Talk 3 , 60 stanzas on reasoning of Nagajuna by Dzongsar Rinpoche
Just recognizing impermanence, simple stuff like we are going to die, can help see the truth of no truly existing reality. More babbling of someone living in the slime and muck of the dark age. Simply notes or paraphrasing and contemplatoincontemplation of teachings of Nagajuna via Dzongsar Rinpoche some are insights of a confused being. So simply for consideration for discussion.
Just recognizing impermanence, simple stuff like we are gong to die, can help see the truth of no truly existing reality.
We can “see” this further through reasoning, and in the Vajrayana through devotion. of course, reasoning and logic is only a tool, but as we have been confused by our own habitual patters of thought which come from the “reasoning” mind, reasoning can also undue the primitive beliefs about reality.
We can cognize whether directly, through our senses or inferentially, coming to conclusions that could be wrong, as will as though consensus. But inferential logic is shaky as our conclusions and logical progression could be wrong, and consensus is also pretty shaky as just because a hundred idiots agree on something does not make it true. (ah, them damn Buddhist always trying to claim that even that it is empty objective relative “truth” does exist, in it’s nonexistent way. )
A person or a bunch of people “identifying” as woman, when they are really a man, does not make it so.
There is nothing outdated about Madhyamika, as true today as it was 2000 years ago. According to Nagajuna, for something to be truly true it ahs to be permanent and independent. Anything dependent on conditions or fabricated can not be true, and not truly existent. It can not be truly existent, nonexistent, both or neither.
Nagajuna does not believe in truly existent nirvana. So, if Nagajuna and apparently the Buddha does not believe in Nirvana than why are we doing this? Because we are suffering. We are dreaming that an elephant is sleeping with us, and we do not like that.
But we believe the dream, so the dream brings paid but really the elephant never existed, as it is a dream.
No true samsara or nirvana. All 84000 Dharmas are there simply for us to see that this is illusion. But if it is all illusion then why can’t we ‘just do anything we want’ why should we have rituals, practice, believe in karma and why should we be good? Because we are sleeping and in the dream, it matters what we do. We are path-dwellers, we are on the path, victims of clinging to the non-existent self.
Emotion creates action and actions create results and results create more emotions etc. this creates the body. The body needs food, sleep, shelter etc.
So, is the result of Dharma practice also nonexistent? Well, it seems that even enlightenment does not truly exist. There is no beginning, no truly independent beginning, as soon as you THINK of a beginning, that beginning is now dependent on the thinker.
Argument and reasoning are very important to the Buddhist path / tradition. The conceptual mind is used to undermine the conceptual mind.
There is also not independent and uncontrived END. BUT ENLIGHTENMENT SOUNDS LIKE A TRUE END, BUT NAGAJUNA SAYS NO. So does that mean samsara continues? No, because samsara never truly existed. There is no real arising, no real dwelling and no real cessation. Everything is deconstructed.
On the relative level it is existing and the more you practice the more you become fussy about the details and karma. The more we realize the non-existence of samsara the more we accept or work with or respect relative reality as it seems to exist. Seems to have something to do with things as they are, mahamudra, pure perception. Somehow out of causes and conditions the apparent reality we experience is what it is, just is and any desire for it to be different is creating further causes and conditions. If we actually recognise it is illusion there is really not need to change it only to experience it.
If Buddhism had a devil, it would be habit. Habitual patterns as the great one often said. So what can we do to cut through habitual patterns? The usual stuff, shamatha vipassana, sadhana , making offerings, circumambulating a stupa, making offerings to the three jewels, same ol, same ol. Just maybe while you are circumambulating you are not causing harm, while you are doing sadhana you are not causing harm while you are toing tong len you are changing habitual patterns of think of me as the most important.
What seems to make Buddhism different from other schools of thought, Hindu and otherwise is the ideas of selflessness and bodhicitta which selflessness alone kind of points to nonexistence and illusionaryness.
Some schools of people who considered themselves Buddhist pot forth that the 5 aggregates truly exist, but Nagarjuna argument is that if they did, then when form ceases at death, you would attain nirvana. Back to what seems to be a huge danger in Buddhism, is nihilism, if when we died we attain nirvana, then it don’t matter what we do. Free ticket to paradise. But ah, it seems even ones as dense as ourselves have this glimpse that it just ain’t that simple. Something brought apparent existence into existence. Some timeless undefinable things, that seems to believe in itself and its projections. Look look at your own mind, mind itself never existed anywhere. WTF???.
Well that’s it for this week. This was a value packed talk, . and it looks like at least 7 more or more. I think it is easier to be a Muslim.
