Conceptual and Non-conceptual

I can think of four ways hypotheticals can be understood as especially conceptual. 1. They are unnecessary, superfluous 2. they are invented 3. they are built on false premises and 4. they obscure more than they reveal.

I'll come back and develop these points when I have time. In the mean time, feel free to comment or offer your own thoughts.

So back to the Western Philosophers for a moment. When they consider a hypothetical situation, where sacrificing one individual will save the lives of a lot of others, this is a good example of how the imagined can get confused with the actual. That these situations are invented, imagined, is a pretty obvious point, that is part of what hypothetical means, but another aspect of hypothetical is that we are conducting some kind analysis using our ability to reason.

Not sure if this is what you mean, but I think among Buddhists we most often get these hypotheticals when we talk about karma. Now in order to understand how karma works, I think it is absolutely necessary to ask just the type of questions as you mentioned.
As such, the answer to many these hypothetical questions may not be very relevant, but their usefulness lies in developing some understanding of the boundaries of such rules as 'no killing'. Because apparently, it is not ALWAYS a nono.
So, although these questions may appear pretty useless, it is the only way to figure out how to deal in dillema's as coping with e.g. terrorists or one naughty boy in a classroom, and to discover for ourselves what other factors need to be considered rather then just taking the Buddha's advice as always black and white - only rarely things are that simple...

Then again, the workings of karma are always explained using examples, many of which are hypotheticals. If you leave the examples out, it is not easy to convey what it really means. As karma and the ways it works is not even directly visible to us until we are a Buddha, one might even argue that for 'normal' humans, even karma itself is a hypothetical.
Is karma therefore useless to discuss? Certainly not, we need to have some understanding of it!
Can it be disturbance when you try to achieve non-conceptual realizations? Certainly yes, just like any other conceptual thought process!

Probably any type of mind-games forms a problem because they are so much easier to cope with then our real problems, and they can be quite addictive.

So I am going to back up six posts and restate my thesis. Instead of saying, "I can think of four ways hypotheticals can be understood as especially conceptual. 1. They are unnecessary, superfluous 2. they are invented 3. they are built on false premises and 4. they obscure more than they reveal."

I am going to assert that: When hypotheticals are built on false premises, and this is unnoticed, they obscure more than they reveal. That they involve a high level of abstraction, is a good thing to be aware of, too.

Part of what is inspiring this thread, is when thinking brings us closer to reality, there is a sense of grounding in it. Logic, Imagination, Memory, can all be used that way. But when it takes us farther into confusion, there can be sense of dispersion that saps our energy, rather than replenishes it. Is this something others here can relate to?

On the other hand, none of the above refers to meditative concentration. It only refers to analysis and visualization. Concentration really compliments all that, and it can replenish our energy really well. So can sleep, lol… my best time to meditate is when I just wake up. That is one reason I take naps when I can. before I go to bed often is good, too.

Matt, I definitely do not think you are crazy (I know it ).

A couple of reactions and thoughts I have.

First, it dawned on me the other day that a non-conceptual state is something that you have to "relax into". That's the way to get there. That during meditation with a particular subject there is a point where simply relaxing without the tension of thought will produce a non-conceptual state.

Now there is a passage from Atisha's Lamp For The Path that has always been difficult for me.

Toward the end of the treatise he states:
"When Bodhisattvas non-conceptually contemplate this excellent teaching they will transcend conceptuality so hard to overcome and eventually reach the non-conceptual state."

This translation can be found in context at this link:
www.lamrim.com/atishalamp/LampForThePath.PDF (verse 57)

I wonder how someone can "non-conceptually contemplate"? Unless it is "relaxing into" a previous contemplation...
Also, if they non-conceptually contemplate something to reach a non-conceptual state that doesn't make sense since they are already there.
I wouldn't be so picky but the rest of the "Lamp" is so precise.
Jeff

These passages are referring to different stages of practice every time they say non-conceptual. First you learn to concentrate, then you begin to feel spaciousness, you can get that from chanting or from single pointed meditation, then eventually this can lead to realization, and when that happens you will know you are everything, and that it is all illusion. That is what he means by the non-conceptual state in the last line of 56. You can think in that state, you can talk in it, but you are not bound by mental constructs that arise out of eons of conceptualism like we normally are. Then, believe it or not, that is when emptiness really becomes important, and you learn to trust it and use it even in more ordinary states of consciousness. And you can start to dissolve and unwind the mental constructs, instead of just transcending them. Anyway this is the order Atisha describes and that was true for me, but I would not consider that order cast in stone. Conditions are ripening in all of us all the time, and they are not necessarily fixed in time the way we normally think of it.

