What do you mean by "nature?" Most people mean something that is intrinsic to a given thing. For example, common people assume the nature of fire is heat, the nature of water is wetness, and so on.

Bhavaviveka, etc., do not accept that things have natures. If they did, they could not be included even in Mahāyāna, let alone Madhyamaka. 
 
...

The idea that things have natures is refuted by Nāgārjuna in the MMK, etc., Bhavaviveka, Candrakīrti, etc., in short by all Madhyamakas.

A "non-inherent nature" is a contradiction in terms.

The error of mundane, conventionally-valid perception is to believe that entities have natures, when in fact they do not, being phenomena that arise from conditions. It is quite easy to show a worldly person the contradiction in their thinking. Wetness and water are not two different things; therefore wetness is not the nature of water. Heat and fire are not two different things, therefore, heat is not the nature of fire, etc. For example, one can ask them, "Does wetness depend on water, or water on wetness?" If they claim wetness depends on water, ask them, where is there water that exists without wetness? If they claim the opposite, that water depends on wetness, ask them, where is there wetness that exists without water? If there is no wetness without water nor water without wetness, they can easily be shown that wetness is not a nature of water, but merely a name for the same entity under discussion. Thus, the assertion that wetness is the nature of water cannot survive analysis. The assertion of all other natures can be eliminated in the same way.

...

Then not only are you ignorant of the English language, but you are ignorant of Candrakīrti where, in the Prasannapāda, he states that the only nature is the natureless nature, emptiness.

Then, if it is asked what is this dharmatā of phenomena, it is the essence of phenomena. If it is ask what is an essence, it is a nature [or an inherent existence, rang bzhin]. If it is asked what is an inherent existence [or nature], it is emptiness. If it is asked what is emptiness, it is naturelessness [or absence of inherent existence]. If it is asked what is the absence of inherent existence [or naturelessness], it is suchness [tathāta]. If it is asked what is suchness, it is the essence of suchness that is unchanging and permanent, that is, because it is not fabricated it does not arise in all aspects and because it is not dependent, it is called the nature [or inherent existence] of fire, etc."
Both are exaggerations.
Esoteric Philosophy Memes of East and West
Credit to Tonni Magdalene from our group
Tarot Memes
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu What it actually is:Manage
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William Lim
William Lim But I've been chopping wood and carrying water everyday? Am I awakened already?
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu No. That picture above doesn’t represent most people. Most people are like thisManage
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William Lim
William Lim Nice! Where do you get the image from?
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Google image “Cartesian dualism” lol
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William Lim
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Just now I was reading an Alan Watts forum and noticed people were talking about anatta/anatman and it occurred to me that Alan Watts must have realised it himself. So I searched online and found a very clear description - beautiful description. Alan Watts does not see substance but formations, events, actions, operations, processes, relations and interconnectedness.

Quote from his book “This is It: and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience“ :

The general impression of these optical sensations is that the eyes, without losing the normal area of vision, have become microscopes, and that the texture of the visual field is infinitely rich and complex. I do not know whether this is actual awareness of the multiplicity of nerve-endings in the retina, or, for that matter, in the fingers, for the same grainy feeling arose in the sense of touch. But the effect of feeling that this is or may be so is, as it were, to turn the senses back upon themselves, and so to realize that seeing the external world is also seeing the eyes. In other words, I became vividly aware of the fact that what I call shapes, colors, and textures in the outside world are also states of my nervous system, that is, of me. In knowing them I also know my self. But the strange part of this apparent sensation of my own senses was that I did not appear to be inspecting them from outside or from a distance, as if they were objects. I can say only that the awareness of grain or structure in the senses seemed to be awareness of awareness, of myself from inside myself. Because of this, it followed that the distance or separation between myself and my senses, on the one hand, and the external world, on the other, seemed to disappear I was no longer a detached observer, a little man inside my own head, having sensations. I was the sensations, so much so that there was nothing left of me, the observing ego, except the series of sensations which happened---not to me, but just happened---moment by moment, one after another.

