/lit/ - Literature

This is a topic well worth exploring for the sake of furthering our inner peace by opening our minds beyond our usual stream of thoughts. We should look into this with the aim of creating more peace with our neighbors and throughout our world. No matter what kind of consciousness we might consider, the clear light of innermost awareness pervades it. Ice, even when it is solid and very hard, does not pass beyond the nature of water. In the same way, no matter how gross, tough, or coarse conceptions might be, the place from which they dawn and the place into which they vanish when we no longer think about them does not pass beyond innermost awareness.

Conceptual awareness appears from within the sphere of innermost awareness and finally dissolves into the sphere of innermost awareness. Since this is the case, as the early twentieth-century scholar–yogi of the Old Translation (Nyingma) School Dodrubchen Jigme Tenpe Nyima says, just as oil pervades the entirety of sesame seeds, so clear light pervades all consciousness. He concludes that therefore even at the time of the manifestation of the coarser levels of mind—both during thinking and during the operation of the sensory consciousnesses associated with the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body—it is possible to identify, through the force of a lama or guru’s empowering blessings and quintessential instructions, a subtle feature of clear light that pervades each of these consciousnesses.

How can we take innermost awareness into the spiritual path right now? It is through being introduced to and identifying—in experience—the clear light that pervades all types of consciousnesses and one-pointedly meditating on this, sustaining attention to it within nonthought, nonconceptualization. Then, as the clear light becomes more and more profound, the types of coarse thoughts diminish more and more. This is why this practice is called “the essential path through knowledge of which all states are released.” Coming to know this single innermost awareness in our own experience, we are liberated from all sorts of tense situations.

To identify innermost awareness, the most difficult part is to make the distinction between mind (sems) and innermost awareness (rig pa). It is easy to talk about this difference, to say, “Innermost awareness has never been infected by mistake, whereas mind is under the influence of conceptualization and polluted with mistaken thought.” This is easy to say, but in terms of actual experience in our own mental continuum, it is very difficult. Dodrubchen said that although we might fancy that we are meditating on innermost awareness, there is a danger that we are actually, in fact, merely maintaining concentration on the clear and cognitive nature of a more superficial mind, and so we need to take care. It is helpful to do the latter, but it is not so profound.

All Tibetan systems, in their final view, emphasize the fundamental innate mind of clear light. In terms of the center of these systems, all of the phenomena of cyclic existence and nirvana are the sport, the effulgence, of the fundamental innate clear light. Hence, the root, and foundation, of all of that is within the scope of cyclic existence and nirvana is the fundamental clear light.

This being so, when practicing the spiritual path, there is nothing else needed to purify these impure appearances—which themselves dawn from within the context of innermost awareness or clear light—than to turn the fundamental innate mind of clear light itself into that through which you practice the spiritual path. Manifesting the fruit of practicing the path, the fundamental innate mind of clear light itself, when separated from all obstructive defilements, is the resultant omniscience of buddhahood, a state from which the greatest benefit to others can be effected.

https://www.lionsroar.com/discover-your-innermost-awareness/

I have nothing much to contribute except that I really enjoy the sparkling clarity of some Tibetan Buddhist discourses and scriptures about the innate luminous Buddha-nature, the potential for basic goodness and basic sanity independent of and unimpeded by obstructions, being, in fact, the same as our own ordinary consciousness. Have a bump.

>>20729553
>wise persons
>>20729553
>Tibetan Buddhism
lol

tibetan buddhism is big pile of shit

and the buddha never taught buddhanature. the buddha teaches only the 8 fold path leading to the end of suffering

also tibetans cant explain how illusion and obstructions arise from rig pa in the first place

>>20731177
>and the buddha never taught buddhanature. the buddha teaches only the 8 fold path leading to the end of suffering
Implicit in the very possibility that you appreciate, follow, feel you can learn from Buddhism is the idea that you can become like the Buddha or attain the same state which he attained. Even in the very way you formulated it, following the 8-fold path which leads to the cessation of suffering is implicitly to become as or like the Buddha did. And this must be something innate to us, already possible. Hence, as a placeholder, Mahayana Buddhism came up with the idea of “Buddha-nature,” that we already have the innate enlightened awareness within us as a possibility, and such terminology and thoughts were also appropriated by Tibetan Buddhists.

