This is a small glimpse of the world you live in and the way it's being controlled... If your mind is a forest, then every tree in it is a mantra (any thought, any perception/sensation). If a tree falls, does it make a sound? Yes, but if you are not aware of it, you won't know what's going on. Mindfulness is accepting and monitoring this whole forest and the trees/mantras in it. Mindfulness enables you to protect your forest from all the external mantras absorbed through your senses. Who controls these external mantras? The same people who have controlled the design and transmission of knowledge throughout the ages. The people in power: Merchants/Industry, Politicians/Government, and, to a declining degree, Religious leaders. Text books, TVs and other media outlets, laws and regulations... Trace them back to the beginning of writing some 5,000 years ago, and you'll see the same sources controlling it. This is the global forest, evolving through foresight, designed with purpose: More power to those in power. You are a tree in the great forest, and you have your own little forest connected to the great one. But do you manage it? Meditation means awareness. When you meditate, you can see what happens in the mind you're in. If your forest is being chopped down, if someone else pollutes or plants seeds, you'll know. When you design, monitor, and protect your trees, you control your forest. And a tree does not fall unless you decide to bring it down. That is all.
You say, "Mindfulness is accepting and monitoring this whole forest and the trees/mantras in it." The term 'mindfulness' is lineage specific and has no meaning outside of your system. Otherwise there is only mindfulness of certain things. maybe some thoughts maybe others, maybe other states of mind, etc.... Mindfulness is not itself a/the goal. It is a method. What is the goal of that mindfulness? When you choose your historic analogy it is basically an appropriate understanding, but saying things like, "That is all!" and so on certainly limits the potential of mind training in general and certain sadhanas and systems specifically.
Hi Chodpa, Maybe I was unclear in my description. Mindfulness is not a/the goal. A goal is a mantra. Mindfulness is simply awareness of goals/mantras - any phrase, sound, object, sensation that we become aware of. Mindfulness is not a method, it is a natural process: moment-by-moment awareness. Every animal is capable of this, but they don't have a mind like ours. We are capable of containing so many mantras in our minds through memory, advanced brain faculties for language, global interconnectedness and technologies transmitting information - mantras - into our minds, and so forth. Mindfulness is being able to experience moment-by-moment awareness and all the mantras from past, present, and projected future as they present themselves - without judging them or attaching to much importance to any of them. Meditation is awareness, and the two types of meditation are mantra and mindfulness. Everything is meditation. A method/technique is just a way to direct and train awareness, and as such, it is just another mantra. This is my perception of what meditation is, and "that's all" I have to say in my response to this particular mantra/thread.
Wrong. It doesn't make a sound if no one hears it. The mind collapses possibilities that are infinite (God) into the finite. It it doesn't get collapsed/observed by something, it doesn't make a sound. Mindfulness and meditation are not thought repellents as you seem to believe them to be. They don't "protect your forest from all the external mantras absorbed through your senses." Slowly they allow a person to shut off the senses themselves if they want to. And finally a person is completely unmoved by that which flows to or from the senses because it's seen as completely illusory anyways. At any rate, you wouldn't try to stop "evil" in the world by telling people to become aware of it if you were enlightened, you would simply tell them to look for the truth in themselves. You don't fight darkness or by becoming aware "oh, it's dark here," you just turn on the light. So much delusional talk around here these days! It seems that the forest needs to be trimmed of that more than anything.
This is not about repelling thoughts, it's about becoming aware of them. Awareness turns on the light because you can hear and see what you were previously unaware of. Awareness brings knowledge, and knowledge is power. The enlightenment in this process is having a mind that sees and understands this power in order to apply it. You seem to have trimmed your forest to the point of seeing only your own perspective.
I think you said mindfulness and mantra are all, but also as clear to some is shakti. So not all is clear. This is why the Upanishads took each tattva and made it supreme. Due to interdependence all things are equal and ultimate. This space never having moved for a second from its primordial state.
