Does anyone have an experience of visions of the future?

[mzaur]

Do you think there was no physical environment 30 seconds ago?

Yes there was, but not before your consciousness of it.
Like the Buddha says in Pali scriptures, that the world arises from the 12 ayatanas or the 18 dhatus. (found in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Wings of Awakening). Similar view is also in Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamaka Karika. In the chapter of Prior Entity and elsewhere. Momentariness of consciousness doesn't change it at all.

Are you saying that the Great Wall of China wasn't there until you knew about it?

Great Wall of China is an idea. Of course it doesn't exist until you know about it.

[Andrew108]

I have lots of visions of the future. I experience these visions all the time.
Fortunately I know that these visions are conceptual in nature. Conceptual mind takes things that don't exist and makes them exist. That's what the future is. Something that doesn't exist taken to be existent.

[kirtu]

I have lots of visions of the future. I experience these visions all the time.
Fortunately I know that these visions are conceptual in nature. Conceptual mind takes things that don't exist and makes them exist. That's what the future is. Something that doesn't exist taken to be existent.

Except that events seen in a vision or dream can actually take place without intervention on the part of the recipient.

Kirt

[kirtu]

Do you think there was no physical environment 30 seconds ago?

Yes there was, but not before your consciousness of it.
Like the Buddha says in Pali scriptures, that the world arises from the 12 ayatanas or the 18 dhatus. (found in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Wings of Awakening). Similar view is also in Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamaka Karika. In the chapter of Prior Entity and elsewhere. Momentariness of consciousness doesn't change it at all.

Are you saying that the Great Wall of China wasn't there until you knew about it?

Great Wall of China is an idea. Of course it doesn't exist until you know about it.

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

Kirt

[Andrew108]

I have lots of visions of the future. I experience these visions all the time.
Fortunately I know that these visions are conceptual in nature. Conceptual mind takes things that don't exist and makes them exist. That's what the future is. Something that doesn't exist taken to be existent.

Except that events seen in a vision or dream can actually take place without intervention on the part of the recipient.

Kirt

Have you had an experience of this?

[kirtu]

I have lots of visions of the future. I experience these visions all the time.
Fortunately I know that these visions are conceptual in nature. Conceptual mind takes things that don't exist and makes them exist. That's what the future is. Something that doesn't exist taken to be existent.

Except that events seen in a vision or dream can actually take place without intervention on the part of the recipient.

Kirt

Have you had an experience of this?

Yes.

Kirt

[Andrew108]

So what happened? I'm asking out of genuine interest.

[kirtu]

So what happened? I'm asking out of genuine interest.

As a kid these were usually dreams of something that was going to happen in the next day or week or so. Some of it involved traumatic events in my family though. Mostly they were ordinary events though like seeing a particular person on swings for example (when I was ten yrs old) swinging exactly the same way and wearing exactly what I saw in the dream. In another case an accident happened on a road that I had dreamed about - I told my mother that we needed to avoid the road and we did. The accident occurred. After 18 the dreams became more and more symbolic and didn't occur for years at a time. I dreamed of a major lineage holder getting ill and called my lama because the dream was really quite alarming - the lineage holder became ill in less than a month and recovered. A dream occurred (it was a while ago - it may have occurred more than once) that was highly symbolic and disturbing. It was the foretelling of a major disaster and all the elements in the dream were reported in the press in great detail. These elements have not been in other dreams with the exception of one element. This is not interpretation (although the highly symbolic nature of that dream made it impossible to predict) and I told my ex and some friends about it. Because of that dream when I dreamed about the lineage holder I called my lama.

Sometimes the dreams do not take place though (as an adult, not dreams as a kid - as a kid the dreams always took place). A handful of them. The dreams have a particular quality that indicate that they are dreams of things to happen. I haven't had one in years now and I've forgotten most of them anyway. So this is a super mild and useless form of clairvoyance. Would it have been too hard to see a damn newspaper date in the major dreams? Or how about letting me know where to go for a job interview, etc.?

One of my sisters, perhaps both, also said they had such dreams. So this will be dismissed as an interpretation of deja vu or a form of hysteria or worse.

