This is an open thread for members of the Dkos Sangha and interested visitors who happen by. Each of us has our own path; we come here by way of many different traditions, and of no particular tradition. While the language we use may differ depending on the traditions, teachers, practices, and teachings that have shaped our journeys, we find in common, generally, a search for who we truly are, our true nature, and to bring the peace and compassion born of that search into the greater world of which we area part. If you wish to share, or if you seek support, or if you simply want to say hello, please do, as this space is for you.
We come to Buddhism via a variety of ecumenical, spiritual experiences and traditions. Today I hope to introduce for a second time, Yogac(h)ara Buddhism, which while not an institutional practice is useful for those of us interested in speculating about consciousness. Its foundational history for Ch’an/Zen and Pure Land is important for those contemporary Buddhist practices.
It was the Yogacarins who took it upon themselves to provide a detailed analysis of the functions of consciousness, as well as the effects that Buddhist practices such as morality, concentration and wisdom have on the consciousness, and how those effects bring one to the Buddhist goal of enlightenment.
There is a dialectic possibility that Yogacara can bring by deconstructing various constructions and projections. Creative pedagogy in the context of Yogacara can represent the potential for effecting other’s mental experiences, as if we can communicate that stored consciousness and its evolution.
The projection of cognitive objects for appropriation is consciousness's main tool for this construction. If I own things (ideas, theories, identities, material objects), then "I am." If there are eternal objects that I can possess, then I too must be eternal. To undermine this desperate and erroneous appropriative grasping, Yogācāra texts say: Negate the object, and the self is also negated (e.g., Madhyānta-vibhāga, 1:4, 8).[2]
Our breathing can help us understand that we can imagine appearance, process and emptiness of entities.
Let your awareness of each breath trace those paths.
Those paths are real and unreal.
Those same paths are internal and external.
emptiness
and
consciousness,
the non-duality
of self
and
other
We can convert indolence into diligence and laziness into zeal.
We can move from calm-abiding to applied-insight seamlessly.
“Just as the light of the sun dispels night’s darkness”.
Have a blessed day.
Namaste
The Yogacara texts cover a vast array of topics, but one of their main concerns is explaining how it is possible for human beings to perceive the world, and then to agree on what they perceive. This kind of problem is especially important in a religious system like Buddhism, where the doctrine of emptiness effectively denies the reality of any set position of awareness.
The Yogacarins defined three basic modes by which we perceive our world:
- one, through attached and erroneous discrimination, wherein things are incorrectly apprehended based on preconceptions;
- two, through the correct understanding of the dependently originated nature of things; and
- three, by apprehending things as they are in themselves, uninfluenced by any conceptualization at all.
These are referred to in Yogacara as the three natures of perception. Also, regarding perception, the Yogacarins emphasized that our everyday understanding of the existence of external objects is problematic, since in order to perceive any object (and thus, for all practical purposes for the object to “exist”), there must be a sensory organ as well as a correlative type of consciousness to allow the process of cognition to occur.
Perhaps the best known teaching of the Yogacara system is the eight layers of consciousness. This theory of the consciousnesses attempted to explain all the phenomena of cyclic existence, including how rebirth occurs and how karma functions on an individual basis. For example, if I carry out a good or evil act, why and how do the effects of that act not appear immediately? And if they do not appear immediately, where is this karma waiting for its opportunity to play out?
The answer given by the Yogacarins was the store consciousness, also known as the base, or eighth consciousness (Sanskrit, alaya-vijnana), which simultaneously acts as a storage place for karma and as a fertile matrix that brings karma to a state of fruition. The likeness of this process to the cultivation of plants led to the creation of the metaphor of seeds (Sanskrit, bijas) to explain the way karma is stored in the eighth consciousness. The type, quantity, quality and strength of the seeds determine where and how a sentient being will be reborn.
On the other hand, the karmic energies created in the current lifetime through repeated patterns of behavior are called habit energies (Sanskrit, vasanas). All the activities that mold our minds and bodies for better or worse—eating, drinking, talking, studying, practicing the piano or whatever—can be understood to create habit energies. And of course, my habit energies can penetrate the consciousnesses of others, and vice versa—what we call “influence” in everyday language. Habit energies can become seeds, and seeds can produce new habit energies.
www.lionsroar.com/...
