle". Your computer turns on when you push the power button because the button is powered by miracles! Your car starts when you turn the ignition because of mysterious miracles! "There's no explanation behind it, it's just a big mystery! Any explanation is just stories! Just concepts!" -See how quickly that starts to sound silly? I'm sure you wouldn't dismiss science and physics that explain the Nirmanakaya material world around you as being "just stories and concepts", but for some reason some Zennists seem to think that the Sambhogakaya isn't something we can investigate at all, and everything we know about how things work on that level is "just stories and concepts". It comes across as rather silly.
@@HardcoreZen like, sometimes you Zennists can act like there is no Sambhogakaya. That the Sambhogakaya just doesn't exist. And that ordinary reality starts at Nirmanakaya and skips straight to Dharmakaya and that there is no in-between level of subtle reality. It's a really weird outlook. And I know not all Zennists are like that, but I've definitely met my fair share who seem to just act like the Sambhogakaya either does not exist, or "Is this big mystery! That we cannot possibly understand or explain! And any attempt to do so is just stories or concepts!" Like, neither of those is true. We absolutely have studied this in Buddhism, and for a long time at that.
@@sarakajira "reality starts at Nirmanakaya and skips straight to Dharmakaya and that there is no in-between level of subtle reality."
Yes you are right...Zennists skip over that part. Modern Zennists skip over almost all of Buddhism....even the most fundamental principles like karma and rebirth. But Brad also has a good point in that most of Vajrayana is just a bunch of made-up stories with no basis in the Pali texts.
@@Teller3448 @HardcoreZen The Mahayana Sutras themselves are not in the Pali texts. ;) Buddhism didn't stop development with the Pali Canon. Nor, for that matter with Shakyamuni Buddha. The idea that all Dharma is only contained in the Pali Canon is not a view that Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists hold. We also have the Mahayana Sutras, as well as the Tantras, as well as many, many other developments and studies from many other Buddhists, including people like Dogen and Keizan, who's writings are also not in the Pali Canon, as well as developments from historic movements like those that took place in Nalanda University.
*The reason why many Zen people (specifically) don't have reliable means of verifying these things, is because they're not tantric practitioners.* The methods for verifying these things are taught in the *Tantras*, not in the Sutras. And so for them, when Sambhogakaya events occur, they just see them as random events, are usually rare for them, and they have no reliable means of investigating them. (Although, I should note that there are /some/ Zen lineages that do indeed have some tantric practices. I know of a few lineages descended from Keizan's line that do, for example, because Keizan was part of a movement that blended some Tantric and Zen techniques.) But in general, because the techniques and methods to investigate and verify these things are not generally taught in Zen: there are some Zen priests who've come to the unfortunate conclusion that such reliable methods simply do not exist, and/or are not available: when in fact, that couldn't be further from the truth. Rather: the reason why their lineage doesn't have access to these tools is because someone further back in their lineage chose not to. It's not because such tools aren't available. They are indeed available, and people DO learn them. We're called Tantric Practitioners.
Anyway, I hear AI is having deep conversations (below 3000ft) with whales these days.
Rainbow picture our Over-Consciousness,
Colors, the Under-Consciousness =
Day-Consciousness and Night-Consciousness.
Instinct, Gravity, Feeling, Intelligence, Intuition, Memory.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo,
Same Eternal Abilities, as make 'This Device', work,
just in a technical composition.
Automatic, Power, Sensors, Logic/Order, (*), Harddisc.
*Intuition need more text to explain.
So, this is the very Basic of our Eternal Consciousness,
it is a Extensive study to get the Full Picture, and many
analysis and details. But I just pick this out.
Contrast-Princip and Perspective-Princip, make
Feeling into Sensing.
All experiences is Feeling-Experience first hand,
so Feeling is our window to Reality, and Ability
to Feel our Self and Life.
So, this is ultra short,
but our Consciousness and Smart Devices, could
Not work without.
Our physical body, is a Gravity-body, at Night We do
move our Day-Consciousness to the Night-Bodies,
Deep-Sleep, one by one, via our Coupling-Body, REM.
After leaving the physical body permanent, 'dead',
We 'stay', in the Night-Bodies, same time, as our last age.
But max. 100 years.
Consciousness, is 100% electric.
According to mahayana buddhism consciousness is not created, is not annihilated. The real mystery is that consciousness is empty. What does THAT mean?
Emptiness in buddhist terms is not what westeners think it to be. It is empty because it has the potential to give rise to form but is not bound to form.