Interestingly some of the dreams as an adult seem to be linked to a particular practice that seems to have enhanced the dreams to some extent.

Kirt

[Andrew108]

Kirt,
Thanks for your reply. I can see how this has effected you and of course if I had had the same experiences I wouldn't deny them - I would find them very puzzling. I haven't had an experience like this so I just see my conceptual mind at play.
Perhaps there aren't really any limits to how relative mind manifests. Thanks again for your detailed answer.

[asunthatneversets]

Great Wall of China is an idea. Of course it doesn't exist until you know about it.

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

Kirt

Does it? I might agree with mzaur on this one. Does anything exist beyond one's knowledge of it? Either conceptually or experientially? It's commonsensical to believe it does but if it's thoroughly investigated I'm not sure if the common view holds up.

[kirtu]

Great Wall of China is an idea. Of course it doesn't exist until you know about it.

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

Kirt

Does it? I might agree with mzaur on this one. Does anything exist beyond one's knowledge of it? Either conceptually or experientially? It's commonsensical to believe it does but if it's thoroughly investigated I'm not sure if the common view holds up.

By "really exists" I mean that the physical world functions as commonly expected. In reality "it is not the way it seems but neither is it other". The "neither is it other" part is important. I could go further with examples: I stepped onto Greenland before I saw Greenland for example because it was so foggy, I landed in Hawaii before I saw the island I was landing at, people get ill and sometimes have no symptoms but nonetheless they die from those illnesses, etc.

Kirt

[asunthatneversets]

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

Kirt

Does it? I might agree with mzaur on this one. Does anything exist beyond one's knowledge of it? Either conceptually or experientially? It's commonsensical to believe it does but if it's thoroughly investigated I'm not sure if the common view holds up.

By "really exists" I mean that the physical world functions as commonly expected. In reality "it is not the way it seems but neither is it other". The "neither is it other" part is important. I could go further with examples: I stepped onto Greenland before I saw Greenland for example because it was so foggy, I landed in Hawaii before I saw the island I was landing at, people get ill and sometimes have no symptoms but nonetheless they die from those illnesses, etc.

Kirt

I'd interpret "it is not the way it seems but neither is it other" as stating that reality (or any other imputed designation) certainly isn't the way it seems to be, but being that it is a projection (an imputed appearance) and is only quantified in accordance with the originating concept it is inseparable from, as such it (as an object of knowledge) cannot appear in any other way... because apart from the knowledge of it(the concept or idea) there is nothing to be found. Which falls in line with the great wall being unfounded(unborn) apart from one's knowledge of it.

[Aemilius]

In the Aggañña sutra, and I believe the same is found in the Abhidharma, it says that the world expands and then the world contracts. If you have read something of modern astromony and physics, like Stephen Hawkins' Short History of Time, that is a very interesting idea. The system that is expanding is much larger than the thousand million worlds of Saha universe, which means the Milky Way Galaxy. It is all the galaxies in our space and time continuum.
K. N. Jayatilleke and Mahayana authors of Abhidharma have in fact said that there are more world systems in the universe than this local galaxy of Saha world, and that this is mentioned in the sutras.

Actually, the correct translation is not "expand" and "contract." The Buddha didn't teach the expansion and contraction of the universe, sorry.

Also, Saha world does not refer to the galaxy. It refers to the land on Earth.
I think you should study some of these translations more carefully and read the texts yourself. It's very bad to confuse the Buddha's teachings into different terms so you can apply them to modern theory. Scientific theory is scientific theory.

Maurice Walshe uses the words expand and contract in his translation of Digha Nikaya and its Aggañña sutta. It is true that other translators use other expressions, like increase and decrease.
It is very clear from the Abhidharma and sutras like the Diamond sutra, that Buddha indeed considered Saha world to consist of different worlds. The Abhidharma author Vasubandhu gives the distance there is in the Saha universe between its four-continent-worlds. The number given by him is vast, but not enough for the distance between Earth and the nearest star Proxiam Centauri, it nevertheless is in the right direction. And it shows that Saha universe consists of different and distant worlds. Not all buddhists have the courage to think like that, and see like that.

