Buddhist Forum?

[Tirisilex]

Anyone know of a Buddhist forum as good as this?

I've been searching for months and all I can find is poorly organized sites.

 

buddhistboards.com does not exist anymore.

 

Any suggestions?

[theist]

but I have been meaning to ask you a question about Buddhism and the conception of the self.

 

I have heard that in Buddhism the self is taken to be ultimately an illusion, a construct of the subtle conceptual body only with no real basis in reality.

 

Is this true?

[gHari]

You will have to be content with meditating on the sound of one hand typing.

 

Hope that was funny.

 

[Tirisilex]

Yes.. The self is made up with the 5 aggregates

According to the Buddha all phenomena is illusion including the sense of self.

Unfortuantly I am not at my home for the next week so I can't give you a better answer. Once I get home this comming weekend I'll be able to explain it better with Access of my books =o)

 

 

*** from a website

 

In general the five aggregates are a way of classifying the body

and the mind. The two main constituents that make up any person

are the body and the mind. Rather than merely saying the body and

mind the Buddha mentioned five classifications, and when he was

teaching this he was using handfuls of grain to say there is this

aggregate and this aggregate and this aggregate, five all

together. The Sanskrit word is skanda, and what it means is a

pile, as in a heap or pile of rice, and those five are the

aggregate of form, feeling, recognition, compositional factors

and consciousness.

The first three of these he mentioned in particular, because of

their relationship with desire. In addition to mentioning that

the source of all our sufferings is in a misknowledge of reality,

at other times the Buddha said that the source of all of our

problems is desire. However we should know that he was not

referring to all desire. For instance the desire to be happy is

not a source of problems. The desire to escape one's problems is

also not the source of suffering. So he was referring to a

specific type of desire, and that being a desire whose object

appears as the source of happiness when in fact it is not. So it

is a desire with respect to or, a desire towards an

hallucination, and the means of eliminating that desire is by

discovering that the object is an hallucination.

So what are the types of objects that this negative desire

arises towards?

Well, one is bodies, our own and others. It's not uncommon that

a body can appear in an exaggerated way, causing it to seem as if

it is the source of happiness, and not only the body but also all

the objects of our senses. So in order to discover the actuality

of the objects of the senses then the Buddha taught, or The

Buddha mentioned the aggregate of FORM.

Then desire arises for those things that feel good. In fact the

desire that motivates most people arises from pleasant

experiences, such as with the thought "This feels good therefore

I want to never be parted from it." What a common thought! Where

the mistake arises is in this expression "never being parted from

it", especially if this object is something impermanent, and that

there is no way that the contact can be preserved for- ever.

Consequently the desire is setting oneself up for disappointment.

Therefore in order to explore such feelings the Buddha mentioned

the second aggregate the aggregate of FEELING.

Another object to which people become attached with desire are

ideas. The disputes that scholars get into can get very heated,

because these scholars become attached to their ideas and

discriminations, regarding their own as superior and other's

ideas as inferior, causing them to desire for their idea to be

recognized as the supreme. This fuels the actions of speech and

so forth that make the various disputes that one gets and can

come to such extremes as causing closed mindedness, losing the

ability to openly examine other's ideas. In order to explore such

discriminations or ideation the Buddha mentioned the aggregate of

DISCRIMINATIONS.

There are many other functions and emotions of the mind, so he

heaped all of those in the classification known as COMPOSITIONAL

FACTORS. In some texts the compositional factor aggregate is

called VOLITION, and volition is one of the functions of the mind

that is contained within that class. This is an example of giving

the name of a member of the group to the whole group. VOLlTION

was chosen rather than any of the others because of it's

importance, and this is because desire for instance can only

bring about experience once it is put into action, and the way it

is put into action is through volition. For instance one can have

the desire to possess something, but it is only when one

generates the actual will to get it that the action follows and

such volition or will is what is known as karma. The word karma

is used colloquially to refer to the experiences that occur to

people. Technically those experiences are known as the results of

karma, and technically karma is referring to the action which is

the cause of such experiences. Karma then is referring to

volition or will, as well as the actions of body and speech

motivated by such will, and once you have set the action in

motion then you're bound to the result, like the turning of a

wheel. So as this is something important to analyze and come to

know the Buddha mentioned this aggregate of compositional

factors.