To become the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. For it implies that experience is not something in which one is trapped or by which one is pushed around, or against which one must fight. The conventional duality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is changed into a polarity: the knower and the known become the poles, terms, or phases of a single event which happens, not to me or from me, but of itself. The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding, and of infinite complexity and subtlety. It is like, not watching, but being, a coiling arabesque of smoke patterns in the air, or of ink dropped in water, or of a dancing snake which seems to move from every part of its body at once. This may be a "drug-induced hallucination," but it corresponds exactly to what Dewey and Bentley have called the transactional relationship of the organism to its environment. This is to say that all our actions and experiences arise mutually from the organism and from the environment at the same time. The eyes can see light because of the sun, but the sun is light because of the eyes. Ordinarily, under the hypnosis of social conditioning, we feel quite distinct from our physical surroundings, facing them rather than belonging in them. Yet in this way we ignore and screen out the physical fact of our total interdependence with the natural world. We are as embodied in it as our own cells and molecules are embodied in us. Our neglect and repression of this interrelationship gives special urgency to all the new sciences of ecology, studying the interplay of organisms with their environments, and warning us against ignorant interference with the balances of nature.

The sensation that events are happening of themselves, and that nothing is making them happen and that they are not happening to anything, has always been a major feature of my experiences with LSD. It is possible that the chemical is simply giving me a vivid realization of my own philosophy, though there have been times when the experience has suggested modifications of my previousthinking. (1) But just as the sensation of subject-object polarity is confirmed by the transactional psychology of Dewey and Bentley, so the sensation of events happening "of themselves" is just how one would expect to perceive a world consisting entirely of process. Now the language of science is increasingly a language of process---a description of events, relations, operations, and forms rather than of things and substances. The world so described is a world of actions rather than agents, verbs rather than nouns, going against the common-sense idea that an action is the behavior of some thing, some solid entity of "stuff." But the commonsense idea that action is always the function of an agent is so deeply rooted, so bound up with our sense of order and security, that seeing the world to be otherwise can be seriously disturbing. Without agents, actions do not seem to come from anywhere, to have any dependable origin, and at first sight this spontaneity can be alarming. In one experiment it seemed that whenever I tried to put my (metaphorical) foot upon some solid ground, the ground collapsed into empty space. I could find no substantial basis from which to act: my will was a whim, and my past, as a causal conditioning force, had simply vanished. There was only the present conformation of events, happening. For a while I felt lost in a void, frightened, baseless, insecure through and through Yet soon I became accustomed to the feeling, strange as it was. There was simply a pattern of action, of process, and this was at one and the same time the universe and myself with nothing outside it either to trust or mistrust. And there seemed to be no meaning in the idea of its trusting or mistrusting itself, just as there is no possibility of a finger's touching its own tip.

Upon reflection, there seems to be nothing unreasonable in seeing the world in this way. The agent behind every action is itself action. If a mat can be called matting, a cat can be called catting. We do not actually need to ask who or what "cats," just as we do not need to ask what is the basic stuff or substance out of which the world is formed---for there is no way of describing this substance except in terms of form, of structure, order, and operation. The world is not formed as if it were inert clay responding to the touch of a potter's hand; the world is form, or better, formation, for upon examination every substance turns out to be closely knit pattern. The fixed notion that every pattern or form must be made of some basic material which is in itself formless is based on a superficial analogy between natural formation and manufacture, as if the stars and rocks had been made out of something as a carpenter makes tables out of wood. Thus what we call the agent behind the action is simply the prior or relatively more constant state of the same action: when a man runs we have a "manning-running" over and above a simple "manning." Furthermore, it is only a somewhat clumsy convenience to say that present events are moved or caused by past events, for we are actually talking about earlier and later stages of the same event. We can establish regularities of rhythm and pattern in the course of an event, and so predict its future configurations, but its past states do not "push" its present and future states as if they were a row of dominoes stood on end so that knocking over the first collapses all the others in series. The fallen dominoes lie where they fall, but past events vanish into the present, which is just another way of saying that the world is a self-moving pattern which, when its successive states are remembered, can be shown to have a certain order. Its motion, its energy, issues from itself now, not from the past, which simply falls behind it in memory like the wake from a ship.

When we ask the "why" of this moving pattern, we usually try to answer the question in terms of its original, past impulse or of its future goal. I had realized for a long time that if there is in any sense a reason for the world's existence it must be sought in the present, as the reason for the wake must be sought in the engine of the moving ship. I have already mentioned that LSD makes me peculiarly aware of the musical or dance-like character of the world, bringing my attention to rest upon its present flowing and seeing this as its ultimate point. Yet I have also been able to see that this point has depths, that the present wells up from within itself with an energy which is something much richer than simple exuberance.