[Aemilius]

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

Kirt

In the Relative truth people make houses, build roads, make great monuments, castles etc.. And they are there, conventionally.
In the Absolute truth nothing exists prior to its perception.
There different ways of understanding this:
1. Great Wall of China is an idea, you can't perceive it as such without knowing this idea. If you were an ignorant person what would you see?
2. Artists, builders, politicians, etc each see a different object, because their minds, values and habitual tendencies are different.
3. Material things can just disappear from our world when nobody anymore knows about them. This is difficult to test and verify, but it is true.

[kirtu]

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

1. Great Wall of China is an idea, you can't perceive it as such without knowing this idea.

As I said the physical GWC exists to ordinary perception whether you know about it or not. You could take a person to the GWC (perhaps blindfolded) and they would perceive the structure without having to be told about it in advance.

In fact this happens frequently for little children.

If you were an ignorant person what would you see?

What do you see?

gwc1.jpg (11.66 KiB) Viewed 266 times

2. Artists, builders, politicians, etc each see a different object, because their minds, values and habitual tendencies are different.

They don't see a different object at all. They have different concepts about the objects they see that we collectively call the GWC. But all humans without defective senses see the same set of tones, etc.

3. Material things can just disappear from our world when nobody anymore knows about them. This is difficult to test and verify, but it is true.

This is not actually true but it is also untestable. In order to test it one would have to eliminate the consciousness of all beings with a propensity to perceive a particular object. Then we would have forgotten what it was that we were to test.

The meaning of material things can just disappear from our world but the material object itself doesn't (except naturally over time). For example, a rock/wall carving was just discovered from some 10,000 years ago that may be a vagina or it may be an explanation or a sign for good hunting, etc. Or perhaps none of the above.

Another example is that you shouldn't walk in subway tunnels even if you haven't seen a subway before or try to cross the street in Manhattan even if you've never heard of or seen a taxi before (I remember both of these examples from my early childhood and was rescued from exactly that).

Kirt

[Challenge23]

Just interested for the sake of it.

Has anyone ever had visions of the future in meditation? I would like to know what lies ahead for humanity. I know monks are usually not allowed to discuss such stuff with the others. But if anyone is willing, it would be good.

Thank you.

Kinda, but not really.

I'll get flashes of what is going to happen between 5-10 seconds from now but only if potential pain is involved. I.e., I would get nothing in a casino but if someone was sitting in a bush on a dark path I was walking at night, I'd get that.

[asunthatneversets]

But the physical GWC really exists whether you know about it or not.

1. Great Wall of China is an idea, you can't perceive it as such without knowing this idea.

As I said the physical GWC exists to ordinary perception whether you know about it or not. You could take a person to the GWC (perhaps blindfolded) and they would perceive the structure without having to be told about it in advance.

In fact this happens frequently for little children.

Unless you are directly in the presence of the great wall, no great wall exists (and actually even in the presence of the great wall there is no such thing either). We accept a story that objects inherently exist "out there in the world" somewhere (separate from us) whether they are being perceived or not... but that is only a story that has been accepted. Accepted rather thoroughly albeit, to the point that I'm sure the suggestion of it's falsity would conjure vehement disapproval and would be considered ludicrous, but that just goes to show how deeply engrained delusion can become. The story is only a story. You can choose to believe the story... but the story will never escape belief. Only what is presently and directly occurring in experience IS. And that isn't even true because the nature of direct experience is misconstrued even further, wrought with countless misnomers mistaken as inherent aspects/attributes. All separation is illusory.

[kirtu]

As I said the physical GWC exists to ordinary perception whether you know about it or not. You could take a person to the GWC (perhaps blindfolded) and they would perceive the structure without having to be told about it in advance.

In fact this happens frequently for little children.

Unless you are directly in the presence of the great wall , no great wall exists

No not just - because we can actually go and find a structure labelled the GWC. It doesn't fade out of existence if it's out of sight.