The last aggregate is the aggregate of CONSCIOUSNESS and this is

referring to the six consciousnesses, visual, auditory,

olfactory, gustatory, tactile and mental, which are the main

means we come to know the various objects that compose reality.

So this also is very important to investigate.

 

In the doctrine of selflessness there's said to be two types.

The selflessness of person and the selflessness of phenomena, and

the person is said to be the I that is designated in dependence

upon any of the aggregates such as in the expression "I am

sitting here." That I is a person which is being designated in

dependence upon the form aggregate, because it is being

designated in dependence upon the body which is included in the

FORM aggregate. Without the body you wouldn't be able to have the

thought "I am sitting here." The great Indian master Nagarjuna

who elucidated The Buddha's teaching on selflessness said that

the misconception of the self of a person arises by depending

upon the misconception of the self of phenomena. By phenomena

there he meant the five aggregates, and for example because of

mistaking the way in which the five aggregates exist, such as the

body, mistaking the way in which it exists then we mistake the

way the I exists which is dependent upon those aggregates. By

mistaking the way the I exists one mistakes the way others exist,

and by mistaking the way others exist then such perverse thoughts

as clinging and ill will arise. Due to the arisal of such

emotional addictions there comes volition, the acting out of

those emotions, and due to such action one is bound to experience

the result, which creates a cycle or vicious circle of death and

rebirth, over and over again.

[Tirisilex]

That went completely over my head...

what did you just say?

[I_love_krishna_]

So, basically what you are saying that the idea of self is imaginary?

 

So, the self does not exist, but due to these "conditionings" it is seen to exist.

 

So, everything basically is there to make something empty look like something that is not empty.

 

Is this from a therveda tradition? I felt this!, I went to a website called Therveda "school of elders" and the meditational techniques provided there make you feel this way. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Unfortunately, this feeling does not last. Soon, the ego and all the conditionings in the mind take over. /images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[Tirisilex]

This belief is held by all 3 vehicles..

Therevaden (Hinayana)

Mahayana

Vajrayana

[AncientMariner]

 

 

 

 

I know a Buddhist scholar pali translator who told me that the no selfer Buddhists actually do not follow anything the Buddha said. In fact he told me that the Buddha said the self is the only refuge and the Buddha talked about unification with Brahma. Take it for what its worth because I personally know very little about Buddhism but according to him almost all "modern" Buddhists are a bunch of "deluded muthas."

[gHari]

Sorry, I thought the 'sound of one hand clapping' was a Buddhist saying.

[Gauracandra]

But then we'd miss your association. Unfortunately I don't know much about Buddhism.

[theist]

Buddhism is another subject I know little about. I do feel an attraction to Lord Buddha even if not to that which is generally presented as his philosophy.

 

Here is an article that proposes a link between Pure Land Buddhism and Vaishnavism that I found interesting.

 

http://www.vina.cc/stories/PHILOSOPHICAL/2003/8/oneadipurisha.html

[yasodanandana]

yes the idea is that the self is an imagination

 

we consider that we are at the basic stage created by sri buddah to clean off every material concept from the vedic religion

 

with buddah we have the concept that everything is an illusion, even the self

 

with shankaracharya we learn that spirit exists and that the ultimate truth is undifferentiated

 

next the vaishnava acharyas add that god is personal and creatures are personal and individual but they belong to a different nature

 

the last and more perfect approach is chaitanya mahaprabhu that says that individual soul and supersoul are at the same time different in quantity and the same in quality

[teyes]

You may try a brand new board E-Sangha, http://buddhism.lioncity.net/ , currently the most active board on Buddhism