She means that in Reality nothing in the manifest world has ever been or will ever be, so it can't be said to move, it only appears to move because of what's known as "maya," or "the play"/"delusion." There's no cause/effect or anything else. This is a common misunderstanding of Buddha's teaching of "interdependent co-arising." Most people understand it to mean that one thing arises and subsides at the same time because of another and it's relationship with that. In fact, all things only appear to arise and subside because of another, they have absolutely no relationship outside One consciousness creating them simultaneously, but because of maya, they appear to arise and coincide. As soon as there is the delusion of seperatness, all things fractal out ad infinitum, so it can be said that one thing's seperatness is interdependant on all things seperateness. As soon as one's own seperatness is realized is untrue, all seperateness ends. Phewww...these things seem to spin off in circles when tried to explicate them intellectually. It's most easily intellectually understood (for myself anyhow) as a dream of God. Just like when you dream then wake, you realize nothing about the dream was "real," except that it was experienced temporarily, this world is only a thought of God/Self/Consciousness. Of course this is a metaphor, and not to be taken completely literally.
It's a shame to me that such well expressed things are so easily overlooked on the net. Hopefully somebody reads them. I lucked onto this one pretty much. Can I ask what Dzogchen view of Karma is?
The word "karma" has come to represent the full breadth of a cycle, so that's what I'll talk about, though the word itself just means "action." From an Absolute view, their is no karma, because the apparent actions, were "done" by objects that never were. Since there was/is nothing ever Really here but Consciousness, how can Oneness move and interact with Oneness. It's like multiplying 4,354,452,974 by 0. No matter how big the number seems to be, zero is always zero. Or the story of a man who was not yet born, that conquered the world. Of course nothing happened, because he wasn't ever born, but we can have the notion of this man conquering the world, though completely unreal. From the perspective within the manifest with Reality slightly veiled- Karma is best thought of as Consciousness's way of cyclically bringing itself back to Oneness, and NOT as a linear cause/effect relationship. In the simplest terms, karma is action. In order for their to be action there also must be the delusion/notion that a singular thing is acting upon another thing. (Again, we see that all notions/ideas rest only upon the notion of dualism/ego.) Think of the action as dropping a pebble into a pond. It creates a theoretical infinity of ripples, some big, some very subtle and barely noticeable. Simultaneously other ripples are being created which then interact and diffract with other ripples. All this is purely imagined though, and in Reality is not happening. Karmic law is that for each ripple to end and for the water to be still, a counteracting ripple must come from somewhere, depending on the location, mass, speed and other qualities of the original action. As surely as a problem (seems to) arises, an equal and appropriate solution simultaneously (seems to) arises. At times the ripples may cause others distress/suffering/further delusion (what would be interpreted as "bad" karma by those who are deluded) while at times the ripples one creates may lead to the happiness/enlightenment/easing of suffereing of others (what would be interpreted as "good" karma by those who are deluded). In order for one to understand that oneself is in fact all Self/God, the consequences/fruition of one's actions must eventually be experienced by that person, so that they might come to know Oneness. ********An important side to this is that "good" karma will resolve itself/attract "good" circumstances, as will "bad" karma attract bad to resolve itself; however, both karmas are really bondage. For instance, you give a person $1,000 purely out of charity, expecting nothing in return. The karmic consequence of this is that you get a new job and make $50,000 a year more. Initially you think that this will make you happier, but then you become attached to the money, worry about losing it, stress over the taxes, and are actually unhappier then you were before. The lesson enacted through nature/the natural course of events is that true happiness only comes from Self/God/Oneness. Wise people, even though still completely veiled in maya, can still see that all actions/events are neither good or bad, they are only open to being interpreted as good or bad. (There are countless fables/tales illustrating this, most famously probably are the man, his son, and the wild horses)********** From this understanding, we can see that the goal is not to accumlate/"do" things which bring "good" karma. Because in order for that to occur, the orginal delusion that a person is a seperate self still exists, and thus because that being is under the delusion that they are the doer, and seperate from God. (And not the Reality that God is all there is, the only "doer/thought creator"). Still under the delusion of duality, the person/being is still subject to suffering and attachment, and the karmic cycle, and rebirth as a "seperate" being (which is not Truly possible, only the notion of seperateness is.) Another facet of karma is that karma/past action always carries with it a charge which causes a person to be attracted to or repulsed by something. This charge, which sprung from the original action, attracts various other circumstances/actions, mostly unconsciously influencing the delusional person without their even consciously knowing it. This of course is not freedom, but conditioned response based on the past. The