(and actually even in the presence of the great wall there is no such thing either).

Ultimately that is true.

We accept a story that objects inherently exist "out there in the world" somewhere (separate from us) whether they are being perceived or not...

you played the inherently exists card - I did not and have not said at all that the GWC inherently exists (it doesn't). But it does exist relatively and physically independent of concepts before analysis (of course I just played the before analysis card).

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean didn't inherently exist either but it's devastation was quite real for thousands of relative beings.

but that is only a story that has been accepted. Accepted rather thoroughly albeit, to the point that I'm sure the suggestion of it's falsity would conjure vehement disapproval and would be considered ludicrous, but that just goes to show how deeply engrained delusion can become. The story is only a story. You can choose to believe the story...

No the relative world is not about stories or beliefs (well, alot of it is - national myths, racial myths, etc.). But physical objects have real physical existence with real effects even if we don't know about them beforehand. Babies in Auschwitz without a concept of gas or a bullet or fire were nonetheless murdered by those relative forces.

Only what is presently and directly occurring in experience IS.

The relative world does not disappear in samadhi. Concepts about the relative world can.

All separation is illusory.

That's ultimately (and relatively, just not usually obviously) true.

Kirt

[gregkavarnos]

To Aemelius and asunthatneversets, the next time you are crossing the road and you are unaware of the speeding car barreling your way, coz you have you are day dreaming about a bizarre theory of non-existence without perception, and the car runs over your ass and perception (via bodily feeling/sensation of intense pain) suddenly makes the car existent for you, well you may stop and think how silly your theory really is (if you are not dead).

Just because YOU do not perceive a phenomenon does not mean it does not exist. And if, as you believe, existence is dependent on perception then all phenomena must exist because there is not a single phenomenon that the mind of an Omniscient One (a Buddha) is not aware of.

So do phenomena exist or not then???

[asunthatneversets]

Unless you are directly in the presence of the great wall , no great wall exists

No not just - because we can actually go and find a structure labelled the GWC. It doesn't fade out of existence if it's out of sight.

True, within mind an entire process of planning to go, going, arriving etc.. seems to occur, however that doesn't change the undeniable fact that unless you are presently in front of the great wall, there is no great wall. Empirically, only what is directly occurring at this very moment can be validated.

It's our habitual tendencies which piece all of these components together to form the world and the "happening" we call life. However when carefully examined they don't truly paint the picture we assume they do.

you played the inherently exists card - I did not and have not said at all that the GWC inherently exists (it doesn't). But it does exist relatively and physically independent of concepts before analysis (of course I just played the before analysis card).

It does not exist independently of concepts, and if something only exists relatively as a result of conception, then it cannot be said to truly exist at all. Physicality is a misnomer.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean didn't inherently exist either but it's devastation was quite real for thousands of relative beings.

These are words on a page which convey an idea. It's useful to consider this event as happening in the past so that one may anticipate a like event occurring in the future, but even at that, it is all projected ideation occurring in the immediacy, which seems to be painting a picture of past/future events (when in truth it is just a presently occurring expression of naturalness). No such event is evident in reality, which is this very timeless moment.

I don't reject the conventional reality of these happenings, but to confuse the conventional with the true nature of things is a mistake. The reality of the conventional is equivalent to an illusion or a dream, ultimately unreal.

No the relative world is not about stories or beliefs (well, alot of it is - national myths, racial myths, etc.). But physical objects have real physical existence with real effects even if we don't know about them beforehand. Babies in Auschwitz without a concept of gas or a bullet or fire were nonetheless murdered by those relative forces.

Yes the mind pieces components together to form a such a picture.... there are no physical objects, no physical existence, no physical effects, no beforehand, no aftermath. However all of these things do seem to appear in mind and I don't reject that.

The relative world does not disappear in samadhi. Concepts about the relative world can.

True samadhi is one's natural state, and being that the relative world is a product of ignorance it certainly does dissolve upon correct view. The relative world is solely a product of conception. Concepts don't describe or comment on pre-existent 'things'.... the 'things' arise from imputed concepts and are inseparable from them.