I wrote an earlier diary - introducing Yogacara Buddhism to the Sangha.
[Yogācāra] attaches importance to the religious practice of yoga as a means for attaining final emancipation from the bondage of the phenomenal world. The stages of yoga are systematically set forth in the treatises associated with this tradition.[7]
Philosophical dialogue: Yogācāra, idealism and phenomenology
Yogācāra has also been identified in the western philosophical tradition as idealism, or more specifically subjective idealism. This equation was standard until recently, when it began to be challenged by scholars such as Kochumuttom, Anacker, Kalupahana,[90] Dunne, Lusthaus,[91]Powers, and Wayman.[88][c]
[...]
In modern western philosophical discourse, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have approached what western scholarship generally concedes to be a standard Yogācāra position.
en.wikipedia.org/...
Tagawa Shun’ei’s book Living Yogacara is a 1989 text translated by Charles Muller in 2009. This introduction to a line of inquiry that while not blessed with institutions and temples like Zen or Pure Land, does have interested scholars. It is more technical than other forms of Buddhism, but in its interest in cognitive processes, amplifies the meditative journey.
Shun’ei describes the thinking consciousness that occurs in the wake of the sense consciousnesses, a phenomenological approach to Buddhism that provides a bridge to so-called Western philosophies still dichotomized as Continental/Anglo-American.
More simply,
...First the visual consciousness sees the printed characters on the page just as they are. then the thinking consciousness that had arisen simultaneously with the visual consciousness follows, cognizing the meaning of the words. However, it does not stop there, as we continue to the relate to the contents of what has been read, pondering its meaning. This is the function of the thinking consciousness following upon the operation of the sense consciousness.
There is also the case where sentences and words are recalled only upon a certain occasion. Remembering the words of a favorite poem or novel, we ruminate on their meanings, savoring them more deeply. This kind of function of the thinking consciousness does not occur simultaneously with the five consciousnesses nor does it directly follow upon them…
[...]
If the only role of the thinking consciousness was to respond to cognitive objects appearing before our eyes, our lives would end up being pretty boring.
It is the ability to pull things out of our own being, examine and contemplate their individual characters, and then accumulate this knowledge that brings richness and depth to our lives. This is the indispensable function of the independently arising thinking consciousness.
(p84-5)
To avoid indolence and craving, and in order to seek equanimity, we need to illuminate a dark room with a clear sky because our mind and body are luminous, when we have clear and firm purpose. One should seek that in one’s meditative practices, in spite of how “our thinking consciousness is endowed with both wholesome and afflictive factors, and conflicting psychological functions are always working within us”. (p92)
Contentment means, according to Kamalashila, accepting conditions as they are, once that one has got a realization-conducive situation set in place. Just sit in meditation. Do not fuss about whether it is too cold or too hot. Just make do the best that one can.
The Arya Ratna-megha-sutra declares: "Calm-abiding is a single-pointed consciousness; Applied-insight is seeing into the nature of things."
“Having taken control of the ups and downs [of meditation practice], the elephant-like mind needs be tethered to the chosen "object" with the rope of remembrance (smrti) and introspection (samprajnaya)," says the Master. "When [the twin poles of] depression (lena) and excitation (audhitya) are finally balanced and the mind is at last calmly abiding on its object, then relax the effort and abide with detachment for as long as one can.
[...]
"After realizing Calm-abiding, then the meditation of Applied-insight may be implemented as follows. The vastly perfect teachings of all the Sages, when studied, directly or indirectly reveal profound insights into Reality. Taking those insights and applying them to meditation, the absolute nature of Reality will be intuitively grasped, disposing of all one's [previously held] conceptual views, just as the light of the sun at dawn dispels night's darkness.”
www.dharmafellowship.org/...
We can convert indolence into diligence and laziness into zeal.
We can move from calm-abiding to applied-insight seamlessly.
“Just as the light of the sun dispels night’s darkness”.
Have a blessed day.
Namaste