Dear e – (Eric?...I’m not sure what name Molly greeted you with either…) I agree that emptiness is different than luminosity…it was a quick and carless addition to my post.
Also, my experiences with Allan never found him being fundamentalist in the sense of his being a parrot quoting the Buddha of this era exclusively nor gratuitously either. Nor did I find him to be a philosophical nor theological ideologue in this respect. He at once was well read and able to recite countless texts if/when appropriate. When he spoke, he, in my view, made a nice synthesis between his own world view and what he had studied. Here, sadly again, I take off my apologist’s hat! ;-) In like manner, that which I have written is conflated to some degree with my findings and life’s experiences with the current paper here too. My notions of relative mind and the absolute minds were first groked from a different tradition. A few years ago, I discussed this a little with Allan and found basic agreement in such apprehensions. In fact, much of his training is with the Yellow Hats who are more inclined to the Middle Way whereas, as much as differentiations can be made, I more adhere to the Mind Only school. Continuing addressing your use of Nirvana, as far as I can tell, this is the same thing as ‘The Kingdom’ which is found in Christianity and other similar states in other traditions. And, it is just that, a state, not a thing or a place as the terms are used in common parlance. As to equating luminosity with the 4th jhana, I can only guess that this may be the case. As you can tell I’m not much into faith or revelation and as interesting as the cannons of different systems are of interest, I seldom discuss things in dogmatic terms mostly due to the subjective nature of words. Case in point, even the link you provided was ambivalent about equating luminous mind and nirvana saying that the former can be transformed into the latter! If I were to make such suppositions about luminous mind and the 4th jhana, I would guess that much of emanationism falls in this category including that found in The Enneads. Thanks for adding your insights! On Oct 27, 2:24 pm, e <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Orn, > > > Hi e – Yes, all concepts are relative in nature. However, the obverse > > is also being imputed if not overtly stated, that of the absolute. > > Can the absolute ever be stated? > > > While Gautama did talk about dependent arising, Allan mentioned the > > Buddha's notion of ‘brightly shining mind’ in his paper. Note > > carefully the words that follow from it:... > > Yeah the luminous mind shows up in a couple short sutras. So out of 45 > years of teaching Buddha mentioned it a few times. If it refers to the > 4th meditative jhana then it is mentioned many more times. If that was > what he was referring too, then some of the later traditions made a > bigger deal out of it then Buddha. The jhanas were meditative states > that predated Buddha, he just used them in a different manner. They > became one fold of the path. They were not the end but an integral > means. > > > Here we are approaching the absolute…something that is not relative > > nor is it dependent. He specifically and, in my opinion saliently, > > said (above) that: > > > “…When we go into that ground from which thoughts, > > emotions, memories, and so forth emerge, there is a substratum > > that can be accessed through meditation. Its very nature is > > luminosity, it makes manifest appearances…” > > > The operative words as I see it are: “ground from which…emerge”, and > > “it makes manifest appearances”. > > Buddha never predicated a causal ground of manifestation. Specifically > he said he looked back as far as he could in time and could discern no > beginning to samsara. If Buddha couldn’t discern the cause of the > manifest, what makes Alan think he can? And lo and behold the cause is > in his own mind. That must make one feel pretty powerful! :-) All > kidding aside, there was only 1 unconditioned “thing” and that was > Nirvana (and it was not considered causal). ALL else was conditioned. > > > So, if anything, Allan appears to be talking relatively about ideal or > > objective emptiness (the absolute) rather than the obverse. > > IMHO emptiness is qualitatively a different animal then the luminosity > of an “exalted” conditioned state of mind achieved during meditation. > > BTW for anyone interested, the wiki is pretty good on the Luminous > Mind.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_mind --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