One of these experiments was conducted late at night. Some five or six hours from its start the doctor had to go home, and I was left alone in the garden. For me, this stage of the experiment is always the most rewarding in terms of insight, after some of its more unusual and bizarre sensory effects have worn off. The garden was a lawn surrounded by shrubs and high trees---Pine and eucalyptus---and floodlit from the house which enclosed it on one side. As I stood on the lawn I noticed that the rough patches where the grass was thin or mottled with weeds no longer seemed to be blemishes. Scattered at random as they were, they appeared to constitute an ordered design, giving the whole area the texture of velvet damask, the rough patches being the parts where the pile of the velvet is cut. In sheer delight I began to dance on this enchanted carpet, and through the thin soles of my moccasins I could feel the ground becoming alive under my feet, connecting me with the earth and the trees and the sky in such a way that I seemed to become one body with my whole surroundings.

Looking up, I saw that the stars were colored with the same reds, greens, and blues that one sees in iridescent glass, and passing across them was the single light of a jet plane taking forever to streak over the sky. At the same time, the trees, shrubs, and flowers seemed to be living jewelry, inwardly luminous like intricate structures of jade, alabaster, or coral, and yet breathing and flowing with the same life that was in me. Every plant became a kind of musical utterance, a play of variations on a theme repeated from the main branches, through the stalks and twigs, to the leaves, the veins in the leaves, and to the fine capillary network between the veins. Each new bursting of growth from a center repeated or amplified the basic design with increasing complexity and delight, finally exulting in a flower.

From my description it will seem that the garden acquired an atmosphere that was distinctly exotic, like the gardens of precious stones in the Arabian Nights, or like scenes in a Persian miniature. This struck me at the time, and I began to wonder just why it is that the glowingly articulated landscapes of those miniatures seem exotic, as do also many Chinese and Japanese paintings. Were the artists recording what they, too, had seen under the influence of drugs? I knew enough of the lives and techniques of Far Eastern painters to doubt this. I asked, too, whether what I was seeing was "drugged." In other words, was the effect of the LSD in my nervous system the addition to my senses of some chemical screen which distorted all that I saw to preternatural loveliness? Or was its effect rather to remove certain habitual and normal inhibitions of the mind and senses, enabling us to see things as they would appear to us if we were not so chronically repressed? Little is known of the exact neurological effects of LSD, but what is known suggests the latter possibility. If this be so, it is possible that the art forms of other cultures appear exotic---that is, unfamiliarly enchanting---because we are seeing the world through the eyes of artists whose repressions are not the same as ours. The blocks in their view of the world may not coincide with ours, so that in their representations of life we see areas that we normally ignore. I am inclined to some such solution because there have been times when I have seen the world in this magical aspect without benefit of LSD, and they were times when I was profoundly relaxed within, my senses unguardedly open to their surroundings.

Feeling, then, not that I was drugged but that I was in an unusual degree open to reality, I tried to discern the meaning, the inner character of the dancing pattern which constituted both myself and the garden, and the whole dome of the night with its colored stars. All at once it became obvious that the whole thing was love-play, where love means everything that the word can mean, a spectrum ranging from the red of erotic delight, through the green of human endearment, to the violet of divine charity, from Freud's libido to Dante's "love that moves the sun and other stars." All were so many colors issuing from a single white light, and, what was more, this single source was not just love as we ordinarily understand it: it was also intelligence, not only Eros and Agape but also Logos. I could see that the intricate organization both of the plants and of my own nervous system, like symphonies of branching complexity, were not just manifestations of intelligence---as if things like intelligence and love were in themselves substances or formless forces. It was rather that the pattern itself is intelligence and is love, and this somehow in spite of all its outwardly stupid and cruel distortions.


André A. Pais
André A. Pais "The agent behind every action is itself action".

Great insight.
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John Tan
John Tan Therefore it is the action that knows, no knower.
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In 2007

marcteng:
Kamma being a form of energy is not found anywhere in this fleeting consciousness or body. Just as mangoes are not stored anywhere in the mango tree but, dependent on certain conditions, they spring into being, so does kamma. Kamma is like wind or fire. It is not stored up anywhere in the Universe but comes into being under certain conditions.


Thusness: 
This is very well said. This is Emptiness. This is Buddhism. 


In 2008:




Session Start: Sunday, April 06, 2008

(4:33 PM) AEN: 8th consciousness is not a permanent storage disk as bodhi hut suggested rite
(5:55 PM) Thusness:      don't anyhow speculate.
(5:56 PM) Thusness:      Stored is spoken out of convenience.
(5:57 PM) AEN: oic
(5:58 PM) AEN: so 8th consciousness is like storage container?
(5:58 PM) AEN: oh
(5:58 PM) AEN: read wrongly
(5:58 PM) AEN: yea
(5:58 PM) AEN: so its not a storage disk la
(6:00 PM) Thusness:      U must later get rid of the entire idea of a 'place'.  Means there are always imprints and tendencies, nothing lost.  It has always been like that.
(6:01 PM) Thusness:      'Stored' as in an on going process to means that the tendencies are there.
(6:02 PM) AEN: oic..
(6:02 PM) Thusness:      But not to see it as a place keeping track of something.  That is just what I think.