Also, I had an intellectual understanding of emptiness several years before realization, which was spontaneous when it happened. I could kind of feel it coming on, and I drove south of where I was living and found Lama Sonam Tsering's Gompa and called him at home from there. We had never met, before, but we kind of knew each other in other ways, i would say in retrospect. We had karma, you know. lol. So he invited me up to his house and while we were chatting and after he dealt with his kids and got them to go outside, I relaxed and just instantly changed, then I experienced a lot of levels of high realization, one after the other. Then i came back to ordinary awareness and felt like very very calm and quiet and peaceful, but I forgot everything, because I had decided to in heightened awareness. But I also decided to remember it over the next nine days, and actually could "see" into the future. So for the next nine days, every time I remembered something from the experience it was also this powerful dejavu, because I would also remember seeing that a UPS guy was going to arrive at that instant, (for example) and of course there he was. That instance was a package for Dan from his folks, we were house-mates in Eugene at the time. It was all very strange. After those nine days I kept going into heightened awareness at times, but I would not forget about it, later. During that first meeting with Lama Sonam, I even looked years ahead and gave instructions to people. So when I was taking workshops from Carlos Castaneda's crew for example, they would repeat some joke I had told them from another place and time, and I would be the only one to get it, and laugh really loud, and then suddenly remember the moment I told them that 2 years before, but they had just heard it, and it was like, Woah, every time. lol.

Anyway my path was very dramatic for a long time, and it incorporated a lot of esoteric paths (Buddhist and Non-Budhist) and esoteric technologies. Now days life is much simpler and for that, far more enjoyable. But we all have the capacity to realize things and eventually become enlightened, and for most people it does not involve so much
drama, luckily.

But you know when I was with Lama Sonam the first time, that was in 1996, and I remembered having powerful realizations in India in 1984, that I had decided to forget afterwards. And I did not remember them again until the next time I was in that state in 1996. I think it was because I was only 19 in 1984, and decided I did not have the maturity or stability in my life to deal with it in a healthy way. That experience happened when a friend of mine and I got invited into the inner sanctum of a Hindu Temple in India. They told us it was very a rare honor to be invited, and we had to crawl between these massive sone ledges to get back in there. While we were there, I had a very similar experience, and my friend experienced it too, but I was kind of in charge and talking to the Guru while it was going on. Then I "commanded" us both to forget it once we left that chamber and we did. Now I can remember the whole experience, the whole conversation plain as day, and it is so strange I forgot all about it for 12 years. But those are the different states of consciousness we all have in us, waiting for the right conditions to arise.

Thank you very much for your kind remarks, and the feed-back, Jeff. I appreciate it.

It is actually very difficult to describe any of these experiences, especially if you want them to make sense to people who have not experienced them yet. And to do so one has to fit them into a particular conceptual framework. I think because we value abstract thinking so much in our culture there is the mistaken notion that you have to have mastered a particular conceptual model to have a particular experience and this is not true. Rather we express or describe the experience within the model.

This is Alex Berzin from the link Clive provided in your thread, Fake it until you make it:

"According to the highest tantra explanation of Buddha-nature, especially that of the Nyingma tradition, the refined portion of each person's clear light continuum innately possesses all enlightening qualities. Therefore, just as the confusion accompanying the unrefined portion in each individual may give rise to the misleading teachings of a charlatan, the refined portion may become the source of further Buddha-teachings. Thus, even when someone's clear light continuum is slightly less than totally refined and still flowing as a pathway tantra, if appropriate internal and external conditions are present, its refined portion may spontaneously give rise to new tantra teachings. Before "the times are ripe" and a spontaneous arising occurs, the teachings pass down in a hidden fashion, from one lifetime to the next, as part of the unrealized potentials of the person's clear light continuum. If the person in whom the spontaneous arising occurs accepts the shared Mahayana conceptual framework of revelation, he or she is likely to describe and subjectively experience the phenomenon in terms of this framework. The description and experience will be valid for that person."

When I was having the experiences I described with Lama Sonam, for example I still had a very poor understanding of Buddhism. In those states I had the sense of knowing anything I applied my mind to, but how I described it to Lama Sonam during those times was in a mixture of Buddhist and Non-buddhist jargon. Luckily, he was sharing the experiences so he always knew what I meant or was referring to. My conceptual understanding of a lot of things developed gradually since, even in the time I have been writing here, I have learned a lot of jargon and how to fit it to my own experience. My current teacher and other Lamas have helped a lot with that, but so has participating here. I am always searching my mind for clearer and more accessible vocabulary and analogies, and I borrow from the different Tibetan Traditions.

So that is both a potential source of confusion and greater clarity. Because the different schools will describe the same stages of the path and the same experience from different points of view. Sometimes neo-Buddhists think this means they are having different realizations and that one school is higher than the others. That is not true. Usually neophytes assume that the Nyingma is highest because they describe and explain from the point of view of result. But that isn't true, it is just a different way of explaining the same things. The Gelug school tends to use the most accessible language, because they are describing from the point of view of path, so they are beginning with what we are all familiar with then describing a transformational experience. Sakya's tend to describe and explain from the point of view of effect, or bliss. So that is the midpoint, not ordinary experience, but in the midst of the transformation. For instance, they will say things like this or that is just bliss. Nyingmapas describe and explain from the point of view of result, so they are not alluding to any kind of transformation at all, they are just describing how things are ultimately. But that is very different than Shantideva, for instance, who describes experience in practice as transformation.

