Bill!,
Sheng Yen's translator(s) during talks by Sheng Yen usually translated a
Chinese word to "Vexations". But I think vexations are afflictions. I think
they are afflictions caused by wandering thoughts; and by attachments to
thoughts and concepts, which act as filters against reality and create a dense
screen against Buddha Nature.
I like what you say about "naive". As in, for example, a naive mind, or a
simple mind. I have sometimes used the word "unsophisticated" mind.
As for the illusions or delusions which pass before the attention and cover our
nature or cover Buddha Nature, ...what to call them?, yes: neither "Illusions"
nor "Delusions" seems distinct enough from common usage to be specific in the
case of discussion of distractions from, and coverings of, Buddha Nature. I
think some technical writings call them "mind-objects", and others use
"mind-movements" (which sounds a bit scatological). But both mind-objects and
mind-movements seem nicely specific, to me.
But some holdings of the mind are not in motion: these are "mind-holdings",
"fixed-ideas", "concepts", which similarly interfere with bare sensation and
fundamental direct sentience. These are rose-colored-glasses, filters,
sculptors, and massage-therapists that do all they can to mold experience into
certain shapes and categories. Some of them are useful to our survival, while
most of the time they are simply given and allowed too much reign to dictate,
censor, colorize, and demand a life and an energy-source of their own. We may
call these mental-filters and actions and tendencies "orientations", and
"biases". In any case, they are derivative and of a higher and more
sophisticated order than direct sensation, and they create artifacts from
sensation, artifacts which present themselves to us with a semblance of being
"real", whereas of course they are not fundamental, and are not percepts of the
Buddha Nature, but are constructions organized around one sort of PERSISTENT
bias or other.
We have "bags" full of these: the five Skandhas, masquerading as a "self".
--Joe
> "Bill!" <BillSmart@...> wrote:
>
> Joe,
>
> I empathize with you because I too struggle sometimes over what words or
> phrases to use to describe experience. It starts from language being
> dualistic and experience (Buddha Nature) being hoistic; but the difficulty is
> also compounded by the different meanings the same words have to different
> people.
>
> I agree 'empty mind' could be interpreted as 'spaciness', although the more I
> think about this I'm not sure if that's such a bad thing. If you could just
> tweak 'spaciness' to mean 'naive' it would almost fit; at least it would
> almost fit for my purposes.
>
> I use the term 'illusion' a lot but actually 'illusion' has a heavy visual
> connotation. I've thought about 'delusion' which is more applicable to
> thoughts and therefore more closely describes what I mean to say - but
> 'delusion' also carries a heavy connotation of mental illness. I don't mean
> that. When your discriminating mind (intellect) creates 'illusions' or
> 'delusions' it's probably functioning properly. I tried out the term 'mental
> concept' for a while but discarded that. It's redundant also. There are no
> 'non-mental concepts'. I guess I could just distill it down to 'concepts'.
> That works for me but I'm not sure if it communicates effectively to others.
>
> Oh well...I guess that's a bog part of the reason I participate in this forum
> - to try to develop a better way to communicate experience - Buddha Nature.
>
> All for now...Bill!
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