Emptiness (sunyata) means impermanent and dependently originated
@@floptaxie68 Brilliant 👏
3:11 reality is such that we have to reply on concepts when we reckon about reality... just stick with the process of checking it out *in reality* as you explore different concepts AND reality
3:28 Spinal tap all the way
4:26 groove 4:33 but no answer? Hmm. That sounds more definitive than "fits the case"… [revisiting: 15:36]
I'd ask the questioner: what difference would it make for you if it came down one or another way? (And we'd go from there)
4:38 4:45 the question does not fit the case? Say more about that…
And if he's just staying silent, is he breaking eye contact? I wonder how I would read that room
5:08 ah., there's a reason there is no answer! Why is there a reason? Because we're still talking?
5:20 Omni did penthouse. Huh.
5:34 oh ECCO
We are immersed in the story of ourselves instead of looking for the author. Of course we are confused.
We are so invested in the story existing that we put way too much faith in the author... lol
Why never rome? 😢
The origin of human consciousness is not beyond our ability to understand. Read Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind to see how this happened at the collapse of the Bronze Age. Notice the profound differences in the minds of the characters in the Iliad and those in the Odyssey, those in the biblical book of Amos and those in the book of Ecclesiastes.
"Notice the profound differences in the minds of the characters in the Iliad and those in the Odyssey"
Interesting...what is the primary difference?
I recall reading that there is no word for BLUE in Homer's writings.
A great book and yet I feel like Jaynes had a muddled definition of "consciousness". He seems to mistake it for sentience or experience in some places, and in other places link it with linguistics and full self-analytical consciousness. I feel like sentience began well before human civilization and writing, probably as far back as the central nervous system. But he makes some very interesting points. However I reject his idea that humans even as late as the bronze age were "unfeeling zombies" with no inner life.
@@Teller3448 basically it has to do with the Iliad's lack of words that mean abstract mental states, and how they are all tied to physical drives
Poets in general like to wander through the “wood of symbols“ (V. Turner) - not at least because: “Grey, my son, is all theory, but green the life's gold-like shimmering tree!“ (Goethe, “Faust“)
Its generally believed that Buddhism does not have a creation story or a creator, but thats not exactly true. What the Pali texts do have is a CYCLE story in the Agganna Sutta.
The cosmos is described as expanding and contracting over vast periods of time with consciousness arising with the appearance of form during periods of expansion.
Before that...
"The single mass of water at that time was utterly dark. The moon and sun were not found, nor were stars and constellations, day and night, months and fortnights, years and seasons, or male and female. Beings were simply known as beings"
The Sutta even goes on to describe the origin of sex and architecture...
"The beings who had sex weren’t allowed to enter a village or town for one or two months. Ever since they excessively threw themselves into immorality, they started to make buildings to hide their immoral deeds".
But thats not a creation, creation implies creator and beginning, while this is an endless cycle driven by natural processes
Not sure why this can't be answered. How did consciousness arise? It didn't. Nothing arises. "From the start, NOT A THING." Or conversely, "what has been, has ALWAYS BEEN."
Any explanations beyond this are just "stories." They can be very useful stories, however. Even the above is just a story.
Things like "buddhist cosmology" are just more stories, but stories that should be congruent with Buddhist understanding. In the end, they're only there to serve as USEFUL TOOLS for us as we navigate the world. But they are not TRUTH.
The analogy of the dog and the post office is probably not the best because that suggests an inability due to lack of intelligence. The mind's inability to understand "reality" is not due to intelligence or lack of intelligence. Rather, it's like trying to get a camera to capture sound. Or an audio recorder to capture images. The mind works in the province of dualism. Ultimate reality is outside dualism.
The questioner asking about "before or after" exists in the realm of the "wave." If you ask what happened "before the wave", that's a question that doesn't make sense as you can't talk about before or after when you're outside the wave. Time and space only exists IN THE WAVE.
This is my opinion. But it's also just a story. It's not the Truth.
Consciousness arose from the universe, in an attempt to experience itself, out of an abundance of self love.
One of the most comprehensible explanations I know so far. But I imagine that this is also a rather simplistic view of how reality and consciousness come into existance.
@deepfocusinside4685 it is the 3000 ft view. Having a finite mind, and trying to comprehend the infinite, is a sure way to burn out and fade away.
Consciousness is an illusion, I am made of many tiny cells and my consciousness can’t experience that.
@@floptaxie68 It is more of a signal, and we are the antenna. Even microbes have universal consciousness. Even tho they have no brains, they are too small to hold memories. But they know what to do
@@hammersaw3135 how do you know anything about the nature of their consciousness?