You see, the difficulty is that ultimately, all of samsaric mind and experience is enlightened. But that is not the reality we live in. We live with the effect of countless eons of delusion. But to instantly purify anything we apply our mind to, we really just need to know its ultimate nature. So Nyingma writing and teaching goes straight to that.

The potential for greater clarity is to use all three. Start with a path point of view, then describe from an effect point of view then describe from a result view, and one person I think does that really well is Robert Thurman. ALex Berzin can as well, but he usually works within the Gelug framework.

The Gelug school is an off shoot of early Kagyu traditions, so they tend to both teach from the point of view of path. Kagyu is Marpa and Milarepa and various Indian Masters prior to them. Gelug began with Tsongkhapa, who was developing the Kadampa tradition Atisha started. Nyingma trace their origins to Padmasambava and some traditions (teachings) are even earlier than that. Sakya School was founded by Sachen Kunga Nyingpo. These were all highly realized or enlightened beings teaching the same Buddha Dharma, but in different ways. The traditions all profoundly influence each other, especially in this Rimed (non-sectarian) age.

The Dalai Lamas have always been Gelugpas, but they have also been a force working for unity and non-sectarianism.

Lama Sonam is a Nyingma Lama, trained by Dilgo Rinpoche and others near him. My current teacher, the person I think of as my Lama, Khensur Rinpoche Geshe Wangdak is a Gelugpa who is familiar with all four traditions. I also have gotten a lot of benefit from teachings and empowerments from other Nyingmpas and a Sakya Lama over the years. Sometimes one will translate for another. I never see any sign of the sectarianism we sometimes hear about, but Lama Jhampa Shaneman once said, "oh, there are some sectarian Lamas out there." I think it is best to avoid them if you can.

Jeff: Sometimes I have difficulty when you say things like:
"..consciousness is not like that, and the material plane itself arises out of the interplay of duality in consciousness."

What is in bold here is basically another way of saying what Atisha wrote here:

56.The great Ignorance of conceptuality
Make us fall into the ocean of cyclic existence

Atisha is saying we fall into the ocean of cyclic existence because of conceptuality caused by the great ignorance. The term "great," refers to it occurring to all sentient beings within all realms: the ocean of cyclic existence. I am describing the "great ignorance" as the interplay of duality in consciousness, in other words sentient beings are generating their realities in an interdependent fashion, because their minds habitually think and perceive in dualistic ways. Like Dan implied, what we normally call reality is a collective dream. We begin to understand it when we study dependent origination, and we begin to wake from it as we realize emptiness.

Saying mind is non dual is saying in truth it pervades all experience. It does not stop at the borders of your skull, it is not really bound by dualistic concepts like my, and mine. It is our ignorance to believe it is, our habit of (dualistic) conceptuality. Sorry, that is about as clearly as I can put it without writing many chapters. That is okay, though, because we tend to confuse understanding with experience, so in may ways it is better to feel like you don't understand it very well. That way you have to rely on your refuge and trust your practice, and so you are creating the conditions for experiences which will eventually cause new understanding.

Matt, I find your writings are a great contribution to a better understanding of `Dharma in the West`.

Matt wrote:
"But consciousness that is stabilized can be even finer than wind, it can be like space. But both are non dual, because they are not confined by concepts that are dualistic in nature, like my mind and that wall."


You describe emptiness as space-like.

That`s good but I always found this kind of description quite one-sided and it could be understood as `nothingness`. This is one of the points we get wrong often and it hampers our progress, makes progress impossible in fact.

Space has the notion of nothing being there............
but, as the Heart Sutra tells us:

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

The first part of this statement seems quite clear and a lot of analytical ado can be built around it.
This might be the reason why we concentrate on it so much in the West.
Because there`s a preference and kind of fondness to analyse.

The second part of this statement is often overlooked IMHO.
Let`s take the so-called visual consciousness:
When we see something, when we `perceive an object`, we see emptiness, but not knowing it, we believe in the construct we make out of it.

So to perhaps more skillfully deal with the fact that we always (not knowingly) experience nothing else than emptiness we should acknowledge that there is something more to `mind`, namely cognizance, described here by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (full text in my other post `Thoughts on Non-Meditation`):

```We can all agree that mind is empty cognizance.
To understand this is not that complicated or beyond us at all.
If our minds were only empty like space, we wouldn't see, hear taste or touch anything.

Can you deny that you see, hear, smell, taste or feel textures?
It is undeniable.

Mind essence is not confined to only being either empty or cognizant.
These two are indivisible.```

Tamara