>>20731177
>8 fold path leading to the end of suffering
it's only possible to end suffering because the forms, the [...list of 84 other things...] are empty of a permanent self-nature which would otherwise render them intractibly a source of angst/misery/disquiet/pain. And they are empty of such a nature because it is their nature to be enlightened and free from such subjective constraints. And we are ignorant of this ordinarily because we are ignorant of all sorts of mundane things to say nothing of more subtle and abstract ones. Illusion and ignorance are the true cogito. I think therefore I err. Test this yourself. And start with the 'Jeets, not the Tibetans.

>>20729553
eastern religions are a meme. all you need are the Greeks, indians are just a curiosity, merely complementary to the intellectual framework of the Western civilization. Eastern religions became popular among hippie types because they're very in your face and don't require you to read dozens of books. they're the mark of a pseud

>>20731177
>the buddha never taught buddhanature
Emptiness is THE teaching, anon. It is the one single thing that the Buddha taught. Everything else is just expanding on Emptiness.

>>20729553
Tibetan Buddhism is straight up cuck shit. Westoids only give a fuck about them because of their victim clout points. Take the True Landpill.

>>20731319
>they're very in your face and don't require you to read dozens of books.
yes the adherents of the so-called western religion are not reduced to quips and relying on a single text for all their ideas until the end of time, they are far more cerebral and philosophical in their contemplation of questions like "was Jesus a man or a capeshitter or both" or "can woman pregnant with out sexo"?

.

>>20731350
the West has the advantage of distinguishing between philosophy and theology (except for the Middle Ages) unlike dumb gooks and pajeets

>>20731716
>The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.

>>20731716
>except for the Middle Ages
Best philosophy is Middle Ages philosophy

>>20731716
tricorporate

>>20731729
I'm a Hegelian, that doesn't refute what I said

>>20731805
No, I'm Hegelian

>>20731805
It does

>>20731824
it doesn't. just the objects are the same but philosophy from definition is not based on dogma while religion from definition is

>>20731842
How exactly is philosophy not based on dogma? Anything which has any substantive content at all necessarily contains dogmatism.

>>20731842
They are the same. Religion is philosophy at a certain stage of development.

>>20731860
And philosophy is religion at a certain stage of its development.

>>20731857
>How exactly is philosophy not based on dogma?
it can be argued that the various philosophies are. but certainly not philosophy itself, which is just a love of wisdom

>>20731875
>but certainly not philosophy itself
In which case philosophy is entirely a non-substance.

>>20731879
as socrates put it, what he was doing was "inquiry into the human phenomena." without dogma, without solid assumptions, thats philosophy. theology is the opposite of that, though with some overlap

>>20731888
>without solid assumptions
Except the laws of transcendental aesthetic and transcendental and general logic without which there could be no Socrates.

>>20731909
there are personal (individual) dogma that arise internally from own personal inquiry, and impersonal (collective) dogma that are forced on individuals externally, there's nothing wrong with the former, the latter should light a red lightbulb in your head. the former is called philosophy, the latter is called religion

>>20731716
That's a very recent development. But contemporary western "philosophy" is basically just ethics with a Christian aftertaste. Hardly anything to celebrate unless you think corporate ESG policy is the highest goal of human life.

>>20731923
But latter started out as the former. And the former eventually again becomes the latter. They are one thing looked at from different points in time.

>>20731246
>that we already have the innate enlightened awareness within us as a possibility, and such terminology and thoughts were also appropriated by Tibetan Buddhists.
in Tibetan Buddhism they typically don't regard it as being just an 'innate possibility' but rather something which is already fully present and actual inside everyone which is why it just has to be uncovered or the adventitious defilements removed; it's the same in a lot of Chan

What's a death cult anyway?

>>20731337
>anatta means no soul!
Theravadans were derided as "annihilationists" for this very wilfull misunderstanding. Via negativa /=/ void fetish.

>>20729553
>>20729558
>>20729566
This is interesting.