ED; I'm not sure If I'm understanding well your sayings here but no intention of interfering in any with your way of seeing life etc... I'm under the impression that your confusion here comes due to you doing too much reading and not experiencing in you that. The Buddha stated very clearly not to believe in anything he said, but experience first and then choose to believe or not believe. A bit like Chris pointed out the other day something on this lines: "First experience afterwards think". But you seem to keep doing in other way round: first you do massive reading to stimulate even more your intellectual thinking and then you experience the consequences of that mental intellectual thinking. This is why you are confuse now. In the light interbeing and the heart of prajanaparamitra sutra or Heart Sutra: Emptiness is form, form is emptiness and the same is with perceptions, mental formations, consciousness....Impossible to understand this in the intellectual thinking form. So you have no more choice but to give up and start to do some sitting to start with. Mayka --- On Sat, 23/4/11, ED <[email protected]> wrote:
From: ED <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] Re: Heart To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, 23 April, 2011, 16:10 Anthony, Many the world over express 'good' feelings such as love, affection, kindness etc. as being associated with the heart. We talk about persons 'having no heart' or being 'heart-broken', or being 'heartless' or 'heartful'. I believe that such speech is symbolic. However, I do not rule out the possibility that affectives experience sensations, feelings and 'spirituality' in a somewhat different way than do intellectuals. This conjecture could possibly be checked out via fMRI studies. After reading the first article on jhana states by Jay Michaelson, posted here by Mike Brown, I am not only underwhelmed by what anyone, including myself, has to say about these matters; but I am also unmoved by any feelings or sensations anyone, including myself, experiences in any organ of the body in connection with any spiritual practice. Possibly only the experience of no-self and non-duality are worthy of note, and I have a lot of doubts and many questions about this too. --ED > Maybe I am wrong, but JM keeps evading my questions, so I have no way to > learn more. > > Anthony --- In [email protected], Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote: > > ED, > > The Chinese language does not have a single word that represents 'mind', so > 'xin' is used for both heart and mind, resulting in the former encompassing a > bigger scope than the latter, as you describe below. > I have been wondering why JM keeps emphasizing 'heart' while disparaging > 'mind'. I don't think his Chinese only speaking teacher makes that > distinction. > After arguing with JM, I started to think that he takes 'heart' to denote > something more directly in connection with senses, while 'mind' is reserved > for 'intellect'. > Maybe I am wrong, but JM keeps evading my questions, so I have no way to >learn more. > Anthony
