Advaitin vs. Buddhist takes on awareness/reality

[greentara]

monktastic, I agree with you. You've given this alot of thought. You've set out your views with care.
As I see it it's best not to get bogged down in strict doctrine. I say first taste liberation, then speak.

[greentara]

muni, I somehow missed your reply to my post. Nisargadatta answers:" It is the clinging to sensate life that binds you. If you could experience the inner void fully, the explosion into the totality would be near.

Question: My own spiritual experience has its seasons. Sometimes I feel glorious, then again I am down. I am like a little boy – going up, going down, going up, going down.

Nisargadatta: All changes in consciousness are due to the "I am the body" idea. Divested of this idea the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, free of experiencing anything in particular. But to realise it you must do what your teacher tells you. Mere listening, even memorising, is not enough. If you do not struggle hard to apply every word of it in your daily life, don't complain that you made no progress. All real progress is irreversible. Ups and downs merely show that the teaching has not been taken to heart and translated into action fully"

[gregkavarnos]

Nisargadatta: All changes in consciousness are due to the "I am the body" idea. Divested of this idea the mind becomes steady.

Really? And what of identification with thoughts, feelings, emotions, theories... Is not the mind thrown of balance by these? I know my mind is.

[greentara]

greg, "Really? And what of identification with thoughts, feelings, emotions, theories..." All problems stem from this individual 'I' which is the body/mind. If things go well you want to enhance it, crow over it. If things go badly you brood over it. It never really gives you any peace.
Trace all feelings, emotions, concepts to there source, the answer lies there.

[gregkavarnos]

greg, "Really? And what of identification with thoughts, feelings, emotions, theories..." All problems stem from this individual 'I' which is the body/mind. If things go well you want to enhance it, crow over it. If things go badly you brood over it. It never really gives you any peace.
Trace all feelings, emotions, concepts to there source, the answer lies there.

The "quote" I was responding to was:

All changes in consciousness are due to the "I am the body" idea...

In your response you have expanded this to include mind. So which is his position: that all changes in consciousness are due to "I am the body" or that all changes in consciousness are due to "I am the body/mind complex"?

[greentara]

greg, I'm just trying to point out there's no real difference between advaita and the teachings of for eg the Zen Buddhist master Dogen.



"Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize such, get to work on such right now."
Dogen

[gregkavarnos]

I can understand that, but if Nisargadatta claims that all changes in consciousness are based in the belief that "I am the body" then there is a real difference because the Buddha teaches name and form, not just form (ie five skhanda, not one) as being the objects onto/by which the self is imputed.

[Simon E.]

greg, I'm just trying to point out there's no real difference between advaita and the teachings of for eg the Zen Buddhist master Dogen.



"Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize such, get to work on such right now."
Dogen

And I have met personally, well -regarded Buddhist teachers who would disagree.
And that remains the case no matter how many times you repeat the view that there is no difference. On a Buddhist forum.

[monktastic]

I can understand that, but if Nisargadatta claims that all changes in consciousness are based in the belief that "I am the body" then there is a real difference because the Buddha teaches name and form, not just form (ie five skhanda, not one) as being the objects onto/by which the self is imputed.

I'm not sure it's so much "Nisargadatta claims," as "Nisargadatta responded to a particular question with..." Sort of like Buddha claimed some things in the First Turning, others (that contradicted the first) in the Second Turning, and as Sogyal Rinpoche says, even Buddha's tongue was tied when trying to describe Mahamudra.

Actually the very next answer Nisargadatta gives is an example of the "provisional teaching" style:

Q: The other day you told us that there is no such thing as karma. Yet we see that everything has a cause and the sum total of all the causes may be called karma.

M: As long as you believe yourself to be a body, you will ascribe causes to everything. I do not say things have no causes. Each thing has innumerable causes. It is as it is, because the world is as it is. Every cause in its ramifications covers the universe.

When you realise that you are absolutely free to be what you consent to be, that you are what you appear to be because of ignorance or indifference, you are free to revolt and change. You allow yourself to be what you are not. You are looking for the causes of being what you are not! It is a futile search. There are no causes, but your ignorance of your real being, which is perfect and beyond all causation.

Actually, he did say things have no causes -- in response to another questioner, in another context. And as for the words "your real being" above, lest anyone take it to mean him advocating a "real self," the rest of his words make clear that this too is a provisional teaching. "Your real being" ends up sounding a whole lot like Buddha-nature.

Anyway, I've said my piece about the relationship between the teachings. This post is primarily to help clear up a "but the Advaitins claim that..." idea.

[Karma Dondrup Tashi]

I can understand that, but if Nisargadatta claims that all changes in consciousness are based in the belief that "I am the body" then there is a real difference because the Buddha teaches name and form, not just form (ie five skhanda, not one) as being the objects onto/by which the self is imputed.

Of course that's not what he teaches.

[gregkavarnos]

Well, I wouldn't know really as I have not studued his teachings, so the "of course" might be "of course" for you but based on what was stated it is not "of course" for me.