Gassho Zenner,ok shall we examine with reason and logic instead of coneptual/philosophical/belief based discussion.
I am with you all the way my friend belief is not the tool to examine the nature of reality. there is another fine tool called logic. I would imagine that a scientific mind would be happy to pursue a conversation confined within logical parameters.
You may have to come down to my level of understanding in order to communicate your notion of how reality is and how it appears. Your language is a little foreign to me, you use some terms that i am unfamiliar with but i am sure we can between us work out what each has to contribute.
We are discussing Buddha Dharma and it is common in debate to use scripture as a proof. My feeling is if a truth stands on two legs then it is unnecessary to produce who said what, it will stand scrutiny and examination.
Just to clarify my friend, we are in pursuit of truth. This subject is something that can bring one to the highest attainment of evolution and not a trivial thing. it is much misunderstood and a wrong understanding is to throw away the most precious of jewels.
How it seems to me, please point out what you disagree with and we can examine it at length.
Two truths;
1) One is not in fact a truth but it is the way the world appears to us, an apparent truth a deceptive truth; the way things seem to be if we don’t examine to closely. It is the illusion the projection of our mind. Unless one has had a direct perception of emptiness one has never had a correct perception at all.
2) Ultimate truth; nothing exists that does not depend on your projection.
Your projections are forced on you, not chosen, if they were chosen we would choose to see ourselves in a paradise and be done with it. Instead we see ourselves in a suffering world in a suffering body perceived with a suffering mind.
You can reason that there is no self to experience the world the way you do but this is ludicrous and serves no purpose and will not end your suffering.
Unless you are a realised being, (and I can not say whether you are or not) we experience a conventional world we have to work in the conventional world to attain an awakened mind. This awakened mind can be achieved; it takes work, study and devotion.
Each moment of your existence is a precious opportunity to move one step closer to discover the true nature of reality, once discovered intellectually it requires huge effort to acquire the causes to have a direct experience of that reality.
For the purposes of this conversation we can agree that there is no self, there is no need to keep referring to this fact. I live in an apparently conventional world caused and produced by my projections and it is with conventional language and reasoning that I will examine it, can we agree to converse like that to stop us turning in circles?
So, conventionally, here are two ways that known things exist; changing things and unchanging things.
Changing things are by nature caused things. For something to work it has to be caused other wise it would have a static unchanging nature and be unable to produce anything, ie a result. The result becomes a cause and so it continues in your fluxing universe.
The dream you refer to is made in the mind, produced in the mind, are things made in the mind not subject to the same flux?
Of course they are caused things, they are changing things unless you can show me any other way they can exist.
So for one thing to cause another there must be a relationship right? You cant get tomatoes from sunflower seeds.
What about the mind is it made of the same stuff as the body?
The cause for this moment of mind is the previous moment of mind. Our present minds are a fluxing, changing, caused, made thing produced by many moments of previous mind.
Agreed or not?
You might want to consider the idea that there are more things that tie us to a belief structure than religion and philosophy.
Look at science books from 150 years ago, there were people very much tied to this new god of science then that might be laughed at by todays discoveries.
Shine