(6:08 PM) Thusness:    This is a very difficult topic.
(6:11 PM) Thusness:    The exact details of how it works has been an ongoing debate.  The reason for the introduction of the 8th conciousness to explain the continuity of consciousness by yogacarin must be understood first.
...


Glossary (from http://www.kheper.net/topics/Buddhism/Yogacara_glossary.html):

*Alaya-vijnana, or "store consciousness" -- one of the central technical terms of Yogacara (Vijnanavada, Vijnaptimatra) philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. Early Buddhists taught about existence of six-fold consciousness, that is the conciousness of five types of perception (visual, audial, etc.) and of "mind" (manovijnana). The Yogacarins analysing the source of consciousness added two more kinds of consciousness. They are: klistamanovijnana, or manas, that is the ego-centre of an empirical personality, and alaya-vijnana which is the source of other kinds of consciousness. Alaya-vijnana is above subject-object opposition but it is not a kind of absolute mind: alaya-vijnana is momentary and non-substantial. Every sentient being with the corresponding to this being "objective" world can be reduced to its "own" alaya-vijnana. Therefore, classical Yogacara states the existence of many alayas.

The Alaya-vijnana is a receptacle and container of the so-called "seeds" (bija), or elementary units of past experiences. These bijas project themselves as an illusionary world of empirical subjects and corresponding objects. All other seven types of consciousness are but transformations (parinama) of alaya-vijnana. In the course of its yogic practice a Yogacarin must empty alaya-vijnana of its contents. Thus the Yogacarin puts an end to the tendency of external projections of alaya-vijnana changing it into non-dual (advaya) wisdom (jnana) of Enlightened mind.
 
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I wrote:

Blue sky. Green trees fluttering. Just that, nothing else. Vivid, alive, and illusory. Enjoy your weekends.

31Angelo Gerangelo, Alejandro Serrano and 29 others
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André A. Pais
André A. Pais We could even say, "blue expanse, swaying green"... 😊
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Yes... been thinking my expression doesn’t sound right as it seems to imply object and characteristics. Your expression is more accurate 🙂
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Tan Jui Horng
Tan Jui Horng But why not further reduce blue and green?
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Tan Jui Horng there is nothing further to deconstruct in the actualization of empty non-arisen suchness or emptiness as form
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André A. Pais
André A. Pais Tan, we can reduce it by saying that "blue expanse" is actually beyond the concept or label "blue" or "expansive". Other than that, "blueness" is a mere occurrence, non-conceptual perception, beyond labels, separation, reification, etc.
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Tan Jui Horng
Tan Jui Horng Soh Wei Yu Does that mean blue and green cannot be deconstructed?

I am asking only because I am wondering that while Andre's expression is more correct, it is still not completely correct, and requires further explanation like his answer to me.


But I suppose that is the problem of expressing something in language. At a certain point we either become unintelligible or end up with a 1000 word explanation of what blue sky and green trees really mean.
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Tan Jui Horng
Tan Jui Horng André A. Pais Thanks. Although I guess that would be a mouthful. Perhaps the only appropriate reaction to seeing blue sky and green trees is to smile and enjoy.
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Jackson Peterson
Jackson Peterson Oy, why bicker over words, yet words still appearing, thoughts arising, blue skies, green leaves... all movements like wind...
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John Tan
John Tan Jui Horng, why do we de-construct and how do we know we r on the right direction using deconstruction and when will it end?
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John Tan
John Tan Wei Yu, y do u say no further decosntruction is needed?
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu John Tan self (background) and phenomena (foreground) to which characteristics belong are constructs, when they dissolve then illusory appearance are tasted as empty suchness without reference points or sense that things exist somewhere and belong to something, illusory like mirage
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu If you look at the sun and then look away from it, certain colours from the “sun” still overlay the rest of the visual field. Colours do not belong to subject Nor object but arise in dependence on conditionality. They do not arise nor exist anywhere but appears as mere appearances and illusions (but vividly clear)
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John Tan
John Tan Yes Wei Yu, u described ur experiences but you did not answer y no further de-construction is needed.
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Direct taste of empty suchness transcends mental constructs and is the termination of linguistic description or the serene coming to rest of the manifold of named things as described by Nagarjuna.

