Dharma Talk
A carpenter is building a house by a turn in a raging river. As he is hammering boards on his back deck, the head of the hammer flies off into the river. So he goes to town to buy a new head. Later, again while hammering, the handle breaks. So he goes to town to buy a new handle. Now, does he still have the same hammer? We will take two novice monks, sit them down under a Bodie Tree. One will argue yes, the other no. And they will stay at it until one or both are enlightened. Yet there was something there all along: hammering. Like hammering, the self is a verb, a process.
The process changes constantly, new things are bound to it, old things become unbound. The process begins, continues, and ends.
Our logic can convince us, to cause us to see a particular content in our view. If we logically conclude that the “I” can’t be found, then it is easy to convince us that the “I” is an illusion.
The unfindability argument goes like this: Is it this? No. Is it that? No. And so on, until ultimately nothing is it. Wait! We stepped INSIDE! And inside, the object isn’t all that it was. Parts of it are, yet not all. In inside those parts? Again more parts, yet the whole isn’t there. What happened?
Think of a Matruska doll. It is three dimensional, point perpendicular to it and you are pointing at it. Go inside the first doll, and you are no longer see the whole doll, only the dolls inside the first. All you can do it point perpendicularly to a three dimensional object. That’s it.
Views
A common Buddhist view is the Emptiness View: there is no self. It took me a long time to understand this view, and I am not all sure I actually do. In the process of reaching an understanding, I discovered the dimensional fallacy. Understanding that led to seeing the emptiness view a different way: the Process view.
I present my view as a view, not as the view: it just provides a way of seeing something I think is important.
Clinging to views causes suffering. And yet, you need to have a view.
I have spent a long time on views, my view, their view. And now I coming to the point of seeing that it is a positional thing rather than a knowledge thing. My position is from myself outward with curiosity.
Viewing through your view, viewing from your view. And possibly your view is yourself.
Its all in how you hold your view. Ways to hold your view: in front of you, filtering what you see; behind you, guiding you. If you see the world through your view, then when it isn’t valid you want to change reality. If you use your view to guide you, then when it isn’t valid you tend to change your view.
So I am going to give you a view that allows you to give up suffering, to give up suffering without having to give up your Self. I am giving the process view. A view that you look from. And I contrast it to the Emptiness view: the view that you look through.
That view is simply yourself looking outward, and what you see. And what you see is Other.
Look with curiosity, not with conclusions.
Look with curiosity, not with expectations.
Look with curiosity, not with certainty.
Valid
Instead of Truth, I am seeking Valid. Valid means “correlates with reality”. Reality is “that which intrudes”. I believe my view to be valid, I don’t know if it is true.
Invalid simply means “does not correlate”, that there is a way to look at that view that does not correlate with reality (example: flat earth).
If reality appears a certain way, then it is possible that it is that way.
Einstein’s General Relativity says that motion is relative to your inertial frame, which for us is the earth. So the view that the sun goes around the earth is valid.
From space, we can see that the earth is a sphere. So the view that the earth is flat is invalid.
Sankara’s
The term Sankara is usually translated as Mental Formation. I use it in a sense similar to Carl Jung: as a complex.
Identify the Sankara that is being fed.
Dependent Origination
It was during the DPP retreat in the desert that I first saw this one through: from ignorance to suffering.
The awareness of time is one of the causes and conditions, and that is what it is: causes and conditions. There are tipping points, gradual, sudden, duality.
Causes and conditions:
The event occurred because the causes and conditions reached the trigger level.
Two Views
Process View and Emptiness View.
In order to explain the two views, I will use an analogy: Sun Centered vs. Earth Centered views of the solar system. The Earth Centered and Sun Centered views are both valid. And each has advantages when explaining what we see. However, the Sun Centered view is less cumbersome when explaining the motion of the planets. In the same way, the Process view is less cumbersome when explaining Not-Self than the Emptiness view.
The regression of the planets is something real, something we see and experience. In the earth centered view, the epicycle view isn’t invalid, it is just complicated. In the sun centered view it is easy to understand.
The earth-centered view is our reality: nomena. The sun-centered view is conceptual: phenomena.
In the emptiness view, the phrase “form is emptiness, emptiness if form” is hard to understand.
I find viewing from the Process View makes it easier to see emptyness, just like viewing sun-centered makes it easier to see retrograde motion.
Process View
What is it really? Is the Red Spot on Jupiter really there? It is easy to prove it isn’t, if we fall into the dimensional fallacy.
Spiritual seekers often express the view that there is “no permanent, unchanging, Self”. Yes, when you add “permanent” and “unchanging”, then I think that is valid. What if the Self was not permanent: what if it came into existence, stayed for awhile, and then went away? What if it was continuously changing?
That is the basis of the process view: we are a verb, we not a noun: a process, not a thing. We are a self-organizing, dynamically stable, bonded process. Complex systems are self-organizing. They follow patterns, affordances, and attractors.
And we do exist. I am the whole of me, not any part. Each part comes, attaches for a time, then goes. And so of I. We exist in the same way the Red Spot on Jupiter exists: we have boundaries: boundaries in time, boundaries in space. There is Self, and there is other.
My place is in motion, each choice is a letting go.
Yes, connected: all things are connected. And separate too.
Emptiness is form, form is emptiness
It’s a noun! Form is a noun, a noun is empty. A noun is a snapshot of a verb.
Noumena is reality, phenomena is the reality we see. Reality is a verb, a constantly flowing stream of processes. We see a form and name it. That name is not the thing, that name is only a pointer.
The form we see, the form we name, is phenomena, is in our heads. It doesn’t exist with out us, it has no “inherent existance”, it is empty.
Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.