more the cycle of karma, memory, desire (karmic cycle) is repeated, the stronger the latent tendencies/charge of a person becomes. In turn, while the charge is strengthened for a while, this gives the person repeated attempts to resolve the action and remove the charge back to neutral (neither being attracted or repulsed), and thus being free from any outside influence. Ultimately karmic resolution is enacted through nature/the natural course of events, until the person finally says, "Enough! I've had it, I refuse to repeat these things which don't bring me happiness!" When this has occured enough times, for enough different manifest things, the person naturally loses interest in everything but God. (We can all see this course of events in countless Buddha's/Liberated Beings). This is why so many schools teach present moment awarness, because if you are really %100 in the present, then you have no karma (past conditioning/attraction-repulsion). It is helpful to understand the notion of karma is a cycle, which eventually resolves itself back to zero, and not a linear chain of events, because a chain continues indefinitely. (Though humorous as the maya is, if the person wants to think of it as cause/effect, that is trully (little T) what it is in this world-view, and can conceivably never end.) So finally we understand that the ultimate aim is not for "good" karma which will breed attachment eventually and never free a person from rebirth, but it is the complete cessation of the belief that there even is karma- the total neutrality of Self that is neither attracted nor repulsed by anything, because there is in fact nothing, and only emptiness/everythingness (for lack of being able to describe it). Ultimately, karma is far too complex to ever completely understand intellectually. At best the intellect can understand these generalities, so don't waste too much time/concern with it. I've chosen to explain it from a somewhat compassionate viewpoint, in that it's ultimately a cycle of teaching/learning rather than punishments and reward (the punishment/reward way of thinking lends itself to dualistic thinking if not careful) though other explications of karma are equally as valid, if not more pessimistic.
Words are sometimes in the way when we wish to convey the deepest of meanings because everyone interprets every word and sentence slightly differently. The world is a brain - yours - because your world is the mind you're in. So let us go deeper, beyond ourselves. I remember reading 1,100 books on evolution, neuroscience, psychology, and history, trying to figure it all out. 8 years and 3 continents passed, until I donated and returned all my books. There was no complete answer in any book. So I meditated, accepting all the books, the thousands of interpretations and paragraphs and millions of words - mantras - as parts of this world, which were now a part of mine. Absolute mindfulness subsumed. Then, coincidentally on the day of the great eartquake in China, it all emerged. This wordless truth spanning 4 billion years of evolution and 50,000 years of ''modern'' human history, lasted a few minutes. It remains in my mind. It is so simple and so very powerful. But strangely, most people would not like to hear it because most people need other people's interpretations, they need parts of the truth and outright lies in order to justify their lives and beliefs. Most people can't handle the truth because it is too simple, perhaps even too meaningless. Looking at life and how we adapt to each other, how we evolve, the truth is truly magnificent. And there is room for God in evolution, because there is room for God in human history. But you should be the interpreter. Words can enslave, they can control how we adapt, and if we survive long enough, they will influence human evolution. As we have spread and settled across the Earth, our brains have evolved and adapted; language emerged 50,000 years ago, today an infant is born with a brain pre-wired for language; words are now everywhere, people are everywhere; brain cells now communicate at unprecedented levels, you and I are now communicating. Natural selection lacks foresight and genes are selfish, but we have developed foresight, and we have developed technologies for mass communication. Once you fully grasp evolution, natural selection, and history to see where we're headed, compassion is the key to our survival. Or I should say, your belief in and understanding of compassion is the key. Survival of the fittest will, for humans, become survival of the compassionate because we will most likely not be able to respond to the greatest threat we're facing until it is too late to reverse the effects of climate change, and we will cross the treshold to severe, drastic changes. By then there will be perhaps 10-15-20 billion people, and those who survive will either be the ones who are shown compassion (food, shelter, a helping hand) or who show compassion for others. Oneness is divided unless you make that One big enough to contain all fragments/mantras, and compassion brings all mantras together. It unites. I will end this now because it is late and I need to sleep. I wonder, will you forget these little words as others rain down upon you from every angle and mainstream media outlet, until your mind belongs to someone else's interpretation and foresight? I hope not. Best wishes and Good night from L.A. to the European Arctic. To my home and to my family who I am finally united with. I love you.
I will not forget what I have always felt, which is that exact same thing. Even if I do die during a self inflicted wound such as we are experiencing now, I will accept that as I accept death and the opportunities to shine while others flicker, hopefully they will come to the light around the people who will love until the end, no matter when that is, no matter why that is.