“Professor Ram Chandra Pandey and Mañju translates it
thus : “I pay respect to the best among speakers who, having attained Enlightenment, has taught relative origination (Pratītyasamutpāda) which is no-cessation, no-origination, no- annihilation, no-abiding, no-one-thing, no-many-thing, no-coming-in, no-going-out; being the termination of linguistic description (Prapañcopashamam), it is the good (Shivam) [Ram Candra Pandey & Mañju, 1999, pp.1]. Mervyn Sprung in collaboration with T.R.V. Murti and U.S. Vyas has translated it thus: “Neither perishing nor arising in time neither terminable nor eternal, neither self-identical nor variant in form, neither coming nor going, such is the true way of things (Pratītyasamutpāda), the serene coming to rest of the manifold of the named things (Prapañcopashamam), as taught by the perfectly Enlightened One whom I honor as the best of all teachers.” [Mervyn Sprung in collaboration with TRV Murti and U.S. Vyas, 1979, pp.32-33].”
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John Tan
John Tan "Direct taste of empty suchness transcends mental constructs and is the termination of linguistic description or the serene coming to rest of the manifold of named things as described by Nagarjuna."

If that is the case, y not just b raw in attention or simply cease conceptuality or naked in Awareness then there r also no named things or mental constructs.
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Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Because mental construct is not mere gross conceptuality. For example gross conceptuality may dissolve but the background Witness still seem eternal and dualistic and very real
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Tan Jui Horng
Tan Jui Horng Hello John, as far as I know,

1. We deconstruct to know what the nature of our experience really is. If we don't then we are just like most people living in delusion which inevitably causes greed and hatred. At a certain point if we don't examine an
d deconstruct we may find ourself clinging to "bare" perception, which is not enough because the empty nature of perception is not realized.

2. We know we are on the right direction... if we check back with the Buddha's discourses? He already did the work so we don't end up with infinite deconstruction, which is what I remember seeing some people comment on the possible downsides of deconstructing experience. There should not be any gross/subtle clinging to the aggregates nor (Buddha forbid) objects that make up our experience. This one should need a strong moment to moment mindfulness and honesty.

3. I don't know actually. There seems to be a lot that can be deconstructed. Does the deconstruction end when we see the aggregates are also empty? As per the heart sutra. But there are still things like "presence", time, etc. I am confused about this.

For your critiques, admonishments, and answers please.
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André A. Pais
André A. Pais "self (background) and phenomena (foreground) to which characteristics [supposedly] belong are constructs"

That's a great way to put it. There is no possessor of characteristics (beyond the apparent characteristics), nor perceiver of perceptions. There is nothing behind appearances (our eyes), nor beyond them (as a conceptual possessor of said characteristics).
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Richard Cooper
Richard Cooper Why deconstruct if the blue sky and green trees are effortless ?
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John Tan
John Tan Hi Jui Horng,

Thks for the detailed reply, I din expect that 😝. My questions were triggered by the conversations between u, Soh and Andre.

Seeing reality through reified constructs r like attempting to understand wind by stopping moving air.

In the process the mind gets confused that "wind" has it own existent and can stand apart from "moving air".

Deconstruction is simply to fix this issue by realizing that "wind" standing apart is like "rabbit horns" and therefore needs to b seen through. It is empty and non-arisen (by using Buddhist terms).

Soh's expression of "blue sky and green trees fluttering" is to convey the experience free from reified constructs, that is "feeling the moving air" directly.

My question to Soh is he is talking abt the experience, not answering ur question of y no further deconstruction is needed, that is, only the reified construct "wind" needs to b deconstructed, not the "moving air" that is felt directly.

In summary, I m just being a busy body, nothing intense 🤣.
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Tan Jui Horng
Tan Jui Horng Thank you for your answer John, how about Andre's "blue expanse, swaying green"? On one hand I feel it is valid, just that the statement itself, if I don't know that Andre has valid and good insight and realizations, would also contain reified constructs (blue and green)?

...or are they actually not constructs?


Expressions of experience in words always perplex me...
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John Tan
John Tan Jui Horng, if looking beyond words into the experience directly, both r ok.

Only sense of attachment of wanting too much to express that freedom from the objects for Andre. Just my opinion, don't take it too seriously.😝
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Tan Jui Horng
Tan Jui Horng Thank you John :)
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